Out of the whole thing, Pope’s and Israel’s favorite thing was the ship pursuit and the firing of the big guns to stop the pursuit. Pope was glad his office got credit for identifying the case and making crucial arrests. He truly did not care about more credit for himself. Until his grandfather reminded him of an election in two years.
Tevis at Wells Fargo organized a congratulatory dinner for the arrest and prosecution of Black Bart. Sarah was invited since she had found the crucial piece of evidence and was there with Morse for the arrest.
Pope was a tagalong guest at the event, at what was apparently Tevis’ favorite place, the Bohemian Club.
“John, I know you don’t like him. I don’t either. But you have the handsome tuxedo from Washington, and I have the blue dress you seemed to like. I have to go. You ought to go to support me. Besides, as Israel lectured you at dinner, every time you get in the paper as a hero helps your re-election. We have to start campaigning now. We cannot wait for six weeks before the ballot boxes open to do it.”
“Honey, are you finished? I was planning to go anyway. Hume said Tevis was going to say something about us in Washington and I should be there to take a bow when you curtsy. Or whatever you are going to do while they are clapping.”
She punched him in the shoulder. She had not done it for a while. He thought she must have been saving energy for a big one. At least he did not have a bullet wound like last time.
His big mistake was thinking these thoughts aloud.
My wife can be so damn volatile! he thought. At least silently this time as he rubbed his shoulder from the second punch.
Sarah booked a room at the Palace Hotel on Market Street for them by telegram from the office.
They went to the gala. Sarah was seated at the head table. Pope, who had nothing to do with the Black Bart capture was seated with strangers at a table near the front.
Tevis welcomed everyone and dinner was served. After, he stood and spoke for forty minutes, crediting Hume and Sarah and giving Harry Morse much less credit than he deserved. In speaking glowingly of Sarah, he mentioned her husband, a former Wells Fargo detective had recently been involved in breaking up a drug ring in the area, and additionally he had assisted Sarah in saving the life of the president. The person who led both of those investigations sat unnamed in his tuxedo twenty feet away.
Pope could see the shock on Morse’s face to learn after eight years and arresting Black Bart, he had “assisted” two Wells Fargo employees. He looked off into the crowd and saw Pope scowling. He scowled on Pope’s behalf as Pope’s two major accomplishments were played down. Morse knew the company’s founders. He would make sure they knew what transpired here tonight. He knew it would not do any good.
This horse was already out of the barn and out of sight, he thought.
After the dinner, a very upset Sarah and Morse left the head table as other people there spoke about what a wonderful speech Tevis made. The only other one still at the table, but extremely disengaged from the conversations was Hume. He knew the truth.
Further, he knew this would signal the end of the most beneficial business and friendship in his career at the company he served so long. He was crestfallen.
Sarah and Harry Morse took one look at Pope and knew he was dangerously angry. His look was fierce, yet he said nothing. He gave a glance at a beloved wife and a dear friend walking toward him but focused on Tevis and even Hume. Hume picked up on it and left the table. He knew he had to do something, but for once was stumped as to what.
As they approached Pope, Morse spoke. Both Popes heard him, but none of the dignitaries Tevis invited did.
“This night marks a sad change in the long relationship between my company and Tevis’s.”
“The move will cost you, Harry. Damnably, it will cost you too much to hire me. I, with John’s agreement, am considering resigning from Wells Fargo Monday morning.”
Hume caught up in time to hear a bit of his closest friend’s comment and all his best remaining detective’s.
“I cannot make up for what Tevis did and didn’t say. Somebody,” and they knew he meant him, “will make sure the Chronicle and every damn paper in the West hears about these slights. I just hope you both are just angry and not serious. We could not operate half as efficiently without the Morse Detective Agency as a partner and Sarah Pope as a detective,” a very shaken Hume said.
“Jim, you’ve known me a long, long time. We have been through bullets and blizzards together. If anybody knows I don’t say serious things through anger, it’s you.
“I need to do some serious thinking,” Morse said.
“Sarah, you have my full support on what you just expressed. With or without you joining our dear and respected friend Harry, we’ll get by,” Pope said.
She turned to a man she respected highly. One who she also liked.
“Mr. Hume, you have provided wonderful opportunities for John and me both. The slant put on our—especially Harry’s and John’s actions in the biggest cases in years worries me. A lot. I’d like to meet with you Monday and talk further.”
Hume nodded at all three and turned. He walked away without saying a word.
“Just in case my friend is more of a gelding than I ever thought, my contacts in the media are even better than his. And I will get to them first. Jim is a politician. He plans to retire from Wells Fargo by dying at his desk there. There is no way in hell he will drop information in any way showing Tevis for the pompous ass we just saw,” Morse said.
The headlines the next morning read “Tevis Slights Famous Detective Morse And Pope, Who Saved the President”. The story had details what the speech should have said and did not. They had already done full coverage on Pope and the drug cartel earlier in the week.
Israel Pope, hearing the story, said, “Don’t fret. People like him create their own hells. It will come back to bite him in the butt without any worry or action by you two or Harry. Good always wins out in the end. And you three are as good as it gets.”
Tevis called Hume into his office on Monday. He wanted to know what the uproar was all about. Hume gracefully corrected items in his speech and reported the Morse Detective Agency was likely to reduce, if not sever, its long relationship with Wells Fargo and he expected Detective Pope to resign. The governor and the president were later interviewed and echoed Morse’s version. They were not as angry as the founders of the company or its board. As a very major shareholder, Tevis was not affected other than by ridicule.
Sarah was sitting outside his office waiting when he returned from the top floor. She gracefully and sadly handed him her badge and letter of resignation.
“I wish you the best. You’ve been a great boss and have John’s and my everlasting gratitude. It breaks my heart it ended this way.” She proffered her hand, and he shook it. Sarah walked out of Wells Fargo, never again to re-enter what she knew to be a wonderful company.
For almost twenty years, Pope listened to and followed his grandfather’s guidance. He did this time, also. Sarah tried, and did a pretty good job. Harry Morse was a more serious enemy with powerful friends.
Harry Morse rented a one-room office in San Rafael. He had the door painted with his agency name and let Sarah select what went inside. She kept it simple and economical. It looked more like a smaller detective bull pen than a business office. Two desks, several locking files, a wardrobe and coat rack and a gun cabinet. She put a picture of the founder, Harry Morse on one wall and a large map of Northern California on another. Pope did the lock work to make sure it was impenetrable.
The Morse Detective Agency North Bay office was open for business. The first customer was a woman who thought her husband was poisoning her. Sarah jumped right on it. One of Morse’s most famous cases was to be another poisoning. The co-founder of Stanford University, Jane Stanford, was poisoned in 1906. Harry investigated the first attempt. Mrs. Stanford succumbed to strychnine poisoning in Honolulu six months later.
As she got into the Morse cases,
she felt at home. It was more like the variety of Pinkerton cases on which she had cut her teeth. Yet, without the questionable tactics of union and strike busting.
The Morse agency was on retainer to many insurance companies. Those cases paralleled the claims cases she and Pope had investigated for Wells Fargo. In her first month, she closed seven cases. Morse was ecstatic. Closure meant cash flow and moving on to other retainers, then final payments.
Morse continued his friendship and assisting Wells Fargo with cases he selected after careful evaluation. The era of gratis work because of friendship or an interesting case seemed to have passed.
Pope had worried he would get bored with the sheriff’s job. Having a guest house shot up, seeing John Wilkes Booth, and breaking up a large smuggling ring in which he saw a ship chase and fight…all in his first few weeks as Marin sheriff. He would have never guessed such goings-on. They held him in good stead. He knew over time he may miss the long trails.
With Wyoming and Washington back-to-back, Pope and Sarah rode some distant trails. Maybe enough.
Pope had to admit he liked coming home at night. Home to one of the most beautiful women he had ever seen. Being near Israel Pope almost daily. It was like the “old days” but better.
There had been a downside to the various papers’ commentary on Pope in response to the Tevis speech and its omissions. While Morse saw a surge in new cases, Pope felt he was gaining unwanted notoriety. In 1883, there were a lot of wannabe gunsels roaming the Western United States. Notoriety with people like Kid Taos in one of the cases he and Sarah had worked in Cheyenne.
He thought he was fast because of the people with whom he picked gunfights. Pope found out after he took him down, he usually went up against drunks.
Kid Taos did not stand a chance against someone like Pope. Or Kane. Or any of the legends who tamed places like Dodge City. People like Masterson, Earp, or Tilghman, who was still marshal. They were real gunfighters, not make-believe ones.
Pope worried the publicity would draw them to San Rafael to show they were faster than him.
He spoke to the family at dinner about this. Millie did not have experience to contribute, other than her normal wisdom and ability to take things down to their basic elements.
Sarah said, “If I heard any other man alive suggest he was so fast, he would draw would-be gunfighters, I’d think it was pure male ego. In John’s case, I am afraid he is exactly right. I wish he was not, for once.”
“I been around some real hairy characters. Some were so scary nobody would take them on. Hugh Glass comes to mind. In the 1830’s about exactly fifty years ago, he was mauled by a bear. He crawled a couple hundred miles, eating worms and grubs and anything he could find. Now, there was a man with bark on! Nobody messed with him.”
“What ever happened to him?” Millie asked.
“Ha! An Indian shot an arrow in his back and killed him a year later in 1833, I believe!
“But, to get back to the discussion at hand, I think my boy has a valid point. A lawman wants to be respected, but not notorious. Notorious draws in a kind of fool we did not have to contend with in my day.”
He turned to Pope.
“Sonny, you can outdraw about any man alive. But there’s one out there you can’t. And even the ones you can, get lucky sometimes. You can have a misfire, have the sun in your eyes, go up against a man with a shotgun like Sarah’s cocked in hand. Get back shot. Anything.
“But here’s the thing. I suspect most of these yahoos are in Texas, Arizona, Montana and the like. They will spend their time dreaming about taking you or Bat, or Earp, or even Hardin down. I just doubt they’ll have the sense or money to come all the way up here. If one does, you’ll handle him like the rest who tried you. I just don’t see a bunch of them parading up to Northern California where they are out of their element. These fellas are not train riders. They are more like grub line riders!”
“Thanks, Grandpa. As always, you add sense to everybody else’s first thoughts. Dangerous people have been part of my life since ten. As sheriff, why should I worry? It comes with the trail I ride.”
They went on eating the venison loin roasted with potatoes, carrots and onions Sarah prepared in the morning and let cook all day in a black iron pot hanging over the coals on the swing iron.
“Now, we have some worries put aside by Israel, Millie fixed one of her famous pies,” Sarah said. She served an apple pie and refreshed everyone’s coffee.
“Millie, will you help me with my baking on this little stove? I think I can do alright cooking meals over the fire in the fireplace, but the baking is beyond me,” she asked. Millie nodded and smiled. The two husbands smiled too. Two women baking desserts was better than just one.
Life went on for sheriff and detective alike in Marin County.
By early December, a colder than normal spell hit. Temperatures were in the upper thirties and rain prevailed.
Pope and Sarah rode in together, kissed and went on to their respective offices.
He hung his heavy canvas ranch coat on the coat rack, followed by his suit jacket and Stetson. He sat his carbine in the rack and poured his third cup of coffee for the day. Sitting at his desk, the gold star glinted prominently on his black vest.
“What’s new, Bill,” Pope asked his chief deputy.
“Nothing yet, Sheriff. I expect a few wanted posters to come in with the noon mail. Nothing of interest worth your reading in the reports from the three night deputies.”
“What do you think of the probability of the town paying for a night marshal and letting us deputize and supervise him? We’re a peaceful place, but there still is the more than occasional drunk, mugging and the like. It would keep this office open all day. He could stay here and make maybe four rounds a night,” Pope said.
“I think we’d have a chance at it. If not, the county is pretty pleased with you and the office over the smuggler thing. They’d probably approve another deputy or two to cover it as a fallback position,” Isakson said.
“I’ll catch the mayor at his general merchandise later and see what he says. He’ll probably whine about budget. Maybe he will be right. If he seems sincere, I’ll take it up with the county commission. You think we’d need two to cover it, Bill?”
“I do. What with illness, family issues and the like. One deputy could do it most of the time, freeing up the second to be another patrol deputy until needed.”
“Sounds like a good solution. I may just pass on the mayor for now,” Pope thought aloud. His chief deputy agreed. This was his third sheriff since signing on as a deputy twenty years ago. All had been good. This one, Pope, was affable but much younger. He might have some basics to learn. He showed a lot of potential, the older man thought.
Pope went to the supervisor and presented his idea. He got approval for one additional deputy as long as the rest of the commission went along. One beat what he had now. The new one would cover nights and he would have to pull one off night patrol to cover when he was not available. Or cover it himself. Or split it with Isakson. Either way, it was doable. The commission would meet and hopefully confirm it in two weeks.
In the meantime, Pope would check with his chief deputy and quietly with other deputies to see who a good candidate might be.
He thought about Martha Lane, then dismissed the idea. With the night deputy position, she would not have to patrol on horseback alone. She would have to manhandle frequent drunks back to the lockup. She would not have any backup. While deputies on patrol did not have backup either, ones did while in town. Their backup was either the chief deputy, the sheriff or both. Just not late at night when predators prowled.
It seemed a distant option to him. With neither Pope nor Sarah at Wells Fargo anymore, he did not have to worry about repercussions from Joe Lane.
He was more worried about whether any nineteen-year-old, male or female, could handle the job alone.
Pope walked by Sarah’s new office just as she was coming out the door with her coat on
and a leather satchel in hand.
“Off detecting? I was going to buy you lunch,” he said.
“Not today. I have to go to Sausalito and check on one of Harry’s old clients. See you at dinner,” she said as she swung a long leg over Kate’s back and settled in the saddle.
“Your shotgun holster is empty.”
“I know. But fear not, husband. My shotgun is in the satchel with my notebook. Right with me in case of a gunfight while eating lunch on the harbor,” she replied with a smile.
He shook his head and walked off as she rode out of town.
Bill Isakson got back from the post office at one o’clock. The ferry with the mail had been late.
As he and Pope were reviewing new wanted posters together, they heard shots.
Pope grabbed his coat and carbine. Isakson grabbed his coat and a long-barreled shotgun. They both went out the door carefully.
The shots came from the area of one of the town’s banks. They moved down sidewalks on opposite sides of the street at the same pace.
Three men with rifles ran out of the bank. They saw the two lawmen and aimed. Bill Isakson fired a load of buckshot. The distance was too great, and it knocked up dust in the street. Pope sought a barrier. He found it in the form of a water trough. Dropping to his belly, he aimed around it as the three sent a barrage of shots towards both lawmen.
Pope aimed his carbine, but a man who had been shopping at the feedstore ran in front of him and he could not fire.
The chief deputy let go another load of buckshot, but to no avail at the distance.
The three jumped on their horses, a black, and two duns, and rode off as fast as possible.
“Bill, check for wounded in the bank. I am going after them! See if you can round up a posse once the bank is taken care of!” Pope yelled.
He sprinted down the street to Caesar and mounted. He always had a couple night’s water, coffee, jerky and the like in his saddlebags, so he did not have to stop as he took off in hot pursuit.
Shooting For Justice Page 22
