by Alex Myers
CHAPTER 20
March 1856
He’s a Changed Man
“Hello, Jack Riggs!”
Jack looked at the finely-dressed distinguished-looking older man and tried to place where he’d met him. He looked like a banker or lawyer. Jack stepped forward and shook the man’s hand. “Nice to see you again, sir.”
“You don’t recognize me, do you?”
“Sure, I do. How have you been?”
“What’s my name then?”
Jack gave up. “OK then, I don’t know your name.”
“It’s me, Murphy McCord.”
It was almost too big a leap for Jack to believe. It was more than the shave and haircut, it was more than the finely tailored suit; the man before him stood a little straighter, his eyes more clear. “Murphy! You’re a different person. What’s going on?”
“I came to find you, came to offer you a job.”
He even sounded different—more educated, less crazy. “A job? I already have a job.”
“You’re digging ditches, Jack. That sounds like your own private version of hell.”
“What were you going to hire me to do?”
“Fix the things I can’t fix and let me make the things that you think up.”
“When did you become such an entrepreneur? You seemed pretty content.”
“For all intents and purposes, I was dead—just moving ‘round a bit.”
“What brought all this on?” Jack asked, still amazed by Murphy’s transformation.
“I’ve been thinking about things since you came by the last time. I was thinking that I had given up on living. I was just waiting around to die.”
Jack grabbed the man by the arm and guided him out of the middle of the street just as a stagecoach being pulled by four horses went pounding by. Murphy seemed to ignore it all and continued. “Me living out in gone-yonder country. I was pretty sure my life ended when I lost Belle and baby Anna. But they wouldn’t have wanted me to give up; they would have wanted me to make a difference. That’s why I went to the State House and later to Washington in the first place. I just came back here to die.”
“I met a guy you know—“
“Kazmer Sevenski?”
“Yes!”
“I’ve been working with him the last two years; he does all my metal work. Incredible mind on that boy. Not to get off track here, but I bought him out yesterday.”
“His gun shop?”
“It’s more than that—he’s got all the smithy tools, too. It’s not so much that I bought his stuff as I bought his stuff and made him a partner. I want to offer a partnership to you, too.”
“But I don’t have any money or anything to offer.”
“I’m a lawyer, Jack. I served eight years in the Texas House and two years as a United States Senator. Oh, and besides that, I’m rich. You have plenty to offer. It’s called intellectual property.”
“How much of a commitment do you need from me?”
“As much or as little as you want.”
“And what are we going to make?”
“Whatever we want. I hired twenty men to put my house and the warehouse in order—repairs, fresh coat of paint. These men are going to move all Kazmer’s equipment over. If they do a good job, maybe we’ll hire a few. I’m not really sure how this is all going to work out, but I just know that I’m not ready to die yet. Yep, dadgum it, I got me some more living to do before I start dying.”
“Do you want to help me stop the Civil War?” Jack asked.
“Perhaps. That sounds interesting. Alright.”
“Do you know what I mean by the Civil War?”
“I reckon it has to do with the ever increasing hostilities ‘tween the South and the North.”
“Yep. Do you want to know how we’ll try to stop it?”
“I reckon we’ll get to that eventually,“ Murphy said.
“Start today or tomorrow?”
“They are going to start moving equipment tomorrow. I’ll be there to make sure nothing breaks or comes untwisted.”
“If you’re not doing anything for dinner, let’s get planning. When you say ‘rich,’ please don’t be offended, but how much money do you have?”
“The good side of $11,000 after buying and moving the gunshop.” Murphy smiled.
We are going to need a lot more money than that, Jack thought
CHAPTER 21
March 1856
Inventions Start Churning
Frank Sanger, Frances’s dad and the third wealthiest man in the state of Virginia, sat next to the fourth wealthiest man, his brother Andrew, and gave an unprecedented audience to an unknown inventor.
“This is a can opener?” Frank Sanger asked. He opened and closed the butterfly handles and turned the wingnut.
“Let’s have a race,” Jack said as he handed Andrew Sanger a can and the recently invented claw-shaped lever-type opener. It was basically a sharp sickle whose point was plunged into a can and sawed around its edge.
“Ran into one of these in England last year,” Andrew” Andrew said. “I about stabbed myself with it.”
“And you’ll use this?” ” Frank handed the opener back to Jack.
This was Jack’s first meeting with Frank and Andrew. He wasn’t sure what Frances had told them about him, but whatever it was, they were more than receptive to his ideas. Jack was disappointed that, as soon as she’d made the introductions, Frances had left on a buying trip to New York.
Frank and Andrew Sanger were both in their 50s, both handsome, well-dressed, well-heeled and intelligent. Frank, the older of the two, was more a traditionalist while Andrew was more a visionary. Where Frank was calm and methodical, Andrew was excitable and vibrant.
Jack took two cans and placed them on Frank’s desk, one in front of Andrew and the other in from of himself. “Ready? Go!”
Andrew plunged the claw-shaped opener three times into the top of the can, each time failing to puncture the metal. Jack stood with his hands behind his back, smiling and watching the man’s frantic attempts. Andrew used one hand like a hammer with his palm flat on the opener and he finally got through. He then started the laborious task of opening the lid.
Jack calmly picked up a can, placed the vice grips on the top, and pressed the cutting wheel into the can. The device gripped and opened the can at the same time. Six quick turns and the lid popped off the top of the can. He quickly opened the second can using the same method.
Andrew Sanger wasn’t halfway through his first.
“Sold!” Frank Sanger said. “Andrew, give up before you hurt yourself. What’s next?”
“This is another, even simpler, hand-operated device for opening cans and prying the caps off bottles. This triangular-shaped punch is for puncturing and piercing cans, and this side, the rounded side, is for popping the cap off bottles.” Jack popped holes in the top of a can and used the other end of the opener for opening a bottle.
“How much?” Frank Sanger asked.
“This one,” Jack said of the butterfly opener, “we can make for ten cents. I can imagine getting that number as low as a nickel and I can see it selling in your stores for seventy-five cents. This one,” Jack said, holding up the ‘church key’ opener, “since it’s a single piece of pressed metal, would cost about a penny a piece, and I can see you selling them for a quarter.”
“I like it,” Frank Sanger said, “and neither one needs much of a sales demonstration.”
“That’s why I choose them,” Jack said. “Plus, we can make them ourselves, farm them out, or sell the patent.”
“Selling the patent might be the best move. Let somebody else worry about protecting the patent from companies like the SAC up in Williamsburg that will start making them the same day they see them. And you have already filed patents on these?” Andrew asked.
Jack nodded toward Frank Sanger, “With the attorney Frances said you said to use.”
“Wegman. The best there is, if you can afford him,” Frank Sanger
said.
“Do you have any more stuff?” Andrew asked.
“A plow and a cultivator.”
“Big stuff, big ticket items that take up a lot of shelf space,” Frank said.
“If you physically carry them in the stores. But if you sell them by catalog sales they only take up some paper and ink.”
“Catalogs? Seen people fighting over them. Quite popular, I must say. People like them to wipe their ass two to one over newspapers.”
“Then you don’t like the idea?” Jack asked.
“No, I don’t like it—I love it. While they sit there doing their business, they read them, or at least look at the pictures. You know, Frank, I like the way this man thinks,” Andrew said.
The little free time Jack had, he spent with Murphy and Kaz, feverishly working on new inventions. By the time Andrew had to leave on a buying trip three weeks later, Jack’s ideas about advertising, distribution, and new products for them to sell had everyone excited. Jack enjoyed the time he spent working with the two men—common modern marketing techniques seemed like magic in the nineteenth century. Between working with them and the countless hours he spent with Murphy and Kaz, he almost didn’t miss Frances—almost. It was extremely convenient that Miss Nancy’s boardinghouse came with its own female entertainment., At a dollar a go, a night with Lottie Moon was some of the best value Jack had found, but each time, it felt more wrong.
CHAPTER 22
March 1856
The Patent Kings
Jack, Kaz, Murphy, and engineer Bob Cooper were leaning over a drawing table in Cooper’s office. Cooper had moved to Virginia with the Army years before and had never left. There wasn’t much need in Norfolk for an engineer, so he supplemented his income acting as a contractor, building houses, docks and barns. Cooper’s office was a storefront down the street from the Sanger Dry Goods store. It was an eight-foot-wide, twenty-foot-deep narrow box of a place, with Cooper living in the upper floor. It was utterly empty except for the drawing table, two chairs, and a large wooden cabinet. They sat at the desk, which got its light from the large front display window.
“Gentlemen, this is the sixth rendering in thirty days I’m turning over to Attorney Dugas, and Evin is then forwarding them to John Wegman.”
Wegman was the Sanger’s attorney in New York, the man many people believed was the pre-eminent patent lawyer in the United States.
“We would have done more, but I’m spending a lot of time with the Sanger Brothers,” Jack said.
“Well, that’s my point. I’ve never done a patent rendering and Evin Dugas has never done an application. John Wegman in New York, according to Evin, is amazed with the products and he thinks they will fly through the application process. Bit of trouble with the plow, though. Seems John Deere and his people were working on a very similar design. Still, Wegman doesn’t think it’ll be a problem.”
“Yes, but our design is better,” Kaz said. “Much lighter. Theirs so heavy it just sinks into ground. Won’t move no matter how many horses try to pull it.”
“Curving the blades upward seems to make all the difference. I can’t believe that they hadn’t tried it already,” Jack said. “And Kaz—it’s your plow, your design. Murphy and I are just helping out.”
“Bob Cooper continued. “Wegman said he’s never known anyone as prolific as you three—your innovation in design, your thoroughness. He asked if you were visitors from the future.”
They all laughed.
Murphy said, “You’re pretty handy with a pencil and rule. I think we could keep you hitched up with projects full-time.”
“Thank you, but I’m more of a builder than an engineer. Y’all might need to hire someone else,” he said in a condescending Georgia drawl. He was a compact, brisk, little man with the air of someone in a hurry. The bridge of his nose had a pronounced downward bend that gave it a hawk-like appearance, made even more striking by his smallpox-pitted, skeletal face.
Jack noticed the man’s look of superiority, the same look he had seen several times in the past few weeks. Cooper’s work was excellent, though. Perhaps he was just imagining things. “You really are quite an artist.”
“I was an architect before I went back and got my engineering degree from Emory University. I used paint and drew a little before realizing what a complete and utter waste of one’s time it was. Why, there must be fourteen, fifteen new ideas you have here for me? You’re racking up quite a bill. What is it that you’re working on now?”
“Jack and I are designing a new kind of bicycle. A ‘bike’—that is what you called it, right, Jack?” ” Kaz said.
“Bike is just another name for bicycle. I don’t know how you all ride those things with the big front wheels like that, anyway.”
“Sounds interesting,” Cooper said, licking his crooked yellow teeth.
“Yes. Both wheels are same size. Jack gave me idea for chain on two sprockets to propel it.”
“Once again,” Jack said modestly. “I can’t believe that someone hadn’t thought of it first.”
“We just don’t have the facilities or manpower to handle our ingenuity,” Murphy said.
Jack rejoined the conversation. “Someone suggested a big machine shop up in Richmond, but why Richmond? We want to do it here. We’ll ship by boat and anything else we’ll do by train out of Richmond. This will be better for us in the long run.”
“I must say, Jack, you’re quite the visionary,” Cooper said.
“Progress Bob, progress. This country is on the verge of an industrial revolution and we can ride the crest of the wave. There’s only one thing that concerns me deeply.”
“And that would be?”
“War. A war between the North and the South.”
“If there is to be war, no southerner alive could say that it wouldn’t be justified.”
“There’s no justification to warrant thousands of men dying,” Jack said.
Cooper stepped away from the drafting table and eyed Jack suspiciously. He opened a wooden cabinet and removed three mismatched shot glasses and a large earthenware jug with a cork stopper in it. It was the largest bottle of booze Jack had ever seen. “Would anyone care to join me for a splash of whiskey? Our work for tonight is done.”
“It seems like all I’ve been doing lately is work,” Jack said. “You say you’ve spent some time in the Army?”
“That’s right,” Cooper said. “Me and my model 1841 Harper’s Ferry Rifle helped slaughter the Mexican Cavalry at Buena Vista in ’47.”
“That is very good rifle,” Kaz said.
“Then this happened.” He rapped on his wooden leg with his cane. “A cannonball took it off just below the knee.”
“I have used parts of the Harper Rifle to make a needle gun,” Kaz said.
“What is a needle gun?” Cooper eagerly asked.
Jack answered, “The needle is a firing pin, the gun is a breech loader and bolt action. Who is that guy we are working on it with?”
“Hiram Berdan,” Kaz said.
“The sharpshooter? He’s the top rifle shot in the country, has been for a while, right?” Cooper said.
“Yes. He’s engineer from New York. He worked at the gunsmith’s in Boston with me. We have stayed in touch with letters,” Kaz said.
“I’ve kind of taken it a step further with a self-contained rim-fire, metal bullet cartridge and a semi-automatic action,” Jack said.
“Tell about telescope sighting,” Kaz added.
“Telescopic sights,” Jack said. “Once we developed the mount it was fairly easy.”
Bob Cooper was flummoxed. “Have you two put this design on paper yet?”
“Design?” Jack said. “We’ve actually built it and shot it.”
“Do you realize this could change the face of war? Why haven’t you brought me the plans for rendering it so you can get a patent on it?”
Murphy looked at Jack and Jack lifted his eyebrows and shook his head. Jack said, “We weren’t in any kind of hurry. Kaz
didn’t want to cut Berdan out of his share of the profits.”
“In your opinion, did you copy enough to cause a possible copyright infringement?”
“In my opinion, no. Why does it matter?”
“I was talking with a friend of mine from West Point who is fairly high up. Robert Lee.“
“Robert E. Lee?” Jack asked.
“Yes, I was talking to him a week ago. The Army purchased a large order from Samuel Colt last year and they are disappointed. I’m sure a recommendation from him would result in an order and quickly, as I understand. Guns and ammunition.”
“We have pistol that can almost do same thing, uses same bullets,” Kaz said.
“We have to do this!” Cooper demanded.
The creepiness rolled off Cooper in waves.
They each took another drink in silence.
“I was really quite lost. All I ever wanted was to be is a soldier. My father and his father were both soldiers. I think I disappointed my father,” Cooper said. He held his head arrogantly back as if sniffing something bad.
Kaz said, “I would very much like to try this American liquor. I have had once before liquor and it was Hartwig-Kantorowicz, a Polish brandy. Never American bourbon.”
“This is not bourbon, my friend,” Cooper said pouring the amber liquid generously into the glasses. “This just happens to be the best sour mash Tennessee whiskey made. A cousin of mine makes it in Lynchburg, Tennessee. Here’s one for all of us, gentlemen,” he said, lifting his glass in a toast “To the South!”
“Na zdrowie!” Kaz said. He downed the entire glass.
Murphy sipped his drink slowly, warily watching Bob.
Jack drank his, savoring and then recognizing the smoky, charcoal, dry taste. “Your cousin’s name doesn’t happen to be Jack Daniels, is it?” Jack asked after taking a recognizable sip.
“No, his name is Jasper Newton Daniels. His son’s name is Jack, but he’s only seven years old. Jasper is in business with Dan Call, a Lutheran preacher. This is his recipe. Do you know him?”
“No, I don’t know him, but I’ve had the whiskey before.”
