by Lou Cameron
London chuckled and said, “I had to read about it later, being as much an old sourdough as you. But, in sum, a mad scientist playing with Rocky Mountain lightning on a night much like this, blew every fuse in Colorado Springs and set the generating plant on fire!”
Stringer frowned, thoughtfully blew some smoke, and decided, “I think I read about it a month or more late in the papers from The States. I’d forgotten Professor Tesla was experimenting with the lightning around Pikes Peak. But we are talking about old Nikola Tesla, the Balkan pal of Mark Twain and sworn enemy of Thomas Alva Edison, aren’t we?”
London grimaced and replied, “A lunatic by any name would still be spooky. Mark Twain’s amusing pal scared the liver and lights out of everyone for miles around with his electricated experiments just west of town. They say he set off private thunderbolts they could hear in Cripple Creek, twenty miles or more up in the Front Range. As if that wasn’t satanic enough, they say he gave private showings in his fancy laboratory, juggling ball lightning with his bare hands!”
Stringer shrugged and said, “I wish I’d been there. But what have Tesla’s electrical experiments got to do with the pending showdown between the M.O.A. and W.F.M., Jack?”
London shot an uneasy glance at the card game in progress just about at easy earshot and murmured, “Keep it down to a roar. This isn’t an official union meeting and in any case, I told you I’m not here as a reporter. I doubt anyone covering the current dispute is going to reap any headlines, and I’m getting too old to duck flocks of migrating bricks. I told you I detoured down this way when I heard they were having more excitement with their electricity in Colorado Springs. I thought old Nick Tesla might have come back to play with the notorious local lightning.”
He saw Stringer was having trouble following his full meaning and added, “I have this notion for a futuristic novel about an ideal society run entirely on clean electric current and the eight hour day. Only, to tell the truth, I’m sort of fuzzy as to just how they make the juice, or why it makes lamps light and motors run once it gets there. I know Professor Tesla backed the winning side in that big argument about Acey-Ducey between Edison and old George Westinghouse. So I figured as long as I was passing through, and Tesla seems to be so fond of publicity …”
“Gotcha.” Stringer cut in with a sardonic grin, adding, “I’m sure you meant to cut him in on the profits after mining his brain for your story. Who’s plot will you be using, Edward Bellamy’s? No offense, but so far it sounds a heap like Bellamy’s “Looking Backward” and, correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t Ed’s copyright have a few more years to run?”
London just smiled, not even sheepishly. One of the reasons he and Stringer got along so well was that it only annoyed London to be called a plagiarist when a critic added that the idea he’d stolen was boring. He told Stringer in a lofty tone, “I’ll allow my idea may be something like Bellamy’s ideal society of 2000 A.D. if you’ll allow he could have swiped his grand notion from Sir Thomas More’s Utopia, which was copped from Plato’s Republic and let’s not worry about who Plato cribbed from.”
Stringer laughed as loudly and about as sarcastically as London’s defense plea called for. A couple of the hardcase mining men at the nearby table shot cold-eyed-curious looks his way. Stringer had long since learned how easy it was to get in trouble among hard drinkers with worried minds and perhaps a few little secrets to hide. So he glanced up at the garish Edison bulbs again to say, “Whatever they’ve been doing to the current here in town it seems to be all right, now, and it’s way the hell past my usual supper time, Jack. What say we go scout up some beans, now that a body can navigate outside with a little light on the subject?”
London shook his head and replied, “You go ahead and grab some grub if you like. I ate earlier and, like I told you, I have a train to catch at the depot just down the way and, lights or no lights, it’s still raining cats and dogs outside.”
So they shook on it and Stringer rose to slip into his yellow slicker and out of that back room while the slipping was still good. He wasn’t sure whether the uneasy feeling in his gut was simple hunger or some sharper instinct until, closing the door after him, he heard Big Bill Heywood rumble, “It’s about time you got rid of that fink in the cowboy outfit, London. I was just about to throw the both of you out. For certain friends of the working man will be here any minute and to tell the truth I’m not too sure I even want you to know about ’em being here in town tonight!”
CHAPTER TWO
The storm outside had apparently blown over, so most of the crowd it had trapped out front had dissipated and it was not only possible but downright easy to belly up to the bar, now. So Stringer did, near the batwinged front entrance, to order a cigar instead of another drink on an empty stomach. He didn’t smoke cigars as a rule, but he knew what the barkeep would say if he asked for a nickel bag of Bull Durham or just stood there like a big-ass bird that didn’t seem to want anything at all.
What Stringer really wanted, as he went about the elaborate business of biting and lighting the two bit Havana Claro, was a clear view of that door to the back room. He knew Jack London could take care of himself in a garden variety saloon fight and it seemed as if he’d stayed back there with the boyos of his own free will. Stringer knew the erstwhile terror of the Frisco Bay oyster flats and many a hobo jungle considered himself a paid-up member of the Red Flag Fraternity. But what might the Red Flag Fraternity think of a downtrodden working stiff who’d taken of late to buying fine California estates and even fancy sailboats since he’d written all them fancy books with such big fancy words and all?
But nothing loud enough to hear out front seemed to be taking place in the back room by the time Stringer had the cigar going too good to just go on standing there without further comment. So he nodded adios at the barkeep and turned to go, just as the batwings parted to admit a lean and hungry-looking cuss with furtive eyes and a ratlike way of hugging the far wall as he darted along it to vanish through that door to the back room. Big Bill had said someone sinister seemed to be expected. Stringer just kept going with the cigar gripped between his teeth, not looking back, and heaved a sigh of relief as he got outside without anyone asking where he might be going, just as the evening was starting to get interesting. He had a pretty good notion who that rat-faced rascal had to be. He’d never seen any photographs of the one and original Albert Horsely, better known as Harry Orchard among labor organizers of the more radical stripe, but everyone from his left-wing admirers to the Pinkertons out to nail him, dead or alive, seemed to agree on that odd way he had of gliding faster on his feet without really seeming to run. If that had been Harry Orchard and not just someone trying to give the impression he was in town, then Big Bill Heywood being down here in Colorado Springs when the National Guard was hunting him in Cripple Creek made a lot more sense. Heywood’s rep as a strike organizer was rugged enough. Harry Orchard didn’t organize strikes. He slaughtered strike breakers. That part-time warrior over in the switchyards wasn’t the only idiot in these parts talking about shooting to kill!
Out on Nevada Street the flood waters had gone down as swiftly as they’d risen and the wet paving blocks gleamed free of the usual horseshit under the electric street lamps that now shone up and down the way. Most of the downtown shops were now closed for the night, but most of the second story windows shed additional light through lace curtains or drawn blinds. Despite the earlier darkness it wasn’t much later than nine and change. Stringer’s empty stomach kept reminding him of that as he lingered near the next corner, undecided about his fellow member of the Fourth Estate back there. He finally decided the cigar was making him feel more butterflies under his ribs than the situation really called for. So he threw the pungent smoke in the gutter and moved on to get something more healthy to swallow. It was old Jack’s own beeswax if he wanted to hang out with union toughs and mad bombers, or Knights of Labor, as some saw them. Stringer tried to keep an open mind on such matters. For in his cowhand d
ays he’d worked for many a boss who’d deserved tar and feathers, while on the other hand they said those hardrock miners Harry Orchard had dropped down an elevator shaft along with one management man had left a heap of widows and orphans.
The streets were fairly deserted at this hour, despite the way the town was starting to dry out, but Stringer got a lady holding up a lamp post with her back to direct him to the Alta Vista Hotel and, better yet, he spied a brightly-lit chili joint ahead, even closer. So, first things coming first, he ducked inside to calm his innards with some chili con came, coffee and mayhaps some pie with cheese, if they had either, and it was halfway fresh.
As he entered, he saw great minds seemed to run in the same sort of channels. The counter had around a dozen other late eaters seated along it. There was nowhere else to sit down in the deep but narrow interior. Stringer left his Stetson on in such informal surroundings, of course, but peeled off his crinkly and now too-warm yellow slicker to hang it up under a sign advising him to watch his hat and coat. There were six or eight other slickers already hanging there and more than one looked more expensive than his. But as he turned to grab a stool he was still pleased to note he could keep an eye on that yellow blur reflected by the silvery cookware against the back wall behind the counter. There were two Mex kids working the counter with the older and fatter short order cook. Stringer felt tempted to order in Spanish, but remembered in time that even Mexicans this far north tended to reverse the Southwestern custom of mixing Spanish in with cow talk. Growing up as he had in the cattle country of the Sierra foothills, Stringer had naturally learned to rope dally from a centerfire saddle and call what he roped with a reata. He’d been hazed unmercifully by Rough Riders from the Northern Range when he’d made that mistake while riding with them and Colonel Roosevelt in his more innocent youth. So he knew that in Colorado a reata was a damn-it rope, a sombrero was a damn-it hat, a palomino was a damn-it buckskin and anyone who pronounced Rodeo “Row-D A Y-oh” like he thought he was an infernal “Matty-Door” was no-doubt a pansy who sat down to pee.
So he ordered his chili beans peppered strong enough for Texas in plain English and was served with no comment from the help or other customers. As he dug in he realized he was either hungrier than he’d thought or that the cook was really from Chihuahua. He had to keep sipping black coffee with his ferocious repast to keep from crying right out loud. Once it was down there, it sure felt swell, though. There was nothing like to to warm one’s innards on a clammy night like this one. He ordered more coffee. As the nearest waiter was refilling his mug, the electric lights flicked off, went on again, and then every light within sight went off again as the Mex sighed, “Shit!” and spilled coffee all over the countertop.
Stringer had suspected he might. So he was off the stool just as a stream of scalding coffee dribbled off the counteredge all over where a slower-thinking gent’s lap might have been. Stringer yelled, “Stop pouring, damn it!” as he fumbled out a penny match box and struck a light. The young Mex laughed uncertainly and at least hauled the spout of his pot back far enough to wet his own toes. By this time others had thought to strike old-fashioned lights, including the fat cook, who’d turned up a gas jet above his stove to fill the interior with a flickering blue glow, growling, “That’s better. I told them they never should have taken out our old gas lamps. This electric shit never works when you really need it!”
As if to prove his point, all the Edison bulbs went back on, glowing a hesitant orange. An older man seated next to Stringer shook out his own match and announced, with a weary smile, “I’ll bet that mad scientist has come back, like they say!” Another agreed there was no doubt about it. As Stringer got rid of his burnt out and no longer called-for match, another customer asked, in a more reasonable tone, if that thunderstorm they’d just had couldn’t have done something funny to Colorado Springs’ wiring. Stringer thought that made as much sense as the first old fart insisting, “That storm blew over an hour or more ago. I tell you old Nick, the nutty professor, done something devilsome to the power plant that time he repaired it for the electric company, or said he had.”
Another disgruntled resident nodded grimly and agreed, “Things have never worked right since they let that infernal furriner fling thunder and lightning about like he thought he was the Lord, or you know who!”
The Edison bulbs flicked off all the way, then came back on about as brightly as they were supposed to run on forty watts. Stringer reached for a napkin to do something about his sopping wet seat as he asked anyone who cared to answer, “Did someone say the famous Doctor Tesla once worked for the electric company here in Colorado Springs?”
The old-timer who seemed to know so much shook his head and said, “Hell, no, not even El Paso Power would have been dumb enough to pay out good money to a raving lunatic.” A more reasonable old-timer had to tell the somewhat bewildered Stringer, “Professor Tesla fixed the town’s main generator for ’em, free. He had to. None of us shall ever forget that wild and stormy night of the third of July in the year of our Lord, 1899!”
“He fucked up our Fourth of July entire!” chimed in yet another chili eater with an axe to grind. Stringer decided to just finish up on his feet, now that the young Mex had poured some coffee into his mug instead of aiming for his lap in the dark. The old-timer who seemed to feel their resident mad scientist hadn’t been all bad was going on about the ferocious thunderstorm they’d had that wild night just before the slated festivities of the Glorious Fourth and how some said it could have just as easily been a lightning bolt as a power surge from Professor Tesla’s infernal machinery when, somewhere in the night, they all heard what sounded to Stringer like a mighty fair imitation of a firing squad at work in the middle distance.
There was a thoughtful moment of silence inside the all-night beanery. Then somebody softly said, “Them was pistol shots. More than six and less’n a dozen.” To which another old timer replied, as soberly, “I make it two guns, say a .44 or .45, and a smaller bore. We ought to be hearing police whistles any second, now.”
He was right. As the Colorado Springs P.D. commenced to chirp back and forth up Nevada Street, Stringer spread some change on the counter and turned to grab his slicker and get back there to see if anyone he knew had just been mixed up in that shoot-out. That was when he first noticed his slicker was missing.
He stared numbly at the empty hook for a time, as it slowly sank in he’d been robbed and hadn’t just done something dumb. He still looked up and down the whole wall, as if there might be a more logical explanation. When there wasn’t, he announced, firmly, “Hey, I had me an old yellow slicker hanging right under that sign advising me to keep my eye on it!”
The older gent next to him cackled, “You should have kept your eye on it, then. I ain’t got your fool slicker, cowboy!”
The others at least tried to be more helpful. When Stringer described his purloined article of rain gear and added it was worth at most two dollars and change, the old-timer who’d allowed Professor Tesla might have been innocent that time declared, “I’m sure it had to be an honest mistake. There was a gent about your age and general size sipping coffee yonder, towards the rear of this joint. He had a black slicker when he come in here. That looks like it, second from the end to your left. I never saw him leave. So he must have done it during all that confusion we just had with the lights, see?”
Another customer nodded and said, “I recall the young gent, now that I’m minded of him. He was dressed like a cowboy, too. Had on a gray hat a heap like your own, young feller. I’ll bet he run out for some reason whilst them lights was out and just naturally grabbed your slicker instead of his, by mistake.”
One of the Mex kids decided, “He’d just paid up. He was sitting there, like he was waiting for something or someone, when the lights began to flash on and off. 1 do not think he took your slicker for to rob you, stranger. Who but a fool would wish for to steal a slicker when the rain has stopped and he already has one of his own hanging right be
side it, eh?”
Stringer moved over to finger the heavier material of the missing man’s black slicker. It seemed about his size and unless the other cuss came back, pronto, Stringer figured he might be ahead of the game. Then a weary-eyed older gent wearing a derby and sporting a gilt badge on the lapel of his snuff-colored suit came in off the wet walk outside to ask, “Might any of you gents in here be able to fill us in on a young cuss who might have passed through wearing a light gray Stetson and a bright yaller rain slicker?”
Everyone seemed to be looking at Stringer, who could only nod and say, “We were just musing about him. You could be talking about a gent who just swapped rain slickers with me by accident. He lit out of here just a few minutes ago. Nobody here can say just where he may have headed, after that.”
The plainclothesman answered, grimly, “I can. We just found him down by the rail depot, dead as a turd in a milk bucket with eight or ten bullet holes in the back of that yellow slicker. You say it was your outfit he was wearing on his way to catch a train or maybe meet someone less annoyed with him?”
Numb-lipped, Stringer reached for his billfold, as he told the lawman who he was and some grim thoughts that had just occurred to him. The plainclothesman nodded as he took Stringer’s I.D. and scanned it, muttering, “It reads either way to me, too, Mister MacKail. They might have just back-shot someone they were really after. On the other hand they were just as likely after you in that distinctive outfit you commenced this night in.”
The town law toted the heavy black slicker the murder victim had somehow managed to exchange for Stringer’s lighter and brighter rain gear. Stringer found it enough of a chore to tote his heavy gladstone all over town for no good reason he could see. But he’d have wanted to tag along, even if he hadn’t been invited to have a look-see and sign a formal deposition for the record. He’d been sent all this way to find out how serious the current labor unrest promised to be this time, and things hardly got more serious than back-shooting, no matter who the intended victim might have been.
