by Lou Cameron
Stringer cocked an eyebrow and said, “That’s likely why he’s been lurking in a back room down at Colorado Springs, then. Who’s Bert Carlton, and has anyone told you Harry Orchard’s just shown up?”
Jeff Keller shot Stringer a keen look across the ridgepole between them as he replied, “The hell you say! Harry Orchard west of the Big Muddy could mean Moyer’s not keeping as tight a rein on his socialist second in command as I would. Bert Carlton is the mine owner who took over the M.O.A. after Stratton died.”
“Is he as smart and fair-minded as their original leader?” asked Stringer, noting he’d about finished the backed-up personal ads as Keller answered, “Nobody’ll ever beat Stratton at being fair-minded. He come from humble beginnings, as a carpenter up Leadville way, and never lost touch with the working stiffs he grew up among. He left a swell home for orphans and elderly poor folk, down to The Springs, and when Silver Dollar Tabor died, he tore up the promissory notes for the loans he’d made his old boss and old pal after things went sour on Silver Dollar. They say Stratton made sure Tabor’s widow, Baby Doe, got to keep their last Leadville mine, the Matchless, and that …”
“Never mind ancient history,” Stringer cut in, adding, “Tell me what we can expect from the sweet old gent’s replacement, Bert Carlton.”
Keller thought before he answered, “Firm but fair in his own hard rock way, I reckon. There were some as said old W.S. was too prone to forgive and forget. But whether young Bert goes along in the end, with some of the more reasonable demands, or just hangs tough and busts the W.F.M. a second time, you and Sam Barca are still making elephants outten pack rats.”
Stringer insisted, “Damn it, Jeff, the union’s already struck most of the mines up here in these hills, hasn’t it?” To which the older man replied with a chuckle, “You mean you just noticed? Of course the damn-fool W.F.M. has called a strike, and I’d say at least fifty mines betwixt here and say Colorado City are having some trouble getting their ore out of the ground. But Carlton’s been recruiting nonunion men as fast or faster than the W.F.M. can march its own off the job. Few of the skilled workers have ever joined the W.F.M. to begin with and any damned hobo can muck ore, and be glad to do so, for three dollars a day.”
As Stringer waved the last copy he’d set between them, the older man said, grudgingly, “Not bad, for a big shot newspaperman used to fancy linotype machines and such. It must be Sam Barca who’s the asshole. The strike’s been on for months and I defy anyone to notice it outside, when the boys change shifts any minute, now. The union found out the last time that they can’t put the owners out of business with any half-ass strike, and as for trying to blast them out a second time, I’d say that was just what Bert Carlton and the more hardcased mine owners are praying for. So far, there’s only been one bad accident, earlier this year at the Vindicator Mine, and nobody can prove Harry Orchard had a delicate hand in it. A couple of pit bosses got killed on the seventh level and some say our Harry had been seen in the neighborhood a few hours earlier. But if it was Orchard, he’s losing his touch of late. Two dozen nonunion workers scabbing for the M.O.A. came through unscathed when some dynamite went off down yonder, by accident or not.”
Stringer shrugged and decided, “Gents like Harry Orchard or even Tom Horn wouldn’t get away with half as many killings if proving suspicion was easy. Do you know another unpleasant cuss called T.S. Murdstone, more likely on the other side? I’m supposed to look him up here in Cripple Creek sooner or later.”
Jeff Keller, who so far seemed an honest man, swore softly and said, “Make it later. You don’t want anything to do with T.S. Murdstone, Stringer. He’s a gambling man who won himself a gold mine as well as a heap of enemies in his time. So stay the hell away from him. That way neither he, nor the sore losers gunning for him, are apt to nail you in their crossfire, see?”
CHAPTER SIX
Armed with more savvy on the local situation, Stringer headed for the nearest Western Union office to bring his feature editor up to date and ask if his paper’s morgue had any background poop on the people he’d heard of so far. Cripple Creek had a serious central business district for its population figures because a lot of its population was engaged in serious business. So the once tiny and still rustic mining and refining community was served by three railroads, along with a surprisingly up to date interurban trolly car system that ran on electricity as well as narrow gauge as far as Independence. But most of the downtown business establishments seemed to be saloons, with or without hot and cold running hostesses, and Stringer had to ask directions to the telegraph office near the central depot.
As he spied the black and yellow sign he was seeking down the road a piece, Stringer noticed white duck military tents, a lot of military tents, pitched cheek by jowl in a good-sized vacant lot across from the railroad depot. He passed the depot and Western Union for a look-see up the slopes across the railroad yards and, sure enough, there was an even bigger herd of tents up that way, with a battery of mountain howitzers holding the higher ground and dominating, if not outright threatening Saloon Row. So whether General Sherman Bell was as fair-minded as the guard commander who’d put down the last trouble or not, he sure seemed to know his job, for a part-time man-of-destiny.
As Stringer retraced his steps to the telegraph office, he spied a couple of troopers holding up a wall across the way with their backs. It wasn’t clear whether they were just lounging there or keeping an eye on the strategic telegraph office. They both had their bayonets fixed to their casually slung Krags. So Stringer suspected their sergeant of the guard had told them they were free to stand at ease, perhaps ordered to stand at ease, and keep their first and seventh general orders in mind.
The seventh general order any sentry was supposed to remember forbade idle conversation with curious civilian males or good-looking females passing by one’s post. The fìrst general order was, of course, to keep an eye peeled and report any and everything one might notice on or about one’s post to the corporal of the guard every time he came by, which was at least once an hour if those boys were half as sneaky-slick as Stringer was commencing to suspect.
He didn’t care if they reported a man dressed like a cowboy going inside to send a wire or more. Knock wood, the good general hadn’t shut down all communications with the outside world, yet. But the pretty blond lady clerk inside looked so cheered-up to see a customer, he suspected business had slowed down of late. He said as much, reaching for some yellow telegram forms and hauling out his own stub pencil. She nodded and confided, “The soldiers arrested a customer, right out front, the first day they arrived. Nobody knows why, so it’s sort of discouraged casual communications ever since.”
He said that sounded grim and asked what the poor cuss had looked like, and what he might have sent by wire that so upset General Sherman Bell. She shrugged and said, “He just looked like a hard rock man to me, dusty work duds and one of those caps they wear. He didn’t get to send any wires to anyone. They grabbed him on the walk out front, like I said.”
He asked how, in that case, anyone could be certain he’d meant to send wires to begin with. She told him, “Oh, he must have. He had this slip of paper in one hand and the latch of yon door in the other, just as the soldiers grabbed him. They tried to get the paper away from him. Only he stuck it in his mouth and got it down before they could make him spit it out, see?”
Stringer grimaced and said, “I do, now. They must have a black list. I’m glad I’m not on it. I hope.”
Then he was too busy writing to jaw with her for a time, pretty as she might have been. When he’d finished he told her, “I’d like to send this collect. We’d still best send it as a night letter. My boss weeps bitter tears just thinking about day rates and gives me a hard time every time I waste a nickel, he says, on a word we might have gotten by without.”
She dimpled across the counter at him and said she understood as she scanned the two-page message, moving her pink lips as she silently counted, and added, “You do
have a lot to say about those silly old socialists, don’t you? I hope you understand this won’t go out until late tonight, after all the day-rate messages have been sent?”
He nodded and told her, “I’d have sent it day-rates if I hadn’t learned at my sweet old feature editor’s knee that night letters were way cheaper and still beat the U.S. Mails. How come you call the W.F.M. socialist? It was my understanding they were just a mine worker’s union.”
She wrinkled her pert nose and answered, “I guess my dear old daddy and two grown brothers know the difference betwixt an honest workman’s guild and a passle of red-flag troublemakers with un-American notions about private property. My dear old daddy is a shift foreman at the Plymouth Rock, up on Ironclad Hill, and both my brothers draw top wages at the Buena Vista.”
Stringer asked her, dryly, “I take it none of the men in your family are interested in joining the W.F.M. then?” To which she replied with a firm nod, “You take it right, sir. My daddy did join the Knights Of Labor, he says, in a moment of madness no doubt inspired by good will to man and forty-rod whisky. But he says all he gained from the experience was the wisdom to say no to future flimflam men calling their fool selves union organisers. My dear old daddy never got a thing but trouble for the union dues he paid the infernal Knights of Labor. They promised him and the others more pay for shorter hours and, in the end, all they wound up with was a blacklisting by the mine owners.”
“Yet he wound up a shift foreman in the end?” asked Stringer with a politely raised eyebrow.
She told him, “We got off awfully lucky. The late and sincerely lamented W.S. Stratton owned all the mines on Ironclad Hill and he was a dear forgiving boss, once he and the other mine owners had busted the big strike and deported the ring leaders from the state. Some of the other big shots wanted to blacklist all the workers who’d even paid for a fool union card, the Pinks had copied down all the membership lists, of course. But Mister Stratton allowed it was dumb to fire good workers who hadn’t done anything wicked and may have learned a good lesson. So my dear old daddy and his friends stayed on, and proved their decent boss right.”
She looked as if she was fixing to blubber up about it as she added, “When dear old W.S. sold his mine holdings and retired back in ’99, he made sure the new owners, an English mining company, would keep the workers on at the same pay. Me and my whole family went to pay our respects when the sweet old gent died, down to Colorado Springs. That infernal new bunch of organizers won’t get very far with any of the old timers here in Cripple Creek, I’ll vow!”
He assured her he himself had no intention of joining either the W.F.M. or M.O.A. and then, since the day was about shot and he hadn’t made any other plans for that evening, he asked what time she got off, and whether she had anyone to escort her home during the current state of martial law. She dimpled at him some more and told him she got off at six. Then she added demurely that her fiance, a blaster working the lobster shift at the Findlay Mine in Independence, would arrive in plenty of time to escort her home, thanks to the swell electric trolley line they’d provided to shrink the gold fields down to size for courting couples.
So he could only wish her and her hard rock boyfriend well and content himself with the silent observation that nobody got to win ’em all.
As he sashayed out he attempted to console himself with the further observation that making love to pretty gals would just be another chore, like paying one’s bills, if a man knew he was stuck with kissing all of ’em he met up with.
It didn’t work. That blonde inside had been pretty and well-built and he was simply too young and healthy to consider retiring from the sport just yet. At the rate he was going, he figured to wind up a dirty old man. Or at least he sure hoped so.
Then, in the lengthening shadows outside, he was forced to reconsider the odds on his reaching old age or even his next birthday, when a tough-looking bozo dressed halfway cowboy and halfway preacher, or undertaker, stepped away from the wall planks he’d been lounging against to softly growl, “Might you be that newspaperboy, MacKail, little darling?”
Stringer regarded the heavy-set and blue-jawed stranger thoughtfully as he considered whether to answer before or after he went for his own six-gun. For the burly brute wore two, cross-draw but low and tied down, under his open frock coat. A tied down holster gave a shootist some advantage in a leather-slapping contest, it was said, but Stringer had always avoided such sinister trimmings for more than one good reason.
To begin with, a tied down holster only gave its wearer an edge when he was walking at a finite target in a preplanned space. It could mess up your draw if you had to draw sudden sitting down or, worse yet, mounted up. But the greatest disadvantage to swaggering about in a tie down rig was that almost everyone you swaggered at knew, as was the case right now, they were facing a cuss who was either damned foolish or damned serious, which sometimes added up to the same thing.
Stringer decided any man who’d call another man little darling, knowing he was packing a gun of his own, had to be at least as dumb as he might be dangerous, so he answered just as sweetly, “You can call me anything but late for breakfast, sweetheart. What’s it to you?”
Stringer was braced for most any move but the next one. The mean-looking cuss suddenly spun on one high heel and walked off suddenly, whipping around the corner of the building to vanish from human ken, or at least Stringer’s.
The object of the sinister stranger’s recent scrutiny stared up the walk at nothing much, muttering, “I give up. What in thunder was that all about?” when he heard boot heels on the walk behind him and, while it hardly seemed possible anyone could have circled a whole building that fast, he still felt a certain tingling up the back of his neck as he whirled to get his spine to the wall and his gun hand even closer to his .38. But he was glad he hadn’t actually filled his fist when he saw it was one of the state troopers from across the way, striding in step with an older and fatter cuss with corporal’s stripes on his blue sleeves.
As Stringer nodded at them, with a bemused expression, the dumpy part-time corporal stared back just as bemused to ask, “Did we bust up a fight or a budding romance just now, cowboy?”
Stringer smiled more broadly to reply, “That jasper didn’t hang about long enough to say, thanks to you boys. I see that when your General Bell declared martial law in these parts he wasn’t whistling Dixie!”
The corporal of the guard shrugged and told him, “Governor Peabody declared martial law. Our job is to see nobody fucks up in this here part of Colorado. Do you have a permit to pack that there pistol, cowboy?”
Stringer nodded hopefully and told them both, “I’m neither a cowhand nor a danger to the community and you’ll kindly note my hands are nowhere near my sidearm as I attempt to produce some documentation for my lawful presence in these parts.”
Neither made any move to shoot Stringer as he got out his press credentials, California gun permit and the military pass old Murdstone had bestowed upon him. He handed all three to the corporal, who looked them over with one eyebrow cocked before he announced, “Your out-of-state license to pack sidearms don’t mean shit in Colorado, and it was my understanding neither our civil, nor military leaders wanted this anarchist unrest glorified in any damned newspapers.”
“How do you feel about that military pass?” asked Stringer, reaching for straws but trying not to let it show. It must not have. The guard corporal handed all the paper back to him, growling, “Ours is not to reason why. I don’t know the officer as signed your pass, but it looks like our own stationary, so I reckon you’re free to carry on unless or until you get some higher up the totem pole than us pissed off at you. Let’s get back to that other cuss with two guns, and no permit to carry either, as far as we could see just now.”
Stringer answered, honestly, “Your guess is as good as mine. I never saw the asshole before.”
“Then how come you call him an asshole?” asked the corporal with a frown that indicated he might hav
e a smarter job in civilian life.
Stringer explained, “You boys guessed right about him acting sort of odd and I thank you for busting it up before it got downright surly. I can’t say what he wanted. But I feel safe in calling him an asshole because he knew me by name, meaning he knew me by rep, and still telegraphed his intent to give me some damned sort of hard time when you two could see, from clean across the street, I was wearing this hardware of my own.”
The dumpy noncom favored Stringer with a thoughtful once-over before he decided, “I don’t know your rep, but unless you’re known as a mighty weak sister, I follows your drift. Do you want to press charges against that two-gun boogyman, if we see him again?”
Stringer thought, shook his head, and said, “I would if I had a thing on him that I might get a judge and jury to buy. But thanks to you boys, he lit out before we got down to just how sore we might or might not be about what. You’d know, of course, if he was a Pinkerton man trying to help your superiors keep a lid on the story up here in these hills?”
The corporal didn’t go the least bit shifty-eyed as he shook his head and told Stringer, “Nobody’s told us anything about any Pinks working for or against us in these parts. If there are any secret agents working on our side, the way that old boy just acted was all wrong. When the Pinks went after the Molly Maguires back in ’75 they never acted beligerent on the streets. They infiltrated the secret society and just collected evidence ’til they had enough to hang two dozen or so of the anarchists.”
