by Lou Cameron
Stringer nodded soberly and said, “We heard the machine gun calling on them to halt. My mother told me never to argue with soldiers blue with guns. But before we go would you mind telling us whether we’re talking about a short squirt sporting a pearl gray hat and a much bigger boy dressed more like a banker?”
The rifleman nodded and said, “That’s close enough. The corporal of the guard says it looks as if the big one was chasing the little one as they whipped around the corner and tried to whip past our armored car, deaf to the gunner’s orders to halt. Do you know who they were? The officer of the day might want to talk to you, once he gets here.” But Stringer just took Murdstone by the arm and said, “Not hardly. We never associate with such assholes. So we’ll be on our way back to our hotel, now.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
It took Stringer the better part of a week to cover the big emergency in the Cripple Creek gold fields. Only it refused to pan out to be as big a story as Sam Barca kept demanding by wire, from his distant and hence more excited vantage point out on the coast.
Things kept starting out dramatic enough, but while Jack London always ended his news stories with a neat twist, whether he had to make one up or not, Stringer was stuck with his bad habit of calling things as he saw them, and there wasn’t that much to see, once the power structure of Colorado, armed with righteous indignation, had the excuse to really crack down.
Both Charles Moyer, as nominal head, and Big Bill Heywood as the executive secretary of the Western Federation of Miners issued statements disavowing the “Depot Massacre” as even the San Francisco Sun dubbed the grim events at the Independence trolley depot. All the union heads managed to do was confuse everyone as to who might be the head of the union while papers from coast to coast ran the pathetic family photographs and otherwise dull obits of the strikebreakers blown to Kingdom Come by the mad Harry Orchard.
Nobody on either side doubted for a minute that the blast had been set off by Big Bill’s sinister pal, even though the posse had failed to cut his trail, that night or any other. Stringer had to report the theory advanced by the handler of the bloodhounds hired by Bert Carlton to track the killer down, although Stringer failed to see how anyone knew Harry Orchard had soaked his boots in turpentine, or for that matter how they could say for sure it had been Harry Orchard, once they failed to track him anywhere at all.
Sam Barca ran the turpentine notion anyway and later on, a lot later on, after they’d both forgotten all about his dirty work at Independence, Orchard would be picked up far from the Cripple Creek gold fields and convicted of another murder, not connected with the labor dispute Stringer had been sent to cover.
For thanks partly to the wild tactics of the union’s more radical wing and perhaps at least as much to the simple fact that the miners were getting twice the pay of, say, a law clerk for eight or nine hour shifts, rough as such shifts might be, the W.F.M. had simply shot itself in the foot, and the M.O.A. set out to finish it off before it could recover from its self-inflicted wounds.
Led by the just as tough but lots smarter Bert Carlton, with the state and local governments backing them to the hilt and to hell with the sissy constitution, the M.O.A. stopped just short of mass lynchings. Union halls were wrecked from New Mexico to Montana. Newspapers sympathetic to “Infernal Anarchists” had their type pied, or dumped on the floor and mixed together, as the first warning. Stores unwise enough to extend credit to any “Ingrate” out on strike were looted and torched by mysterious night riders no local sheriff saw fit to go after, if he knew where his bread was buttered.
Martial law was extended to cover every mining camp anywhere near Cripple Creek. All saloons, dance halls, gambling hells and gun shops were closed down until further notice. As an afterthought, Carl ton ordered his fellow miners to shut down their mines as well. With nobody drawing dime-one in wages until the “Anarchy” ended, the results were a downright violent lack of sympathy for union organizers in the shanty towns around the mines. Anyone who objected, however mildly, including the surprised sheriff, himself, was simply tossed into the military stockade to ponder the error of their ways on piss and punk, as bread and water was then called by both those who served it and those who had to survive on it. So most saw the error of their ways right off and some were even allowed to go home and sin no more. But a boxcarload of men on the M.O.A.’s serious shit list were given a free ride to the Four Corners desert country to the southwest and there tossed off in the middle of nowhere with the not-too-subtle advice that their health would suffer just awful if they ever came back to Colorado or, hell, applied for a job in a hardrock mine owned and operated anywhere by real Americans.
Three or four times that many simply fled for their lives before they could be rounded up. With peace restored the mines opened up again and that was that for quite a spell. The power of the W.F.M. had blown away with the dynamite smoke of their ill-advised attempt to terrorize gents who were just as tough, just as stubborn, and a hell of a heap richer.
Whether fully behind the murderous Harry Orchard or not, Big Bill Heywood would go on to organize the just as noisy and apparently aimless “Wobblies” I.W.W. or Industrial Workers of the World, with no more luck, after wrecking poor old Charley Moyer’s union for now, if not forever.
Meanwhile, Sam Barca kept wiring demands for more detail and then blue penciling such details as Stringer could come up with. There was no fresh news in the simple fact that American working men were more interested in bread and butter issues than political theories.
In the end, even old Sam agreed Stringer had apparently wrung all the juice out of the confusion in Colorado and suggested Stringer either look into what the union might have had to do with all those mysterious electrical events everyone kept blaming on Nikola Tesla or, hell, just pack it in and come on home.
Stringer hadn’t even considered Doc Tesla as a suspect in connection with the half-assed emergency up in the gold fields. Those blinking lights the night of that horrendous explosion hadn’t struck anyone as mysterious. The dynamite had ripped out a heap of trolley wire, causing a power surge, causing a circuit breaker somewhere along the line to reset the current, he figured. Then, since he wasn’t really that sure what he was figuring, Stringer moseyed over to the Cripple Creek Electric Company to see if anyone there might be able to explain it to him.
The young gal customers got to pay in the front office said she hadn’t even noticed the lights doing anything in the middle of the night, that night, since she’d been in bed with all her lights turned off. He didn’t ask her who she might have been in bed with, so she repaid his courtesy by sending him out back, where one of the electricians might be able to help him.
He found a tall skinny drink of water in greasy coveralls greasing the drive train of a swamping Corliss steam engine in the generator room. The cuss was friendlier than his morose expression had indicated at first. He said that like the ball governor spinning about up there above their heads, the electrical gear this big engine cranked ran on its own. He heard Stringer out on those winking lights and decided, “Close enough. I wasn’t on duty that night, but I heard about it from the night shift. Ripping out all that wire had about the same effect on the system as every trolley on the line starting up at once, overloaded. We got off light with no more than some winking and blinking. Threw the electric clocks all over town a minute or more off, of course. But no real harm done.”
Stringer frowned thoughtfully and said, “The local clocks got knocked really out of shape the day before, though. Could you tell me how come?”
The skinny and greasy electrician started to ask what day they were jawing about. Then he nodded and said, “Right. That was no accident. We shut this here steam engine down about an hour, around four in the morning, when nobody with a lick of sense needed any juice from the generators, see?”
Stringer nodded but said, “That’s about the time I’d shut down to clean the firebox or whatever, but I reckon I’d tell everyone in town with an electric
clock. You boys made it impossible to open the time locked vault at one bank I know of, too.”
The electrician shrugged and told him, defensively, “We never figured anyone would want to open a bank vault at four in the morning. As for electric clocks, we don’t sell ’em, we just sell the juice as runs ’em and, between you and me, I wouldn’t have one as a gift. They make no sense at all, as electrical appliances or as clocks.”
Stringer said, “I’ve noticed none I see in passing seem to agree with my old fashioned spring-wound pocket watch, or even with one another. Does anyone know why?”
The electrical expert nodded and said, “Sure. It’s just a matter of electrical theory versus electrical fact. There’s nothing much to the innards of an electrical clock. Your pocket watch is a heap more complicated. That may be why they invented the fool things. There’s nothing in the guts of an electric clock but a little geared-down electric motor. It’s set to turn in time with the sixty cycle a.c. current we’re supposed to churn out here at this central plant.” He squirted some oil down a mysterious rat hole of the slowly turning Corliss as he added, with a wry chuckle, “What we’re supposed to do and what we can do ain’t always the same. When you’re dragging sixty cycles back and forth every second, and you add up all the seconds of a livelong day, it’s a wonder to me them electric clocks ever get close to the real time. We do set out cycles with a regular clockwork timer, of course, but with one thing and another, and the fact that every other damned device works just as well at say fifty-nine or sixty-one cycles …”
“I got it.” Stringer cut in, adding, “The angle I’m after is possible skullduggery someone like that union bomber the other night could cause by messing with the current more seriously. Throwing clocks off the correct time sounds more annoying than profitable. They told me at the bank you can’t open an electrically-timed lock by switching off the juice. So that can’t be it.”
The Cripple Creek electrician said, “We’ve heard about the trouble they’ve been having with the current down at The Springs. Sounds to me like the time they let that mad Russian plug lightning bolts into their system. Can’t say I’ve heard of anyone down yonder getting robbed with lightning, wild or domesticated, though.”
Stringer nodded and said, “That’s what I mean. I’ve got it on good authority that old Nikola Tesla’s nowhere near Colorado Springs this summer. He’s out on Long Island, near New York City, trying to talk to Europe by short wave whatever before Marconi gets really good at it. So tell me something, as one electrician to a cuss who may know more about cows, is there any way some experimental gear Tesla and his assistants might have left out here could sort of go off by itself, messing up the local juice by, well, accident.”
The man more used to such matters in Cripple Creek was wise enough to think hard about that before he decided, “Nope. I’ve no idea what them eastern dudes had plugged in down yonder. But I do know it was two or three summers back and electric appliances just don’t work that way. An electric clock, a fan, something more complicated, is either plugged in and switched on or it ain’t. As long as it runs right nobody ought to notice, save for the meter reader, maybe. He’d only notice if the whatever was drawing an unusual amount of juice. If your abandoned whatever burnt out or went on the blink some other way, assuming it was plugged in and nobody noticed who, if anyone, was getting the monthly bill, well, it could play hob with the circuit „til it blew a fuse or started a fire. Damn white trash will put pennies in the fuse boxes. But as for a play-pretty of the mad Russian switching itself on long enough to turn off half the lights in town, and then just switching itself off again, I’d surely love to see the blueprints of that modern wonder!”
Stringer agreed there had to be some mysteriously motivated human hand behind such goings on and thanked the older man for confirming his suspicions. But as he headed over to the Western Union to once more wire his feature editor, he was still stuck for any rational motive anyone might have for playing pranks with the electric current of Colorado Springs.
It had to be some prankster, for the few hitches Cripple Creek had experienced with its own juice had been easily explained by a gent not half as used to the new industry, Stringer suspected, as old Sparks Fletcher, the troubleshooter he’d talked it over with on the way out of town. That other electrical expert had said neither he nor anyone else in Colorado Springs had been able to trace the trouble to its source, meaning that whether he or she had a sensible reason or not, the prankster down yonder was good at it.
According to Jack London, such pranks had been taking place for some time, now. Good old Vania had been inspired to come all the way out west for her Czar by the mysterious goings on.
Thinking about Vania made him wonder if she’d still be at the Alta Vista, and still half as fond of him, once he got back there. The little blonde behind the Western Union counter looked just as chesty, come to study on her middy-blouse, and pretty chipper, considering recent events, so he asked her how her boy friend at the Finlay Mine had made out that grim night. She looked blank until she remembered, dimpled, and said, “Oh, I just made that up, to keep customers from getting fresh with me. Did I tell you that whopper, Mister MacKail?”
He reached for a telegram blank and said with a sigh, “You must have thought I was getting fresh. I’m still glad you didn’t lose anyone important to you in that blast. More than two dozen ladies did wind up widows, in the end.”
Then he got busy bringing Sam Barca up to date, saying there just wasn’t anything more to report from Cripple Creek and that while he’d give Colorado Springs one last shot, not to bank on anything hot unless the Sun meant to run malicious mischief in distant parts. As he was blocking out his message, the blonde fooled with her upswept hair, murmuring, “I must have taken you for just another cowhand when and if I fed you that line about a hardrock loverboy. Is it true you spend most of your time in San Francisco, where ladies ride in the park all gussied up in English riding habits and everybody dresses for supper, even week nights?”
He handed her his terse message, saying, “Some parts of Frisco are more refined than others. I’d like this sent day-rates, por favor.”
She nodded and naturally had to read it as she ticked off a nickel a word. Then she sighed and said, “Oh, dear, does this mean you’ll be leaving Cripple Creek right off? Before the dance at the Civic Center this weekend, I mean?” To which he could only reply with a sigh of his own, “I reckon it does. Like they say, them as hesitates gets left out, ma’am.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Vania Hovich wasn’t at the Alta Vista when Stringer showed up that evening, walking stiffly after riding so far so fast, even downhill most of the way. When the room clerk told him Miss Hovich had checked out shortly after receiving a cablegram in a blue envelope, all the way from Vienna Town, for heaven’s sake, Stringer gave himself a mental kick in the ass for having ridden that poor bay so cruel. He didn’t even want to think about that blonde in the bush he’d passed up for the sure thing he’d thought he was loping on back to.
The room clerk gave him the same key to the same room and added a yellow envelope from Western Union they’d been holding most of the time he’d been gone. It was addressed to him, of course. He took it upstairs with his gladstone before he tossed his hat on the bed and sat down beside it to tear the mysterious message open. He found it mysterious because Sam Barca had kept in touch with him during his stay in Cripple Creek and he couldn’t think of anyone else who’d want to wire him in Colorado Springs.
But it was easier to figure once he saw the wire was from Jack London in New York City, of all places. Stringer had to laugh once he got over his first surprise. Old Jack had somehow found out Vania was Austro-Hungarian, not Russian, and likely more interested in stealing secrets for old Franz Josef and the young Kaiser than any fool Czar of all the Russians! London said he’d contacted Tesla after all, out on Long Island where he was supposed to be. He went on to warn Stringer not to tell Vania this, no matter how nice she was t
o him, because Nikola Tesla didn’t think much of the Austrian claims to Croatian territory and expected his wireless telephone, not telegraph, to win the big war he figured Austria was begging for if it didn’t keep its damned hands off other folk’s property.
Stringer tore up Jack’s wire and flushed the results down the commode in his adjoining bath, just in case. Then he took a leak as long as he was in there and washed up a mite, changing to a clean if somewhat rumpled workshirt from his gladstone as he considered how young the night seemed for sleeping, alone, albeit a mite late to go calling on strange ladies, even ones you didn’t care to sleep with.
He told himself it could wait until morning. Then he told himself Miss Hotwire Hamilton didn’t have to have a telephone listing in the city directory if she didn’t want anyone calling her up at home and that, what the hell, if she was getting laid or taking a crap she just didn’t have to answer, right?
