“I forgot to mention they had found a box of cigars in somebody's gear and all four of them were puffing away on big stogies, blowing out the smoke as they stood about with their weapons, watching us. But not laughing or carrying on, as you might expect. No, they appeared serious and very calm in their manner.
“The tall colored man, Catlett, said something and the four of them began lighting the ends of the fuses with their cigars.
“Well, we began to pull and push against each other. We tried to reason-or maybe I should say plead with them by this time-seeing those fuses burning at eighteen seconds a foot, which seems slow, huh? Well, I'll tell you, those sputtering, smoking fuse ends were racing, not crawling, right there coming toward our legs. ‘Stomp 'em out!’ somebody yelled and all of us began dancing and stomping the ground before the burning ends were even close. The two colored men and the Apaches had moved back a ways. Now they raised their rifles, pointed 'em right at us and Catlett said, ‘Stand still. You move, we'll shoot you dead.’”
Franklin Hovey waited, letting his listeners think about it.
“Which would you prefer, to be shot or blown up?” he said. “If you chose the former, I'd probably agree. But you would not choose it, I guarantee, looking into the muzzles of their guns. I promise you you'd let that fuse burn through between your feet at its pace and by then try not to move a muscle while being overcome by pure fear and terrible anguish. There was a feeling of us pressing against each other, rooted there, but not one of us stomped on a fuse. It burned between our feet and was out of sight behind us, though we could hear it and smell the powder and yarn burning. With maybe a half minute left to live, I closed my eyes. I waited. I waited some more. There was an awful silence.”
And silence at the table in the Gold Dollar.
“I could not hear the fuse burning. Nothing. I opened my eyes. The four with the guns stood watching us, motionless. It was like the moment had passed and we knew it, but still not one of us moved.”
Franklin Hovey let the reporters and listeners around the table wait while he finished the whiskey in his glass and passed the back of his hand over his mouth.
“The fuses,” he said then, “had not been connected to the dynamite sticks, but burned to the ends a few feet behind us. It was a warning, to give us a glimpse of eternity: The tall one, Catlett, approached and said if they ever saw us again, well, we'd just better not come back. They hitched a team to the dynamite wagon and drove off with close to a thousand pounds of high explosives.”
“That's it, huh?” a reporter said. “What was it the nigger said to you?”
“I told you, he gave us a warning.”
“Just said, don't come back?”
Franklin Hovey seemed about to explain, elaborate, then noticed that two of the girls who worked in the Gold Dollar were in the crowd of listeners.
“He said something, well, that wasn't very nice.”
“We see you again, we crimp the fuse on, stick the dynamite stick up your ass and shoot you to the moon…boy,” were Bo Catlett's exact words.
3
A man by the name of Gean was brought down in a two-wheel Mexican cart lying cramped in the box with his new straw hat on his chest, both legs shattered below the knees by a single .50-caliber bullet. He said he felt it, like a scythe had swiped off his legs, before he even heard the report; that's how far away the shooter was. He said he should never have left the railroad. If he ever went back he would be some yard bull, hobbling after tramps on his crutches, if the company doctor was able to save his legs.
The one who had guided the cart down out of the mountains was Maurice Dumas. The Chicago Kid was tired, dirty and irritable and did not say much that first day. He took Gean to the infirmary where there were all manner of crushed bones from mine and mill accidents, some healing, some turning black, lying there in a row of cots. It smelled terrible in the infirmary and the reporters who came to interview Gean handed him a bottle and asked only a few questions.
Had Sundeen found Moon?
Shit, no. It was the other way around.
Moon was carrying the fight now?
Teasing, pecking at Sundeen's flanks.
Was it Moon who shot him?
Get busted from five hundred yards, who's to say? But it's what he would tell his grandchildren. Yes, I was shot by Dana Moon himself back in the summer of '93 and lived to tell about it. Maybe.
How many men did Moon have?
A ghost band. Try and count them.
What about the Mexicans?
They'd come across women and children, ask them, Where they at? No savvy, mister. We'd burn the crops and move on.
And the colored?
The niggers? Same thing. Few Indin women and little wooly-headed breeds. Where's your old man at? Him gone. Him gone where? Me no know, be home by-'m-by. Shit, let's go. But it was at a nigger place the sniping had begun…riding off from the house after loading up with chuck and leading a steer…ba-wang, this rifle shot rang out, coming from, I believe, California, and we broke for cover. When we looked back, there was one of ours laying in the weeds. After it happened two times Sundeen had a fit, men getting picked off and all you could see up in the rocks was puffs of smoke. But he took care of that situation.
How did he do that?
Well, he took hostages so they wouldn't fire at us. I was walking up a grade toward a line shack, smoke wisping out the chimney, I got cut down and lay there looking at sky till one of your people found me and saved my life. Though I won't pay him a dime for that bed-wagon ride back here; I been sick ever since.
What else-how about Indians?
Shit, the only Indians he'd ever seen in his life was fort Indins and diggers. The ones rode for Moon were slick articles or wore invisible warpaint, for they had not laid eyes on a one.
The company doctor took off Gean's right leg. Gean said he could have done it back home under an El Paso & Southwestern freight car and saved the fare from New Mexico.
4
My, that Gean has the stuff, doesn't he? Tough old bird.
Maurice Dumas said to Bill Wells of the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, “Everybody was so taken with his spunk, or anxious to get out of there, they didn't ask the right question.”
“About what?”
“The hostages. He said they took hostages, then started talking about how I found him and put him in the cart.”
“What about the hostages?”
“They shot them,” Maurice said.
He wasn't sure he was going to tell this until he did, sitting with Bill Wells in the New Alliance. Like one reporter confiding in another. What should I do? Should I reveal what happened or not?
Why not?, was the question, Bill Wells said. “Are you afraid of Sundeen?”
“Of course I am,” Maurice said.
“We have power, all of us together, that even the company wouldn't dare to buck,” Bill Wells said. It was a fact, though at the moment Bill Wells was glad they had come to this miners' saloon rather than mix with the crowd at the Gold Dollar. “Tell me what happened.”
Maybe Sundeen thought it would be an easy trip: march up there with his hooligans and run the people off their land, burn their homes and crops, scatter the herds-like Sherman marching to the sea. Sundeen did have an air about him at first, as though he knew what he was doing.
But there were not that many mountain people to run off. And how did you burn adobe except to blacken it up some? Tear down a house, the people would straggle back and build another. The thing Sundeen had to do was track down the leaders and deal with them face to face.