He left the pilothouse and went down a flight of stairs to the galley where a grizzled deckhand was telling a dozen coal miners about the alligators that swarmed when novice deckhands fell overboard. “And I reckon you boys noticed how low the main deck is to the water. Sometimes them critters just walk on. Prowl about, looking for something to eat.”
“Been in West Virginia my whole life. Never seen no alligators in the Mon.”
“They congregate at Pittsburgh.” He winked at Bell.
Bell addressed the miners. “We’re almost at the trolley park. There’ll be a lot of folks milling around when we land. I’m hoping you boys can help keep order while we get them into the barges. You’ll see your own people and—”
“Ah wouldn’t bother your head too much about that,” drawled the West Virginian. “The Strike Committee organized committees for everything from Drinking Water Committee to the Cooking Committee to the No Cusswords Committee to the Defense Committee. You can bet by now there’s a Barge Gittin’ On Committee and a Barge Gittin’ Off Committee.”
Camilla’s tall-tale-telling deckhand stood up. “Right now, I’m organizing a Mooring Line Committee. The captain’ll do most the work driving us alongside, but I want every man of you ready to jump with a rope.”
Twenty minutes later, steaming at nearly eight knots against the current, Camilla squeezed her tow past a string of dredges that Captain Jennings said were building locks and a dam at Braddock. “About damned time, too. Above here, in a dry spell, the Mon drops so low you can plow it.”
The dredges were working through the night. A lucky break, thought Bell, as their lights might provide cover for the towboats’ lights.
“There’s the park,” said Jennings.
Bell had already spotted the tall circle of the Ferris wheel. It was silhouetted against the electric-light glow of the outskirts of McKeesport. If he had any doubts about the wisdom of this “stunt,” they evaporated when he saw the mass of men, women, and children crowding the riverbank with their bundles in their hands.
“Where’s the Defense Committee?” Isaac Bell called down from Camilla’s top deck as Captain Jennings flanked his barges back against the riverbank.
“At the gates.”
“Holding off the Pinkertons.”
Jennings’s searchlight swept inland, and Bell saw a sight he would never forget. Mary Higgins had estimated that ten thousand had joined the ranks since the march began at Gleasonburg. It was a number hard to imagine until the light swept over the rippling mass of people — men and women, and children sitting on their shoulders — all with their faces turned to the river.
“Soon as your barges are full, head back down,” he told Captain Jennings. “If I’m not back, leave without me.”
Bell hurried down the two flights to the main deck, jumped onto the muddy riverbank. Miners were dismantling a shuttered cold-drinks stand and spreading the boards across the mud. Bell walked inland, through acres of people carrying their belongings and loads of canvas wrapped around tent poles. He walked under the Ferris wheel and circled a swimming lake. A carousel stood still, with canvas tied over the horses. A freak show was boarded up for the winter. When at last the crowd thinned, he arrived at the fence that separated the park from the trolley barns.
Miners with lever-action rifles guarded the gates, which they had barricaded with planks, crossties, and lengths of track pried up from the station. The riflemen had their backs toward the retreating crowd and the towboat searchlights piercing the sky, concentrating on what was outside the gate.
“Where’s Fortis?”
The miner in charge of the detail, a hard-eyed man in his forties, was in the ticket booth. He looked like he had not slept in a long time.
“Mr. Fortis? I’m Bell. Jim Higgins said you were covering the retreat.”
“Not a minute too soon. Look at those boys.”
Bell peered through a crack between the planks. The lights were on in the trolley barns and the huge doors open. Inside, scores of strikebreakers armed with pick handles had sheltered from the rain. A streetcar parked outside the barn drew his eye. Twenty men with Winchesters sat inside it.
“Pinkertons?”
“In that one. Coal and Iron cops in another behind the barn.”
“Where’s the militia?”
“So far, the government’s holding them in reserve in McKeesport. But one of our spies says those jailbirds are waiting to attack about four in the morning. I’m worried they’ll jump the gun when they cotton to your barges.”
“They must have spies, too.”
“We caught three tonight. A triple play. They won’t be telling nobody.”
“What did you do to them?”
“Bought us some time,” came the opaque reply.
Bell said, “I want to be sure you boys make the last boat.”
“We’re loaded and ready to run.”
Bell had already noticed the wheelbarrows lined up and covered with canvas.
“What’s in those barrows?”
“Rifles, ammunition, and dynamite.”
Wondering whether he had led the Van Dorn Detective Agency into a shooting war, Bell asked, “Sure you need explosives?”
“Sure we won’t get caught short.”
“I’ll come for you when we’ve got the last of your people loaded.”
Back at the river Bell found the loading going slowly. When Camilla finally swung her barges away from the bank and started down the Monongahela, and Captain Jennings’s son maneuvered the second fleet alongside, the tall detective opened his pocket watch. At the rate this was going, they would be lucky to land the last tow at Amalgamated before the morning fog lifted ten hours from then.
37
Henry Clay spotted a junior stockbroker waiting under a light where the Vulcan King landed for coal in Wheeling, West Virginia. He recognized the type employed by Midwestern branch offices of the brokerage that Judge Congdon controlled with his secret interest. Hair short and combed, suit pressed, collar freshly starched despite the late hour, smile hopeful, the young man was hungry to please anyone from New York headquarters.
“Mr. Claggart?” he asked, his eyes wide at the spectacle of the biggest steamboat he had ever seen hulking over the wharf, broad as a steel mill and twice as black.
“You from the office?”
Gone was Clay’s Southern banker costume and his drawl. He was brusque — his dark frock coat as severe as the freshly painted Vulcan King, his costly homburg fixed at a sober angle — a valuable man obliged to journey from the great city to direct enterprises too lofty to be trusted to ordinary mortals.
“Telegram for you, sir. On the private wire.”
The young fellow handed him an envelope and emphasized its importance with a breathless, “It’s in cipher.”
“Cipher means private,” snapped Clay. “Private means don’t shout about it in a public place.”
It was nearly midnight. The wharf was remote, chosen for its distance from the public wharf, and deserted except for Vulcan King’s firemen wheeling fresh coal up the steamboat’s landing stage. The junior broker stammered apologies.
“Lesson learned,” was Clay’s magnanimous reply. “Wait over there until I give you an answer to wire back.”
He sent the broker scurrying with a cold nod and moved under the light, slit open the envelope, and immediately began grinding his teeth. Inside the envelope was the standard printed company message blank: