The Striker

“Don’t slow down ’til we’re inside the gates or they’ll mob us.”

The gates were just beyond an iron girder bridge that carried the rails above the workers’ slum that encircled the smelter, and it looked to the Pinkertons as if they would make it. Suddenly, from the helplessly raging, stone-throwing mob of strikers, a hero darted — a slight figure, no bigger than a boy — dragging a heavy ore rake.

“Where the hell— Stop him! Don’t let him move that switch!”

No one had to tell the remaining gunman riding on front of the danger to the locomotive. His Winchester leaped to his shoulder and he snapped a shot at the ru

His bullet missed the boy, ricocheted off the girdered overpass, and pierced a window in the Nyren Smelter gate tower.

The boy ran in front of the train and jammed the rake into the switch.

One hundred yards from the safety of the smelter gates, the locomotive’s pilot wheels were derailed by the rake. The massive drivers right behind them sliced the steel rake like a length of sausage. But the forces squeezing that extra piece of steel crammed between the movable switch point and the fixed rail spread the rail a single inch out of line. With nothing for their flanges to grip, the drive wheels slipped off the rails.

The locomotive jumped the track and tumbled off the overpass into the slum streets below, dragging its coal-laden tender and ten full ore cars onto the roof of the building that housed the Nyren company store.

“What’s troubling you, Jim? We did all right today.”

Jim Higgins looked up bleakly from his desk in the union hall. The local’s secretary and vice president had returned with celebrants’ beers under their belts. “Not counting eight in the hospital and two men dead?” he asked, although the victims were not his only source of concern.

“They died like heroes.”

“Speaking of heroes, wasn’t that little guy something?”

“Has anyone seen him since?” asked Higgins.

“Neither hide nor hair. Too bad. He deserves a medal.”

“He’s smart to lay low — better yet, light the heck out of Denver.”

“Halfway to San Francisco, if he’s got a brain in his head,” agreed Higgins, hoping against hope. From the first instant he had seen the slight figure with the rake he had an awful feeling that the “little guy” was neither a man nor a boy but instead a slim young woman in trousers named Mary Higgins.

He had sent telegrams to friends in Chicago and Pittsburgh, where she should have gone after West Virginia. So far, no one reported seeing her. Times like this, he wished he wasn’t an atheist. Times like this when there was nothing left to do but pray.

“Brother!”

In she walked, not in trousers and cap, thank God, but in a bedraggled skirt and a lady’s hat with a perfunctory feather decorating it.

“Mary,” he said, rising, “how wonderful to see you. When did you get into town?”

Mary took note of the red-faced vice president and secretary and replied, “I just got off the train. I had a feeling I’d find you here. How is it going?”

“Gentlemen, my sister Mary.”

The secretary and vice president nearly broke their arms whipping off their hats, reminding Jim Higgins how attractive men found his sister. They told her that the strike was going wonderfully and that they would surely win. Higgins waited until he and Mary were alone in his rented room before he told her the truth. “It’s not working,” he said. “The strike is stuck in Denver. It won’t spread far.”

“I saw Mother Jones in Chicago,” said Mary, referring to a brave old labor leader who was an inspiration to them both. “She was hoping you would convince the Western Federation to join with eastern miners back in Pe

“So was I.”

“She said that since all the mines are owned by Wall Street operators, the unions should strike simultaneously. The operators are national. We should be national.”

“Did you say you just got into Denver this evening?”

Mary looked him straight in the face. “What do you want me to say?”

“I want you to say that wasn’t you who derailed the ore train.”

“Why?”

“You could have been killed.”

“You could have been killed in Gleasonburg.”

“I would have been if that young miner hadn’t come to my rescue, but that is not the point.”

“Miner hell!” said Mary. “Isaac Bell is a Pinkerton.”

Jim Higgins could not believe his ears. “He can’t be. That’s not possible.”

“I saw with my own eyes.”

“Did he say he’s a Pinkerton?”

“Well, not in so many words. He claimed to be a Van Dorn.”

“There’s a big difference,” Jim argued. “Pinkertons provide strikebreakers to break unionist heads and protect scabs. I’ve never seen Van Dorns doing that. They are a cut above.”

“Have you ever heard of a Van Dorn working for the union?” Mary fired back.

“Bell helped you get out of West Virginia, didn’t he?”

“Bell was spying, brother. Bell tricked us. He’s no better than the rest of them.”

13

“Last stop, gents,” said Isaac Bell as the trolley from Morgantown bounced into Gleasonburg. “Round up what you can before dark. Meet back here. Mr. Van Dorn will buy us supper in that saloon,” he added, indicating Reilly’s, where Mary had wangled coffee.

“What I most enjoy about detecting work is the opportunity to travel,” said Mack Fulton, gazing upon Main Street’s unpainted company houses, goats chewing bark from dying trees, piles of broken rock and coal dust, and muddy hillsides logged to ragged stumps for propping timber.

“To see new sights,” said Wally Kisley.

“Broadening our horizons— Get the bags, Archie.”

Wish Clarke passed their bags to the redheaded apprentice but held on to the heaviest, an usually long, reinforced carpetbag that made a muted clank when he set it on the ground.

“Looks like they burned down the jail.” He winked at Isaac Bell. “Most of the courthouse, too. Is that how you cut loose of the lynch mob?”

“I had some help from a lady— O.K., gents, let’s get moving.”

Mack Fulton asked, “Who gets Archie?”

“You two,” answered Bell, and said to Archie, “Help them up stairs and crossing streets.”

Wish Clarke headed for the company store.

Isaac Bell went to the mouth of Gleason Mine No. 1. No longer disguised as a miner, he presented the Pinkerton in charge of the guards a letter of introduction he had not yet used that identified him as a Van Dorn Agency detective working for Gleason.

“What the hell is this supposed to mean? We don’t need no detectives. We’re the detectives.”

“It’s signed by Black Jack himself, and it means you’re ordered to give any Van Dorn who asks for one a safety light and get out of his way. I’m asking for one.”

They brought him the light. They were edgy, he thought, less cock of the walk, less inclined to bully. “Where you going with this?”

“A walk,” said Bell. “Come along if you like,” knowing the Pinkerton would never enter the mine.

“The miners are talking strike.”

“When did that start?” Bell asked, recalling Jim Higgins’s promise There’s more where I came from.

“Damned fools are takin’ the bit in their teeth. Whole town’s about to blow sky-high. Wouldn’t be surprised if some of them took a swing at you.”

“I’ll run the risk,” said Bell. He carried the light through the timbered portal and hurried straight down the haulageway.

The ventilators were ru