The Striker

“Couldn’t have put it better myself.”

“Here comes the boy.”

Luke led them the final hundred yards up the logged slope and into the cave, which Bell surmised, by its timber propping, was actually an old mining hole cut into the side of the hill by backwoodsmen digging for fuel to heat their cabins long before the Gleason Consolidated Coal & Coke Company commenced its commercial venture. Zeke, Luke’s father, could not risk lighting a fire. He had a thin blanket for the cold, and he tore hungrily into the biscuits, after first asking whether Bell and Wish had eaten and they answered that they had. Between bites he explained that union men were coming from Pe

Sounds drifted faintly up the mountain — the chug of a locomotive across the river, a steamboat whistle, bursts of raucous laughter from the saloons, and, once, the clang of the trolley. The ill-lit Gleasonburg itself appeared as a distant glow, softer than the thin moonlight filtered by river mists.

Bell said, “Luke, maybe you ought to tell your father what you told me you overheard.”

“What’s that, boy?”

“The cops said the scabs are coming.”

“What scabs? From where?”

“Italians and Poles.”

“Then we’ll block the trolley. Maybe even get the Brotherhoods to stop the trains.”

“I’m afraid it won’t be that easy,” said Bell. “What Luke heard suggests that the company will barge them up the river from Pittsburgh.”

“That’s not possible.”

“That’s what they said.”

“Well, that just plain ain’t possible. We haven’t even begun to strike. What would give them the idea to bring scabs? How could they know our plans? We just made ’em. Now, what are you Van Dorn fellows doing here?”

Isaac Bell said, “Do you need our help?”

“What kind of help? Fighting strikebreakers? We can barely feed ourselves. How we go

Luke said, “Pa, I asked them to help you get away.”

“I can’t go away, son. I gotta stay here. The fight is here.”

“But—”

“No buts.”

“But the Pinkertons said they’re calling up militia if you strike.”

“I hope that’s not true.”

Isaac Bell cocked his ear. He heard a strange sound and stepped out of the cave to hear better. Wish followed. “What the heck is that?”

“Sounds like music.”

It grew slightly louder, as if climbing on the vapors from far below.

“I’ll be,” said Wish. “Recognize that?”

Bell picked up the tune and sang softly.

“You can hear them sigh and wish to die,

You can see them wink the other eye

At the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo.”

The source was a mystery. None of the plank-and-barrel saloons had the means to hire orchestras. It certainly was not Reilly’s upright. Bell heard violins and horns, in addition to a piano, clarinets, and a double bass. And while there was no denying there were brothels in Gleasonburg, no one had the money to support a dance hall.

“There,” he said. “Look on the water.”

A steam yacht rounded a bend in the river. It was lighted end to end by electricity, its windows and portholes casting more light than the town and the moon combined. Bell recognized the clean and graceful lines of a Herreshoff, a magnificent boat built in Rhode Island. He was too far away to see the orchestra, but he could hear the musicians finish playing “The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo” and then jump smoothly into Joplin’s “Easy Wi

“I’ll bet that’s Gleason’s steam yacht. The Monongahela.”

“I wouldn’t mind being at that party,” said Wish.

“What’s that following it?” asked Bell.

A dark form, much longer than the steam yacht and four times as wide, crept after it. Only when it had completely rounded the bend could they see the lights of a towboat pushing a score of barges lashed together.

The orchestra bounced to the new hit “Bill Bailey, Won’t You Please Come Home?”

A loud steam whistle drowned out the music. The tow turned ponderously across the current and headed toward the barge dock.

Luke and his father had followed them out of the cave. “Barge tow,” said Zeke. “Empties coming back from Pittsburgh.”

Bell focused his keen eyes on the tow as it neared the barge dock. It was difficult to see for sure, but he sensed curious ripples of motion within the barges, like cattle boats landing for slaughter. “They’re not empty.”

“Who the heck barges coal up the river?”

“They’re not carrying coal… They’re full of men.”

Bell looked at Wish and the two detectives shook their heads in amazement. The strikers would have their hands full. While they were still getting organized, Black Jack Gleason’s yacht had escorted scab labor straight to their back door.

Luke said, “Oh, Pa, I’m powerful sorry.”

Zeke stood there, shoulders bowed, and felt blindly for his son’s hand.

The Monongahela stationed herself in the middle of the river. The steamboat pushed the barges against the dock, and soon Bell saw lanterns bobbing as the Gleason police began herding the men off the barges and up Dock Street.

“What—”

A white flash in the middle of the river lit the water from shore to shore and etched the surrounding hills as stark as snow. It cast a diamond brilliance on the tipple that towered over the shantytown, on a tow of laden coal barges moored to the tipple pier, and on the scabs shuffling ashore — a thousand workmen clutching bundles — their startled faces whipped to the sudden burst of light.

Isaac Bell fixed on its source and saw the Monongahela’s superstructure jump straight up in the air. Cabins, navigation bridge, and smokestack parted from the steam yacht’s sleek hull. For half a second, they appeared to float.

16

A thunderous double salvo roared like battleship guns.

Isaac Bell, high above the river, felt the heat of the explosion on his face.

Then silence and darkness settled on the water, the town, and the hills. The music had stopped. Jagged flames pierced the dark. The yacht’s hull was burning.

“What happened?” cried Luke.

“Her boiler blew,” said Zeke. “The Good Lord has intervened! He has struck that Satan dead.”

Isaac Bell exchanged dubious glances with Wish Clarke.

The younger detective spoke first. “That one-two punch sounded like someone lent the Good Lord a hand with a hundred pounds of dynamite. First the dynamite, then the boiler.”

“Isaac, old son,” said Aloysius Clarke. “I do believe you’re getting the hang of your line.”

“We better get down there and lend a hand.”

Bell discovered as he and Wish pushed their way onto the dock that the Polish and Italian scabs had not been imported from their home countries. Nor had the numerous black men come directly from the South. They had been rounded up from the coalfields of eastern Pe

“They didn’t tell us nothing about the union.”

“They just said there was jobs.”

In the middle of the river, the steamboat that had brought the scab tow was circling the burning remains of the Monongahela, playing lights on the water, looking for survivors. Suddenly, her whistle shrieked an alarm.

“Now what?” asked Wish.

Bell pointed upstream where the tipple loomed darkly against the night sky. “Coal barges adrift.”

The entire tow that had been moored to the tipple pier — a fleet of twenty loaded barges lashed together — wheeled ponderously into the river and picked up speed as the powerful current dragged it downstream.

“How in heck did they break loose?”

“First thing I’ll ask, come morning,” said Isaac Bell.