The Striker

Isaac Bell saw someone come pushing through the mob even as the front ranks hesitated.

It was Mary Higgins, shoving through them and racing up the steps to stand shoulder to shoulder with him.

“If you brought a gun,” said Bell, “give it to me and get out of here while the getting is good.”

“I don’t need a gun.”

“If you believe that, you’re dreaming worse than your brother— Down!” He saw the blur of a gun barrel swinging their way. He kicked Mary’s skirts out from under her and swept her off her feet. A shot pealed from the back of the mob. The bullet stormed so close to Bell’s head it knocked his cap off. He could not see who had fired or whether he was leveling a second shot. He was. The shot came with no warning, slamming Bell sideways as it ripped through his coat and burned a bloody track across his ribs.

Bell caught his footing and aimed his Army. He raked the crowd, trying to locate the man who shot him. He still could not see him. He was somewhere behind them. Then he saw that the second shot emboldened the angry miners. Pushed by those behind, the men in front surged straight at him.

Isaac Bell triggered his weapon, held it firmly at his waist, and fa

The rapid fire sent a blizzard of bullets inches above the mob. Heads ducked, men scattered for cover. Spanish War veterans familiar with field ca

Jim Higgins was watching from his cell, gripping the bars. Bell spotted keys on the rack and a double-barreled shotgun. He unlocked the cell and shoved the shotgun into Higgins’s hands. Higgins stared at the weapon as if Bell had passed him a snake.

“Don’t worry about hitting anything. The noise’ll scatter them.”

“Are you all right, Isaac? There’s blood all over your coat.”

“Tip-top,” said Bell. His ribs felt like he had just fought ten rounds with a strong man who specialized in body blows. But he could breathe, a good sign that no ribs had splintered.

“Here they come!” cried Mary. She grabbed a lantern off the desk and looked down the hall.

The mob was beating at the door. Bell took back the shotgun. Mary returned. “There’s a door and a ladder down to the riverbank.”

“How many are out there?”

“No one. It’s too steep. It’s right on the bank.”

“Take your brother.”

Mary grabbed Jim’s arm and lighted the way. Bell took up the rear. The mob battered at the door. Bell fired the right barrel. The shotgun bellowed. The pounding stopped, but only for an instant. Jim Higgins lowered the ladder. “Go,” said Bell. “I’ll cover.” He had one cartridge left in the shotgun and one in his revolver. Jim Higgins started down the ladder. The front door splintered as the fence post they were using for a battering ram thrust through a panel.

Bell loosed the second barrel of the shotgun, and the fence post fell into the room as if the men wielding it had let go and run for their lives. “Go,” he said to Mary. “That made believers out of them.”

But instead of starting down the ladder, Mary ran to the front room and threw the lamp. It landed on the jailer’s desk. Glass shattered and kerosene oil caught fire, spreading flame across the desk and igniting the second lamp. She paused in the hallway, and Bell saw her profiled by the leaping orange firelight. She looked startlingly beautiful, with a smile of satisfaction shining on her face.

The burning jailhouse, which should have distracted the mob, proved Bell’s, Jim’s, and Mary’s undoing. No sooner had they climbed down the ladder and begun picking their way along the steep riverbank than the fire rose to the courthouse above it. The wood burned fiercely. Flames leaped to the sky and dissolved the darkness of night.

“There they are!”

“Git ’em!”

The mob raced among the shanties along the top of the bank. Bell, Mary, and Jim Higgins slid to the bottom and splashed along the water’s edge. Bell saw ahead of them the barge dock where empties were parked overnight, waiting for steam tugs to push them to the tipple. The street above co

“We’re done for,” said Jim Higgins. “I’m the one they want. I’ll stop here. You two get in the water. Try and swim for it.”

The current was swift, the river over five hundred feet wide and pitch-dark beyond the firelight. Bell was a strong swimmer, he could make it across with a little luck. The expression on Mary’s face was brave but doubtful that she could swim that far.

“Both of you, stop here,” he commanded in a voice that allowed no argument. He found them a hiding place behind a stone breakwater. “I’ll be right back.”

He ran, leaping obstacles lit by the fire, and climbed up on the dock. At the end of the string of barges was a little yard tug that would do the shuttling. Bell jumped onto the first barge and ran along its gu

“There he is!”

Bell leaped the space between the first and second barge and ran faster. He barely heard the howls behind him, his eyes fixed on the next barge, and the next, and the single light burning on the steam tug. He jumped from the last barge onto the tug and cast off its lines. The current took it immediately and dragged it downriver swiftly into the dark, beyond the mob, but away from the breakwater where Jim and Mary were hiding.

7

“Mister, what in tarnation are you up to?”

The little tug was a simple flatboat with its boiler and smokestack standing on deck between the helm and a coal bin. Isaac Bell had just grabbed a fireman’s scoop and was reaching to open the furnace door when an elderly night watchman with a long white Civil War beard rose, yawning, from a sleeping nest of coiled rope and canvas.

He saw the dark silhouette of the tall detective loom against the burning courthouse, and he pawed a six-gun from his waistband.

Bell snatched it away.

“Sir, I’m only going to borrow your boat for a short ride. Can you let me do that?”

“No, sir. She’s not your boat. She belongs to the Gleason Coal Company. I cain’t let you steal her.”

“Don’t make me throw you overboard,” Bell snapped, praying the old fellow would believe he meant it because, if he didn’t believe him, Isaac Bell had no idea what he would do next.

The old man blinked, looked down at the black water, and said, “Don’t hanker to go swimming, just now.”

“Does she have steam up?”

“A mite. I threw some coal on a while back.”

“Throw some more on.”

“Well, all right. It’s not like I’m helping you steal her, is it? I mean, I cain’t just let her drift into the rocks. Which she’s about to do.”

Bell opened the quadrant, sluicing steam into the piston, felt the propeller engage, and spun the spoked wheel. The little tug stopped drifting and headed upstream into the current. He steered for the now distant breakwater and tried to coax more power out of her. The steam gauge showed that with her furnace banked for the night, she had barely enough pressure to make headway.

The old man scooped some coal into the firebox and banged the door shut. “Son, you a river pilot?”