Vacant Graves

by Christopher Beats

  “That’s quite a welcome party.”

  She shivered. I noticed then that she had only her frock on. Heavy as the material was, it wasn’t enough to protect her from the Pennsylvania winter.

  My greatcoat was too large by half so I gave her my jacket instead. That was good, since I hated to loan anyone my Chesterfield. It was a nice overcoat, even with the patches.

  Phoebe recited her story mechanically as we juggled clothing. She was so focused on her story that I’m not sure she noticed what I was doing.

  “They got to talking what they were going to do to you—Mr. Stanislaus just told them to bring me back. They were supposed to ‘punish you accordingly.’”

  “Enlightened managers know when to give their employees latitude,” I observed.

  “They were really excited. There was talk of stoking up some coal to burn your um, your...”

  She blushed and I laughed. “I get the picture.”

  “They thought you might see the smoke, though, so coal was out. The man with the knife kept saying—kept talking about—suggesting...” She shook her small head. “The most horrible things I’ve ever heard.”

  “The only time scrags have imagination is when they’re hurting somebody. Go on.”

  “They weren’t smart like you—they didn’t chain me up at all. They thought they could catch me. So I stood up and kicked the settee over and made for the window. I got it open and jumped headfirst, only my bustle got caught on the sill.”

  The detective part of me reconstructed the scene beautifully: Phoebe caught like a fish in a net, wide-eyed and kicking while the little rat-faced thug from the depot grabbed her winter coat. Phoebe and her captor became a jumble of limbs and drapery. The two thugs at the door could only stare dumbfounded at the bizarre curtain-thing writhing in front of them.

  “I got free somehow and ran. I don’t know how—but I did. My coat got lost and my bustle got all smashed to pieces.” Her skirt was depressingly limp around her. “I haven’t run that fast in my life, not even this one time when a crazy bull chased me through a pasture.”

  The images—both of them—brought a grin to my face. A slip of a child fleeing for her life from an enraged bull. Years later, a slightly older girl dashing through the brick alleys, crinoline hiked up to her waist.

  “It must’ve been quite a sight.”

  Phoebe managed a laugh of her own. “I bet I looked pretty silly.”

  “You said something about a gun before.”

  She sighed with regret. “I almost got the most splendid rifle I ever saw. It was a little after the shooting started. This man...” Her voice trailed off.

  “Yeah?”

  “He got shot. Right next to me.”

  “There were marksmen.”

  She nodded. “He got shot in the chest. It was a good, clean shot. I looked up and that’s when I noticed the sharpshooters. They had the latest Krag-Petersson repeaters.” She blushed a little at the look I gave her. “I’ve seen ’em in catalogs.”

  “Is that Hunnish?” The name sounded more Deutsch than British. The limeys were generally at the forefront of murderous innovation, but the Germans were a close second.

  “Norwegian.”

  “Huh. Didn’t know the Norwegians could manufacture decent artillery. You learn something new every day.” It made sense, in a way—Norway was probably the last country in Europe that had any wild animals such as bears. With the Krag-Petersson, maybe they could fix that.

  She sighed longingly. I couldn’t help but think that most girls sighed like that for attractive young bachelors. “Beautiful design, actually. It’s got a fancy scope and a collapsible bipod.”

  “So how’d you almost get one, if they were on the roof?”

  “Someone in the crowd—a unionist, I suppose—threw a rock at him. He hit the sharpshooter just when he was leaning over for a shot. Poor devil pitched right into the crowd.”

  “I bet they loved that.”

  Phoebe shuddered. “They tore him to pieces. The noise—sweet heavens—the sound that man made when they got him.”

  “You went for his gun?”

  “Most folks were intent on hurting the detective, but I knew what was important. I went for the gun. This unionist got there sooner, though.” Her shoulders slumped. “He should’ve let me have it. One of the other marksmen got him in the back two minutes later. See, he didn’t have anywhere to hide it. When they saw him with it, well...”

  “And you did?”

  She nodded and twirled her skirt around. It would’ve made her walk a little funny, but it could hide a rifle. I marveled at all the mischief I could’ve done if only I wore frocks and bustles. Maybe Pinkerton hired women precisely because they had more places to hide their artillery.

  “Where do we go then, Mr. Schist? You aren’t going to confront them, are you?”

  I tried not to think about the rifle. It would’ve been devastating in her hands. “No, we’d better lie low for a bit.”

  The road from the hospital split. One fork went downhill, toward the river. The other climbed up into the mountains.

  “Unless MacCallard is dead, we still have a job. Maybe we can take this chance to head into Liuttsville and see if the miners know anything.”

  She gasped. “But the old man said—you’re not going to take me into a mining town, are you?”

  “I am.” I hesitated then added gruffly, “You’ll be fine.”

  The chit had dodged two Gatlings, run a phalanx of hardheads and outwitted a trio of bloodthirsty scrags. I had a feeling she’d be more than fine.

  Of course, I wasn’t going to tell her that.

  The minx seemed to augur my unspoken thoughts. She held her head high as we started up the lane, despite her broken bustle and wild hair.

  Chapter Nine

  Liuttsburg, the factory town we had just left, was a reeking cacotopia, a veritable hell-on-earth. I want to be clear on that, because compared to the mining town upslope, Liuttsburg was an apogee of clean modern living. The mining town of Liuttsville was little more than a squalid encampment nestled between the hills about two miles from the river. There wasn’t a single brick in sight. The shanties were stitched piecemeal out of throwaway railway boards and salvaged riverboat planks. Their walls were a variegated hodgepodge of different woods faded by the sun and stained gray by the ubiquitous coal dust. They looked as if they couldn’t keep the rain off, much less the cold mountain winds.

  To add to the general camp-ambience, they weren’t using gas or even Franklins for cooking but outdoor fire-pits like savages on the steppe. A gray pall of wood smoke joined the haze from the river, making me wish for a filterhelm.

  When we turned, we could see the whole valley laid out before us. Several creeks with brown turgid water slipped between the rocks down to the river. The factory town—Liuttsburg—was west of us, outlined by the red river fire beside it. Rails shot into the woods south of us, which hid Juniper Junction where the mountains gave way to relatively flat ground. The hospital was midway between towns, halfway down the valley, and Liutt’s mansion brooded on a hill just north of the hospital. The windows were lit but the place looked empty. Liutt was, from what I understood, a reclusive bachelor with no entourage whatsoever. Apparently he was one of those rare Magnates who, if one ignored his mansion, lived a rather Spartan existence. He was not given to dinner parties or balls or dancing. His only guests were accountants and secretaries. His only family was his money.


  Somewhere, a banjo was playing. The mining town was divided by nation. The two largest present were Ireland and Africa, as evidenced by the brogues and Dixieland drawls.

  Phoebe paused to show a scrawny waif on a porch how to skin a rabbit. The wretch didn’t speak English, so I translated.

  “I don’t get it. She don’t look like no city girl. How’d she get that age without learning how to clean a coney?”

  “She’s an island mick,” I told her. “You kill a coney in Ulster, the gentry’ll hang you for poaching.”

  “Poaching? Rabbits are varmints. Varmints are never out of season.”

  I laughed harshly. “In Ireland, if you ain’t a lord, everything’s out of season. Lords can hunt anything they like, including micks.”

  She pursed her lips and ruminated. I could tell she wanted to think I was exaggerating, but the poor girl had just seen a massacre. That can cause a philosophical crisis in some folk. I knew I should try and say something, but what was there to say?

  I’d had the same crisis a decade ago. The darkest parts of my life weren’t when I questioned God. They were when I questioned humanity. Once you’ve lost your faith in humanity, the other questions kinda didn’t matter. The only thing left to do after that was figure out how you were going to survive in a world that wanted you dead.

  More often than not, the world got its way. Liuttsville was evidence of that. The shacks around us were hollow as a starving belly, but not because people wouldn’t live there. There were always folk desperate enough to live in a sty like this. No, they were empty because tenants came and left rapidly.

  The tenants came and left rapidly because the earth was hungry here. It swallowed men as fast as Liutt could hire ‘em. Which meant it was a great place to find scabs. These miners would take a factory job in a heartbeat. Crossing the union might get your legs broken, but that was still better than being smothered under a ton of earth. Or being blown to bits by mislaid blasting powder. Or crushed by a loose timber. Next to the mines, an angry union must’ve looked like a kitten to these guys.

  My buddy Verhalen, a Technocrat, would’ve been proud. At least part of the solution to my case lay in mathematics. If I could find out the mortality rate of the mines, the actual mortality rate, I could compare it with the hiring rate and see who was missing. If Liutt hired more miners than died or came to work, the balance was probably in the factories.

  But robber barons weren’t very open. I’d have to make rough estimates. On the surface, it seemed entirely possible to hide the missing miners behind the usual death rate. To confirm it, I began to plan out a quick survey of the neighborhood. I’d follow up with interviews to establish a death rate. Widows tended to be emotional, however, so maybe it would have been better to talk to Dr. Lichfield. A physician would be less biased and might even have records.

  Of course, Liutt might anticipate this. The doc was probably under strict orders not to divulge information on mortality rates. I doubted a garnish would work, either, since Lichfield seemed like a principled sort of man, if a bit peculiar.

  Before I could start feeding the computations into my mental Babbage, though, Phoebe interrupted me.

  “Mr. Schist!”

  I’d fallen into one my internal reveries, completely ignoring the world around me. The soldier part of me knew this was dangerous, but on the other hand, when you’re in a place as dreary as Liuttsville, the details of your environment are best forgotten.

  “What?”

  She pointed at a small mob of soot-faced miners ahead of us. Voices were being raised.

  Before I could steer us away, Phoebe trotted to the back of the crowd to get a better look. I sighed and went after her. Several Harrimen were at the center of the mob. They weren’t in their hardhead gear—just regular gray overcoats. One pair stood brandishing clubs while another pair dragged a weeping woman’s stuff into the street. Several pieces of furniture already lay in the muddy lane.

  “What’s going on?” Phoebe asked.

  “None of our business,” I answered, brusquely taking her elbow.

  She pulled free and repeated her question.

  One of the miners turned and answered in Gaelic.

  Phoebe glanced at me. “What’d he say?”

  “An eviction. Let’s go.”

  “But why are they evicting her?”

  I paused and repeated her question in Irish. The answer was hardly surprising. “Her old man died in the mines. She don’t work here so she don’t live here anymore.”

  A few of the miners glared at me, white-eyed beneath dirty faces.

  “Let’s go,” I repeated.

  The widow screamed and fell to the mud. Before anyone could respond, Phoebe dashed through the miners and caught the woman by the waist. Petite as she was, the Mosey girl was rather sturdy. She held her up from the dirt as the widow’s horrible wails turned to keening.

  Of all the queer Irish customs, keening was perhaps the most hated by outsiders. Anglo and Teutonic minds had nothing but contempt for the practice. I knew this firsthand. My pa had despised it deeply, so that whenever some relative or another died, he was sure to be scarce. Every death in my family saw my mother weeping and keening followed by days of screaming argument. My mother never forgave my father for his cold Hunnish heart. When he died, I swear she keened all the louder just to aggravate his ghost.

  Harriman’s thugs were of a mind with Pa. Their dander was already up anyway, but the screeching got them into a rage. Two of them promptly dropped the table they were carrying and covered their ears with their hands. When the table—a month’s wages at least—hit the ground half its legs cracked so it sat like a panting dog in the mud.

  The Hounds on crowd duty were even less considerate. They stepped forward and raised their cudgels as if to thrash the voice out of her.

  I was caught like a rat in a trap. The mob was getting ugly fast and my charge was right in the middle, about to be pummeled. The cold, logical part of me whispered to leave. She was nothing but trouble.

  This time, though, it wasn’t Gatlings. It was penny-ante hooligans. Hooligans without guns.

  I drew the sixer and squeezed a shot off straight down.

  The miners turned in fear and backed away as the gray after-plume wafted out of my barrel. The Harrimen froze where they were, their baby faces agog with shock. Even better, the Irishwoman stopped her screaming.

  I calmly raised the smoking revolver at them. A .22’s barrel isn’t very big, but it was imposing enough without their fancy British armor.

  “The girl’s my ward,” I announced.

  Phoebe wrapped her arms tightly around the widow and fixed the goons with a look of defiance.

  “What are you, a goddamn radical?” The biggest of them stepped forward a little, suggesting his balls were proportionate to his height. “We don’t tolerate socialists ’round here.”

  “I’m no socialist,” I explained, the gun pointed at his chest. “I’m a bodyguard. This girl’s my ward.”

  They glanced at Phoebe. Her weeds weren’t particularly fashionable or expensive, but she plainly wasn’t a company girl.

  “Tell your little tart to mind her own.”

  “Is Mr. Liutt paying you to brain widows?” I kept my voice hard, as if I believed it. Inwardly, I cursed the empty-headed chit for getting us involved.

  The men exchanged glances. Plainly they thought me a radical, whatever I said.

  “Lower t
he fucking piece,” the big one demanded unwaveringly.

  “We’re the law around here,” another one added. “No guns allowed.”

  “I’ve got a permit of sorts.”

  “Permits ain’t valid, ‘less Mr. Liutt signs ‘em.”

  Before another word could be spoken, a young boy of about twelve exploded onto the scene. He was the rangy sort, all legs and arms, with a thick layer of black grit on his face. Oblivious to our standoff, he dashed into the middle of the crowd and threw his arms around the widow.

  Kind as Phoebe may have been, she recoiled from the filthy boy, surrendering the woman to him at once.

  The boy and the widow wept together for a moment. After a hurried discussion in Gaelic, the boy stood, supporting his mother. “You can’t kick us out. I work the mines, too.”

  I lowered my gun.

  The detectives kept a wary eye on me but turned their attention to the boy. “Company housing ain’t for brats. Your pay don’t cover shelter. Move in with your Teague relatives. We know you got aunts and uncles here. Your lot breed like rabbits.”

  The Irishmen murmured angrily. Most of them couldn’t speak English, but they knew an epithet when they heard one.

  “I’ll work two shifts then,” the boy insisted. “I’ll pay. You’ll see. I’ll pay.”

  “Seems we have an agreement, gents.” I pulled a wad of company notes out of my pocket. “Why don’t you fellahs go have a drink on me?”

  The Harrimen didn’t seem to mind company script at all, because the incident with the .22 was forgotten. When they left, the big guy shook my hand like we were old friends. The bribe wasn’t enough to put the furniture back, of course, but the assembled miners quickly took care of that.

  The woman was too benumbed by the incident to thank me. The boy, however, was already acting the man. He pumped my hand and insisted he repay me.