Vacant Graves
Page 20
“Do you have evidence?”
I pulled the key to the basement out of my pocket. “This leads to a secret room underneath the mansion. You can search there, or you can go to the morgue and see the chute which carries corpses up to the mansion.”
He took the key. “You did well, Mr. Schist. Worth every penny.” He reached into his pocket and drew out a small stack of company script.
The sight of that awful pink paper gave me strength enough to stand. “Greenbacks.”
His face was pained. “I know, I know. Think of this as a down payment. Aidan has the real stuff.”
“MacCallard?” I waved the script aside rather than take it. “Why would MacCallard pay me for your job?”
“Because we rolled the Association’s treasury into the union’s.”
“You what?!” I sat back down, trying not to panic. The groups were merging. Why else would they combine their funds?
More than fire had spread from the factory town to the mining camp.
“We’re joining forces,” the miner explained unnecessarily. “Six men died last night in the mine and not one of their bodies came home. The Association isn’t going to be neutral any longer. Aidan is concerned about proper burials as well. The bodies of dead factory workers aren’t getting returned, either.” He shook his head darkly. “If word gets out what he’s doing to them...”
Angry factory workers were one thing, but I suspected that not even Harrimen could deal with the miners if they got mad. “So it’s war, huh?”
“With both of our towns in agreement, he’ll have to listen.”
“You expect Liutt to negotiate? He Gatling’d the union.”
“We can make him negotiate.”
I wasn’t really sure how “making” him negotiate was different than fighting him, but I wasn’t going to ask.
“Finish your job for Aidan and you’ll get paid.”
“What?” I glared at him. “I finished your job. I’m not Macy’s. This ain’t a two-for-one special.”
He shrugged. “The funds were rolled over. I’ve got nothing but script on me.”
“What the hell does MacCallard need all that money for?” I demanded.
Miners didn’t make much, but if you added up hundreds of monthly dues, it made for a considerable treasury. Combine that with the factory pay and you’ve got quite a war chest.
Mack didn’t answer. Instead he looked around as if the walls grew ears.
That’s when I realized where the greenbacks were going, why the two organizations would pool their funds.
“MacCallard bought guns,” I whispered in horror. War chest wasn’t a metaphor anymore.
“They should be here already.” Mack glanced cautiously out a window. “A whole buckboard full. They came over the mountains on the ol’ whiskey trail. The Harrimen didn’t know about the roads up there, since everyone takes the rail now.”
“Enough for factory workers and miners both?”
He nodded.
That was a lot of guns. There was no shortage of weapons, though, even if the Magnates didn’t like people to be armed. The entire continent had, after all, been engaged in a nasty war just ten years ago. Surplus arms, be they British, Yank, or Reb, were easy to come by. The warehouses of weaponry had to go somewhere and in this case, the robber barons’ greed outweighed their fear. It was common practice for Canadian or Californian businessmen to buy crateloads of rifles, smuggle them into the Magnocracy and sell them back to the same disgruntled Yankees who built them at inflated prices.
“Aidan bought enough for everyone. He was counting on us to join him.” The miner shook his head. “I told him we wouldn’t join. I told him I didn’t want things to get violent, but Lichfield forced my hand when he started charging the miners for burial.”
“Half your miners are Irish and you thought you could avoid violence?”
He ignored the jest. “At least the goddamn slave owners let people bury their dead.” His voice shook with emotion.
I looked at him warily. “You need to cool off before you make this decision. Rage can get a man killed.”
“It’s not rage, Mr. Schist—it’s wrath. Righteous anger at unrighteous treatment.”
Before I could comment Phoebe was beside me, her small arms around my neck in a most untoward manner. Mrs. O’Neal lingered in the doorway, watching the affection with disapproval.
“Mr. Schist! They told me you were dead.”
“Crass hyperbole, girl. I just stopped breathing for a bit. Has the fire been extinguished?”
It was Mack who answered me. “The dike’s working. For now.”
“Any sign of Stanny or his guys?” I asked Phoebe.
She shook her head. “No. I was safe helping with the buckets. I don’t think he’d look for me there.”
“No, men like Stanislaus would never imagine we’d fight a fire without being paid.”
“So this man, Stanny, is pursuing you?” Mack asked us.
I nodded. “You’ll know his scrags when you see ‘em. They’re in flash threads. They’ll look out of place.” I hated to admit it, but only city folk would wear clothes like that out here.
“Is that all you’re going to say?”
“What would you like to add that’s so important?”
Phoebe rolled her eyes. “Oh, I don’t know...maybe you could mention that they’re rolling around in a custom-built steam carriage?”
“It’s, um, black,” I added weakly.
Mack suppressed a grin. “I’ll tell my boys to keep an eye out.”
“I had the same offer from the hardheads, only they changed their mind when Stanny started throwing bucks around. I need to get my money and get the hell out of town.”
“You’ve done us a service. We won’t betray you.”
“The Hounds aren’t around here anymore,” Phoebe told me excitedly. “I didn’t see them during the fire at all.”
I glanced at Mack.
He was grim. “They probably called them back to Liuttsburg.”
“That’s good, right?” Phoebe’s eyes darted between our faces.
“No...so he can arm them.”
I could imagine the Liuttsville Harrimen lining up at the armory to trade truncheons for shotguns. They would enter bareheaded and march out in steely filterhelms like a line of faceless ants. If MacCallard wanted a war, Harriman would be happy to provide one.
“This was supposed to be an easy case,” I told no one in particular.
Mack gave me a puzzled expression. Phoebe laughed.
I stood up, let the pain wash over me, and found that I could walk in a straight line—with Phoebe’s help, of course.
“I want my greenbacks,” I told him. “Then we’ll take that whiskey road you mentioned back to civilization.”
“Can’t advise it,” Mack told me. “The mountains get bitter cold and you don’t even have an overcoat.”
He was right. My overcoat and waistcoat had both deserted me. The shanty had a small Franklin with a few chunks of anthracite burning—probably purchased at an exorbitant price from the company store—yet I was shivering. I couldn’t imagine facing the mountain winds like this.
“You can have Paddy’s old coat,” Mrs. O’Neal said. “He’s no need of it.”
I couldn’t help but think that her husband was probably quite cold right now, lying on one of Lichfield’s slabs with half his guts torn out.
When she brought her husband’s coat,
I could’ve kissed her. I didn’t see a tattered old rag but camouflage.
“Do you have anything that would fit Phoebe here? We can trade you her coat for it.”
Mrs. O’Neal glanced over Phoebe and nodded. “That frock coat might fit my eldest girl nicely, if she sees her next birthday.”
I turned to Phoebe, who couldn’t speak Irish, and explained. “We need to change your attire.”
Phoebe clutched her coat possessively. She shook her head weakly when she saw the tattered rags that Paddy’s widow produced.
“I can’t trade my coat for that. It’s robbery. I saved for weeks to buy this!”
“Stanny would’ve fenced it anyway,” I reminded her. “It’s way too staid for one of his girls.”
Phoebe reluctantly made the swap.
We’d spent hours away from the hotel now, so Phoebe’s face had a sheen of oily soot. Once she donned the ragged coat, her own mother wouldn’t have recognized her.
I was no different. Despite Mrs. O’Neal’s ministrations, I was filthy as an alley cat. When I put on Paddy’s coat, it barely reached my thighs. It was an old topcoat or maybe a pea jacket, with a loose flannel weave like an Irish grandmother had sewn it. Maybe one had. It was a far cry from the overcoat I’d lost.
I appreciated now why some of the workers called me a dandy. My misplaced Chesterfield—with its factory-tweed and velvet collar—was more valuable than these homespun weeds, even though it was old and patched in places.
It was also warmer than this pea jacket, which would never get me over the Pennsylvania mountains. From the way Mack looked, he was thinking the same thing.
“I can take you to Aidan,” he said. “You can argue with him about the money.”
“My deal was with you,” I reminded him.
“No,” he said. “It was with the Associations. And the Associations have merged with the union.”
“This is why you always get it in writing,” I told Phoebe without taking my eyes off the miner.
“That’s good advice.” Mack ignored my glare. “Shall we go?” He gave Mrs. O’Neal a bow and stepped outside.
“Don’t blame them,” Phoebe said apologetically. “They’re in a hard spot.”
“So what? We all are.” I patted Mrs. O’Neal’s hands and followed Mack into the cold red night. Fresh dizziness swept over me when I stepped onto the porch.
“You gonna be all right?” Mack asked.
I thought of the magic blue ampoules in my breeches pockets. “I need a privy.”
He led me to an outhouse and waited with Phoebe at a respectable distance. With the door closed, it was dark, but I managed to get out a vial and insert it into the syringe. The injection-device was much more advanced than the ones I’d seen in the war. I suspected that Dr. Lichfield—or Liutt—had designed these as well.
I hoped that his genius wasn’t just for mechanics but chemistry as well. The blue serum I injected into my veins was all that kept me running now. As soon as it hit, the dizziness vanished and the squalor of the outhouse came sharply into focus.
When I stepped into the night, I gave Phoebe a reassuring smile. “All better.”
I wondered if the chit suspected something. She looked at me with more concern now than when I was wheezing and staggering. Could she hear the glass tinkling in my pockets?
“Let’s go,” Mack said, starting up the street.
She opened her mouth but I stalked after him before she could say anything.
Chapter Sixteen
We were surrounded by angry miners yet I felt more defenseless than ever. Stanislaus would have been hard pressed to find us in this group, especially given our camouflage, but big groups also attract big guns. Knives didn’t worry me so much as Gatlings.
The miners were spoiling for a fight, though they weren’t ready for one. Most of them had picks or sledgehammers, which would be great for cracking filterhelms, except it was hard to get close enough for that when your victim’s peppering you with flechettes. A few of the rioters managed to scrounge up firearms—a single-shot rifle and a few derringers. I even saw an antiquated muzzle-loader that had probably last seen service at the Battle of New Orleans.
We didn’t encounter any hardheads, probably because Mack led us through the stark woods again. His men might’ve been spoiling for a fight, but the big miner sure wasn’t. We ran around Liutt’s mansion and followed the ridge line back to the cabin with the secret room.
For a second, I thought maybe we’d taken a magic dirigible ride back to Paris, circa 1790.
The streets were barricaded with all manner of debris—sideboards, barrels, beds, and chairs—stacked taller than a man. The defenders manned them like medieval soldiers, their faces orange in the torchlight. They gripped hammers and spanners and long lead pipes, a tribe of angry Vikings with a junk-pile for their armory.
“Our minin’ brothers!” someone screamed.
The men behind the barricade began to whoop and holler. The miners whooped merrily back at them. At that moment, no one cared about being Irish, Native, or negro. It would’ve been uplifting, except that they were all dead men in my eyes.
Phoebe grinned at the excitement, but I glowered. The bloodlust was getting strong. Men get funny when they’re in groups and this was getting to be a really giant group, almost an army. They were drunk with power, as if these numbers meant something. I knew from experience that numbers could be countered when one side had fire-breathing shotguns and a rolling iron death-box.
The miners paused to chat with their new allies. Evidently, all the major thoroughfares on this side of the town had been similarly blocked. We were told to enter through a side alley, one of the passages which were too narrow for a steam fort to navigate.
Harriman’s ‘61 was having an effect, all right, just not the one he intended. It was making the unionists wily instead of scared. It was just a machine, after all. I had no doubt that many of the members were vets like me. They had reported how easy it was to forcibly mothball an ironclad, provided one got past the Gatlings. The barricades wouldn’t stop it, but they might slow it down enough for men to do the deed.
They might have had a chance. I just didn’t want to be around when they tried.
Behind the barricades, Liuttsburg had become a fortified camp. Women and children were stowed in the rowhouses while men patrolled with makeshift weapons. When we got near MacCallard’s headquarters, I shook my head.
A buckboard stood in the yard with gun-muzzles poking out of it like the spines of a hedgehog. Several men with clipboards were examining the arsenal while a dozen armed with carbines guarded it.
The miners cheered at the sight of so many rifles.
Mack was silent.
“That’s right, boys,” one of the riflemen said. “Blood for blood!”
There were more whoops and hollers.
“We’ve gotta get outta here,” I told Phoebe.
“So you keep saying,” she said absently. She was staring at the gun barrels with longing.
She was right. It had been my damned mantra since we hit this burg. It didn’t make it any less true, though. I could smell a looming battle like rotten fish. The glee of the unionists had a hard edge to it. It was anger masking itself as triumph. They’d watched their friends butchered at the factory gates. This wasn’t about low wages or cancelled shifts anymore.
This was about revenge.
“I want to see MacCallard,” I told the man at t
he door.
“He’s busy. Come back later.”
“Before or after the Harrimen burn your houses down?”
“They ain’t burnin’ nothing,” the man insisted.
Mack stepped forward. “Let him in.”
The unionist stared at Mack for a moment, nodded and let us pass. I was more than a little surprised the fellow listened to the miner. The factory guy was not only white but Anglo, with a strong Yankee accent. I would’ve assumed he was a Nativist, except he seemed to have a grudging respect for the negro.
When we entered the hidden room, we found that MacCallard was, as the man insisted, quite busy.
He was meeting with his lieutenants, including Roy and some other men. A set of plans sat on the table before them. MacCallard pointed at several points on the diagram. No one seemed to notice the three of us as we approached.
“The charges must go here and here to disable it.”
“We got enough bang-juice for that?” Roy asked.
“More than enough,” MacCallard answered. “Since our brethren joined the fight.”
“Good thing they brought the nitro,” Roy laughed. “‘Cause miners ain’t much good for anything else.”
Several of the other lieutenants laughed with him.
MacCallard glared. “You need to have more respect. Those men are our brothers.”
“Give it a rest, Aidan.” Mack stepped into the lantern light, revealing our presence. “These men won’t change overnight.”
Roy shifted uneasily.
“They’ll learn respect in time,” Mack said patiently.
MacCallard didn’t look convinced.
“I brought Schist.” Mack nodded back at me. “He’s here for his payment.”
“The job isn’t finished.”
I stepped into the lamplight beside Mack. “The hell it ain’t. I found out what Liutt was doing with the bodies. What’s more, I found something else out. Lichfield and Liutt are the same man.”