Spur: Nevada Hussy

by Dirk Fletcher

  "Now, Stella. Who is trying to steal the gold shipment?" Spur asked.

  "I only know two names. One of them is Guy Pritchard. He's one of the two engineers on the little steamer that comes in from Reno on the branch railroad. The other gent could be the mainspring. Gent's name is Rush Sommers. The Rush Sommers. Used to own the old Crown Point Mine. Now he's into something big again with what they're calling Consolidated California. He told me he had the engineer tied up, and a key man in the sheriff's office, as well as an exbanker from the east now running a saloon who could help him dispose of the gold."

  "So we've got quite a cast. How do I know you're telling the truth?"

  "Why would I lie about something that could get me killed?" said Stella. "Hell, by now there are too many wives in town for fancy women like me to count much. Was a time when we was top drawer around here. When women was scarce, all the men treated us girls like queens of the court. Then too, that kind of theft would hurt this town, put some small outfits into bankruptcy and cut down on my own business income. That's two good reasons why you should believe me."

  Stella slid off the bed-and-began-to dress.

  "I got to get back for the early evening trade," she said. "What I told you, every word is gospel true. You can come see Stella anytime. But don't even try to talk to me except upstairs. I don't want that damn Sommers cutting me up!"

  ROCKY MOUNTAIN VAMP

  CATHOUSE KITTEN

  INDIAN MAID

  SAN FRANCISCO STRUMPET

  WYOMING WENCH

  TEXAS TART

  MONTANA MINX

  SANTA FE FLOOZY

  SALT LAKE LADY

  Dirk Fletcher

  October 1874

  (Virginia City, Nevada found her place in history one day in 1859 when placer miners began throwing aside heavy bluish sand and blue-gray quartz they called the "blasted blue stuff." They were hunting gold in one of several placer mines on the slopes of Sun Peak, later named Mt. Davidson, where it lifted thirty-six hundred feet above the valley of the Carson river.

  In June one miner gathered up a sack of the blue stuff and sent it over the hill to Grass Valley in California for assay. The reports that the "blue stuff" was rich silver ore caused a virtual exodus from several small California towns. When news of the rich strike of heavy gold ore leaked out, a thousand men hurried the hundred miles to Washoe and Mt. Davidson where a staggering settlement of tents and shanties sprang up overnight at Gold Hill and another at the site of the first "blue stuff" discovery which soon became known as Virginia City.

  The fabulous and brief life of the Comstock Lode had begun. It would last as a large factor in Western U.S. mining from 1860 only to 1880, and thereafter become the site of the two ghost towns. But the hardy souls who battled the shafts, tunnels and drifts to say nothing of the hundred and ten degree underground heat and the surging floods of subterranean water knew nothing of the quick, tempestuous life Virginia City would have as a burgeoning mistress to over a hundred thousand miners who came, worked there and left.

  The fortunes flamed in the 1860 's, then faded and resurged with the famous Consolidated Virginia mine in 1874 and 1875. Spur McCoy arrived in the hurdygurdy village on the side of the mountain in 1874. The population that year was 18, 304 and there was a saloon, bordello and gambling hall on every other corner.

  MARY BETH FRANKLIN stood in the sloping street of Virginia City watching the miners coming out of the holes in the ground. She hated those tunnels and shafts and drifts! She hated them more than anything she had ever known in her entire eighteen years. She blinked and then slashed with her hand to wipe away the surging tears. Her father had gone into those same holes.

  One day less than a year ago they had brought out what was left of him, his body mangled and crushed by heavy machinery. She hated that machinery!

  Mary Beth stood on this corner each day when the men went home. She handed out leaflets to everyone who would take them. Each week she had a new one which she wrote and which the printer, Mr. Jacobs, provided for her without charge. He had been a good friend of her father. The message today was shorter than most:

  "Men of the mines. You must demand that the owners guarantee better working conditions and provide more safety equipment. Every day men die in the mines. My father died a year ago in Hale and Norcross Number Three, and nothing has been done to make safer the area where he worked.

  You are men, not work animals! Demand from the union and the owners that you be given a fair chance to work and to live, so your wives and families will not be begging in the streets.

  Talk to the mine owners, the foremen and the shift bosses. Make them understand that a work stoppage is the only way management will listen. The owners must be made to feel the pinch of no production, which will slow down their rush to become millionaires a hundred times over!

  Please talk to the other men, urge your union to make demands, speak with one voice! You are the only ones who can keep yourselves alive while you work like animals deep under the ground!"

  Mary Beth handed a paper to a passing miner, who looked at it and dropped it.

  "Can't read," he said over his shoulder.

  Mary Beth was not a beautiful girl, being short and a little broad in the hips, but her face was attractive and lately she had more than a dozen men courting her. She knew that was because there were two men in Virginia City for every woman. The eligible women to marry were few and most already taken.

  But she would not marry yet. She had promised her dead father that she would crusade for a year for better working conditions and to plead for more safety equipment in the mines. She would hold to her promise. She turned, stepped up from the dust of the street to the boardwalk in front of the Virginia City Tin Goods Store.

  She looked in defiance at the store owners. Most had warned her not to stand in front of their stores to hand out her papers. The merchants were safe, they were making more money than ever before in their lives, and she felt sorry for them. Because they, too, were feeding off the dead men who lay in the cemetery at the edge of town.

  At least no one had tried to keep her from handing out her message. Once an itinerant preacher had prayed with her, but when he walked away he did not take one of her handbills.

  She looked up as a man stopped in front of her. She did not know his name, but she had seen him several times before. Usually he was with Mike O'Grady in his fancy four-horse carriage. It took four horses to pull the rig because it was so big, so expensive and so heavily built.

  "We can't have you doing this anymore, Mary Beth," the man said.

  He was taller than she, wore a dark blue suit and vest, a gold chain linked his vest pockets, and he wore an expensive low crowned beaver hat.

  "What?" she said both in surprise and to give her time to think.

  "I said we simply can't have you trying to stir up the men this way. The mines are as safe as any can be. You must go home and stop this public display. It is very unladylike."

  "Let me go and talk to Mr. O'Grady. He owes my mother and me at least that courtesy."

  "Little girl! He owes you nothing. You were paid a two hundred dollar death benefit because of your father's loyal service. That was not required."

  "The money has been spent on food and clothing. How long do you think that much money will last?"

  "Then you will have to marry and settle down. Let your husband worry about the finances. That is no affair of mine or Mr. O'Grady. But when you insist on spreading gossip and seditious slander such as that garbage, it is our concern. And we shall stop you each time you try."

  The man snatched the sheaf of papers from her hand, then bent and picked up the bundle of the rest of the five hundred handbills and walked quickly down the boardwalk.

>   "Stop!Thiefl" Mary Beth shouted and ran after the man, pounding with her small fists on the man's back and arms.

  He stopped, turned and pushed her shoulder, sending her reeling against the dry goods store.

  "No!" a strong voice thundered.

  Mary Beth saw only a flash of color as a tall man in a soft brown hat with Mexican silver pesos around the headband, swept past her and stopped the man who had her handbills.

  "I believe you have something that belongs to the lady," Spur McCoy told the man in the blue suit.

  The mine owner's flunky bristled, his eyes narrowed and his breath came in short gasps.

  "It's no business of yours. On your way, or I'll have you arrested."

  "The papers," Spur McCoy demanded, holding out his hand.

  The slightly shorter man in the town suit spun and started to take a step away.

  Spur grabbed his shoulder, turned him around and slammed his fist into the soft belly. When the man bent down in agony, Spur's right uppercut hit the point of his jaw, lifted him off his feet and dumped him unconscious on the uneven boardwalk. He dropped the papers, and Spur picked them up, straightened them, then handed them back to the girl who stood with her hand over her mouth in surprise.

  "I believe these were yours, Miss."

  "Oh. Yes. Thank you." She looked away.

  "Are you all right?" Spur asked.

  "Yes. He didn't want me to hand out my leaflets. He's from one of the big mines."

  "And this is a mining town. Could I have one of the papers?"

  She handed him one. "My father died in a mine. I'm just trying to save some of the other men who will die. Are you a miner?"

  "No, I'm reading for the law."

  "Oh, then perhaps..." Her gray eyes came up and stared at Spur for a moment, then she shrugged. "No. It's no use. Thank you for helping me. I must hand these out." She moved down the street giving the papers to everyone who would take them. As she returned she scooped the handbills from the boardwalk where people had thrown them down.

  Spur watched for a moment, then looked for his suitcase with the double straps around it. He found it where he had put it down when he saw the man snatch the handbills from the girl. He didn't even know her name. He probably never would.

  Spur McCoy checked the signs on the buildings along the nearly level street carved into the side of the mountain and ahead of him he saw the New Frontier Hotel. There should be a reservation for him there, one of the hotel's two-room suites with a bath on the same floor.

  Ten minutes later he had checked in at the desk, settled in the second floor room 202, and looked over the long telegram he had received at Denver.

  He knew it by heart. He was to proceed by rail to Reno, Nevada, where he would take a branch rail line to the mining town of Virginia City. Once there he would be a lawyer checking out the possibilities of opening a practice.

  "Your assignment is to determine the accuracy of rumors we have heard that a robbery attempt will be made when gold and silver bullion is transported from Virginia City to the San Francisco mint. Such transport will be by rail. There is supposedly a well organized plot brewing to steal the whole trainload of gold and silver. If such a plot exists, it is your job to defuse it. If that is impossible the plot must be foiled before it can be put into use when the train leaves for San Francisco sometime during the week of October 15, 1874."

  Easy, Spur thought. Just waltz up to everyone in town and ask if they were going to rob the gold train. Simple.

  Spur McCoy was one of the handful of United States Secret Service Agents in the nation charged with upholding the laws of the federal government across every state and territory. His boss in Washington D.C. was Gen. Wilton D.Halleck, the number two man in the agency who gave orders, and listed their priority. William Wood, the director of the agency, had been appointed by President Lincoln and each of the succeeding presidents.

  Spur's permanent Secret Service office was in St. Louis, where his responsibility included the entire western half of the U.S.His operational cover story was that he headed the St. Louis branch of Capital Investigations, with main offices in Washington D.C. and New York City. In St. Louis Fleurette Leon was in charge of the operation when Spur was away, which was most of the time.

  He had only one contact to find in Virginia City who might be able to give him some leads. She was the woman who had sent letters to the government every day for a month about the problem. Her name was Stella. She worked at the Golden Nugget Saloon. The lady was a bar girl, dealt poker, blackjack and faro when needed and could be sweettalked into bed after closing time if the cash was right.

  Spur took off his shirt and vest, washed as well as he could in the heavy porcelain bowl and put on clean clothes. He brushed back his reddish brown hair, and buttoned a new, brown, soft leather vest he bought in Denver. It was a little after three in the afternoon. The sun was low in the sky and the October air had a nip in it at the elevation of 6,205 feet.

  The big Secret Service man walked down Main Street, then turned into Fifth where most of the saloons, bordellos and gambling halls clustered. He found the Golden Nugget halfway down the block. It was not the biggest, had glass windows, a large mirror behind the bar and twin stairs that led to a second story that vanished down a hallway he expected led to about twenty extremely small bedrooms.

  No sawdust on this floor. He pushed his low crowned brown hat back and shouldered through swinging doors. Spur looked much the same now as when he came off the train, with one exception, he wore a big army issue 1873 Colt .45 low on his right hip. The bottom of the holster was tied down to his leg so the weapon and the way he wore it gave a subtle message to half the drinkers along the bar. This man can use his six-gun.

  Spur bought a cold beer and turned, watching the action. There wasn't much yet. The shift at the mines would change soon. Some now worked two shifts, since it didn't make any difference what time it was a thousand feet down into the mountain. Spur was not claustrophobic, but he did not enjoy wandering around in deep mines. Those thousands of tons of dirt and rock over his head were a constant worry. He hoped that this assignment would not put him down in a mine.

  The Golden Nugget had a long bar complete with brass rail and glistening varnished top. On the other side of the room there were a dozen tables for drinking, and another dozen next to the far wall for serious gambling. Monte, poker, and craps were the biggest demand games. Only two poker tables were in use.

  The spot beside him at the bar was open and a girl in a low cut dance hall dress slid in next to him. The dress was bright red, with a tightly cinched waist and a flare below that reached just short of her ankles. This was shockingly short since it showed two inches of leg over her high topped shoes. A small brown mole marred the inside of her right breast where it had been pushed up to form three inches of cleavage.

  Her mouth was painted red, her eyes shadowed and a touch of rouge brightened her cheeks. Even with all the paint, she still looked like a farm girl from Kansas, which was what she was.

  "Buy a girl a drink?" she asked and smiled. Her fingers stroked his arm and curled around his neck.

  "Only if your name is Stella. Friend of mine said I had to see Stella next time I got to town."

  "Damn."

  "Is she here? Which one is she?"

  "I must be in the wrong business," the girl said. She snorted and shook her head. "The one in the blue dress, that's Stella. We call her old Prune Face with the Big Tits."

  "Oh, that one," Spur said. He left the rest of his glass of beer on the bar and wandered toward Stella. She had been talking to two miners at a table, and when he came up she turned to him.

  "Buy a girl a drink?"

  "Sure. Bring me a beer and whatever kind of watered down tea I'm paying whisky-price for, for you. I don't mind." He gave her a silver dollar. She grinned and headed for the bar. Spur chose a table far away from the others. Stella was no knockout beauty, but the other girl had been right. In the tits department Stella was a winne
r. She came back quickly, found him at the table and set down his beer and a tea-colored drink in a whiskey glass for herself.

  "I hear your name is Stella."

  "Right, who told you?"

  "Friend of mine from back east."

  "Fame, it really travels now with the train."

  "This friend is in Washington D.C.His name is General Halleck."

  Stella almost dropped her drink.

  "The letters finally got through." She looked around. "You didn't tell nobody you was coming to see me, I mean here in town, did you? I seen girls chopped up in small parts for less. You got a hotel room?"

  He told her.

  "I'm going to be sick. I feel it coming on. I'll be at your hotel room in half an hour." She stared at him. "Damn, but you are pretty."

  "Are you in any danger?"

  "Not as long as they don't find out. Hey, don't they have real bath tubs at that hotel, where you can sit down and stretch out, almost lay down in the water?"

  "I'll have a hot bath waiting for you. Now we better talk a little so everything looks normal. You go get me another beer and than a half hour later you come to my room, 202 in the New Frontier."

  "Yeah, I know. And I'll use the back stairs. Hey, I been around this town for three years." She smiled, then leaned in and kissed him on the cheek. "Damn, I better get another beer for you. You drink it, then slap me on the bottom and pinch a tit and I yell at you and drift on to somebody else. You got it?"

  Spur nodded.

  A half hour later he had a bathroom on the New Frontier Hotel's second floor reserved, saw that there were three buckets of steaming hot water there and one of cold, then he waited for Stella.

  She came to his room precisely on time, saw he had taken off his vest and hat but still had the sixgun on.

  "Figure you'll need that pistol?" she asked, closing the door and leaning against it. She had changed to a simple print dress that buttoned high around her throat. Stella laughed. "Hey, relax. First I have a real bath, then we talk." She paused. "What's your name?"

  "Spur McCoy."