by Bill Albert
Good and solid as his system might have been, it didn’t stop him being interrupted every few minutes by someone wanting his decision or his advice. Miners from all over the state and beyond came in with their problems, some personal, some official, and to each one Bill listened patiently as if he’d been waiting just for them to show up.
Immediately I saw Bill Haywood I felt ashamed for being there as the spy I was, and scared. It was no wonder he thought I looked peaked. But then so did he. He seemed worn down to where there wasn’t any more to wear down, the skin on his face stretched too tight across the bones, his good eye blinking bloodshot, his shoulders drooped. And I was there to make it worse for him. It didn’t seem right. But what choice did I have? Close to none at all.
13
I don’t how long I’d been asleep when he shook me awake. It had gone dark and there was only Bill and me and the lingering smells of smoke and sweat.
“Come on now, son. Up you get. Sorry. Doesn’t seem to be enough hours in the day to fight through all the work that keeps rolling in. Sending out lawyers to rescue the boys, all the strikes going on at once, regular union work to do. Have to wait until they lock the front door before I get any of the paperwork cleared. Hungry? Must be. Know just the place for us.”
He promised me dinner. That was after what he said would be a short visit to a saloon a couple of blocks from the office. It was different from most mining-town saloons. Sawdust and spittoons, of course, but more steady somehow and quieter. Men weren’t talking loudly, they were making conversation. A few played cards, but there was no proper gambling that I could see, no working girls either. A real civilized city saloon.
“Sorta young for bringin in here ain’t he, Bill?” the bartender asked.
“No, Henry, my old friend! Would I do something like that? Looks young for his age, that’s all. Eighteen years old last April. Isn’t that right, boy? You see. Besides he doesn’t drink anything stronger than a soda pop.
“OK? So don’t worry about it. That’ll be a whisky for me, if you please. Best thing there is to clear out that dry office dust.”
We sat down at a table at the back of the saloon. Bill was careful to take a position with no one behind him and a clear view of the front door. There was going to be no aces-and-eight’s ending for Big Bill Haywood.
“Dangerous times,” he explained, hitching up his belt.
He opened his coat to show me the butt of a Colt .38 stuck in the top of his pants.
“Word has it that I’ve been marked out for an Alliance bullet. If not a bullet, then some bullpen, and I don’t propose to spend any time in a bullpen. Too darn much to do.—Howdy, Sam! Yeah, thanks.—Sure, marked out. Doesn’t surprise me. You might have noticed that there’s a war going on in Colorado, a full-blooded, take-no-prisoners class war.—Howdy to you too. Thanks, Bob, I’ll tell him ya said that.—Professional gunmen. It’s how outfits like that work. Have to fight fire with fire if it comes down to that.
“So tell me, son, Hyman isn’t it? What have you been up to since Mullan?”
Name’s Herbert Brown now, I wrote. Safer for me than what it was. Penhaligan not in Missoula. Picked up with a gambling man. Traveled a lot. Letter writing for my pay. Friend got shot dead last week in Cripple Creek. On my own now.
Postponing Glove’s death up until the week before and leaving out Harry Orchard altogether made the story simpler. When you’re shaving the truth, those simple stories are the best to be telling. You don’t get yourself tangled up in them so easy.
“Tough,” Bill said. “Not saying I’m not sorry for what happened, I am, but still a professional gambling man is not a proper companion or a proper example for a young boy. Parasites is what they are. The only work they do is work on other peoples’ weaknesses. It’s no wonder the Knights kept them out, them and the bankers, lawyers, and saloonkeepers.—Ham! What have ya got to say for yerself, ya ol’ rattler?
“The Sheriff,” he explained when the man left.
It seemed half the saloon knew Big Bill. On the streets it was the same. You could see in his face and in the outright, proud way he held himself that Bill enjoyed being a well-known man in the big city.
“On your own? That’s tough. Might be we can fix you up with something at the office. You come along tomorrow and we’ll . . .”
“Hello, Bill.”
“Hello, yourself, Al.”
A man with sandy-red hair, about twenty years old, well dressed, with a too-long-in-the saloon cast to his face and just about standing.
“Fine. Or not so fine I guess. Take your pick. Fine. That’ll do for now. You think they put something wrong in the whisky in this upstanding downtown hostelry? Maybe a dose of the rat poison?”
“No,” laughed Bill. “Rat poison’s too smooth for what they serve here, would only take the bite out of it!”
The man spluttered something and then folded into a chair.
“Hello, boy. Didn’t know you had a son, Bill . . .”
“Not my son, just an old friend.”
“Hello there, Bill’s young old friend. A pleasure. Say, boy, what happened to your neck . . . Listen, Bill, I got to ask you . . .”
“Who you working for this week, Al? The News? The Post?”
“You know something? I can’t . . . Wait a minute. Just hold it. Welton Street? That’s it, Welton Street. Must be the News, Bill. That OK with you? The News? Thank you very much.”
“I thought they had you covering the prize fights, Al?”
“Right. The great pugilistic battle. The glorious ring! The prize fights! But what, my dear Mr. Haywood, could be a greater fight for a greater prize than the fight you’re fighting? Answer me that if you will?”
“Where’s your ‘To the Colors,’ Al? You sound more like the old Senator.”
“Do I now?”
At that point three other men joined us. They were reporters too and, of course, they all knew Bill.
“Runyon,” one asked our tipsy companion, “haven’t you been tossed out the door yet, tosspot that you are?”
“Precisely what door would that be, my small speckled friend?”
The man was neither small nor speckled, but then I wasn’t seeing him through Runyon’s eyes.
“Bill,” asked another, “You got anything to say about Peabody’s statement?”
“What statement was that?”
“Said law and order was being returned to Colorado.”
“You know me, boys,” Bill said with a wide smile, “always in favor of law and order.”
“When he says ‘law,’” Runyon slurred. “When, that is, Governor Peabody says ‘law’ he is sailing into what for him personally, Peabody, are unwatered charters.” He giggled.
“He said,” put in another reporter, ignoring Runyon’s mumblings and reading from a notebook, “’the Western Federation of Miners is not only a criminal organization but the most un-American organization in the land.’”
“Only criminals I see,” said Bill, his voice starting out soft, then step by step building into his stump oratory, “are those that refuse to listen to the legally expressed will of the people of the state of Colorado. Where is that eight-hour day we all voted for? You go over there and ask Peabody that, why don’t you? Only criminals I see are those that run law-abiding men out of town because they’re union men. The only criminals I see are those who refuse to protect those men from lynching vigilantes. The only criminals I see are those ex-convicts and barroom toughs being hired by the mine owners as ‘detectives’ and ‘special deputies.’ The only criminals I see are those who arrest men without charge, who surround the courts with armed men, who ride roughshod over the Constitution. If you boys want to find yourself some criminals acting un-American, well you know exactly where they live.”
The reporters bent to their notebooks.
“Peabody says the Feder
ation has been defeated over in Cripple Creek, Bill. Mines are starting back to working, your members drifting off. What do you say to that?”
“Never defeated! The fight is just warming up, boys. You wait. We still got some big surprises for Peabody and his Alliance thugs.”
“Never!” echoed a refueled Runyon slamming his hand on the table, “defeated!”
For the next couple of hours the men drank and talked. Runyon passed out on the table. I listened. I learned that I had become enlisted in the army of rapacious corporate capitalism, monopoly, and corruption. It was that same old tune Aunt May had sung so loud and angry in Wallace. I was reluctant, conscripted, drygulched, and pressganged, but a soldier in that damn army nonetheless.
“Let me ask you boys something?” Bill said. “Didn’t we fight by the rules to get the eight hours on the ballot? And isn’t the ballot box the American way to do things? And what happened when we won? You know as well as I do what happened. The sniffling old profligate John D. came out here and had a talk with Peabody. The mine owners had a talk with Peabody. The Smelter Trust had a talk with Peabody. The Citizens’ Alliance had a talk with Peabody. Where’s the eight hours, boys? Disappeared in all that backroom talk and palm grease. That’s how it’s done by those true democrats, those true Americans like your Governor Peabody.”
“You saying he’s un-American, Bill?”
“No, no, I’m not clever enough to claim something like that, Eaton. No, what I’m saying is that he was elected by the citizens of Colorado, not by the mine owners, the United States Reduction and Refining Company, and certainly not by John D.’s Colorado Fuel and Iron. It’s a wonder to me that you boys can’t smell the stink.”
“What’s that?” Eaton asked.
“Why the stink of corruption, Mr. Eaton, or don’t you have the genuine reporter’s nose for it?”
The argument, banter, storytelling, and drinking went on and on, stretching out our “short visit” until almost midnight. I never did get that dinner.
14
Bill took on a sizably full load at the saloon. Two of the other reporters had joined Runyon slumped drunk asleep on the table before we finally left. Bill’s talk was rambling uneven and he was walking a mite too carefully, but with all that his stride was straight up as we made our way through the deserted streets.
“Vultures!” he spat. “I know they got a job to do. But that’s no excuse, is it? Listening to what they want to hear or what they’re told to hear, especially that bunk artist Eaton. Those two crooks over at the Post run more of a circus than a newspaper. You know they got Alferd Packer, the cannibal, working for them? Ate a party of prospectors back in ‘74. Not the whole party, mind you, just parts of part of the party. Walked out of the mountains in the springtime sleek as a greased pig. And those two over there got him a parole a few years back. Can you credit it? Bonfils and Tammen and Alferd Packer. Vultures, crooks, and cannibals! Just about perfect, wouldn’t you say?”
I couldn’t understand much of what he was raving on about. The drink talking I guess. More than that it didn’t sound like the kind of information I was supposed to be gathering, so I let it slide by.
“Got some place to stay, Harold?” Bill asked, forgetting my new name but spotting my Gladstone.
I handed him Harry’s note.
“What? You won’t get there tonight. On the other side of the river. Gee fizz, what are we going to do with you?”
He stopped and leaned against a lamppost.
“That’s better. This walk home seems to take longer every night. Place for you. All right then, I’ll tell you what, Herbert, seeing as how we’re old comrades so to speak, which I know you can’t and a shame that is too, and we are, aren’t we? Old comrades that is. Good. Now then, you trail along with me and you can bunk down at our place for the night. Not far from here at all. Where are we again?”
He searched around for a street sign.
“Right, there we are, Fourteenth. Can’t promise it’ll be any longer than the one night though. Have to talk it all through with the Boss, Mrs. Haywood that is, in the morning. Wadda you say?”
I didn’t say no, although I wanted to. It was bad enough that I was going to have to spy on him at the headquarters without being set down in the bosom of Bill’s family. I hoped when she saw me Mrs. Haywood would not be obliging and I could move straight over to Mrs. Winkler’s. That hope didn’t work out in the least.
“Why, he’s been sent, Bill,” she exclaimed when she caught sight of me in the morning. “I can tell he has. You just look at the boy, will you. Sent.”
“Jane! Oh, Lord. He’s not been anything of the kind. Man he was traveling with was killed, that’s all.”
For a moment I thought she knew about the detectives, but it was more serious than that.
She pursed her lips and shook her small head ever so slightly.
“I can’t expect you to understand, Bill Haywood. You never have. And you know there’s no point in talking about it either. Poor boy! You sit down here, Herbert. Don’t you worry about a single solitary thing. I am sure that God will provide the true perfection that you possess.”
“Man provides, Jane, man. All the rest is so much long-haired-preacher, pie-in-the-sky hogwash.”
She ignored him, something I never saw anyone else do to Big Bill. Then she turned to me.
“The demonstration of His love is here and now, Herbert, if only we know how to find it.”
“Jane, I must . . .”
“Please, Momma! Daddy! Please! Don’t!”
Henrietta, the Haywoods’ seven-year-old daughter, ran over and pulled urgently on her father’s arm. He lifted her up and hugged her.
“All right, little daughter, all right,” he said, smoothing back her red hair.
Nevada Jane Haywood was an invalid. Arthritis so bad she couldn’t walk. She had to be carried or pushed about in a wheelchair. She was also a devout Christian Scientist, although I can’t say I ever saw that it did her any good.
“Are you familiar with the teachings of Mrs. Mary Baker Eddy, Herbert?” she asked. “Have you had the opportunity to read Science and Health? It is a most wonderful revelation I can assure you, especially for those of us, like you and me, who seem to have been so sorely afflicted.”
Bill’s face went hard with the effort of holding back. He set Henrietta down.
“Got to get to the office, Jane. No time for this now.”
“When did you ever have time for the Lord, Bill? Or Mrs. Eddy?”
“You coming along, Herbert?” he asked sternly.
I stood up.
“You can stay with us as long as you like, Herbert,” she said. “We’d be mighty pleased to have you here. Wouldn’t we girls?”
“Yes, Mamma,” the two girls answered in unison.
Vernie was fourteen or fifteen. A handsome, solid-looking girl with a lot of Bill’s strength about her. She had his height as well and was almost half a head taller than me. She had been watching me throughout with an agreeable curiosity. Maybe it was that which made me take an instant liking to her.
“You mustn’t mind Mrs. Haywood,” Bill told me as we walked away from the house. “It’s the sickness and the constant pain that’s turned her to the spoutings of that fanatical, ignorant old woman. She’s tried everything else, all kinds of remedies, potions, healing waters, and quack doctors. I thought Christian Science was just another one of those, but it’s taken hold like a bloodsucking leech and won’t let her go. You know what old Mark Twain said about it a few years back, don’t you?
“No? Called Christian Science the most terrible, unscrupulous, tyrannical religion since the Inquisition. Said that woman’s trying to set herself up as the new Jesus Christ.
“I can’t abide that kind of religious superstition. Blinds people to the real world, makes them accept it as it is. God’s will be done on earth! T
ake her over to Colorado City and show her God’s will being done on this earth. She’s even got to my little girls with that religious nonsense.”
He smacked an undersized fist into his palm.
“That’s the worst! Children are such tender things. Need to be brought up the right . . . Ah, sometimes, well sometimes I don’t know what to do. You watch yourself. Mrs. Haywood is a persistent woman, strong with that religion. And you have that,” he said pointing to my neck. “Grist for the mill it is. She even wanted to try one of their faith healers on my eye! Can you imagine that? It’s been cold and dead since I was a small boy, but no, one of those silly old women came around. Told me it was only in my imagining that made it not see, offered to heal me with prayer. I showed her the door double quick, believe me I did.”
He dropped his head and fell glumly silent until we came abreast of the United States Mint, a three-story, gray granite fortress a few blocks from the Haywoods’ house. The sight of it seemed to buck him up. Suddenly he stopped, grabbed my arm and pointed.
“See that, Herbert? Grand isn’t it? What you’re looking at is a monument, a living testament to miners. If it wasn’t for us those boys in there would have nothing to mint. If it wasn’t for the miners no gold, no silver, no money to oil the wheels of industry and business in America. That’s what you’re seeing. A monument to the importance and strength of the miners.”
After that his head went up and his stride lengthened. We turned down Fifteenth and started toward Arapahoe.
I was given another lecture when we came to the Mining Exchange. Bill never tired of giving lectures, that was his way.
“Every stock certificate and mining share bought and sold in that building is nothing more than the flesh and the blood of miners, ground up, changed about and made to look like something it isn’t. Makes it possible for them to buy and sell without any fuss. Doesn’t it strike you as peculiar that the men who actually make the wealth with their own hands and lives are looked down upon as dangerous beasts by those silk-hatted plutocrats who make their wealth by gambling on the fruits of those very beasts’ labor? Doesn’t that strike you as peculiar, Herbert?”