by Bill Albert
Hurriedly I walked over to the Portland Hotel.
“Wasn’t it wonderful of Mrs. Decker and Mr. Cody? Imagine arresting you! We were all so shocked, Hyman. The entire League was shocked. Mrs. Blanchard? Oh, fine I think. Why do you ask? She cried, of course. So did I, Hyman. It was a terrible thing to see them take you off like that. Do you think you should? I mean, Mr. Cody did promise and . . . I see. Yes, I see. That’s right, I guess. Of course I will, Hyman, how much do you want? Is this enough? No, please. You can send it back to me when you get settled. And one more thing. Just wait a second.”
Rebecca went over to the guests’ desk in the hotel lobby and scribbled out a note.
“Here, if you get to New York, I’m sure he would be more than happy to help you out any way he can.”
The envelope was addressed to Mr. J. Argument, 52 Allen Street.
I’ve been on the run ever since then, never staying in one place more than a week or two, reading the newspapers, riding the side-door Pullmans, being careful and always moving East. Now that Bill Haywood is free and clear, so am I. Really and finally free from that damn Pinkerton and all the other damn Pinkertons. I can stop running. Maybe I can even stop changing my name.
HAYWOOD CONGRATULATED BY HUNDREDS OF
FRIENDS
A strong gust tears the newspaper from my hands. It blows away, dancing and hopping across the grass, and fetches up against the marble plinth of a large bronze statue.
The City of New York Erects This Statue to
the of a Citizen Whose Genius has
Contributed to the Greatness of the Republic
and the Progress of the World
A stern-looking gent in tight-buttoned frock coat. He’s balding and sports-side whiskers. His left hand is outstretched and in it he holds what looks like a small board with a round flat tin can set in the middle of it. Can’t make head nor tail of how that has contributed to Greatness or to Progress.
The Genius is looking out towards passing boats and beyond them to the Statue of Liberty and she—no longer my welcoming angel, no longer my mother’s midwife and angel of death, no longer my own personal covenant with life and with America, but a 150-foot-high, torch-wielding May Arkwright Hutton—she is looking out towards the Atlantic.
A hundred yards or so to my right, across Battery Park, her noisy immigrant rabble forever silenced, is the immense, flag-topped rotunda of Castle Garden.
I have come home.
Come home to start a new life. Come home to start a new story. After all, isn’t this America? And isn’t America the land of new stories—true stories, half-true stories, and real whoppers? Of course it is. Everyone knows that. All you have to do is listen.
Other Endings
Buffalo Bill Cody wanted to retire but continued to perform, plagued by debts and circuses and old age. He gave up his shooting act, appeared in the arena in an open carriage instead of on horseback, and took to wearing a toupee. In 1912 he made the mistake of borrowing $20,000 from Harry Tammen, joint publisher of the Denver Post and patron of Alferd Packer, the Colorado Cannibal. Shortly afterwards Tammen forced the sale of the entire Wild West Show, including Buffalo Bill’s horse, Isham. He tried to make a comeback, but when, finally, at 12:05 on January 10, 1917, William Frederick Cody crossed the Great Divide, he was still deeply in debt. He was also six weeks shy of his seventy-first birthday. Theodore Roosevelt said that he was “an American of Americans . . . He embodied those traits of courage, strength, and self-reliant hardihood which are vital to the well-being of the nation.” Bonfils and Tammen started a campaign in the Post to raise pennies from children to build a monument to the Great Scout. The pennies came in but the monument was never erected. Although he wanted to be buried near Cody, Wyoming, his wife, Lulu, was persuaded otherwise, some say by a “gift” of $10,000 from Tammen. Five months after his death Buffalo Bill was finally buried on the top of Lookout Mountain overlooking Denver. He’s still there.
By 1907 the Huttons had outgrown Wallace. They moved to Spokane where, with her wealth and energy, May quickly became a prominent, albeit unconventional, figure in local society. Suffrage remained her main interest, although she also became active in charity work, especially for unwed mothers and orphaned children. It was at this time that she tried to buy up and destroy all copies of her book, The Coeur d’Alenes or a Tale of the Modern Inquisition in Idaho. She died in 1915. She was fifty-five. Five years later the Hutton Settlement, an orphanage, was established by Al. He died in 1928.
The Haywood trial was James McParland’s last big case. For a number of years afterwards he remained head of the Pinkerton Agency in Denver. He died there in 1919, remembered in the slim obituaries as the man who had foiled the Molly Maguires. He was seventy-five years old.
Soon after the trial Charlie Siringo, “The Cowboy Detective,” dissatisfied with the Pinkerton Agency, resigned. He wrote a number of books about his life, most of which were heavily censored by the Agency after bitter court battles. In 1914, they blocked the publication of The Evil Isms. The two evil isms facing America were, according to Siringo, Anarchism and Pinkertonism. He moved to Hollywood where he wrote stories and appeared in a number of movies. He remained there until his death in 1928. He was seventy-two.
Harry Orchard never got his promised reward of freedom, at least not physical freedom. Soon after his conviction he was befriended by the widow of ex-Governor Steunenberg, a Seventh-Day Adventist. In 1909 Harry was baptized in the faith and remained a devout believer. He wrote a number of autobiographies, including Harry Orchard, The Man God Made Again. The caption to the frontispiece photograph of Orchard reads, “A Captive Within Walls but Free in Christ.” This was the only freedom he ever found, despite numerous attempts to obtain parole. He was in the Idaho State Penitentiary until his death in 1954, by which time he was eighty-eight years old.
The 1907 trial brought Big Bill Haywood to national and international prominence. However, this was no recommendation for the conservative wing of the Western Federation of Miners which, in league with Charles Moyer, engineered his removal from office in 1908. About this time he also became permanently separated from his wife and daughters. After a few years with the Socialist Party he finally returned to the Industrial Workers of the World. In 1912 he became General Secretary and from that time onward his name was synonymous with the Wobblies and their many dramatic battles for workers’ rights. In 1918 he, along with a hundred other leaders of the IWW, was convicted of over 10,000 separate crimes, mainly to do with their opposition to the war. Tired out, ill with diabetes, and knowing he would not survive a twenty-year sentence in Leavenworth Penitentiary, Big Bill jumped bail and fled to the Soviet Union in 1921. He died in Moscow on May 18, 1928, homesick and disillusioned, at the age of fifty-nine. Half of his ashes were interred under the wall of the Kremlin near to the grave of his friend, John Reed. The other half were laid to rest in the Waldheim Cemetery in Chicago next to the memorial to the Haymarket Martyrs.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright 1996 by Bill Albert
ISBN 978-1-4976-2319-4
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
345 Hudson Street
New York, NY 10014
www.openroadmedia.com
BILL ALBERT
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