“Yes, Sir.”
Again, the defense counsel came to his feet. “Your Honor, Mr. Darrow knows Mr. Bullock’s discharge wasn’t—”
The judge raised a hand, took a deep breath and cocked his head toward the seasoned attorney before him. “Swift to your point, Mr. Darrow.”
“Yes, Your Honor.” Darrow’s blue eyes returned to the witness. “Mr. Bullock, you were telling us about the sheave wheel.”
“Yes. It’s a big thing up there, out over the top of the shaft. You see it on your way up. We all think on it—if we was to not stop and slam right up into it—which we did that day. We all knew it’d happen. I crouched to save myself from the hard blow I knew was coming. I seen a piece of timber about one foot wide there underside the sheave, and soon as we rammed, I grabbed hold and held myself up there, and pretty soon the cage dropped from below me, and I began to holler for a ladder to get down.”
“Must have been distressing, up there, holding fast to a timber, dangling 1,631 feet over an open shaft, watching your fifteen brothers fall.”
Bullock choked back tears. “Yes, Sir. That’s what I saw.” He paused. When he resumed, his tone was empty, as if the voice of his shadow. “I heard em. Heard em go. They was screaming. They knew their end had come. I heard em till I heard em no more.”
<><><>
Round-headed, forty-year-old Harry Orchard sat motionless in the Eagle Head Saloon of the tiny mining town of Wallace, Idaho, about a hundred miles up the track from Missoula, Montana, and about the same crow-flight south of the Canadian border. It was July and the mountain air carried a chill, though not enough for his bear coat—so it was in his trunk at the boarding house. Instead, he was in his clay-colored coat that bore a bullet hole in the back. (Though Orchard put the hole there moments before assuming the coat, he’d forgotten the prior inhabitant’s name, or why he’d killed the man.) He fingered his pucey-black homburg hat on the planked bar. He knew what was about to happen and wanted to be ready. His partner, the younger, ferret-faced, infallibly ignorant Steve Addis, was about to spray a broth of blood and brain across the bar. The mess, once splattered, will have belonged to the quivering man standing beside Orchard: the vice president of the Bunker Hill Silver Mine and Concentrator, the largest of its kind in the world, located ten miles further up the Northern Pacific rail line.
“Hold on there!” protested the man, eyes bulging.
Addis gave a scurvy smile from under his green plaid cap and pressed the Colt against the man’s forehead, indenting a circle there. Addis’s other hand held a Bowie knife to the man’s throat. “Which you rather? You’re gonna die, so dealer’s choice: bullet or blade? I pick blade. But I’m sportin, so you decide.”
“You don’t need to do this,” the man cried, his face clammy and flushed. “I’ll leave. I swear.”
Orchard knew he needed to move, otherwise he’d have to pay a dollar to have blood cleaned from this coat, again. He lifted his drink and stood, muttering to Addis, “Outside.”
“Please mister. I did nothing. My boys. My wife …” He wept.
Addis clucked his tongue. “Family’s everything, ain’t it?”
“I’m begging you—”
“Take him outside,” Orchard tried again.
“Tired of this talk,” barked Addis, sticking out his chin.
“Do it in the street. Less mess.”
Addis leaned, his pointy nose almost touching Orchard. “He might talk me confused if I go out.”
Orchard paused on that. At least the weaselly fellow knew his weakness. He had to give him that. When they’d been introduced a month gone, the man gave his name as Steve Addis. Maybe it was. Maybe wasn’t. Didn’t much matter. These loose-gun killers were never around long. Like the men seizing the owners’ train down at Missoula. Orchard knew nothing about them—only that they’d load it as he’d asked, then bring it there in an hour or so. He glanced at his pocket-watch and shrugged. “I’ll finish my drink.”
The man plead again, “I had nothing to do with busting that meet. I get on with Federation fellas. You tell em. You tell Bill.” Another shuddering breath before he continued. “Oh, you think I’m a Pink! Well, Sir, I’m not! Most decidedly not! I’m a Wobbly, a union man, if anything. Can prove it, so you let me be. I ain’t one of them snollygoster Pink spies!”
“Snollygoster?” mused Orchard.
The man began to tremble visibly.
“Bullet or blade?” Addis asked. “You gotta choose, friend.”
“Or dynamite,” Orchard added.
When Addis grinned toward Orchard, the mine vice-president attempted to swat the gun, but Addis reacted too quickly, leaving the man hitting air. Addis popped him on the forehead with the flat of the knife. The man recoiled, exclaiming, “Goddamnit! Leave me alone. You’ve got the wrong man.”
“Bullet or blade?” Again Addis brought the pistol up and returned the knife to the man’s throat.
The man didn’t know—or perhaps he did—that Addis was hired to kill him. In fact, Addis had no knowledge of what the man had or hadn’t done. It simply didn’t matter. It was all for union gelt: twenty dollars a head.
The man sobbed uncontrollably.
“Bullet or blade? Pick your way. Or I’ll let this sombitch decide,” said Addis, indicating Orchard. “He’ll strap a bomb to you.”
The man bit his lip, urine streaming his trousers. “I don’t want to die.”
“Bullet or blade!” Addis screamed.
“Bul—”
Addis returned his Colt to the man’s face and pulled the trigger. Sure enough, bloody brain tissue exploded, covering the bar and its mirror, with some spattering Orchard’s hat and coat.
“Well, shit on a cracker!” Orchard exclaimed, jumping back though not losing hold of his glass. Addis stood motionless, watching the body crumple and convulse. He holstered his pistol, sheathed the Bowie, repositioned his cap, and walked out the front door calmly, as if leaving church on a brisk Sunday afternoon. Orchard saw his glass and the whiskey in it were blood-misted. He pondered it for a second, wiped the rim with his sleeve, then downed the reddish drink as he left. In his wake, the saloon remained pin-drop silent though it held fifteen stunned miners and one unhappy barkeep, all of whom heard Orchard yell outside, “Addis! You owe me a dollar!”
The gruesome scene held its viewers in a paralytic grip. No one wanted to approach the dead man. Finally, the barkeep, a man named Clement, murmured, “One of you fetch Sutherland.” Fetching the sheriff would do no good. Everyone knew it. The man missing a quarter of his head was mine management. The killers were identifiable by most everyone in the saloon, though not likely by their real names. Regardless, they were untouchable. A murder this bold was sanctioned by Big Bill Haywood in Denver, the dead-eyed union boss of the Western Federation of Miners—known simply as the Federation. It had been ordered and paid for, and no man who wished to again earn a miner’s wage, however slight, wanted the attention of Big Bill. Neither his bad attention nor his good. Indeed, anyone who appeared to support the killing may find himself being conscripted to do similar work—a request not to be declined. Communicate disapproval of such blood-spillage and you risked having to flee to the other side: non-union scab lines under the protection of the Pinkerton Detective Agency—or the Pinks—the bitter enemy of the Federation. Or worse, one day it might be you being asked, “Bullet or blade?”
So the men shuffled from the saloon in almost single file, their rhythmic boots plodding, their gaze to the back of the man ahead. Don’t talk. Just leave. Don’t look at the dead man. Step over the expanding pool of blood. Don’t bother to pay your tab. And, most certainly, do not fetch Sheriff Sutherland.
<><><>
– 2 –
The warm afternoon brought more testimony from a number of miners, operators, foremen, and laborers, as well as representatives of the owners of the Stratton In
dependence Mine. Darrow felt certain he had the jury. As the attorney for the Federation, Darrow had shown that the owners had allowed the lift to be overburdened by twice its designed load. That alone should be sufficient negligence to shift liability to the owners, regardless of the mine workers’ presumed “assumption of the risk of death.” The jury should go his way, especially as he was seeking an insultingly small sum from the owners: three-thousand dollars per miner killed. He needed only to close his case with the strongest witness he had: the lift operator, now squirming in the witness chair. Darrow approached him.
“Mr. Simmons, you’re the operator of the—”
“The hoisting engineer,” retorted the thin-faced, mustached man in his best sack suit and narrow tie.
“The hoisting engineer, yes. The hoisting engineer.” Darrow slowed the word engineer so the jury could get a whiff of its importance. “You’re much more than a mere operator. Please accept my apologies. You’re a hoisting engineer. You’re trained to operate the lift. The Stratton mine must have educated you for two weeks or more to perform your duties as the hoisting engineer.”
“No, Sir. I’d been on that job for two days.”
“Two days! Surely you’d operated, I mean engineered, a similar hoist at other lode mines before the Stratton?”
“No, Sir.”
“No? Two days to become a hoisting engineer. Two days and the owners of the Stratton put you in sole control of the lives of the four hundred and sixty-three men who rode that shaft down to the stopes each morning. All right, Engineer Simmons, tell us: you had that platform coming up. What happened?”
The witness bounced his gaze off the jury then back to the floor before clearing his throat. “I seen the cage was at the collar of the shaft and moving quickly. I tried the brakes but they weren’t slowing it none, so I went to—”
“Might the brakes failed owing to twice the load tolerance?”
The defense counsel’s attempt to object was straightaway squashed by the judge’s almost imperceptible shake of his nose.
“Might have. Might. But I wasn’t aware sixteen had gotten on. Least not then. But it wasn’t right in its working.”
“Continue, please.”
“I immediately reversed the engine and sent the cage down a hundred feet. Again I tried the brakes, reversed the engine again, and brought the cage back to the surface. Then the brake just stuck. Froze up and I couldn’t move it none. I again reversed the engine and sent the cage back about the same distance and stepped over to the other side and took hold of the other brake, and it was in the same condition. The second time …” Simmons’s voice cracked. He sniffed a few times, his neck and cheeks reddening. “That second time the cage came up, I called three times for the shift boss, ‘For godsakes come and help me put on the brakes.’ Meantime I was reversing the engine backwards and forwards. Mr. McDonald, he came and tried to help me, but this time when the cage came up it was going quick above the collar.” He cleared his throat once more, then, swaying his slumped head, spoke just above a whisper. “I reversed the engine, but it was too late. The cage hit the housing fast and went to pieces and …” The hoisting engineer began to tremble, then a series of sobs overcame him with such force that it required both bailiffs to assist him from the courtroom.
<><><>
Unaware that his second-in-command had just been murdered a hundred miles up the track in Wallace, the superintendent of the Bunker Hill Mine, James Branson III, climbed the steps of a well-appointed, private Pullman Special train car of the Northern Pacific, resting at the Missoula, Montana station. The engine hissed steam, but otherwise remained idle. Branson was in wholesome spirits, with reason to be ebullient: production was up, shutdowns at an all-time low. And only twenty-three miners had been killed in the Coeur d’Alene Mining District during the first three months of the year—a twelve percent drop from the previous year’s first quarter, and of those only nine died at Bunker Hill.
Surely the owners’ representatives had summoned him for extollation, to pin praise upon him like ribbons upon his chest. He was so certain of it that he had splurged on a pair of Sorosis, patent-leather cap-toes that now clicked up the Pullman’s metal stairs to its rear platform. The gentlemen in this train car, gods of capitalism, will appreciate his shoes—here in the wildlands of silver country where working folks don’t know a Sorosis from a squaw’s sandal. These Chicago chaps will see his shoes and recognize him as one of them: owner-stock not labor-stock. Of course they won’t say anything—that would be too obvious. But they’ll think, why is this Sorosis-wearing fine fellow stuck in this godforsaken place? Let’s bring him back with us to Chicago. Or, let’s move him to San Francisco where he has family. All right, not San Francisco, thought Branson, not after its quake and fire devastation three months earlier. But any other city. Anyplace but here.
In the last decades of the nineteenth century and the first few years of the twentieth, the Coeur d’Alene Mining District in far- northern Idaho was prime for the extraction of silver. Among the rolling elevations between Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, and Missoula, Montana, and north to the Canadian border, the great barons of American wealth, the denizens of privilege and power, bought and built a scattering of profitable silver mines. Offering their workers all the comforts of a Russian gulag, the mines served their masters well—making them exponentially richer year upon year, decade upon decade. Of course, where wealth is highly concentrated, governing oversight limited, and the need for work broad and urgent, abuse of the working class abounds. The mines of northern Idaho were no exception, especially the one Branson supervised, the Bunker Hill.
Mine owners professed two self-exonerations for each miner killed: First, men freely chose to toil in the deadly mines, assuming all risks, working conditions, and requirements—therefore it would be entirely un-American to stand in the way of such a freely made individual choice. Second, whatever happened in an old wilderness to enrich a new-century, city-dwelling shareholder was sanctioned by the progress of humanity, by an unwritten, capitalist decree. It was ordained as the rightful exercise of the owners’ patriotic duty. And whatever suffering ensued was warranted against the frightening rise of godless socialism, especially in places like Wyoming, Idaho, and Colorado.
At the top of the stairs, the Sorosis shoes paused, and the westerly wind blew with a bite. Something was amiss. At least one Pinkerton guard should be at this door, yet it was vacant. Branson narrowed his gaze through a slight window, but found it obscured by an interior curtain. He inhaled, turned the door handle and entered. Void of people, the car held only well-appointed benches, tables, curtains, and candelabras. Silence. He removed his tall bowler and surveyed the interior. Crystal glasses were put away. Cigar boxes were in their humidors. Not just empty, it was tidy, as if it had carried no one at all on its journey west from Chicago.
As much chilled as puzzled, Branson turned, looking out the windows. Perhaps he would recognize someone on the depot landing. No—just strangers, and only a few at that. Had he forgotten the meeting place? Perhaps the time? He retrieved the telegraph from the pocket of his suit (another recent mail-order from Chicago). After his eyes twitched across it, he stuffed it back. Monkeys’ asses were testing him. Maybe they were squeaking beds at Jane’s boarding house again. He placed his hat on a peg as he had many times before, then took a seat in view of the door. He had no choice. He had to wait. Sorry sons of whores.
<><><>
Darrow had been modestly confident of a victory. Evidence had poured forth on the lack of commonly used stops in the vertical shaft, the negligence of not having another man on duty at the collar, the incompetence of hiring a hoisting engineer with no qualifications, the carelessness of allowing sixteen men on the lift, and the overall failure of the mine’s owners to ensure the brake system was properly inspected. Thus, the jury’s verdict rattled him. They found in favor of the mine’s owners, holding the men’s deaths to be within the
risks taken in the performance of their labors. The dead were nothing and their widows were entitled to nothing. Their children nothing either. Nothing.
Walking from the courthouse, Darrow’s embarrassment was assuaged only by his outrage, his fury at the obvious judicial bias in the Colorado courts. Though he had won the battle of evidence, had even been buttressed by the judge’s sympathies, Darrow had lost the jury to the artifice of an inherently corrupt system. He reasoned and rationalized—the jury must have felt trapped, like birds in a cage, unable to exercise their natural abilities. The law (written by politicians bought wholesale by the mine owners) encouraged juries away from their principles, their private, moral sense of justice. Clearly the mine owners were responsible, but they would not be forced to pay.
He fumed as he walked, feeling flat footed and fraught. The horrific deaths of those men, flesh and blood fathers, husbands, brothers and sons, were just ledger-sheet costs. And the cost of this trial but a pittance plucked from those shareholders’ ripe asses. “Damnation,” he muttered aloud as he crossed Larimore Street.
Corporations were a duplicitous class of self-proscribed “citizens” able to fly the gold laissez-faire flag when it served them, when it was needed for profits. But then they would shuttle up the red flag of socialistic sanctuary to shield themselves from losses, like a semaphore in a hurricane. And the voters were too ignorant to see it. Too lazy to pay attention. Too comfortable. Too miserable in their personal failures to identify their true oppressors.
He felt his cheeks flush, then heard his wife, Ruby, faintly admonishing him. Darling, no man tries harder to right things, she would say. But your wax wings will take you only so far. You can flap and fly, and try, but sooner or later the flames of other men’s stupidity will get you. She was aggravatingly right, even if her analogy was wanting.
He took a breath and checked the creases in his hat. He would deliver the bad news to his client, William “Big Bill” Haywood, the leader of the Western Federation of Miners. He would tell him in person, man to man—ignoring what was probable, that Haywood would’ve already learned of the verdict from one of his spies and minions. They were everywhere in these streets. Along with their counterparts—Pinkerton operatives. Darrow grimaced. Haywood might fire him. Maybe not. Probably not.
American Red Page 2