by Darryl Brock
Jealousy licked at my brain.
“They made fine talks about the virtues of the country.”
“What country?” I asked quickly. “Where?”
“Ah, that I don’t recollect,” she said. “Jack mentioned several settlements. I remember thinking I’d be afraid out there among the savages.” She saw my disappointment. “I’m sorry, Mr. Fowler, I believe it was in one of the far territories that has an Indian name. You can find out in Tamaqua easily enough. That’s where General O’Neill had the most success recruiting. They’ll know where their neighbors went.”
I rose from the table. Tamaqua was less than twenty miles away. “I’m on my way.”
“Be careful,” she said. “These are terrible times. Everybody will be suspicious of you.”
I told her of yesterday’s killing.
“They’ve been wanting to get Bully Thomas,” she said. “It will make things worse now. The Welsh will strike back, mark me.”
I told her I wanted to give her a week’s rate and leave a small parcel which she should open if I didn’t return. She nodded soberly.
“Why don’t people here want to move West?” I asked.
“They love their patches,” she answered, “where life is more like in the Old Country.” She added that Jack had felt they had no experience in the kind of grain farming General O’Neill seemed to be talking about.
“If Cait and I are there,” I said, “and it turns out to be a good settlement, would you consider bringing Catriona to join us?”
She looked at me silently. “I might … now,” she said finally. “So many have gone away or died. I truly think I’d consider such a thing.”
“Let’s hope it works out.”
“God speed, Mr. Fowler.”
I reached Tamaqua on the Shamokin branch of the Reading—owned, naturally, by Mr. Gowen. Up to then I’d regarded Promontory, Utah, as the worst place I’d ever been. I quickly put Tamaqua down beside it. Saloons and gambling dens surrounded the station. The streets swarmed with down-and-outers who stared with booze-dulled and/or predatory eyes. In my new duds I felt like a piece of meat thrown into the carnivore cage. I was seriously thinking of offering cash to one of the down-and-outers for his clothes when a pair frazzled-looking whores flanked me. One grabbed my arm, the other reached boldly for my crotch. Shaking them off, I was treated to lurid opinions about my manhood.
Every hotel featured a saloon. I ducked inside one to escape the street and seek information. It wasn’t much of an escape; again my clothes attracted every eye. Several street types followed me inside and took seats close enough to eavesdrop as I tried to ask the bartender about General O’Neill. When he allowed as how he’d heard the name, one of the men got up and went out.
Minutes later, a thin, emaciated-looking man came in carrying a newspaper and trailed by a battered gray bulldog. The others, who’d taken note of everything up to then, didn’t so much as glance at him. Nor did the thin man look their way as he took a seat several stools down the bar. I noticed that his hand twitched when he signaled the bartender, who drew two beers and set one before me.
“Compliments of Mr. McKenna.”
I raised my glass to the thin man. McKenna wore tinted spectacles that enlarged his eyes. The hair on his head was much redder than his coppery beard and looked like a wig.
“I hear it’s information you’re wantin’,” he said in a jovial tone. “Care to chat over the foam?”
I started to move toward him but stopped at a growl from the bulldog. I saw that its ears were torn from fighting. “Stay put, Kilkenny!” McKenna commanded. The dog settled on his belly, bloodshot eyes fixed on me. “Hell of a mate,” McKenna said. “Fiercely loyal—like an Irishman.”
“Why ‘Kilkenny?’ ”
“Oh, he’s ugly, brutish and foul, like lads from that very region—and has a fuckin’ regal attitude to match theirs. They consider themselves the only ones with true mining experience in Ireland, you see, and resent any of us gettin’ ahead of them. Worse, they consort with the Welsh!”
His explanation had seemed part performance. He studied me for a reaction, then asked where I was from.
“Minersville.”
I could tell he wanted more, but he smiled politely, and despite his haggard look his manner was friendly and engaging. “Lodging at Billy McIntyre’s? The Rainbow? Meahan’s Hotel?” He made it a guessing game, laughing each time I shook my head.
“At a widow’s,” I told him.
To my surprise he lapsed into song, his voice a pleasant tenor:
‘Where live ye, my bonnie lass?
An’ tell me what they ca’ ye;’
‘My name,’ she says, ‘is Mistress Jean,
And I follow the collier laddie.
My name,’ she says, ‘is Mistress Jean,
And I follow the collier laddie.’ ”
The bartender led the room in clapping when he finished. The bulldog let out a low moan, which brought laughter.
“Give us ‘Kathleen Mavourneen!’ ” somebody called.
“Another time, lads.” He waved to the bartender for more beer. “So,” he said, his voice lowering as he leaned toward me, “is it your opinion the Chain Gang did it?”
I stared at him.
“Perhaps the Modocs?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Why, the shootin’ of Bully Thomas.” The magnified eyes studied me. “In Shoemaker’s Patch, only a few leagues up the mountain.”
“I heard that a man got killed.”
“Well, ye know something.” He peered at me. “But the job was botched—he was shot but still lives—and so he wasn’t murdered after all.” McKenna’s brogue made it “murt-hurred.” He tapped the newspaper he’d brought. “The Shenandoah Herald has the Mollies doin’ the job on Bully.”
“The Molly Maguires?”
“The same.” He pushed the paper toward me. “But the Herald is always against the Mollies, so it’s to be expected. What do you think, Mr.…?”
“Hemingway.”
He repeated it slowly. “That doesn’t sound Irish.”
“No.”
He leaned closer. “The Herald says that because the Mollies fought off the operators’ blacklegs, the army should come in to run the mines and fix the trouble-makers once and for all. Are you partial to the Irish, Mr. Hemingway?”
“Yes, Mr. McKenna.” I was losing patience with the quiz game. “But I have no idea who shot this Bully Thomas fellow, and I don’t know anything about the groups you named. I’m sorry about the hard times, but I’m not here because of the strike or anything connected with it.”
“Why are you here?” he said softly.
“To find out where General O’Neill’s settlement is located.”
“You’d be eager to settle there?”
I started to say yes, then hesitated, wondering if he might somehow be linked with the Fenians.
“You don’t resemble a farmer,” he said mildly.
Danger signals were flashing in my mind. The bulldog … the sandy whiskers … the Irish charm and singing … Could McKenna be the infamous Pinkerton informer? He didn’t resemble Richard Harris in the slightest, but it gave me the creeps to think I might be facing the real man. The most disturbing part of the movie was that the agent had stayed among the hard-pressed strikers not just for days or weeks but more than two years—and then coldly betrayed them.
“Do you know the location?” I said.
“It might be that I do.” He cocked his head slyly. “But it’s a fact that I’m not at liberty to recall before consulting the Body-master.”
“The who?”
He explained that it was the leader of the Order of Hibernians, an Irish benevolent association.
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s go talk to him.”
“Oh, he’ll come here.” McKenna smiled. “And soon, for a fact. His shift at the Boston Run Colliery is nearly ended, and he’ll be dropping by with the boys.”
&nbs
p; An ominous subtext?
McKenna must have picked up on my uneasiness—he seemed highly intuitive—for he launched into a tale of his own brief mining career. Soon after he began working below the ground, a coal car broke loose from its moorings and went thundering at him. He’d dived aside barely in time to escape death, and still limped from his leg being caught beneath hundreds of pounds of coal. Afterward he’d caught pneumonia and nearly died.
“My hair fell out and vanity led me to buy this horrible thing.” He tugged at his wig. “The worst is that I suspect that car was set loose on purpose—and not by the Welsh.”
“Who, then?”
“Irish,” he said dolefully. “Likely the Sheet Iron Gang, our deadly foes. ’Tis a shame, but the truth is that we’re split among ourselves.”
I couldn’t resist. “Aren’t the Pinkertons supposed to be sniffing around too?”
“You have knowledge of that?”
“Rumors.”
He leaned close. “Do y’know that in Schuylkill County well over a hundred have been murdered, many of them mine bosses and foremen, without a single conviction?”
I stared at him, perplexed. Was he deliberately breaking from his role? Was it a test? Another probe to see who I was? I remembered that more than one agent had been sent to infiltrate the Mollies. Did McKenna think I might be a fellow Pinkerton? Or a potential Molly?
I muttered something about violence begetting violence.
He held my eyes a second longer, then his face changed as the doors burst open and soot-grimed men crowded in. McKenna immediately ordered a round, then got up and spoke to a broad-shouldered man with dark hair who, I gathered, was the body-master. They glanced at me several times before McKenna beckoned me to follow them into a small room off the bar. The dark-haired man motioned curtly for me to sit.
“Mr. Hemingway,” McKenna said officiously, “I’ve told Jack Kehoe here what it is you want.”
Kehoe … That was the name of the man played by Connery. The leader of the Mollies. I was almost positive of it. The real Kehoe didn’t look much like the star actor, but he had a leader’s presence. He was solidly built, his hair and whiskers threaded with gray, his steely blue eyes suggesting that bullshit would not fare well with him.
“I’ll be talking to him alone.” Kehoe’s rumbling bass allowed no dispute. McKenna looked slightly confused, then turned with obvious reluctance toward the saloon.
Kehoe and I stared at each other. Just when I’d decided it was a contest to see who would blink first, he said, “I don’t care who you are or what you want—I want you the hell out of here.”
I refrained from pointing out that Tamaqua wasn’t my idea of a vacation spot. “I’m just looking for General O’Neill.”
“I know what you say you’re doing.”
“McKenna doesn’t speak for me,” I began.
“It’s not him alone,” Kehoe interrupted. “A message came to me in the mine today—about you.” He smiled but it wasn’t pleasant, his teeth briefly bared in the begrimed face. “Mrs. Sullivan spoke up for your character. But she called you Fowler, not Hemingway.”
Whoops. I started to respond but he waved me silent. “She asks that I protect you while you’re here.”
I waited.
“I’ll do that, not for your sake but because you showed kindness to Noola and her lassie. And the memory of Jack Sullivan is precious to me.”
I nodded cautiously.
“I’ll give you the information you want,” he said. “At least, what is known from months back.”
My hands balled into fists. “Great!”
“It’s not great,” he snapped. “It’s to get you gone. We’re headed for trouble here and don’t care for outsiders hanging about. If it weren’t for Noola, you’d find your leave-taking a spot rougher.”
I’d already reached the same conclusion.
“John O’Neill’s grand settlement is on the Elkhorn River.”
I waited for elaboration. None came. “Where is that?”
“Nebraska Territory.”
At last!
“Word was that the settlement is thriving.”
“Through farming?”
“Perhaps that,” he said. “But the place lies on the route taken by gold-crazed lunatics bound for the Black Hills. They need provisions, which O’Neill’s people are providing.”
“Isn’t that Indian country?”
“The Army is thereabouts,” he said, “under General Custer.”
That revelation didn’t exactly inspire confidence.
“Do you know anything of Caitlin O’Neill?”
The name drew a blank.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll be leaving.”
“Be quick about it,” he said. “I can guarantee your safety only as far as Minersville.”
“Let me offer you something back.”
“What would that be?”
“You have a Pinkerton here,” I said, voice lowered. “He’s gathering information to use against you.”
The blue eyes narrowed and I wondered if I’d made a disastrous mistake. But if things played out as they had before, Kehoe and others were doomed.
“Who is this … person?” Kehoe asked, the deep voice deceptively soft.
I glanced at the door to be sure it was shut. “Keep your eye on a man who sings and has ready cash for drinks.”
Kehoe’s mouth was a grim line. “That’s a serious charge.”
“A suggestion, no more.”
“It’s much more,” he snapped. “You’ve accused one of the Order of the most devilish crime imaginable. Why do you suspect him?”
“I can’t tell you.” What could I say? That I’d come back in time? I spread my hands placatingly. “If I turn out to be wrong, you’ve double-checked one of your members, that’s all.” I paused for emphasis. “But if I’m right, I’ve saved your neck and others’.”
“You’d better be gone,” he said, rising. “Now and for good.”
I stood up. “Thanks for the information.”
“Perhaps I’ve done you no grand favor,” he said tersely, “sending you off to the savage wilds.”
Maybe so, I thought, but it definitely beat sticking around there.
ELEVEN
I stopped in Minersville long enough to retrieve my valise from the station locker and the parcel I’d left with Noola containing most of my money.
“I used one of your dollars,” she said, “to get a man to John Kehoe.”
“You may have saved my life,” I told her. “Things over there look ugly.”
“It’ll surely get worse,” she told me. “Every day there are beatings and shooting. The strikers can’t hold out much longer; the union is talking about marching on the operators.”
I told her what I’d heard about the Nebraska settlement and urged her again to give thought to moving West. She said she would. I promised to wire her, and insisted she keep five dollars, perhaps for future train tickets.
Railroad buffs who romanticize nineteenth-century train travel obviously never spent endless days and nights riding those wretched jolting cars with no heating or cooling. They weren’t whiplashed by the frequent lurching halts necessitated by the locomotives’ hunger for coal and water. Their clothes weren’t riddled by hot cinders as they waited on station platforms.
Then there were the passengers. By now I’d become accustomed to deodorant-challenged bodies; I was no prize in that respect myself. But I couldn’t get used to tobacco spitting, which was universally practiced. A disgusting phenomenon. Funny to think that ballplayers would be among the few to continue it a century later.
Pullman cars became scarcer the farther west I traveled. In them, little sofas ran along the sides, each two forming a “section” that, joined at night, made an adequate bed. But older cars provided only a plank with cotton ticking that swung out from the wall. From the train boy you could buy a straw mattress for fifty cents. Forget privacy. And with fewer women on these lines, the nights
were orchestrated with cacophonous snoring and farting and belching.
Not to forget spitting.
Passengers ate most meals in station cafes. Eastern cuisine was no great shakes, but out West the food was truly awful. Staples of every meal were beef—salted, boiled or roasted—along with bacon, tea and coffee. To hold off scurvy, cabbage occasionally was available.
At every station, land agents poured into the cars, brandishing pamphlets that promised Eden-like bliss on the prairies. Seeing my eastern clothes, they hit on me like flies. For practically nothing I could buy a quarter—hell, make it a third!—of some budding metropolis. Spreading out their paper plans of a new Athens or Rome of the West, they showed off gridworks of avenues and streets, plazas and public gardens, railway stations and banks and churches.
If pushed they would grudgingly acknowledge that presently only some fifty souls inhabited wooden shacks on the site. But inside of three years there would be more than twenty thousand, and for a man of my type, “a capitalist with an eye to the prime chance,” it was an opportunity not to be missed.
Or if I wanted something more rural and serene, a few hundred dollars—at most a measly thousand—would set me up like a feudal baron and I’d spend the rest of my days in unbounded prosperity. The prairie soil was so rich that if I tossed out a few handfuls of seeds in April, by the end of July I’d reap forty bushels per acre. Just turn the soil, no manure required. As for livestock, steers cost only twenty-five dollars. To feed them through the winter, merely cut and store a little hay in advance. Couldn’t be simpler.
Just sign right here.
If capital was a problem (unlikely for a man of my distinguished character), credit was easily available. And if cash somehow ran short later on, I could work for friendly neighbors at the going rate of two dollars a day. More than fair.
More than believable, too, I thought, in a time when wages were scarce and jobs paid half that or less. When I asked about the O’Neill settlement, the answer was usually a disdainful sniff or put-down remark about Fenian communists. Several said bluntly that the so-called colony was merely a staging area for the O’Neill’s next invasion of Canada.