by Darryl Brock
The opening days of August had seen explosive violence in the coal region, as the miners lost hope of winning by peaceful means. I couldn’t help wondering if Kehoe, fore-warned, had blown McKenna’s cover this time around. Having read in the newspapers of recent developments, I’d been afraid to go to Minersville, and suggested our meeting in Scranton.
Noola’s one-word reply: Yes.
She couldn’t help being depressed over coming away with almost nothing from the sale of her property. Although heavily mortgaged to the coal company, it had at least provided an illusion of stability. Their present rootlessness frightened her.
“In Omaha we’ll pick up whatever you need,” I assured her.
She looked at me quizzically. “You’ve come into the money, is it?”
I laughed and nodded. “It’s for the whole colony, but you’re now part of it and there’s extra for newcomers.” I figured that what I’d gone through entitled me to allot a tiny portion of the money, and I didn’t think John O’Neill would mind. I also guessed that Noola wouldn’t be on her own very long in O’Neill City unless by choice. Too many lonely Irishmen there for that.
In Chicago we stayed at the Briggs House, where I’d lodged with the Stockings. Noola and Catriona were open-mouthed at its opulence. I think Noola never expected to enter such a place, unless as a maid. The desk clerk arched an eyebrow when I asked for separate rooms. We’d taken to calling ourselves the Finnigans, a rough blend of our surnames, and Noola wore her wedding band to further discourage others from thinking her a low woman.
“Why don’t we travel as your servants?” she said.
“No way,” I told her, but was unable to explain my egalitarian feelings very effectively. She was from a century and a society that viewed class distinctions as part of the natural order. I had a lot of trouble with that.
While shopping for clothes, we saw evidence of the great Chicago fire of four years before. “What caused it?” Catriona asked, gazing wide-eyed at whole neighborhoods of charred bricks and rubble.
“Mrs. O’Leary’s cow,” I told her. “Kicked over a lantern.”
Catriona accepted it. Not so Noola, who said indignantly, “Sure, and they blame it on a poor Irish cow.”
Chicago’s sporting press was still gloating over nabbing the four prize Boston ballplayers. Reading that Harry Wright now faced morale problems with his club, I wondered if Andy had been glad to get away for a while.
We arrived in Omaha, fed up with hot, stifling, jolting cars—by now I felt qualified to write a guide book on 19th century rail travel—and while Noola was picking out a washtub and wood-stove for their coming household, I took Catriona on a shopping spree. Her favorite among the new toys and dolls we picked up was a fairy princess that hung from the ceiling and danced when you pulled the cord. For Cait I bought the latest in double-boiler pots and assorted bolts of beautiful fabrics. For Kaija, tins of imported kippered herring. For Linc, wood-working tools that I intended to borrow. For John O’Neill and the colony in general, backgammon and checker boards. And books, lots of books.
At a lumber mill I picked up quantities of planed boards and nails. My furniture-making plans included a bed for Catriona, who could scarcely envision such a thing.
To carry everything I bought a mule-and-wagon rig that had the best springs I could find. Our spirits were soaring by the time we set out for O’Neill City. Catriona didn’t look so bony any longer, I noticed, and both she and her mother were losing their coal-valley pallor. My leg still hurt occasionally, but nothing like before, and my limp had pretty much disappeared.
That night, in our little camp halfway to the Elkhorn, Noola gathered creekside rushes and showed Catriona how to weave them together and tie off the ends. The girl brought me something hidden in her hands. “It’s a St. Brigid’s cross,” she said. “I made it for you.”
It felt paper light in my hand. “Tell me about this cross.”
With Noola’s help she told how centuries ago in Ireland a pagan chief had fallen mortally ill. Somebody summoned the Christian girl Brigid to convert him before he died, but when she arrived he was already delirious. In those days, rushes were strewn in houses to warm the stone floors and hold down dust. Brigid wove several into a cross. The dying chief miraculously came to his senses and asked what she was doing. Moved by her piety, he asked to be baptized.
“It happened near Kildare, where I was born,” Noola said. “We’ll make many of these to hang from the eaves of our new house.”
Wondering how Cait, who long ago had fallen away from the Church, would react to this Irish woman’s uncomplicated faith, I didn’t tell her that her new house was likely to have no eaves but rather a sod roof.
“This is a lovely country, Mr. Fowler,” she said, gazing at the sunset. “It’s a grand new home we’ll have.”
Things looked anything but grand the next day, however, as we drove into O’Neill City.
“Where are the people?” Catriona said.
“I don’t know.” I felt an unpleasant foreboding on seeing a woman swoop her child inside as we approached.
I hitched the rig at Grand Central and went inside. Only the buzzing of flies greeted me. I walked back to John O’Neill’s quarters and through a gauzy partition saw him in bed, his head heavily bandaged. Cait dozed in a chair beside him. I whispered her name and she glanced up. I was shocked by her haggard look. Her eyes widened and she stood and rushed out to me and I folded her in my arms. It was how I’d dreamed it, except that she shook with muffled sobs.
“I knew you weren’t dead.” She clung to me and her voice held a note of relief. “I knew it.”
“Who said I was?” I asked. “And what happened to John?”
She looked up at me with tear-reddened eyes. “McDermott is the answer to both questions.”
Oh, Jesus. “He came here?”
Nodding, she held me even more tightly. “With two of his cutthroats.”
I had a nauseating presentiment. “Was one dark-skinned? Lean and rot-toothed?”
Another weary bob of her head. “His arm was in a sling and he moved like he’d been hurt—yet he was the one I most feared.”
Worst-case scenario. LeCaron had survived.
“Where were the townsmen? Where was Linc?”
“They were all out trying to round up our livestock,” she said. “McDermott’s men came in the night and set them loose, trying to make it seem the work of an Indian raiding party.”
A new fear struck me. “With Linc and the others gone … were you? … did McDermott? …?”
“He struck me in the back of my head,” she answered. “I was knocked flat and stunned, and Red Jim tried to drag me inside my soddy. I pretended to be senseless, and when he reached to open the door I broke free and ran for Kaija’s, where I knew she kept a rifle near the door. She saw us coming and fired at Red Jim. He dove to the ground and didn’t come near after that. We spent that night barricaded there, keeping each other awake. Not until the next day did we learn the worst.”
The worst? How bad could this get?
“They beat John nearly to death,” she said. “He and Tim, who had a fever, were the only men here. They wanted John to reveal where you were. They seemed to believe that either you were dead or that you’d already come back here. When they finally gave up with him, John was barely conscious. But he heard McDermott say he’d get the money he needed by staking out gold claims.”
Which suggested Morrissey must have assigned Red Jim the task of recovering the casino’s lost money. Probably with McDermott’s life at stake.
“What about Tim?” I said. “Is he okay?”
“That’s truly the worst.” Cait started to cry again as she pointed northward, in the general direction of the Black Hills. “They took him with them.”
Part Three
Harvest
No sensible man will think of going to the Black Hills without first insuring his life.
—Missouri Valley Life Insurance Co. of Leaven
worth, Kansas from an ad in the Press and Dakotaian, September 3, 1874
One frequently only finds out how really beautiful a woman is after considerable acquaintance with her.
—Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad
TWENTY-FOUR
“Caitlin!” We heard Kaija’s whisper from the entrance and moved toward her. I’d forgotten about Noola and Catriona, who stood beside her.
“Those terrible men,” Kaija said wrathfully to me. “Linc’s still chasing them.”
“He’ll bring Tim back,” I said, “if anybody can.”
Unfortunate phrasing. It came out grimmer than I intended, and I saw Cait’s face tighten.
Catriona picked that moment to present her with a St. Brigid’s cross. “To bless the land here,” she said, as Noola had coached her. “The good Irish land!”
Coming after everything else, the girl’s gesture was too much for Cait, who raised her hands to her eyes, her shoulders shaking. Like a chain reaction, her emotions spread. Kaija hugged her and they both burst into tears. Noola put a hand on Cait’s shoulder and choked up with sobs. A frightened Catriona began wailing.
I got out of there.
“This is where you’ll live.” Cait opened the door to Tip McKee’s soddy. Noola and Catriona followed her inside as I went to retrieve their trunk. Dealing with the newcomers offered a diversion, and Cait had brightened a bit.
“Where’s Tip?” I asked when I returned.
“He left soon after you did.” Her eyes met mine and the smile that curved her lips struck me as bittersweet. “He said that he recognized, finally, that my heart belonged to another.”
For an instant I felt exalted. Then I was uncertain. Did another mean me? Or Colm?
“I missed Tim terribly while he was gone,” she said, shifting the subject. “When he came back with Andy, I was so perfectly happy.” Her eyes brimmed over again.
I took her hand. “We’ll get him back.”
John O’Neill was awake and sitting up on his pillows. His mood lifted dramatically when I informed him of the deposit I’d made for the colony in an Omaha bank. In the lantern glow the bruises on his face looked like purple hollows.
“Why would McDermott such a risk?” I said. “You’ve got powerful friends.”
“None so powerful as John Morrissey, who’s put a mortal fear into Red Jim,” he said. “He’s frantic to get the money back, and he had a score to settle with me, too, for driving him away from here. I wish I’d shot the bastard when he was in my sights. Do you know what he told me when I lay there bleeding?”
I shook my head.
“That my nephew Colm was murdered at Antietam.” His voice grated out the words. “Shot down by Fearghus O’Donovan.”
For an instant some of the old milkiness seemed to be lurking in that room. “How could he know that?”
“Red Jim joined the Union Army repeatedly,” he explained. “He would serve a week or two, then desert and join elsewhere to collect a new enlistment bounty. One of his stints was to guard at Elmira Prison, where Meagher’s Irish Brigade rotated for noncombatant duty. Fearghus was among them there, waiting to muster out at war’s end.”
“I can’t believe he’d confess a murder.”
“He didn’t … quite. One night, in a fever, Fearghus started raving about Colm, and Red Jim heard him.”
In my memory: loamy scents … acrid smoke … a green battle flag … O’Donovan’s desperate face above a leveled pistol …
“He blackmailed Fearghus ever after that,” O’Neill finished.
Now I understood how McDermott could worm his way into high Fenian circles. O’Donovan had been his admission ticket.
“To have it come out like this is a great sadness,” O’Neill went on. “But you know, Sam, an odd thing happened while McDermott was telling it.”
“What was that?”
“Everything seemed to slow for an instant. It almost seemed that another presence was in here with us”
“Colm?”
The old man stared at me.
“I’ve felt his presence too.”
He nodded slowly. “I believe that we are past the worst of it now,” he said. “Even if Linc and the men can’t bring Red Jim in, he won’t dare come back. We’ll never again let our guard down.”
I realized than that Cait hadn’t told him about Tim.
I took a breath and broke the bad news.
Linc and the others rode in at sundown. They’d lost McDermott’s trail along the Niobrara River, some fifty miles to the northwest. It was clear that his small force—three men plus Tim—was moving fast, expecting pursuit. And that they were headed for the Black Hills.
“They’ll see you coming miles off and set an ambush if you try to follow them in there,” John O’Neill said, leaning over a map of the gold territory sold in the colony’s store. Linc and I flanked his bed. We’d been trying to come up with a strategy. “They’ll also hold hostage Tim against you.”
“No way to sneak around them?” I asked.
O’Neill pointed out that they were using the trail Custer had established—“the thieves’ road,” as the Sioux called it—and no shorter southern route existed.
“Won’t the army stop them?” I asked. “They’ve pulled everybody else out of there.”
“Everybody they find,” Linc amended. “Hundreds slip back through at night.”
“Can’t we just show up at a fort and ask for help?”
O’Neill shook his head doubtfully. “Grant has forbidden military action in the Hills during talks with the Indians,” he said. “We may have pulled all our troops out by now. No regimental commander would dare go against orders and send his men in.”
“So much for the army,” I said disgustedly.
“Custer might help us,” O’Neill said after a pause. “Not officially, of course, but maybe with a scout or a ‘volunteer’ squad.”
“Where is he?” I asked.
“Fort Lincoln.”
Linc looked startled. “That’s eight hundred miles north!”
“You could steam up the Missouri and be there in a fortnight,” O’Neill said. “Custer could show you how to come down through the Black Hills from the north, the last thing McDermott would expect.”
“Why would he bother?” Linc said skeptically. “Were you close when you served under him?”
“I earned his respect as a fighter—but you’re right, that wouldn’t do it.” O’Neill smiled slyly. “Custer is ambitious, and the Democrats have their eye on him for next year’s presidential election. He could be reminded that as the only Fenian commander who took the field I can deliver Irish votes all across the country. More than Tammanny Hall. More than most anybody who might be inclined to stump for him.”
“Would Custer have a chance?” I asked.
“The Democrats just lost twice to a popular war general,” O’Neill pointed out. “Custer has dash in the public mind. He helped open up the west to the railroads. He opened the Black Hills to mining interests.”
“Got no use for him,” Linc said tersely.
O’Neill looked at me. “Custer refused to command colored cavalry in the war.”
“I’ll have to be your goddamn servant when we get to Fort Lincoln.”
“Hey, so far nobody asked you to come.”
“I’m going,” he said flatly. “And I’ll do what’s needed to get Tim back.”
“Cait will insist on going too,” O’Neill said.
“No way.”
“He’s her son, Sam,” he said. “And she might get more from Custer, who has a decided weakness for beauty.”
I was shaking my head emphatically when we heard her voice from the doorway. “I’ll not be left behind in any search for Tim.” She walked into the room and stood before me. “That’s final.”
“It’s no country for a woman,” I argued. “Linc and I will have tough going as it is. With you along, I’d spend all my time worrying about you.”
“It’s perhaps a new
thought for you,” she said, “but why not allow me to worry about me?”
A faint chuckle came from O’Neill.
“Cait, where we’re going strong men die of exposure and sickness and hunger—assuming they survive all the snakes and grizzlies and Indians.”
“Aye,” she retorted, her brogue becoming evident, “t’isn’t country for a woman, I’ve no doubt. But is it fit for a boy?” Her eyes bored into mine. “My son is out there, Samuel. What manner of mother could stay behind? And what if you two don’t return? You’d have me just staying here, waiting blindly?”
Torn between wanting to keep her out of danger and wanting never to leave her again, I had no ready answer.
“Remember in Cincinnati, Samuel, when we brought Tim through the terrible fever?” Her tone was softer. “And I told you that if he went to his death, I’d surely follow?”
The memory of it was indelible.
“My words angered you then, as they do now,” she continued. “But if Tim survives, I’m bound to be part of saving him. And if he’s to be lost, I must know in my heart that I did all that I could.”
At least this time she wasn’t saying she’d be lost too. I looked to the others for support. Linc was busy examining the ground. O’Neill was regarding Cait from his bed with a rapturous expression, as if she were St. Brigid herself. Or, more aptly, Joan of Arc. What else to expect from somebody who gloried in bucking impossible odds and three times had invaded a neighboring nation?
“There’s another reason for my going,” Cait said. “I think you can guess it.”
I looked at her blankly.
“Oh, Samuel.” With a tiny sigh, as if dealing with a borderline simpleton, she reached for my hand; then, with a gentle smile said magic words: “Do you truly imagine I’ll let you go off again without me?”