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“Claggart,” Clay replied, extending his hand and reeling them in with a drummer’s smile. “John Claggart.”
“What’s this about Higgins being a spy, Claggart? I heard he’s a union man.”
“So did I,” said the other.
“That’s what the company wants you to believe. Those fellers told me that the minute their pal said yes to the snake, the Pinkertons were all over him like paint. Blackjacked him something awful, bloodied his face, busted his hand.”
“Spy!”
“Murderer!”
“Spy!”
Clay continued toward the back of the mob, casting aspersions calculated to inflame, and stepped up on a horse trough for a better view. Lo and behold, there was Joseph Van Dorn’s favorite — young Isaac Bell — springing up the courthouse steps to try to reason with the mob.
6
“Hang him!”
Isaac Bell had vaulted up the steps just as the grieving crowd of the victims’ friends and families exploded into a savage lynch mob howling for Jim Higgins’s blood.
“Hang him high!”
“Murderer!”
“Spy!”
“Hold it!”
Bell had a big voice, and when he filled his chest and let it thunder, it carried to the farthest man in the mob and echoed off the mountain. He raised both hands high above his head and it seemed to double his height. He spoke slowly, clearly, and loudly.
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sp; “Jim Higgins is no spy. Jim Higgins is an honest workingman just like every one of us.”
“Spy!”
Bell pointed a big hand at the miner who had shouted.
“Who told you Jim’s a spy? Come on, man, tell us. Was it anyone you know? Any man you trust? Who?”
The miners looked at one another and back at Bell.
“Jim Higgins is no more a company man than you or me.”
The men in front were looking confused. But from far in the back, Bell heard shouting. “Murderer! Murderer!”
He could not see who was shouting in the failing light. A shadowy figure in a slouch hat flitted behind the mob. A dozen throats picked up the cry “Murderer! Murderer!” and from where Bell stood on the steps he could see a wavelike ripple of motion, and hundreds began to surge closer.
The company police guarding the jailhouse door edged aside.
“Stand fast, you men!” Bell shouted down from the steps.
“Murderer!”
The cops broke and ran. Some fled straight into the crowd, some around it, and when they had gone nothing stood between the lynch mob and the union organizer but a young Van Dorn detective on his first case.
Isaac Bell drew a single-action Colt Army from his coat and leveled it at the crowd. Then he delivered a cold promise.
