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“Well, not in so many words. He claimed to be a Van Dorn.”
“There’s a big difference,” Jim argued. “Pinkertons provide strikebreakers to break unionist heads and protect scabs. I’ve never seen Van Dorns doing that. They are a cut above.”
“Have you ever heard of a Van Dorn working for the union?” Mary fired back.
“Bell helped you get out of West Virginia, didn’t he?”
“Bell was spying, brother. Bell tricked us. He’s no better than the rest of them.”
13
“Last stop, gents,” said Isaac Bell as the trolley from Morgantown bounced into Gleasonburg. “Round up what you can before dark. Meet back here. Mr. Van Dorn will buy us supper in that s
aloon,” he added, indicating Reilly’s, where Mary had wangled coffee.
“What I most enjoy about detecting work is the opportunity to travel,” said Mack Fulton, gazing upon Main Street’s unpainted company houses, goats chewing bark from dying trees, piles of broken rock and coal dust, and muddy hillsides logged to ragged stumps for propping timber.
“To see new sights,” said Wally Kisley.
“Broadening our horizons— Get the bags, Archie.”
Wish Clarke passed their bags to the redheaded apprentice but held on to the heaviest, an usually long, reinforced carpetbag that made a muted clank when he set it on the ground.
“Looks like they burned down the jail.” He winked at Isaac Bell. “Most of the courthouse, too. Is that how you cut loose of the lynch mob?”
“I had some help from a lady— O.K., gents, let’s get moving.”
Mack Fulton asked, “Who gets Archie?”
“You two,” answered Bell, and said to Archie, “Help them up stairs and crossing streets.”
Wish Clarke headed for the company store.
Isaac Bell went to the mouth of Gleason Mine No. 1. No longer disguised as a miner, he presented the Pinkerton in charge of the guards a letter of introduction he had not yet used that identified him as a Van Dorn Agency detective working for Gleason.
“What the hell is this supposed to mean? We don’t need no detectives. We’re the detectives.”
“It’s signed by Black Jack himself, and it means you’re ordered to give any Van Dorn who asks for one a safety light and get out of his way. I’m asking for one.”
They brought him the light. They were edgy, he thought, less cock of the walk, less inclined to bully. “Where you going with this?”
“A walk,” said Bell. “Come along if you like,” knowing the Pinkerton would never enter the mine.
“The miners are talking strike.”
“When did that start?” Bell asked, recalling Jim Higgins’s promise There’s more where I came from.
“Damned fools are takin’ the bit in their teeth. Whole town’s about to blow sky-high. Wouldn’t be surprised if some of them took a swing at you.”
“I’ll run the risk,” said Bell. He carried the light through the timbered portal and hurried straight down the haulageway.
The ventilators were running, and he could hear the clatter of hundreds of miners picking in the galleries, the muffled screech of electric drills, and the occasional heavy crump of dynamite tearing open the seam. He recognized the doorboy he had helped out after the wreck and waved. The child did not know Bell in his sack suit and fedora and looked frightened that he had drawn the attention of a detective.
Bell stopped and pressed a small gold piece into the boy’s grimy hand. He stared at it with a combination of disbelief and terror. “It’s O.K.,” Bell assured him. “My grandfather left me a few bucks. You can keep it or give it to your mother and father.”
“I don’t got no father.”
“Give it to your mother.”
