Chapter Twenty-Two
Morgan caught a ride on a flatcar load of workers headed out to the bridge site. The mixed weather had turned to pure blowing sleet, but that didn't stop the work. He hunched alongside the other men, nobody saying anything and keeping their chins tucked into their collars against the cold. Hope McDaniels, the engineer, was already on the job, standing on the north bank in front of his bridge. When he saw Morgan climb off the flatcar he pointed proudly at his almost completed trestle rising above the river waters.
"Give me five more days, and you'll see the first engine roll across her," McDaniels said.
Morgan eyed the sky, squinting against the sleet. "Better hope the river doesn't get up again."
The engineer frowned at the same sky. "This weather here, I've never seen anything like it since I left Scotland. One day it's hot and the next day it's freezing. Yesterday I was counting the new buds on the trees and admiring a bit of green here and there, and now I'm standing in this."
Morgan plucked a bit of sleet from his mustache. "I'm ready for this weather to break, myself."
"You didn't come all the way down here to talk to me about the weather."
"I'm looking for a man named Tubbs. I understand he was the grading foreman for a while."
"He was until this river held us up."
"How come he wasn't put on your bridge crew? I would think the railroad would want to keep around a man they thought enough of to make a foreman."
"Not on my crew. I can tell you never met Tubbs. A most disagreeable man. I never did see what Mr. Duvall saw in him. An odd pair if you ask me."
"I want to question him about a girl that was beaten."
"I heard about that. Tubbs was hanging around camp the last time I saw him, and keeping himself in pocket money by running errands and doing odd jobs for Mr. Duvall."
"He seems to have left camp since then."
"Well, if he did, he's come back. I saw him early this morning riding his horse along the river."
Morgan walked the tracks back to camp. It was a cold walk, and the soldiers in the gun pit nodded at Morgan begrudgingly as he passed by them and went into the office, no doubt wishing it were them going inside to a hot stove. The six Pinkertons lounging in the front room said nothing to him.
Duvall was at his desk in the back room and he looked up from his paperwork at the sound of Morgan's boots on the floor, first at Morgan, and then through the open door into the front room at the Pinkertons glaring at Morgan's back. "You didn't tell me what you did to Sid."
"You didn't ask," Morgan said.
"That man was in my employ."
"That man was a troublemaker."
"You pushed him off a going train."
"I pushed him gently, if that helps you."
Duvall seemed about to explode, but took a deep breath and changed the subject. "McDaniels tells me that one of his best workers was injured in a knife fight last night."
"That's partially true," Morgan replied.
"What have you done about that?"
"He was the one that pulled the knife. He and one of the Italians got too much whiskey in them and hooked up pretty good, but I broke them up and sent them to their tents. Nobody got cut."
"Well, Hope's man didn't make it to work this morning."
"He was probably too hung over to work."
"I expect you to get this camp under control. You're spread too thin. I want you to take some of the Pinkertons on patrol tonight."
"If that's the way you want to play it."
Duvall was shocked that Morgan agreed so easily, but he quickly recovered. "I'm glad you've changed your mind about some help, and I trust you won't throw any more of them off a train."
Morgan returned to the front room. He studied the Pinkertons around him, and then pointed out four of them. "Come with me."
"We work for the superintendent." The one that spoke was a broad man in a beaver coat and a chin like the end of a two-by-four. A wool cap was cocked over at a rakish angle on his square head, the cocky set of it matching the man's demeanor. His Dublin accent was thick and hard to understand.
"You work for Chief Clyde now," Duvall called through the doorway.
"Maybe he's yer man, but this poxy maggot gobsmacked Sid and threw him off the train, and Sid was me sham," the Irish Pinkerton said. "Me and my blokes here are more 'n a bit langered about that bit o' business, and would give him a puck or two upside the noggin and put the toes of our Wellies to his rib bones before we would work for him."
Morgan noticed the scars on the man's eyebrows and cheekbones, and the crooked knot of a nose that had been broken more than once. He probably wasn't long off a ship from the old country. New York, Boston, and many other ports on the eastern seaboard were full of such men. The most brutal of them found jobs working as strong arms for the bosses and crooks who ran one racket or another and needed men who weren't afraid to hurt people. He was two inches shorter than Morgan, but a good twenty pounds heavier. And he carried himself with the confidence of a man that had won many a fight.
Dixie came through the door, ducking in out of the wind and closing it quickly behind him. He took quick measure of the room and the way the Pinkertons were looking at Morgan and leaned back against the front wall with his Spencer tucked under one armpit and resting his forearm.
"Trouble, Chief?"
Morgan looked at Dixie, and then at the Pinkerton standing before him. "No trouble."
The Pinkerton smiled, revealing a missing front tooth. "Bend your stalk up your own arse and go feck yourself."
"Are you the toughest?" Morgan asked quietly.
The Pinkerton cocked his head. "Eh?"
"I asked are you the toughest one of these men. I'm assuming that you are."
The Irishman made a charge at Morgan, but Morgan took up the cast-iron firewood poker from the ash bucket beside the potbellied stove beside him. He swung the poker in what appeared an almost negligent backhand stroke, and the end of it clipped the Irishman on the point of the chin and knocked him staggering. A curse of rage and pain gusted from the Irishman's lungs, but Morgan was already bringing the heavy poker down like a tomahawk for a second lick. The improvised weapon met the crown of the Pinkerton's skull, and he dropped in a heap at Morgan's feet.
Morgan made a few air strokes and then a flashy, quick riposte with the poker as if it were a sword and then brought it to his chest in some kind of formal salute. He gave Dixie a quick glance and shrug of his shoulders. "Fencing Club, Yale class of '52."
"Oh, you dashing, manly devil," Dixie said in his most bland and stuffy imitation of an affluent, New England gentleman.
Morgan set the improvised weapon back in the ash bucket. "Anybody else a friend of Sid's?"
Apparently, none of the other Pinkertons had been fond of Sid, or if they were, nobody was going to say it. Instead, they made a show of watching the trickle of blood oozing out of their fallen comrade's head and leaking onto the floor to mix with the drool running out of one corner of his slack mouth.
"My God," Duvall said from his office. "You, sir, are out of control. Simply because you represent the law does not make you above the law."
Morgan pointed at the other Pinkertons lining the wall. "Any man of you that can't see fit to work for me can draw his pay right now. I don't think much of your damned agency, but Dixie and I could use some help."
The other Pinkertons continued to stare at the Irishman on the floor.
"All right, now that that's settled, let's be about our business." Morgan beckoned the other three men he had originally picked. "The rest of you haul this man over to Doc Chillingsworth and tell him that he bumped his head. Then you get back here on guard."
Three of the Pinkertons followed Morgan and Dixie out of the office, while those remaining tried to get the fallen Irishman to his feet. Once outside, Morgan crossed the head of the street to the company store and led them inside to the hardware section at the back end of the tent. He pointed at a barrel containing axe, sledge, and pick handles.
"Get one." Morgan drew out a pick handle, and stood patting the pale white hardwood stick in one palm while he watched each of the men in turn choose their own clubs. "You men know the rules, and if you don't, make them up as best you can or come find me. The number of people in camp has doubled in the last two days, and we know that most of them have nothing to do with the railroad. Some of them are just innocent men passing through or looking for work. The rest of them? Well, there's our trouble."
The men around Morgan nodded grimly.
"We go easy where we can. Take them quietly if they'll let you, but if any man bucks the law he gets Old Hickory upside his head. You understand that? No guns unless you have to. Know the difference between a harmless drunk and a man looking for trouble. Be courteous but firm."
All three of the Pinkertons mumbled their understanding.
"Good. I want two of you to take this side of the street with Dixie. You there, I'll take you with me and work the Bullhorn's side of the street. Any questions?"
There were none. Morgan went out of the tent, saying nothing to the storekeeper chasing after them wanting payment for the handles the men had taken. Two of the Pinkertons stopped to face the storekeeper.
"Police business," one of them said. "Chief Clyde's orders."
The storekeeper appeared very upset at his goods being taken, but he wasn't dumb, nor was he foolishly brave. He quickly decided that he had business elsewhere in the store. Outside, Dixie started a slow walk down that side of the street with his force, while Morgan crossed to the far side trailed by the single Pinkerton he had chosen. People were quick to take notice of the clubs the men were carrying, and gave them wider berth and right-of-way than usual as they passed. But Morgan smiled at them as if nothing was out of the normal.
The Bullhorn wasn't open for business yet, but Morgan went inside anyway. One of Tuck's bouncers sat on a stool right inside the door, and was the only one in the tent other than a swamper cleaning up the mess from the night before. Morgan was about to turn and leave when Bill Tuck came in through the back door carrying two wooden cases of beer bottles on one shoulder. The saloonkeeper set the load down with ease on the end of the bar while he took stock of the clubs Morgan and the Pinkerton were carrying.
Tuck wiped his hands with a bar towel and pointed at the pick handle in Morgan's hand. "What's that for?"
"Keeping the peace," Morgan said.