Sweet Thunder (29 page)

“The plot of this is somewhat harder to follow,” I said faintly.

“Ay? Buck up, Morgan. You've had a good ride with the boys, you're about to have your picture in the paper, people will read whatever folderol you come up with. What are you complaining about?”

Satisfied that he had put things in perspective, Sandison stayed stirrup to stirrup with me as, down the block in front of us, cohort after cohort of defiantly singing miners marched past the lofty headquarters of the Anaconda Copper Mining Company. What a scene that moment of the parade was as a thousand voices lifted in the verse,
“Down there deep we're all one kind, / All one blood, all of one mind / I back you and you back me, / All one song in unity.”
Flags waved, pinwheels spun on sticks children held like lollipops, the sun shone bright on a Butte free of strife for the course of a day. And tomorrow, I knew even without the sage glint in Sandison's eye, the civil war of labor and capital would resume, I would shed my temporary mantle of mounted correspondent and resume editorial battle with the
Post
, the calendar page would be turned, with each of us one day nearer our destiny.

But right now, my role in life was to look as presentable as possible astride a clip-clopping horse while portraiture occurred. Catercorner from the Hennessy Building, the photographer Sammy waited beside his big box camera on a tripod, gesturing urgently to make sure I saw him and was ready. Gruffly saying he didn't want to break the camera, Sandison dropped back out of range. “Don't forget to smile at the birdy, laddie.”

A smile became out of the question, however, as I spotted a number of bruisers strung out along the entire front of the Hennessy Building, positioned against the wall and the display windows with their hands over their private parts in the manner of museum guards and other functionaries who stand around for hours on end. Unquestionably, these had to be the extra goons making good on Anaconda's threat to station guards at all company property, in this case merely for show around the infamous top-floor headquarters. Of a type I would not like to meet in a dark alley, the Anaconda operatives favored gabardine suits; as Hill lore had it, blood was more easily sponged off that than softer fabrics. In the holiday crowd, they stood out like gray wolves.

After my initial alarm, I realized the scene was actually peaceful, no guns on display or evident inclination toward any, and with the long file of miners having marched past without incident, apt to stay that way. Blind Heinie's newsstand was situated right across the sidewalk from where the most prominent of the goons had made their presence known alongside the department store's big windows, and as the sightless old news vendor entertained himself by slapping his thighs in rhythm with the Miners Band's distant rendition of “When You and I Were Young, Maggie,” the nearest gabardined thugs were idly nodding along. Breathing a sigh of relief, I sat up tall as I could in the saddle to be ready for Sammy's camera. The throng lining the sidewalk
ooh
ed and
ahh
ed at the prospect of being in the picture, meanwhile making guesses about my importance. “I bet he's some relative of Buffalo Bill's. Look at that set of whiskers on him.” Trying to live up to all the attention, I patted Blaze's neck, fiddled with the reins, straightened my hat. At least some of Armbrister's hunch was paying off as, goons notwithstanding, the main display window with
HENNESSY'S DEPARTMENT STORE
in large golden lettering made a fetching backdrop, mannequins in cloche hats and flapper dresses indolently holding teacups, the mischievous implication there that since Prohibition had come in, “tea shops” served gin that way. Bobbing in and out from behind his viewfinder, Sammy called across the street to me, “Slow down a little, Morgie. I want to get the shot just as you pass the window.”

Blaze and I never made it past. As if in a strange dream, I still see the individual who looked like a drunken bum, appearing from the far side of Blind Heinie's newsstand, suddenly plunge through the other onlookers and come stumbling out of the crowd to intercept us with something held like a bouquet. But no, too late I saw it was a rolled newspaper he had lit with a match, and with it flaming like a torch, he made a last running lurch and thrust the burning paper under Blaze's tail.

Put yourself in the poor horse's place. Driven wild by its singed hind part, my steed left the earth, and came down frantically swapping ends, bucking and kicking. His gyrations whirled us onto the sidewalk, scattering onlookers and goons alike. My panicky cries of “Whoa!
Whoa!
” fell on deaf horse ears. As if we were in a steeplechase, Blaze's next jump aimed straight for the maidenly tea or gin party, as the case may have been, crashing us through the big display window.

Flappers flew, teacups sailed. Ducking falling glass, I was low as a jockey, clamping to the saddle for all I was worth. Now that we were in the store, in the ladies' wear department to be exact, Blaze seemed not to know where to go next, very much like a baffled shopper. My repeated chorus of
whoa
s finally having some effect, he halted in the aisle of the lingerie section, still snorting and quivering and his ears up like sharp flanges, but no longer determined to buck us both off the face of the earth. Holding the reins taut just in case, I cautiously felt around on myself and could find nothing broken. Remarkably, my hat still was on my head.

“Ride him on out! C'mon, the horse knows the way now!” The commotion in back of me was from Leonard and Claude and Tinsley, their own horses' heads curiously poking through what had been the window. In truth, I didn't know what else to do, and at my urging, Blaze rather delicately picked his way through fallen flappers and other window-dressing and rejoined the street as if hopping a ditch.

The scene outside the store was a shambles I gradually made sense of. What had been the parade was a blue knot of Rough Riders, whooping to one another as they caught up with what had happened. Nearer, leaning more precariously yet in his saddle, Sandison had the culprit at gunpoint, the six-shooter aimed squarely between the man's eyes as he babbled that somebody he had never seen before paid him to play a prank, was all. The squad of goons had backed off to a discreet distance, evidently wanting no part of any trouble they hadn't started. Policemen belatedly elbowed through the crowd. The more familiar blue uniforms of my riding companions surrounded me.

“You all right, pard? Man, we've seen some stunt riding, but that one takes the cake.” Tinsley and Leonard were singing my praises—and Blaze's—while Claude mutely slapped me on the back. More to the point, I realized, was the remark from Sammy hustling past with his camera and tripod. “Got a good one of you flying through that window. Better come on, if we're gonna make deadline.”

Somewhat worse for wear when I showed up at the
Thunder
office on foot—Blaze being restored with high honors to the Wild West Show string—I was fussed over by Armbrister, but meanwhile steered to my typewriter. I did my best to concentrate, to make sense of my notes, to think straight like a good reporter should, but it felt hopeless; my mind was a blur. Thank heavens my fingers seemed to know what they were doing.

Armbrister nearly wore out the floor, pacing as he waited to grab each page. After the last tap of a typewriter key, I fell back in my chair, exhausted, awaiting his verdict. Eyeshade aimed down into my story like the beak of a clucking bird, he mumbled the sentences rapidly to himself until finally swatting me with the sheaf of pages. “Terrific lede. ‘I rode with the James brothers—up to the point where my horse and I went into Hennessy's department store.' Let that bastard Cartwright top that! And the bit about Russians dancing the kickapoo, great stuff. That's what a hunch can do for you, Morgie. Copyboy!”

In no time, the newsroom trembled with the start-up of the press, and we along with the rest of the
Thunder
staff could hardly bear the wait to see what a similar rumble of machinery was producing across town. At last our contraband early copy of the
Post
was rushed in. Armbrister speedily scanned the pages as only a journalist could, then, with an odd expression, he passed the paper to me to do the same.

There was not one word in the
Post
about the Rough Riders.

  19  

“I
STILL CAN'T BELIEVE IT.
It isn't like Cutthroat Cartwright to miss out that way. He ought to have snapped up the Rough Riders story like a wolf licking his chops.”

“Are you going to natter about that all night?” None the worse for wear—unlike me—after the day's horseback adventures, Sandison was heartily tucking into his plateload of scalloped potatoes and veal parmigiana; stiff and sore as I was, cooking had to be done. Also for supper were the
Thunder
and the
Post
spread around on the table, more like a long wharf than ever with just the two of us docked at one end. “I don't know what's the matter with you. You achieve a whatchamacallit, swoop—”

“‘Scoop' is the honored journalistic term.”

“—and you sit around maundering about why the other fellow didn't get it instead of you. Can't stand good luck, ay? Pass the spuds.”

“I am only saying, it's mysterious.”

“Yes, yes, the dog that didn't bark, we've all read our Sherlock Holmes, never mind. It'll become clear or it won't.” With that profundity, he turned back to the
Thunder
front page, with the splashy headline
Bronc Goes on Hennessy Shopping Spree
and accompanying photograph. I still had trouble believing the evident daredevil in the saddle was me. “Not that I mean to criticize,” Sandison pontificated, studying the photo, “but when the pony takes to the air like that, you really should hang on to the saddle horn instead of your hat.”

“I must remember that the next time I mount up on Pegasus.” That retort flew by him, as he returned to the newspaper while forking down his meal, sturdy as a Viking while I ached from the bottom up. It occurred to me that in all the confusion and deadline rush, I had not managed to express my appreciation for his holding the flame-wielding culprit at gunpoint. “Ah, thank you for riding shotgun, so to speak.”

“Hmm?” He barely glanced up. “Seemed like a good idea if you were anywhere in the vicinity.” Favoring his side, he reached for his coffee cup with a wince. “What is it about you? I spent my whole ranch life around people armed to the teeth and never got shot.”

“You would think,” I said wearily, “guns should be as allergic to me as I am to them. Balance of nature, that sort of thing.”

This drew me the observation that I was an optimist, which did not seem to qualify as a compliment in Sandison lexicon. Pushing his practically gleaming plate away and untucking his napkin, he leaned back with a groan and addressed the ceiling. “I know what I'd do, though, if a bunch of idiots was gunning for me and setting fire to my horse and so on.”

You sit up and pay attention when the Earl of Hell offers advice on matters of that sort.

“I'd let it be known something nasty could happen to them as well as to me,” he drawled, lowering his gaze as if sighting in on me. “Someone in particular, to get their attention.”

“Threaten Cartwright, you mean.”

“An eye for an eye. Right there in the Bible, heh.”

I swallowed hard. “Sandy, I don't think I have it in me to even the score that way. Do I look remotely homicidal?” A sigh from across the table answered that. “Cutlass is unfortunately as sharp as that damnable pen name. He would know in a flash I was bluffing.”

“Think straighter than that, man. All sorts of unpleasant things might happen to someone like him that aren't necessarily fatal.” He steepled his fingers, evidently pondering the list. “Butte after dark can be a lively place,” he plucked an example. “A person could accidentally get into an altercation with someone rowdy. A muscular miner or two, for instance.” His gaze lofted off again. “I'm only saying, that could be pointed out to the pertinent person.”

Now I was the one pondering, deeply. The bearded old figure across the table had taken a bullet for me and similarly performed heroically in the horseback episode. He could hardly be blamed for wanting to head off any more such incidents. Even besides him, everyone else near and dear to me—Grace, Jared and Rab, Russian Famine, Hoop and Griff, the embattled
Thunder
staff—was bearing some kind of brunt of Anaconda's machinations. And there was always the ghost of Quin, the question mark hovering around his death.

The more I thought about it, the straighter the thinking became, as Sandison prescribed. Why should Cutthroat Cartwright waltz into town to do Anaconda's dirty work and be left spotless? My verdict did not come easily, but it came.

“I'll put the matter to Jared Evans—he no doubt has some way of getting the message across to Cartwright that he had better watch his step,” I met Sandison's terms with all the determination I could muster. “I take your point, about being on the receiving end of gunshots and equine high jinks and all.
Satis superque
.”

For whatever reason—would I ever understand the outsize bearlike book-loving string-'em-up personality across from me?—the Latin tickled him into a rollicking belly laugh. “‘Enough and more than enough,'” he wheezed. “Well said, my boy. You have a touch when you half try.”

In high good humor now, he poured himself some more coffee and did the same for me, rather a stretch for his usual contribution to our mealtimes. “By the way, figure me into breakfast tomorrow. Bacon and three or four eggs and a stack of hotcakes will do.”

Seeing my surprise at this departure from his routine of breakfasting only with his books, he said defensively, “Don't drop your teeth. A man has to stoke up a bit to get back on the job, doesn't he?”

“Back on the—? You don't mean downtown, surely.”

“Unless it's been moved in my absence, that's where the public library is.”

“But you're still nursing your wound.”

“Am not,” he said crossly. He tried unsuccessfully to sit up straight without wincing. “Bit of a stitch in my side, is all.”

“Minutes ago you were describing that to me as a nearly lethal bullet.”

“You're worse than Dora ever was for nagging,” he grumbled. “Don't you see, I have to get down there and tend to the collection. There's a board of trustees meeting coming up and I need to have things patted into place.”

I saw, all right, as if a veil had been lifted by a corner. He had to make sure the mingled budgetary funds that steadily nourished the finest book collection west of Chicago—and thanks to the judicious use of the paste pot in his office, grew the number of rare volumes with his SSS bookplate in them—did not show any loose ends. “It's time I picked up the reins again,” he said smoothly. “Though I'm sure you did the best you could filling in for me.”

Buried in that was the fact that he would go to any length for his beloved books, even entrusting their care to me. No matter how cantankerously he put it, I was deeply moved. So much so that I could no longer hold the secret in. With the help of seemingly casual sips of coffee, I began: “As long as we are unburdening ourselves about such matters—”

“Is that what we're doing? You could have fooled me.”

“—I have a confession to make. That winning wager I made on the fixed World Series. I, ah, bet your book collection. The inventory I did for the public library, I mean. Butte bookies are used to strange collateral.”

“Of course you did, nitwit. How else were you going to put up a stake like that?”

My coffee nearly went into my beard. I sputtered, “You knew? All along?”

“That's the trouble with you bunkhouse geniuses,” he waved away my soul-baring disclosure. “You think nobody else has a clue about what's going on.”

“You—you're not angry?”

“If I lost my temper every time you did something, I'd be going off like Old Faithful, wouldn't I.” He heaved himself to his feet. “Better get your beauty rest, bronc buster. You don't get to show off in a parade every day. Tomorrow you have to get down to business and give that Chicago scissorbill something to think about. Heh, heh.”

•   •   •

Despite its name, the Purity Cafeteria seemed to me the apt spot to inaugurate playing dirty with Cutthroat Cartwright, in council with Jared and, of course, Rab, amid the hurly-burly of food fetching and wholesale dining where we would not be suspected of anything except runaway appetites. Sandison informed me he would be putting in late hours at the public library for some time to come, so I was furloughed from supper duty at the manse anyway. Perfectly free to follow the edict of the Earldom of Hell, if I had the courage. I was nervous, not to say a novice, at plotting of this sort. Threatening harm to another human being, even an Anaconda hired gun—I had to regard Cutlass as such, just as much as if he were blazing away at me, so to speak, with pistol and torch—did not come naturally to me. A show of brass knuckles when danger stared at me face-to-face had always been as far as I was prepared to go. Now, though, the Highliner's authoritative, “If that's how you want to plan your funeral, it's your choice” rang in me like the opening bell of a boxing match. Wasn't I merely counterpunching, in the effective style of a certain lightweight champion of the world? Casper never shrank from hitting back, and he won nearly every time. Nearly.

Beaming, the plump bow-tied proprietor greeted me as an old customer the moment I entered the Purity. “I hope you brought your appetite. You're in luck, tonight's special is Dublin Gulch filet,” by which he meant corned beef and cabbage. He knew his business in more ways than one, having made peace with the fact that Butte was a union town by posting prominent notices that the enterprise hired only members of the Cooks and Dishwashers Brotherhood, and always welcoming Jared and other union leaders as though he were an honorary member of their number. Accordingly, the cafeteria was where the Hill ate when it went downtown for an evening out, and it took me a minute to spy Jared and Rab in the crowded room, she naturally spotting me first and waving like a student who knew the answer. I could certainly have used one.

I waited until the three of us had been through the serving line and were seated with heaped plates of corned beef and cabbage before broaching the topic of Cutthroat Cartwright. Rab listened sharp-eared as if she were at a keyhole, while Jared chewed on his Irish filet mignon as well as what I was saying in roundabout fashion. When I was done citing Sandison and counterpunching and otherwise trying to put the best appearance on the topic, he asked, poker-faced, “So what is it you and Sam the Strangler want us to do, Professor? Drop Cartwright down a glory hole some dark night?”

“Mr. Morgan!” Thrilled as a schoolgirl but trying to stay proper as a teacher, Rab examined me with fresh eyes. “You really want”—detention school language came to the fore at a time like this—“his block knocked clean off?”

“No, no, I didn't say that,” I protested guiltily. This conversation was veering uncomfortably close to the memory of my brother's long walk off a short pier. “I'm merely suggesting giving Cutthroat a taste of what might happen to him if he keeps trying to live up to his nickname at my expense. It would be good for him.” Not to mention, for me.

Veteran of life-and-death battles far beyond my experience, Jared considered the mission. “Tempting to give him the works, though, isn't it. Twice now the ones he fronts for have tried to put you where you'd be pushing up daisies. That's asking for it.” When Rab, her conspiratorial nature notwithstanding, had to exclaim at that, he winked it away. “Trench talk, is all. You should have heard us sit around in the mud all the time and discuss what we'd like to do to the Kaiser, too.”

Glancing around casually one more time to make sure we were not being overheard, he got down to business. “It sounds to me, Professor, that you're prescribing a dose of muscle for our friend Cartwright.”

“Uhm, within reason. A taste.”

“Tsk,”
he pulled that oh-so-straight face again, “where ever will I find lugs of that kind in Butte? I'll have to look long and hard, don't you think? Especially in Dublin Gulch around Quin's old neighborhood.” He brushed his hands. “It's settled. He wants to play tough, we'll show that conniving—”