Port Hazard (2 page)

Small men often
have a way of filling a room, mainly out of spite. Harlan Blackthorne obliterated rooms; not by compensation or by denying his lack of stature, but by sheer force of the conviction that most of the men he met were unnecessarily large. Those of normal height felt unwieldy in his orbit, while tall men were made to consider themselves freaks. He was a dandy who had his suits cut too youthfully for him, and there was a lot of speculation among the deputy marshals, with considerable money to back it up, that he dyed his glossy sable hair and beard. Strangers who didn't know who he was smiled behind their hands when he strutted into a room. Two minutes into conversation with him, the smiles withered and blew away. He had more enemies in Washington than Jefferson Davis and held absolute authority over a region as large as Middle Europe.

An empty glass and a pitcher of water awaited him on the desk. Without ceremony, he filled the glass from the pitcher, removed his false teeth, and submerged them in the glass, where they grinned at Spilsbury and me throughout the interview. He only wore them behind the bench, not that either his speech or his dignity suffered in their absence. If anything, without them his rare smile gave him the tight-lipped, diabolic look of a Satanic Mona Lisa.

“The schism that exists between the law-abiding new Confederates and their violent brethren is their problem, not ours,” he continued, not bothering to greet either of us. “In fact, it offers the rest of us our first opportunity to destroy the organization, or at the very least, render it superfluous. In five years it will pose no more threat to these United States than the Knights of Columbus.”

Whenever the judge made reference to “these United States,” it sounded as if he had them right there in his watch pocket. He'd fought for them in Mexico, served their military as an advisor during the Civil War, losing his teeth in battle and his digestion in politics, and seemed to consider these sacrifices some kind of down payment on proprietorship. He had opposed Southern Reconstruction in favor of punishment, and behaved in general toward the eleven former seceding states as if they'd deserted him personally. Alarmed, the moderates in his party had conspired to arrange his appointment to a territorial post as far from Capitol Hill as was available. There he continued to make his opinions known by sentencing former rebels who were convicted in his court far more severely than those who had never declared war upon the Union. Of those who appealed, only two got as far as the Supreme Court, which had reversed one sentence and upheld the other by a narrow margin. The common belief in Montana, that there was no appeal between Blackthorne and Jehovah, remained unshaken.

“What makes me the one to insert the wedge?” I asked. “I'm just a target, and a cheap one at that. Twenty dollars and train fare.”

Blackthorne snapped his fingers at Spilsbury, who leaned forward and passed the double eagle across the desk. The Judge glanced at it and smacked it down on his blotter as if he'd flipped it. “This is a symbol, not remuneration. It pleases them to commission murder for the Confederacy with the token of a Yankee goldpiece. Mimms offered his services gratis.”

Now I was being discounted. The longer I stayed in that room, the less my life was worth. “How did I come to be on their list to begin with? It's been almost twenty years since I took my licks for the Union.”

Spilsbury spoke for the first time since Blackthorne had entered.

“You're rather a notorious character. Evidently there are scores of schoolboys who ought to be reading Matthew Arnold who are instead persuaded by the example of a number of ten-cent shockers that you roped and skinned the elephant. That's a tempting mark for a cause looking for space in the public columns.”

“I didn't write the dime novels. I barely met the man who writes them before I ran him out of Helena. There isn't a word of truth in any of them.”

“Whoever said ‘a lie cannot live' never saw one dressed in yellow pasteboard with a lurid title,” the marshal said. “These fellows are not known for their discernment.”

“Gentlemen, you're both wrong, as well as in contempt for speaking out of turn. The court is in recess, not adjournment. It goes where I go.” Having swung this gavel, the judge favored me with his Luciferian smirk. “You are exalted, Deputy. Marshal Spilsbury doesn't feel called upon often to pay you a compliment. However, he overestimates your importance. These are not unruly schoolchildren, hungering for adult attention. They never strike without reason.

“It's true you're the most infamous officer of this court,” he said. “However, it's my court, and your extermination was intended as a message for me. My opinions of this treasonous trash are widely known. If they can kill my most ferocious dog, the reasoning follows that they can kill me. It's first-form Machiavelli at best, but rather impressive for a band of inbred plug-chewers and pickle-stickers.”

I found this intelligence more of an irritation than a testimonial. In one choice phrase I'd gone from dime-novel hero to slaughterhouse mutt. What made it more irritating still was the conviction that he was probably right. For all their prominence in the telegraph columns and bookstalls, gun men were pawns, shuttled about by judges, senators, and owners of railroads. Those were the only three groups whose members were difficult to replace.

I said, “How am I supposed to pull off this parting of the Red Sea? I'm not even first form.”

“That's a point in your favor. Disregarding Emancipation, the principal result of four years of war was to scatter spies across the continent. Southern sympathizers are no longer to be found solely in the South. You'll find them piloting a ferry in Kansas City, bookkeeping in Philadelphia, pumping a blacksmith's forge in Texas. They're in Congress and medicine and law enforcement. An army dispatched to destroy the Sons of the Confederacy would be observed and reported upon throughout its march. By the time it reached the enemy stronghold, the enemy would have vanished, slithered down its network of holes, to reassemble elsewhere later and force us to commence gathering intelligence all over again. One man, or a small group, might slip past these Copperheads unnoticed, or if noticed, might be dismissed as no threat. How you manage the parting itself is your affair. Your experience in sowing discord in this court may show you the way.”

“Where do I start? San Francisco's a big place.”

Blackthorne directed his gaze to the marshal, who produced a memorandum book from the same pocket that contained the wanted circular on Tobias Mimms. He forked a pair of spectacles with egg-shaped lenses onto the thick bridge of his nose. He hadn't needed glasses to read his Bible, but then he knew most of its passages by heart.

“‘Daniel Webster Wheelock,'” he read. “Have you ever heard this name?”

“Two thirds of it,” I said.

“It seems his parents had lofty hopes for him in the profession of law. If so, their disappointment was abysmal. Half of every penny that vanishes into the bagnios and deadfalls on the San Francisco waterfront finds its home in Wheelock's purse. In return, he keeps the peace, such as it is. Those who breach it either pass from sight or end up snagging some fisherman's net in the harbor. There is a name for such fellows.”

“Back East, they're called captains of industry.”

He went on reading as if I hadn't spoken. “He's sixty, a club-foot, with a classical education obtained at Harvard University; a Boston native with an ancestral connection to the first pilgrims. Rather a curious background for a Tammany hack. However, he's the man to see if you want to do any sort of business in Barbary, legitimate or otherwise.”

“Am I to call him out or shoot him from ambush?”

“Neither, if you can avoid it,” put in Blackthorne. “Killing Wheelock would only stir up the hive and scatter its contents further. In any case, there's no evidence he's connected with the Copperheads. They're under his protection, along with every other active citizen out there, lest the top blow off and Washington declare martial law to contain the damage. Wheelock has the most to lose in that situation. As a peacemaker, he's more conscientious than the army and the Church of Rome. You need to befriend him if you're to find out who's behind the Sons.”

“How I do that is my affair, too, I suppose.”

“The marshal's notebook will provide pointers. He's made rather a study of The Honorable D. W. Wheelock.”

“‘Honorable'?”

“He's a city alderman, as well as a captain in the fire brigade,” Spilsbury said, thumbing through his pages. “He also holds—”

The Judge's teeth bumped against the side of the water glass, cutting him off. Blackthorne was fishing them out. “I've heard all this before. At present, I have a murderer to try. The marshal can give you everything you need.” He worried the teeth into place and stood. “Don't forget, Murdock, you're still a target. Take along a deputy to stand at your back.”

“I'll take Staderman.”

“Staderman's laid up with a broken pelvis. That big roan of his put its foot wrong last week and rolled over on him. He should have shot the clumsy beast years ago. He has a soft spot where horses are concerned.”

“His only fault.”

“I thought you hated each other.”

“I didn't choose him for company. What about Partridge?”

“He's testifying next week. Kearney's available.”

“Kearney can't hit Montana with a shotgun.”

“That's the lot, Deputy. Thirty-six men, one hundred forty-six thousand square miles. If you know a civilian you can trust, whom you can persuade to risk his life for posse pay, have at it.”

“I can think of one,” I said. “One I think I can trust. The rest of it may take some work.”

The difficult part
about tracing Edward Anderson Beecher was he worked for the railroad. The easy part was he worked for the railroad.

A fellow who earns his living carrying luggage, making up berths, and delivering messages to passengers aboard the Northern Pacific could make his home in Portland or St. Paul, Boise or Salt Lake City. All I had was a name and description, and an area of search as big as the Indian Ocean. All I needed was the name.

Chicago knew where every piece of rolling stock was sided and where every employee was keeping himself. When I told Judge Blackthorne who I wanted to stand behind me on the trip to San Francisco, he wired the name and a one-sentence request East and got a reply within six hours. The porter with the friendly saber scar was working a ceremonial excursion organized to commemorate the completion of the rairoad line and was expected in Gold Creek Saturday, along with a herd of generals, bankers, congressmen, newspaper reporters, and Ulysses S. Grant, former president of the United States.

There were four trains in the excursion, pausing at every whistle-stop for speeches, libations, and gifts of wildflowers tied with ribbon and delivered by pretty little girls in white dresses to dyspeptic old goats in stiff collars. Three had already passed through Helena. I was told I'd missed several displays of fine elocution and the spectacle of a senator's fat secretary being hauled aboard a rolling caboose by his britches after he slept through the departing whistle with one of the young creatures at Chicago Joe's. Beecher, according to the wire, had boarded the first train west of town. He must have turned back from Garrison just ahead of me to accept the assignment. The fourth and last train was due in one hour and I was expected to be on it.

I got to the station with my valise just as the locomotive shrieked to a leaky stop, hung all over with flags and garlands and gents in beetle hats leaning out the windows, firing pistols at the clouds and waving at the throngs and the firehouse band, for whom the enchantment of “O, Susanna” sounded as if it had begun to wear thin. The first team, including Grant and the railroad brass and Washington's best speechmakers, had been aboard the first train, and by the time it came to stock this one, all that was left were the wardheelers and second cousins; people not considered important enough to ride up front but too dangerous to leave behind. I swung aboard a day coach against the stream of alighting passengers, found a seat near the back, and let down the window to thin out the atmosphere of twice-smoked cigars and Old Gideon.

In due course, the electioneering blathered to a finish, reinforcements were brought aboard in the form of crates of champagne and the odd giggling girl in bright satin. The train lurched ahead, pulling away from the tinny strains of “Garryowen,” and buried the end of Custer's dirge under the razz of its whistle. An old campaigner in a sour-smelling suit with tobacco juice in his beard went to sleep with his head on my shoulder. I wasn't sure whether he was too important to shoot, and by the time we rolled into Butte, my left arm was numb. We overnighted there, for no good reason except to let the excursionists nurse their headaches and to sample some more of the local fauna. All the hotel rooms were taken, so I got back on board and gave a porter a dollar to make up a berth and wake me an hour before the train was scheduled to embark. He did that, and for another dollar brought me biscuits and gravy from the Silver Bow Club, leaving the tray outside the water closet as I was shaving. I asked him if he knew Beecher and where I might find him in Gold Creek.

He frowned. He was a handsome lad of eighteen or so, with aristocratic features and skin as black as a stove. “I can't say as I've heard the name, sir, but a lot of the coloreds keep theirselves at Danny Moon's Emporium on the Benetsee.”

“Do they serve white men?”

“I wouldn't know, sir. I keep temperance myself.”

“How long before the yahoos start boarding?”

He looked at his watch. The entire transcontinental system would fly to pieces without its pocket winders. “Fifteen minutes, if we're leaving on time. We're sure to hear from Mr. Hill if we don't.”

I gave him another dollar. “Would an abstemious gentleman such as yourself object to learning whether there's a quart of good whiskey left in town and bringing it to me?”

He took off his cap, poked the coin under the sweatband next to the others, and put the cap back on. “Mr. Drummond at the Silver Bow Club keeps some Hermitage in stock for patrons of good character.”

I sighed and wiped off the last of the shaving soap. “What do you charge for a reference?”

The porter stiffened. The cap came off and he fished the silver dollars out of the band and held them out. “I ain't a grafter. You'll find plenty of them in town.”

“Sorry, friend. Most people I meet, when they find out I work for Washington, start thinking they can get a little of their own back. It destroys your faith in good fellowship. I'll get the bottle myself.”

After a moment he returned the coins to his cap and his cap to his head. “I'll get it, sir. These bankers and politicians will try your patience. One of them slapped me when I wouldn't fetch him a woman.”

“Did you slap him back?”

“Mr. Hill wouldn't approve of that. The gentleman wouldn't approve of what he ate for supper that night, either.” He touched his cap and went off on his quest.

 

Gold Creek was in a fever. It had never lived up to its name, the nuggets coughed up by Benetsee Creek never having compared to the strikes in Bannack, Alder Gulch, and Last Chance, and for twenty years had stood only on the loose foundation of the hopes of those residents who had gambled everything on their claims and had nowhere else to go and nothing to get them there if they had. The coming of the Northern Pacific had rekindled some of that early optimism. Fresh clapboard, glistening with new paint, had been nailed up over the log walls of the assayer's office and the general merchandise, and the horse apples swept out of sight for the first time in a decade. The street, in fact, was faintly greenish, paved as it was with the uncollected droppings of a generation. The population was five hundred, but only if you counted the flies.

Today the transient numbers were considerably higher. People had come from all around to get drunk and slap the back of the victor of Appomattox, to round up votes, fleece the sheep at the gaming tables, and lift the occasional poke in the press of flesh. There wasn't a room to be had in any of the hotels, as I found out when I went looking for a roof. Most of the private homes had temporary boarders, and tents had sprung up like mushrooms all over the foothills. The whole place looked like the night before Gettysburg.

Stepping down from the train I squeezed past a gang of Eastern Republicans handing out leaflets opposing protective tariffs and shoved aside a rodent in a striped jersey who tried to wrestle my valise out of my hand. This put me off balance, and I jostled a portly, gray-bearded gent in a suit that smelled of mothballs. I put out a hand to steady us both and muttered an apology. Someone barked at me and I turned my head that way just in time to be blinded when a heap of magnesium powder went up in a white flame. I had my Deane-Adams in my hand before I realized my photograph had been taken. Years later an acquaintance asked me how I'd come to know General Grant, and when I said we never met, he told me he'd seen a picture of me in a book with my hand on the shoulder of the eighteenth president of the United States. That made me feel bad, because if I'd known I was that close I'd have told him it was my privilege to have fought with Rosecrans at Murfreesboro. I never got another chance. Grant died two years later, penniless, a victim of his business associations.

The third hotel I tried was full up like the others, but the clerk agreed to let me leave my valise there for a consideration. My expense book threatened to create a shortage of dollar coins in Denver. I asked where I might find Danny Moon's Emporium. The clerk, a horse-faced Scandinavian, too young for his drinker's rosy nose, looked me up and down from hat to heels, then mumbled something about following the creek south until it got dark. It wasn't noon yet, but I took his meaning.

It was built of logs without benefit of clapboard, with a long front porch supported on more logs, like a raft. Boards suspended from the roof with letters burned into them advertised whiskey, lunch, and cold beer. I stopped to let a bull-necked, bald-headed Negro in dungarees and a wool flannel shirt soaked through with sweat carry a streaming bucket of beer bottles up the front steps from the creek, then followed him inside, moving aside an oilcloth flap that covered the doorway. That old familiar mulch of tobacco, burned and chewed, sour mash, stale beer, and staler bodies greeted me in the darkened interior. I let my eyes adjust to the pewtery light struggling in through panes thick with grime, then made my way to the bar, towing a path of silence through the whirr of conversation. Mine was the only white face in the establishment, and I had on the only white shirt. My entrance had interrupted a game of dominoes atop a table made from a packing crate and an argument at the bar, which was made from a door laid across a pair of whiskey barrels.

The bartender turned out to be the man I'd seen carrying in beer from the creek. He paused in the midst of unstopping one of the bottles to look at me from under a brow like a rock outcrop. I groped a nickel out of my pocket and laid it on a door panel. “I'll have one of those beers, if they're not all spoken for.”

A gray tongue like a toadbelly came out and slid the length of the bartender's lower lip. “You lost, mister. You gots to follow the creek north till it gets light.”

That seemed to be the joke of the town. I said, “It's a long dry walk.”

The customer to my right reached over and pinched the sleeve of my travel coat between thumb and forefinger. He had on overalls with a big safety pin keeping one strap in place over a pair of red flannels gone mostly gray. “That silk?” he asked.

“Not for thirty a month and four cents a mile. What about that beer?” I was still looking at the bartender.

His eyes moved from side to side, couldn't find a quorum. He slammed a thick glass onto the bar and filled it from the bottle, not bothering to tilt the glass to cut the clouds. I thanked him and took a drink. It was homemade stuff, bitter, with hops floating in it, but I felt the cold of it drying the sweat on the back of my neck. I asked the bartender how he kept people from stealing the bottles out of the creek.

“Water moccasins.”

“I didn't think we had water moccasins in Montana.”

“Benetsee's got everything in it. Except gold.” He opened a mouth with no teeth in it and let out air in a death rattle of a laugh.

“Maybe you just spread the story around to protect your beer.”

The mouth clapped shut, then opened a quarter-inch. “Maybe I is a liar in your eyes.”

“No, sir. Just a good businessman.”

A full little silence followed, like a fire gulping air. A drop of sweat wandered down my spine, stinging like molten lead. I had five cartridges in my revolver and thirty-two pairs of eyes on me, if the dusty mirror strung from a nail behind the bar wasn't missing anyone in the shadows. Then someone laughed, a shrill, bubbling cackle, with no irony in it. A hand smacked the bar, hard enough to create a tidal wave in my glass.

“He's snared you, Danny.” This was a voice I recognized. “I'm so scared of snakes in general I never once thought you was bluffing about them water moccasins. What you need now's a wolf trap. Man's got to be thirstier'n Christ on the cross to trade his fingers for a sip of that piss you stir up in back.”

Another silence, shorter than the first. Then someone else laughed. That started a rockslide. The room shook with guffaws. I extracted a fistful of coins from my pocket and laid them on the bar in a heap.

“Pour each of these fellows a beer,” I said. “If there's anything left, you can put it toward that wolf trap.”

Danny joined the others this time, showing his pink gums. “I'm thinking bear. You don't know these boys when they's parched.” He scooped the coins into a box with Pallas Athena on the lid and started pouring.

I picked up my glass and moved to the end of the bar, where a gap had opened in the rush to take advantage of my generosity. Edward Anderson Beecher leaned there on his forearms with one hand wrapped around his glass, a cigarette building a long ash between the first two fingers. He had on his porter's outfit, the cap tilted forward and touching the bridge of his nose—a violation of the Northern Pacific uniform code. The scar on his cheek looked like a curl of packing cord caught in fresh tar. He was smiling into his beer, his lips pressed tight.

I said, “Prefer to buy your own?”

“Don't take it as an insult. Two beers and I'm a bad risk. If it gets back to Mr. J. J. Hill I even showed up in a place like this in my working clothes, I'll be back shoveling horseshit.”

“You railroad men all talk about Hill like you've met face to face.”

“Could have. One white man in a beard looks pretty much like all the rest.”

I drank, spat out a hop. I hoped it was a hop. “Thanks for the shove. That could have gone another way.”

“I come here to drink, not see my friends kilt. I seen how handy you are with that iron.”

“You make friends quick. Or is Gold Creek home?”

He dragged in smoke, the ash quivering but not falling, blew twin gray streams out his nostrils. Shook his head. “I know all the places at all the stops, is all. Spokane's home. I ain't been lately. Last time I was I had a wife.”

There was nothing there for me. At forty-two, I was one of the oldest deputies in Blackthorne's string, but the younger ones had given up trying to tell me about their dogs and women. Sooner or later, all confidences were regretted; resentment set in, and always when you needed the disgruntled party to deal you out of a bad hand.