The Striker by Clive Cussler (ebook reader web TXT) 📕

far from his post at the switch to derail the runaway. When they arrested him, he said it was because they learned he was a union organizer and trumped up the charges to sideline him.”

“I’m not surprised. Nor am I surprised my brother couldn’t see their scheme. As I say, he’s a dreamer.”

The barkeep burst into the office with panic in his eyes. “You have to leave. I’m shutting down early. All hell’s busting loose.”

Outside, the sun had slid behind the mountain, and night was closing in on the hollow. A cold wind blew down from the higher elevations. Damp air and tendrils of fog rose from the river. The courthouse was deep in shadow.

The crowd around it had tripled in size. Where, earlier, people had whispered, now they were calling out loud, and some were shouting. Bell saw mothers dragging children away, as if they had gauged the mood and found it dangerous. Men came running up Main Street, carrying baseball bats and pick handles.

“What are they shouting?” asked Mary, though surely she heard but could not believe.

“Murderer!” said Bell. “Stay here. Let me see what I can do.”

•   •   •

HENRY CLAY drifted through the crowd on a route seemingly aimless. He was a broad-shouldered man of thirty-five who moved with effortless grace. Though not markedly tall, he was powerfully built, an asset that he concealed with expensive tailoring when in his Wall Street office in New York City and with a loosely fitted coat and overalls when pretending to be a coal miner. The red bandanna tied at his throat did not necessarily shout from the rooftops that he was a union man, but it could be construed as a sign of where he stood in the conflict between the working class and the capitalist class. The slouch hat that shadowed his face kept the fading daylight from reflecting the golden yellow hue of his amber eyes.

Face-to-face for an instant with a grim-visaged miner, Henry Clay muttered, “The son of a bitch might as well have taken up a pistol and shot those boys.” As he moved along, the miner shouted “Murderer!” at the jail, where the Gleason police were looking nervous.

Clay whispered as he passed another man, “Those poor boys, I just can’t bear thinking on them.”

“Murderer!” erupted behind him. It was like pushing an electric doorbell. “Poor boys”—“Murderer!”

Clay stopped in front of two men who were looking dubious. Smart ones, the sort who would be tempted to take a flier on the union. “Bunch of fellers told me Higgins is a company spy.”

“The hell you say. Who are you? What’s your name?”

“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.

“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.

“I will shoot the first man who steps near.”

Those in the front row, close enough to see his eyes, believed him.

They hesitated and started to fall back.

•   •   •

JOE, you self-righteous son of a bitch! Henry Clay shouted in the confines of his mind, taunting Joseph Van Dorn as if the great detective was glaring across his desk. Or down a gunsight. Goodness fetches goodness. Fools fetch fools.

He reached inside his voluminous coat.

Fool or not, young Bell cut a brave figure. The mob, teetering moments before on the cusp of violence, had been sidetracked by his commanding voice. Clay had fired up the back ranks again. But now the young detective had a gun in his hand and it was time to stop Bell before he ruined everything.

The marksman’s weapon in Clay’s shoulder holster was a top-notch Colt Bisley .45 single-action