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

wolf eyes, from which exploded a fist. The white-damp dream in which he thought he had seen the shackle he never found. He shook his head, wondering how to unscramble tangled memory, and pressed on. “It doesn’t take much shaking to explode fulminate of mercury. How long before the winch jerking the wire set off the detonator?”

“Minutes at most.”

“Which meant the saboteur was in the mine when he attached the explosive.”

“Had to be. Slapped it on with a wad of tar last minute as the train went by.”

“A cool customer, knowing the train might come crashing back at him before he could get out.”

“Mighty cool,” Wish Clarke agreed. “Knowing it was coming gave him a certain leg up to get out of the way. Still, you gotta hand it to him. A cool customer.”

“Who knows his business,” said Wally Kisley.

“All of which supports young Isaac’s contention,” said Wish Clarke. “With the timing of the explosion unpredictable, what union man would perpetrate such an act knowing it could kill his brother miners?”

“It does make you wonder what he’ll think of next time.”

“This calls for a drink,” said Wish Clarke, emptying the bottle into his glass. “Wally’s right, we are onto something.”

“Until Gleason fires us.”

“When Gleason fires us,” said Bell, “I’ll try and talk Mr. Van Dorn into letting us stay on.”

“I wouldn’t count on that.”

The food arrived, and Isaac Bell’s squad began debating what it had been before the cook got ahold of it. Wish Clarke took his glass to the bar. He motioned for Bell to join him.

“If you want us to keep looking for your provocateur, steer clear of the telegraph office.”

“Why?”

“And if you see a boy coming your way with a telegram, run like hell. The Boss can’t order you to stop if he can’t find you.”

Bell grinned. “Thanks, Wish. Good advice.”

“Want some more?”

“What?”

“Next time you shave, why not leave off the region encompassed by your lip and nose?”

“Grow a mustache?”

“You’ll look a mite older with a mustache. Make the opposition take you seriously.”

Bell grinned again proudly. “Those Pinkertons took me seriously. They dropped their guns like they were red-hot.”

“Indeed they did,” said Wish, draining his glass. “Although it could be argued that what they took seriously was a brace of double-barreled twelve-gauges.”

“You always told me, the sure way to win a knife fight is bring a gun. They had so many pistols, I reckoned I needed scatterguns.”

“You reckoned correctly, no doubt about it, Isaac. But speaking for the group, I can assure you that we’re all mightily pleased we didn’t end up with hides full of buckshot, which is always a possibility with so much firepower on the property . . . Mr. Reilly probably feels the same about his piano . . . At any rate, it’s worth considering whether a thick old mustache might obviate the need for brandishing artillery in the first place.”

He signaled the barkeep for another bottle.

“Thirsty today?” asked Bell.

Wish Clarke smiled, amiably. “How observant you are, Isaac. You’d make a good detective.”

“Hey, mister? Mister?”

A boy was whispering from the door.

“Get out of here!” bellowed Reilly. “No kids in my saloon.”

Isaac Bell recognized the doorboy he’d given a coin to. “It’s O.K., Reilly. I’ll look out for him. Come in, son. What’s going on?”

The boy glanced fearfully behind him and slunk inside. He had a cloth sack clutched to his chest. The sight of four Van Dorns glowering at their supper plates stopped him in his tracks. Bell shepherded him to a corner table. “Reilly, would you have a sarsaparilla back there?”

“The only thing I got that ain’t booze is coffee.”

“Do you like coffee?”

The boy nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“O.K., we’ll take coffee. Lots of sugar. Make it two. What’s your name, son?”

“Luke.”

“I’m Isaac, Luke.” He offered his hand and the boy took it politely. “What can I do for you?”

“Are you really a Van Dorn?”

“Yes, I am. So are those gents at the table.”

“All of ’em?”

“Any particular reason you ask, Luke?”

The boy nodded. “I didn’t tell you the truth about my father.”

“You said you don’t have a father.”

“I do have a father.”

“Good. Where is he?”

Luke looked around and whispered, “Hiding from the cops.”

“Why’s that?”

“The union sent more organizers from Pennsylvania.”

Bell nodded, recalling, again, Jim Higgins’s promise that union men would replace him.

“The cops caught one and beat names out of him.” Luke’s lips started trembling, and Bell saw him stare at the table as if imagining his father smashed to his knees in a hail of fists and blackjacks.

“Whose names, Luke? Your father’s?”

“Somebody warned him. He got away.”

“What’s that smell?” called Wally Kisley.

“That’s your supper,” said Mack Fulton.

“Not these buffalo chips. I smell something good. Hey, boy, what’s in that sack?”

Luke clutched his bag tighter.

Bell whispered, “Is that for your dad?”

“Yes, sir,” Luke whispered back. “From my mother.”

“Why’d you come here?”

“I thought if you’re private detectives, maybe . . .”

His voice trailed off.

“Maybe what, Luke?”

“Maybe I could hire you to protect him from the cops. Or at least help him get away?”

“Detectives cost a lot of money,” Bell said gently.

“I don’t have any money—excepting what you gave me. But I’m wondering if maybe I could trade something.”

“Like what?”

“Like things I heard.”

“Things you heard where?”

“Jake’s Saloon, where the cops hang out . . .”

“Does Jake allow boys in his saloon?”

“We climb up from the river, under the cellar, and we can hear ’em yelling upstairs.”

Wally called, “What do you have in that sack, boy?”

“Fatback and biscuits and baked taters, sir.”

The Van Dorns looked at their plates, then at Luke’s sack.

“I have an idea,” said Wally Kisley.

“No,” said Isaac Bell. “Luke’s got a job to do, delivering supper. And we’re going to help him.”

Truculent expressions on the faces of his men told Bell that he had a rebellion on his hands if he didn’t think quick. “Gents: Wally and Mack and Archie are going to the company store to buy fatback and flour and lard and coffee and sugar and milk and butter and potatoes, which they will carry to Luke’s mother and pay her five dollars to rustle up a couple of days’ worth of fatback,