Chase (15 page)

A
bby said, “Oh Phin, no!” At the same moment her grandmother said, “Nonsense! You stay right here!”

Brinkley said, “Isn't this boy a murderer?”

“No, the man you passed is the murderer,” Abby said. “Neither of you can go.”

“I have to,” Phin said. “He can't come here.”

“He's one man. There are”—she looked around the room—“six of us.”

Phin looked, too, at Brinkley's kind, bewildered face, Grandma Collins, Alma and Fraser looking deep into each other's eyes. Abby herself. Which of them would he risk?

He crossed to Fraser's blankets and crouched there. Slowly Fraser's eyes shifted to look at him.

“Plume's coming,” Phin said. “I'm going down to meet him.”

The old keenness sharpened Fraser's gaze. “Hide,” he whispered. “I'll say I lost you.”

“If he doesn't believe that—” Phin couldn't continue, couldn't put into words the pictures in his mind.

Fraser glanced at the woman bending over him, and his face changed. He lifted the hand on his uninjured side, flexing it oddly—looking for his derringer, Phin thought. With an angry grimace he let the hand fall.

“You have a plan, lad?”

“Not much of one,” Phin said. His lips were numb. “Give him back his money—”

Fraser shook his head. “That's not what he wants.”

Phin felt the bottom drop out of his stomach. The paper. Of course, the paper.

Abby came with the bowl of apples and fell to her knees beside her mother. Her face was white and knobby and fierce, strained to silence. Alma, as if all else was a dream, dipped her hands into the brown apple soup and spread it on Fraser's wound. His breath whistled. He looked at her again, holding her eyes like a lifeline.

But after a moment he whispered, “Gun. In my bags.”

Phin shrugged helplessly. “Can't shoot.”

“Then…why are you going? Throw yourself away?”

“I wonder that myself,” Abby said in a choked voice.

I don't want to be killed in front of you.
Phin couldn't say that. He didn't want to be killed at all, but to have Abby see it…He looked away from her, and caught Fraser watching him.

“Take the horse,” Fraser said. “Draw him off. When you've lost him…come back.”

“Your prisoner?” Phin managed.

“My
horse
,” Fraser said. He reached up and they gripped hands. Fraser's was dry and warm and firmer than Phin had expected, more full of life. He gave Phin a strong look, a short, sharp nod. “You'll do fine, lad. See you in a bit.”

Phin got up quickly, wondering if the man believed that. Fraser's long coat hung on a peg by the door. Phin took it down, releasing a dark reek of old blood. The left side lapel and shoulder were stiff with it. He shrugged into the garment, put on the hat. It fit, almost too tightly. Behind him Brinkley said, “He's just a boy. Shouldn't I—”

Phin stepped out the door and closed it on the argument. It opened immediately, and he knew Abby had followed. “Why did you take his coat?” she asked.

“Cold,” Phin said. He couldn't tell her the real reason.

“I'll bring the mare in,” she said in a tight voice.

Phin went with her to the barn, and took the bridle from its peg. He buckled the bit in and tied rope to the rings to make reins.

Outside he heard oats rattle in a wooden measure, a distant nicker, the sound of hooves. He stepped out the door as the horses came around the corner.

They made a beautiful pair; the mare deep-bodied, long and capable, marred only by her halting step, the stallion all spring and silk and velvet. Phin looped the reins around his neck. “Ho.”

The stallion lowered his head into the folds of Fraser's coat. Three puffs of breath; then he looked past Phin at the house. In the delicate skin above the nostril, Phin saw again that strange purling of—what? Blood? Air? Spirit?

The horse turned his head toward the road. He gazed, or stretched with another sense toward something that commanded his attention.

Hurry, then. Phin reached up with the bridle. The stallion seemed to bow slightly, allowing him to put it on while still watching the road. Abby brought the saddle. Phin settled it and cinched it on.

“We're not helpless,” Abby said suddenly. “We could do something.”

“We're not like him,” Phin said. That was the only way; wait in ambush, shoot Plume down as he drove into the yard. Plume would do that. Fraser might. None of the rest of them could.

He took the roll of money from his pocket, peeled off two bills, and handed them to Abby. She shook her head.

“No,” Phin said. “It's—” It was blood money, probably, pay for Engelbreit's murder. Let a little of it go for something good. “It's board,” he said. “If I come back—I'd like to stay awhile.”

Abby listened; listened past when he stopped speaking, searching his face with her eyes. Then she did take the money, and surprised him with a quick, fierce hug, hard enough to hurt.

“
When
you come back, you're welcome to stay, and read all winter if you want. Be smart, Phin!” She turned away untying her apron, caught the mare with it, and they disappeared into the barn.

The stallion swung around, ready to follow. “Ho,” Phin said, and mounted. With a hard lump swelling in his throat, he adjusted the clumsy rope reins, and touched his heels to the stallion's sides.

The motion beneath him was as he'd remembered, swift and smooth and almost too powerful. He circled, trying to get in synch, get the horse pointed where he meant to go.

He rode by the house. Grandma Collins came out on the step. Phin raised his hand stiffly, like a salute, and passed out of the yard into the shadowed road. Stone walls glided by. Tree trunks rippled. Bright leaves twirled down and Phin heard them land, whispering.

How calm he felt, how blank. His mind should be racing, planning, but it wouldn't. He was simply here, simply now. Maybe this was all courage amounted to, what Engelbreit felt, turning from his stove. Ah! Now this.

Was he afraid?

He was. Like stepping into empty air over the Dog Hole; something impossible was happening. He doubted he'd survive.

Yet he felt large, too, expanded to fill out Fraser's coat. He'd laid Fraser low, hadn't he? Lower than he meant, but he had done it.

The gravestones came into view in their straggling rows, the wet grass long and rank between them. A streak of snow remained in the cold shadow of the north wall,
patterned with red leaves. It took Phin back in a rush to his mother's grave and Bittsville.

How quick they'd been to help in what ways they could, Murray and the Lundy's, Jimmy and Dennis. People were kind, people were brave. How many would be caught in Fraser's cave-in? Justice was never perfect. The innocent suffered with the guilty—and not all those Phin loved were good.

The stallion's ears sharpened. His steps faltered, and in a moment Phin, too, heard hoofbeats. A dark shape came into view below the graveyard: a buggy pulled by a brown horse.

Phin's hand on the reins checked the stallion for a heartbeat. The buggy came on without hesitation. At this distance Plume saw Fraser, as Phin had meant him to. Before he could look harder, and see Phin Chase, Phin kissed to the stallion and rode briskly up to the buggy.

Plume frowned in puzzlement. Then an ugly light flared in his eyes. He reached onto the seat beside him, and suddenly a gun was in his hand. The stallion wheeled. Phin grabbed for mane as the gun roared and the air hissed and the horse spun and he flew from the saddle.

He came down on leather again, hauling in the loose rope reins and whirling the stallion, whirling again as the
doctor's terrified horse plunged past. The buggy careened toward the graveyard wall, bumping over the grass, and tipped on two wheels in the ditch.

A black shape leaped from it; Plume, landing clumsily in the road. His ankle turned. He fell heavily on one shoulder and came up with the gun pointing straight at the stallion's chest.

“Right there! Or I drop him.”

“Ho,” Phin said. He felt the horse dance under him, on the edge of disobeying. “Ho!”

Plume rose; awkward now, lame, but the gun never wavered. “Get down. Be a shame to miss and hurt him.”

Phin didn't move. Plume shrugged and raised the gun, then hesitated. “Happened to the mule man?”

Phin jerked his chin backward, seeing what he wanted Plume to see—a body stretched out on the forest floor, no threat to anyone. “He was a Pinkerton agent.” His voice worked. That surprised him.

“Was he?” Plume said. “Was he, now?” His eyes widened, with an inward look; thinking of things he'd said to Fraser, and of people Fraser had talked with back in Bittsville.

After a moment, though, he returned to the present, looking Phin over. The passion had died out of his face. He was pale and sober in all senses, with new lines beside
his eyes. “I've never killed a kid,” he said. “If you don't want to be the first, tell me and tell me quick. Where is it?”

“Your paper.”

“My paper, as you call it. And don't pretend you can't read. Didn't I see you at Engelbreit's with a big book open in front of you? Hand it over.”

Phin shook his head. “It's gone.”

The gun muzzle twitched.

“I burned it,” Phin said. As he said that, his gut fluttered, and he heard Engelbreit behind him at the stove crumpling newspaper, kindling his breakfast fire. He never got the chance to lay a chunk of wood on it. It must have flared and burned out while Plume was pushing the books off the shelf and Phin was running, and Fraser, unbeknownst, was picking up the fallen jacket….

“Tell me you didn't read it,” Plume said. “Tell me I don't have to kill you.”

Did he want Phin to beg? Or did he mean it? The stallion pawed; Phin stroked the silken neck, soothingly. “I grew up in Murray's,” he said. “I know better than to mess with Sleeper business.”

“So you didn't read it?” Plume's eyes bored into Phin's, round and dark like Jimmy's eyes, round and dark like the hole at the end of the gun muzzle.

“I didn't read it.”

Plume sighed and shut his eyes a second. “Fine,” he said. “Fine.”

“Is…Margaret in trouble about it?”

Plume's eyes opened again, with an expression of acute dislike. “What do you think, kid? Think I ratted on her? Think I tried to throw off the blame?”

Phin shook his head no. No, he thought better of Plume than that, strangely enough. But Margaret might have said the wrong thing at Murray's. The wrong people might have heard. Sleepers didn't war on women or kids—he'd always heard that. But they didn't do killings on their home turf either, and Plume had. And if Plume had caught him in his first rage, he'd be dead now. The old truths didn't hold these days, and there were more troubles coming.

“Listen,” he said, “something bad's going to happen.” He'd come down here in Fraser's coat, on Fraser's horse, to get close enough to say this. “There's Pinkertons all over coal country. A big trap, Fraser said. Tell Murray and…take Margaret away.”

Plume listened, tired, unsurprised. At the end he said, “Makes you think she'd go with me?”

It sounded like a statement, not a question, but Phin
answered. “She'd like to see the West. She told my mother once.”

Plume weighed that, hefting the gun in his hand; turned slightly to one side now, pointing toward the sky. “I've made nothing but mistakes the past few days,” he said. “This might be another. Where you heading?”

Phin shrugged. “Canada?” He was a better liar than Fraser.

Plume sucked at his front teeth a moment. “If they catch you…you'll talk?”

Phin saw Engelbreit's wide eyes, heard his head hit the stove. He clenched his jaw hard, and nodded.

Plume's gun hand turned. Almost as an experiment, it seemed, he pointed the weapon at Phin's chest.

Then he let it drop to his side. “Go,” he said.

Didn't he want the horse? Phin had expected that, been prepared to give up the animal. “Don't you—” he said, “I mean—I have your money….”

“You know what?” Plume said, in a voice of weary dislike. “Keep it. I want you to have what you need to go a long, long way!” He limped toward the buggy.

The stallion shook his head, pulling the reins through Phin's slack hand, and surged uphill, toward the farm and the mare. Dazed, Phin let himself be carried. Was this real?
Or would Plume shoot after all? His back awaited the bullet. His heart ached at the beauty around him; bird-song, bright leaves, the gray house looking down, raising its eyebrows. No shot came. What had he done? Warned a murderer, helped him escape. What would they think?

His mother brushed by. “Whoso would be a man, Phinny…”

He was above the graveyard now. He heard Lucky barking, and glimpsed the buggy coming down the road, a rifle poking out of it, the familiar blue of Abby's dress. They'd heard the shot. This was a rescue party. How would Plume react to that? Phin turned to look back.

Plume was at the capsized buggy. As Phin watched, he slashed the traces and led the doctor's horse from the shafts. He wrapped the reins around his fist and sliced them riding short, dropped the ends in the road.

Now he climbed onto the stone wall and slid onto the horse's back. As he reined around there was a moment when he faced uphill, faced Phin. He checked the horse, staring. Phin stared back.

Then he turned downhill, toward Bittsville and his own concerns.

Phin rode uphill to his.

I
n the 1870s the coal-mining region of Pennsylvania was torn by strife. In response to union organizing among the miners—mainly Irish—the mine owners organized, too. They created a private militia, the Coal and Iron Police, and hired the Pinkerton Detective Agency to infiltrate the unions. In 1875, when their preparations were complete, they provoked a strike by drastically cutting wages.

The Long Strike lasted six months. Families went hungry, and leaders on both sides were murdered.

The strike failed. Violence continued and was blamed on the secret organization most commonly known as the Molly Maguires, or sometimes—as in this story—the Sleepers.

The Molly Maguires trace back to pre-Famine Ireland, when an armed group of that name resisted English occupation. In America from the 1850s on, every crime committed by an Irishman was blamed on the Molly Maguires. They were alleged to control the unions and the benevolent society, the Ancient Order of Hibernians—the AOH. Because of the group's secrecy, these charges remain impossible to prove. They may be anti-Irish, anti-Catholic, and anti-union propaganda, or they may be true. Or the truth may lie somewhere between.

The fact remains that organized violence did occur. Unfair mine bosses frequently received what was known as a “coffin notice,” a death threat decorated with a hand-drawn black coffin. If the boss didn't leave, he was murdered.

Killings accelerated in the months after the Long Strike. Two mine officials were shot in the first weeks of September alone. Suspects were arrested, and later that year one of them, a miner named Jimmy Kerrigan, turned state's evidence.

Also in September James McParlan, a Pinkerton spy working undercover, delivered to his bosses a list of all known Molly Maguire members in coal country. The Pinkerton agency gave the names, as well as lists of alleged
Molly crimes, to a vigilante group that later attacked a home and murdered a suspect and his sister.

In March 1876 James McParlan's identity was discovered and he fled. He surfaced during the trial of five Molly Maguires for the murder of a policeman. His testimony and that of Jimmy Kerrigan resulted in the execution of twenty members of the organization. Others fled, and the organization was broken up.

Were they terrorists? Labor organizers? Thugs? Patriotic defenders of Irish rights? Accounts differ to this day.

Controversy also continues about the role of the Pinkertons. The Pinkerton National Detective Agency was founded in 1850 by Scottish immigrant Allan Pinkerton. Pinkerton had fled Scotland after taking part in a demonstration for workers' rights. In America the agency he founded became an arm of big business—mines, banks, railroads—and the United States government. Pinkerton was known among criminals as “the Eye,” because of the agency's logo, an open eye with the motto “We never sleep.” The term “private eye” originates with the Pinkerton Agency.

The FBI—Federal Bureau of Investigation—was modeled on Pinkerton's methods, which were innovative and aggressive. The American public first became aware of this
side of the agency's work when Pinkerton detectives bombed the home of Jesse James's mother, wounding the elderly woman and killing a child but leaving the outlaw unscathed. This defeat was still rankling Pinkerton at the time of the Molly Maguire investigations and contributed to his determination to succeed. Many consider James McParlan, famous for his undercover work among the Molly Maguires, to have been a provocateur, instigating crimes for which members of the organization were later hanged. Certainly he knew in advance of at least two murders and did nothing to stop them. In his defense, his own life was at risk throughout the investigation, and there may have been nothing he could do.

There is no record of Pinkerton agents using tracking horses. I'm not aware of anyone doing so until recent years when horses came into use for search and rescue operations. But the scenting ability of horses has been observed and used by people for centuries, limited only by the human imagination.

Bittsville is a fictional coal town set in the anthracite region of Pennsylvania, between Wilkes-Barre and Pottsville. No person in the story is meant to represent a historical figure.