GATLING WAS DOING a weapons deal in El Paso when the colonel’s telegram was delivered to his hotel room. The telegram said it was urgent. It was always urgent with Colonel Pritchett. Now, after a long, gritty train ride, he was seated in front of the colonel’s desk in the Maxim Arms Company warehouse on Crosby Street on New York City’s Lower East Side. Gatling said something about the weapons deal he had been forced to abandon.
“Never mind that,” the colonel said. “Larsen can handle it. He’s already on his way.” Larsen was one of the colonel’s top salesmen. The colonel leaned back in his chair and put a match to his pipe. “I’ll get right to the point. Have you ever heard of Michael Patrick Kane?”
“Sure. The labor boss of the Butte, Montana, copper mines. Rough customer, I hear. Gets his name in the papers all the time. Last story I read the mine owners were trying to get his citizenship revoked and have him deported to Ireland.”
The colonel spoke through a cloud of smoke. “Much as they’d like to, I doubt if they can do it. But they’re right. The man is a menace to sound American business. The city of Butte has been in a state of anarchy since he rose to power. Strikes. Bombings. Killings. Extortion. In no other country would such thuggery be tolerated.”
Gatling was always amused when the colonel climbed up on his high horse. “What’s your interest in this? Maxim has money invested in copper?”
The colonel put on his self-satisfied face as he always did when he talked about Hiram Maxim’s vast wealth and influence. “Of course he does. Mr. Maxim has investments everywhere.” To Gatling he sounded as if he had a few bucks invested himself. “But Mr. Maxim’s interest in Kane’s bloody-handed activities isn’t entirely financial. As a concerned citizen he would like to see something done about Kane. He would like to see the scoundrel brought to some sort of justice.”
Gatling didn’t know all that much about Kane. “Hasn’t he stood trial a number of times?”
“Three times, to be exact. Twice for murder—that is, causing murder to be committed; once for complicity in the bombing of a mine operator’s house. He won acquittal in all three cases through jury tampering, intimidation, bribery. He should have been convicted and hanged, but it seems as if he’s beyond the law. When he first started to organize the Western Labor League, the miners flocked to his banner. Now they’re sorry for it.”
Gatling wanted to hear facts, not sermons. “You can hardly blame them. The mine operators look on them as white slaves. They wouldn’t pay them at all if they didn’t have to. Maybe they’re a little better off with Kane pushing for them.”
This earned Gatling a cold stare. “Most of these miners are ignorant foreigners who were starving in Ireland or Wales, Poland or Italy, before they came here. At least in this country they have a chance to work. Anyway, what’s this sudden interest in the common man? Your Zunis aside, what have you ever done for anyone?”
“Not a thing.”
“Well, then?”
“Well, then, what do you want to do about Kane? You want me to kill him? Maybe you’re forgetting that Butte isn’t Panama or the New Mexico desert. Folks there might not take kindly to Hotchkiss cannons and other heavy hardware knocking down their town. There’s the local law, there’s the state militia.”
“Certainly there is,” the colonel said, “and that’s why you won’t be taking Hotchkiss guns or mortars. Therefore you will have to get along with your trusty light Maxim, which after all is your favorite weapon. Take along some Maximite, our new explosive. You used it in Panama and know what it can do. Besides, it might attract attention if you arrived in Butte and started buying dynamite.”
“What’s all this talk about explosives? I don’t know what I’ll be using.”
“That’s for you to decide. However, I would like you to try out our new high-powered air pistol, what I call the Silent Assassin. Quite frankly, it’s for killing people without making noise. Take it no matter what you think of it. You may find it useful.”
“What about the ordinary miners? I don’t see myself gunning down a lot of working stiffs.”
“I told you they’re sorry they ever supported him. Most of them want to be free of Kane and his thugs. Their wages remain comparatively low in spite of Kane, yet they have to pay five percent of what they earn into the union treasury each and every week. Kane’s thugs make sure they pay up—or else. And what do they get for it? Bugger all. Kane claims their so-called contributions pay for the union’s operating costs, to provide them with benefits if there’s a strike. Poppycock! All that money goes into Kane’s personal bank account.”
Gatling didn’t doubt that what the colonel said was true. But he said, “Just the same, they may rally to him in time of trouble. He’s one of their own, or used to be.”
The colonel displayed some impatience. “I’m telling you—don’t you listen?—they’re sick to death of Kane and his ruffians. The man is a leech sucking their lifeblood. One of the miners, a decent Irishman named McDonnell, dared to demand an accounting of the vast sums that have gone into this nonexistent fund. Finally he made such a nuisance of himself that one night he simply disappeared. It’s said he’s buried under a mountain of slag. The Pinkertons have reason to believe that Kane strangled McDonnell himself. Usually he leaves the killing to the hired help, but that day he was drunk.”
Gatling shifted in his chair; after the ass-punishing train ride, he was tired of sitting. “Why don’t the mine operators hire somebody to kill him?”
“That’s been tried,” the colonel said. “Certain parties who shall be nameless hired two of the best ... two highly experienced men from Chicago to do the job. And mind you, these were men who worked as a team and had many successes. Their bodies were found on the front steps of the biggest mine owner in Butte. Both men had been tortured before their throats were cut. Both bodies had the same sign pinned to their chests with shoring spikes. The sign said: THIS WILL BE A GOOD LESSON FOR ME.”
“Kane must be a funny fellow.”
“Quite so. Will you do it?”
“I’ll do it,” Gatling said, thinking he didn’t much like this job, but he needed the money to help the Zunis of Western New Mexico, who had raised him as one of their own after his parents were tortured and killed by Apaches. Years later, long after he’d left the Zuni pueblo, he had gone back to fight a one-man war against the greedy copper barons who were trying to drive the peace-loving Indians off their ore-rich lands. The war had been won, but it had left the Zunis in poverty, much of their ancient pueblo in ruins, their farmlands destroyed. Since then he had been sending the Zunis most of the money he earned doing special jobs for the colonel and the Maxim Company. He got fifty thousand for every job, testing the latest Maxim weapons in actual combat. The colonel picked the targets—always men who deserved to be killed—and Gatling took it from there. He could take a job or leave it. So far he hadn’t said no to anything the colonel asked him to do.
“What’s Kane like?” he asked. “I don’t doubt he’s as bad as you say he is, but if I’m going to kill him, you’ll have to draw me a better picture. You always use the Pinkertons to do your snooping. What do they have to say?”
“Quite a lot.”
The colonel opened a folder on his desk. “Michael Patrick Kane,” he read. “Born in County Mayo, Ireland, 1844. Original name O’Kane, but he dropped the O after he came to America. Family evicted by landlord’s agent, 1860, and their cabin demolished by police battering ram. Arrived in the U.S. the same year. A suspect in the ambush murder of aforementioned land agent. Worked as a day laborer and teamster in New York until he joined the notorious Five Points Gang. Sentenced to two years, Sing Sing Prison, 1862, atrocious assault. Left New York after his release. No knowledge of his activities during the year 1865. Believed to have enlisted in the 69th Regiment, New York Irish, to avoid arrest on a murder and robbery charge, and to have deserted shortly thereafter. Appeared in the Pennsylvania coalfields, 1866, and worked as a miner for two years until he was run out by the Coal and Iron Police for suspected participation in early Molly Maguire murders and bombings. Chicago, 1866 to 1868. Worked as a horsecar driver, sentenced to three years for rioting and mayhem during the strike of 1868. Arrived in Butte, 1871, and has remained there ever since.” The colonel paused to ask Gatling, “Are you getting a picture of this charming fellow?”
“I guess he liked Butte better than those other places.”
“As well he might. It has made him a very rich man.” The colonel got back to the folder. “Kane worked in the biggest copper mine until he was barred from all the mines, silver and gold mines included, because of his violent participation in the general strike of 1872. Repeated clashes with city police, company police, and detective agency operatives. Suffered numerous injuries as a result. Survived several attempts on his life, though one such incident was thought to be a hoax intended to drum up sympathy. Kane, after initial setbacks, succeeded in establishing the Western Labor League in 1874. He has headed this organization since then. All attempts to unseat him have failed. No union elections are held. The few union officials there are, known to the press as Kane’s Puppets, are picked by him.”
Gatling tilted back his chair to make himself more comfortable. “Is there a separate bank account for the union fund?” he asked. “If there isn’t, it would be interesting to know where the money goes.”
“Some of it is deposited into a separate union account,” the colonel said. “Not very much. The rest is banked in Kane’s personal account or hidden away in safe-deposit boxes in different banks, different cities. The money for his criminal investments comes from the safe-deposits. All cash, no checks, nothing to connect him to anything. Even if—”
A homely, middle-aged typewriter girl from an adjoining office knocked on the door and came in when the colonel said, “Enter.” She handed him a transatlantic cable envelope and he tore it open. The typewriter girl retreated when he glared at her.
“It’s from Mr. Maxim,” the colonel said. “He wants to know if I’m making any progress in the Kane matter.”
“I just got here, Colonel.”
“Yes, of course, but you know how Mr. Maxim is.”
“You keep telling me. What about these criminal investments?”
The colonel put the cable in a drawer and continued without referring to the folder. “Pinkerton’s best operative, Charlie Siringo, has traced Western Labor League money to all sorts of criminal enterprises. Stock funds. Counterfeiting. The buying and selling of stolen goods. Obscene books and pictures. Don’t smile. There is a great deal of money to be made from filth. Kane is the owner of, or a partner in, brothels in Chicago, New York, and Washington. Not straightforward places, mind you, but the vilest dens. But he also owns or has an interest in a number of red plush houses. One, the fanciest of all, is in Washington. Its main purpose appears to be the blackmailing of indiscreet but influential men, some of them in the Congress.”
Gatling suppressed a smile. He knew for a fact that the colonel patronized the plushest whorehouse in whichever city he happened to be. But his wife was dead, he belonged to no church, and he wasn’t in politics, so he didn’t care too much about being discreet.
The colonel said, “Charlie Siringo, in the course of the Kane investigation, talked to a retired detective captain of the District of Columbia Police. This man told Siringo, a friend of many years, that Senator Lally didn’t commit suicide—perhaps you read about it—but was murdered on the order of Kane’s partner in the most exclusive house in Washington.”
Gatling guessed he’d been out of the country when the senator went to the Big Pork Barrel in the Sky. “He refused to be blackmailed and threatened to spill the beans? Regardless of the consequences?”
“Bravo, Gatling!” the colonel said in mock approval. “I didn’t have to explain it to you with the aid of a blackboard. Lesson Number One for the blackmailer: never try to blackmail a man who is dying of a diseased liver. The senator’s body, both wrists deeply slashed, was found in an overflowing bathtub in his Chesapeake Hotel suite.”
“Why is that not suicide?”
“Because this policeman, a most capable detective in his day, concluded that it was murder. Both of the dead man’s forearms were severely bruised as if one murderer held the arms steady while another slashed the wrists. When the detective tried to follow this up, word came from high up and he was ordered to desist. No one wanted a scandal, so let it be the suicide of a dying man. When he persisted, he was forced to retire. He talked to Siringo because he trusts him. No one else. He knows he’ll lose his pension if he does.”
“What good would it do if he did talk?”
“No good, not a bit. The murder was committed five years ago. The villain who ordered it has been dead for two. So there’s nothing to trace it back to Kane, who was in Butte when it happened. But murder is a way of life with him. He lives in a world of extortion, blackmail, bribery, intimidation, all manner of murder, and yet, as I have said a number of times, in spite of all this he not only survives, he prospers. Would you be surprised to learn that he owns a small but extremely profitable gold mine?”
“Nothing surprises me,” Gatling said.
The colonel said, “The man who owned it originally, Simon Lascell, was an independent with no partners. A prospector who struck it rich, though at first he had little money for development. But business conditions improved and he started to take out high-grade ore. Kane had his thugs kidnap Lascell’s only son, who was attending the University of Minnesota. Lascell had to sell the mine to Kane for a paltry sum or the boy would be killed. After the papers were signed, Lascell boarded a train for Minnesota, where his son would be turned over to him. Can you guess what happened next?”
Gatling wished the colonel wouldn’t drag it out with these dramatic pauses. “Lascell never got there.”
“He never got there,” the colonel repeated. “Somebody bashed in his skull and threw him off the train. Later the son’s body floated up from the bottom of a river where it had been dumped weighted with chains. Once again Kane was suspected, but there was no proof of any wrongdoing. He hadn’t budged from his house for weeks.”
This was going to be a tough one, Gatling thought. He liked it better when he could meet the target head-on in some remote place where he could bring all his weapons into play. But a busy, overcrowded town like Butte ...
“Tell me about the house,” he said. “What the Pinkertons say.”
“Oh, it’s a fine house,” the colonel went on. “A fine stone house. Naturally, Kane’s miners couldn’t build such a house, but they did the donkey work, supervised by masons, stonecutters, and carpenters. Did they get higher wages than their brothers in the company mines? Well, they did get twenty percent more, as do the miners in Kane’s private gold mine—not a hell of a lot when they have to contribute five percent of the phantom union fund.”
“The house itself, Colonel?” Gatling had a fair idea of what the colonel was going to tell him.
“A fortress,” the colonel said, “and I’m not being melodramatic. Two stories, solid stone, slate roof, steel shutters that can be closed from the inside by crank wheels. The Pinkertons got hold of a mason who worked on the house and paid him for information. I’ll tell you this, that house can’t be burned.”
Gatling knew the Pinkertons were damned good when it came to gathering information, but he wasn’t taking anything for granted. The agent or agents who put together the file on Kane might have been carried away. He would have to see for himself.
Gatling said, “Where do the bodyguards bunk?”
“Five of them live in the house, possibly in the stone cellar. That’s where the weapons are, I expect.”
“A fortress with only five soldiers to defend it?”
“Why not, if it’s a strong enough fortress. However, twenty more gunmen are housed in a separate building, what Kane calls the Labor League headquarters. Not as elaborate as Kane’s house, but built of brick and therefore solid enough. Down the far side of the hill so as not to spoil the view. Men are on guard night and day, and if the alarm bell on Kane’s roof starts clanging they all come running. The entire ten-acre property is fenced with barbed wire—it’s at the center of Kane’s larger properties—and at night they let out the dogs. Kane won’t be easy to get at.”
Gatling figured the colonel got some kind of perverse enjoyment out of giving him jobs most men would refuse. The jobs had to be done because Hiram Maxim wanted them done; just the same, Gatling sometimes suspected that the colonel wanted him—just once—to make a mess of things. It hadn’t happened yet.
“I’m sure you can do it, old man,” the colonel said with false heartiness.
Gatling said, “Doesn’t Kane ever go out? Go into town? Take a buggy ride? What about the mine?”
“He goes out very seldom,” the colonel said. “Once in a while he visits his gold mine. They say he’s so proud of it he might have discovered it himself. But wherever he goes, he always has a bodyguard of at least ten gunmen. All very bad lads. You know the type.”
Gatling knew. If Kane was as smart as he seemed to be—and maybe he was more than smart—he would hire different kinds of men. Strong-arms for the kicking and beating, the heavy work. Gunmen for the killings and bodyguarding. Dynamiters for the bombings and intimidation. Gatling didn’t include Kane’s crooked lawyers and go-betweens in his assessment of the labor boss’s army. He’d be taking on the thugs, not the fixers.
“I’ll have to have a reason for being there,” he said. The colonel pulled the cut-down casing of a brass artillery shell toward him and scraped the dottle from his cold pipe. Then he refilled his pipe with shag tobacco and put a match to it. He puffed vigorously until he had it going good, adding more smoke to the smoky room.
“Yes,” he agreed. “You must have a reason for being there. Butte isn’t like other places. In Denver, say, you could just check into a hotel and nobody would give you a second glance. Beautiful Butte is different. It’s a town divided into two camps, the mine companies and the miners, the mine operators’ police and Kane’s thugs. Of course there is a middle element: merchants, tradesmen, storekeepers, hotel proprietors, saloonkeepers, and so forth. Their allegiance depends on where their money comes from.”
The colonel smiled. “You’re a strong chap,” he said. “You could find a job in the mines.”
“Like hell!”
“My little joke. As a working stiff you’d have no freedom of movement, needless to say. What you need is your own business. But you can’t be a doctor, a dentist, or any kind of professional man. A few questions would find you out. Your first patients would lynch you by day’s end.”
The colonel adjusted his black eye patch; with his fierce military mustache and a seamed face permanently browned by the Indian sun, it gave him the look of a freebooter on the old Spanish Main, and his business methods were as piratical as his appearance.
“What about a gun store?” Gatling said. “Gun sales and gun repair. Nothing big. Just a small store, a place to store my weapons.”
“Not bad,” the colonel said, nodding his approval. “You certainly know enough about guns. Nobody could trip you up there. But of course you can’t just appear out of the blue. One faction or the other—probably both—will be suspicious of you. Butte is a place of deep suspicion, so someone will check back on you. You must have a background in the gunsmithing business.”
“Can you fix it, Colonel?”
The colonel liked to think he could fix anything. “I think so,” he said. “In fact, I’m sure I can. One of my former employees, a man named Ethan Taggart, has a gunsmithing business in Kansas City. Taggart is about your age, fairly tall, though not as dark as you are. Served in the cavalry, as you did. The army got him interested in weapons and he came to Maxim for a job after his discharge. A bit old for an apprentice, but I hired him anyway. I can make it worth his while to leave his business in the hands of an assistant and let it be known that he’s off to Butte to set up a new shop there.”
The way the colonel laid it out sounded all right, but Gatling wanted this part of the plan to be foolproof. Or as close to that as possible.
“Just as long as he doesn’t hang around Kansas City,” Gatling said. “If they check back, they’ll check good.”
The colonel waved aside Gatling’s doubts. “Taggart won’t dally, I promise. He owes me a great deal—I helped him to get started—and if I ask him to go far from Kansas City for a month, he’ll do it. I told you he’ll be well paid. Money works wonders, old boy.”
Gatling thought of all the millions Hiram Maxim had accumulated since he began to sell his weapons all over the world. Money men, who knew about such things, said he would be a billionaire by the end of the century.
Gatling said, “Why can’t Maxim and his pals pay Kane to quit? Put him off, whatever it takes. Send him back to Ireland to live in a castle and raise prize pigs. He’d soak them good, but he’d be no longer a threat.”
“That’s been considered, not that I ever thought there would be much chance of success. Kane likes power too much, and he has all the money he needs. That gold mine makes him a man of substance. But a group of the biggest operators did approach Mr. Maxim through a third party. Mr. Maxim rejected the idea, saying quite sensibly that Kane would take the money and then refuse to budge. Mr. Maxim said they could hardly sue to get their money back. So you can forget that approach. It will have to be done the hard way. What don’t you like about it?”
Gatling wanted to say “Everything,” but that would be a mistake. He had built a reputation, at least with the colonel, for seeing every job through. The colonel thought he was paid too much for his work, but he was able to push it because he hadn’t failed yet. If he expressed too many doubts, the colonel would swoop down on him like a hawk.
So all he said was, “If too many people know I’m coming, somebody is sure to run to Kane with the story. Somebody will do it for the money.”
The colonel said impatiently, “Perhaps I didn’t explain myself properly. No time has been set, no names have been mentioned. The powers that be and the police don’t know if one man will be coming or five hundred. The arrangement is this: The man or men who come—if and when they come—are to be given a free hand. No one will have your name or description. Does that make you feel better?”
Gatling didn’t answer that. “This Ethan Taggart,” he said. “I’d like to know more about him. Is he married? Single? Does he vote Republican or Democrat? Does he play the bassoon?”
Reaching for his solid-gold watch, the colonel pressed the button that released the face cover. “Let’s get on with this, shall we? I have an appointment—a very large sale—in ten minutes. About the bassoon I really can’t say. Taggart is a confirmed bachelor. I got an order and a letter from him last week. He would have mentioned a sudden bout of marriage fever. He votes Democrat. Voted for Cleveland in ’86. I know that because the men here were making election bets. We’ll talk again tomorrow. Anything else?”
“My business expenses, Colonel. It’s going to take money to rent the right store and stock it with weapons.”
The colonel frowned. “Can’t you just lay out the money and send me a bill?”
Gatling smiled. The colonel, a notorious penny-pincher, was always trying to cut corners when it came to him. “Bills have a way of getting lost,” he said. “I’ll need at least twenty thousand.”
“Tomorrow.” The colonel crashed his tilted chair forward. “We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”