DOC MOO SAT ON the floor of a bullet-sieved cabin, a cigarette trembling between his fingers. Adrenaline was still coursing through his blood. Thin lances of light floated around him, beamed through coin-size holes in the walls. Before him sat the masked leaders of the antiunion forces, a party of Baldwins and company men assembled in a hillside village where the crude cabins and outbuildings hung perched from the steep face of the slope. They’d set woodstoves and upended tables and sacks of oats beneath the windows, rising now and again to shoot.
Their commander wore a dark muffler to hide the lower half of his face, but Doc Moo thought he recognized a small scar between his eyes.
“What brings you to our lovely hamlet today, Doctor?”
Doc Moo stared at the man’s scar. If it was the man he thought, he knew him by reputation alone, a war hero and veteran mine guard who’d been a captain of the guard during the Paint Creek Mine War. Some said he’d run one of the machine guns on the Bull Moose Special. The miners called him “Bad Tony.”
Doc Moo composed himself. “The strikers have agreed to quit shooting if you promise to do the same. Captain Brockus got word yesterday.”
Bad Tony, if that’s who it was, was sitting with his back against a pie safe full of feed sacks, his hands folded atop his binoculars, his rifle leaning against the wall. Above him, the kitchen window. Spidery cracks radiated from a neat, dime-sized hole in the single remaining pane. Around him, men whittled at the floor with their knives or watched the smoke curl from their pipes.
“Them boys running short on ammunition, that it, Doc? Used up all the cartridges the Union handed out?”
Moo sucked on the cigarette, hearing the wind whistle through the scatter-shot walls. “Given the way both sides have been going at it, I’m surprised there’s a single round left in either West Virginia or Kentucky.”
“Shame more of ours ain’t struck home,” said one of the mine guards.
“I’m sure they feel the same way across the river,” said Doc Moo.
“Hell, they’re just living off the teat of the Union over there,” said the man. “Rather fight than work.”
Bad Tony nodded in agreement. “That’s right, Doc. They opened fire on men just trying to do an honest day’s labor.”
“I’m not here to take sides,” said Doc Moo. “I’m here to arrange a truce.”
“How do we know the Union didn’t send you here themselves? Maybe there’s a squad of Lick Creek boys laying in wait down there, ready to shoot every one of us the second we come out from behind cover.”
Doc Moo felt his chest swell. That old Muhanna blood stoked again. He pulled his feet into his hips and sat cross-legged, looking at the men around him through a veil of smoke. “I don’t know any of you men behind your masks, but many of you know me. I’ve treated you when you were ill or injured, your wives, your children, your neighbors. You’ve knocked on my door in the middle of the night and I’ve come. I didn’t ask your political party, church, or employer. My vocation is to heal, not to divide. I’m here because this valley is wounded, hurting. Bleeding. Our valley. The Battle of the Tug must end. It’s time to call a truce.”
“The Regulars ain’t coming to help?” asked one of the men.
“No, the President refuses to send troops again.”
“And the state police want this ceasefire?” asked Bad Tony.
“Captain Brockus himself sent me.”
The man looked around at the others, who nodded or shrugged or shifted their eyes to the floor. Then back to Doc Moo. The pale scar gleamed between his eyes. “Truce,” he said. “But you best keep something in mind, Doc. You might not always have the privilege of treating both sides.”
THE MINGO COUNTY COURTHOUSE brimmed with irate merchants and business owners, men in high white collars and double-breasted coats, their pink cheeks puffed with indignation. More than two hundred of them, sitting in the gallery and the jury box and the balcony. They twisted in their benches and spoke over their shoulders, their voices thundering beneath the same ceiling where Sid Hatfield—that murdering blackguard—had been acquitted.
You heard about the super down at Matewan? Man ain’t out the hospital yet.
They had to wire his jaw shut, he’s sucking his suppers through a straw.
Hatfield’s the reason for this mess, stirring the miners to fight.
Tomorrow was Matewan Day, the first anniversary of the massacre that pitched their county into turmoil, unrest, insurrection. The day that dried up business, left dust gathering on the shelves of their dry goods stores and draft horses languishing in their liveries, the wagons and carriages unhitched. The day that Sid Hatfield shot down those Baldwin detectives in the street and coal production slowed to a rattling cough. After all, this black rock, born from thin seams of primeval wetlands compressed beneath the earth’s surface and lumped into the stockings of wicked children on Christmas Eve, was the dark heart of every business in this county. The lifeblood of commerce. It was the very ink that kept their ledgers in the black. But it was combustible, too, ready to burst into flame.
The latest bout of violence ended three days ago with a truce, but they feared what new trouble Matewan Day might bring, what new disorder to threaten their livelihoods. They were sick of the strikers and agitators in their county, the filthy tent colonies pitched in the hollers, and the constant eruptions of violence in the coal camps. They were loud men, afraid of the riot reaching their own doorsteps—a marrow-deep fear that made their bones feel bendy, their hands clammy and soft.
We can’t have these people just living in the hills.
The shooting could reach town, what then?
Law and order must be restored. Else we’re doomed.
They hushed as the doors creaked open and Captain Brockus of the state police entered the courtroom. The man’s boot-spurs rang down the center aisle, echoing across the stone floors. Captain Brockus, his face pale and stern as a marble bust. The mouths of the gathered men parted at his passage. Brockus carried his campaign hat beneath one arm and the white dome of his forehead sloped back to a last vestige of hair cropped close to his skull. His badge gleamed hard and bright. Surely, here was a man who could put these agitators to ground.
Brockus stood with his back to the judge’s bench and squinted across the gathered crowd, as if searching for a certain steel in the men’s eyes. His thighs looked huge, encased in the flared hips of his riding breeches, and the heels of his riding boots were set close enough to touch. He cleared his throat, hard and crisp.
“I applaud you men for coming here tonight, for answering the call of duty. You men gathered here, you’ve been summoned because you are the better people of Mingo County. The kind of men who stand for law, order, and American patriotism.”
The crowd nodded, whispering among themselves.
Here, here.
Yes, we are.
The better people, damn right.
“What we have here is a state of war, insurrection, and riot. Mingo is crawling with agitators, outlaws, and malcontents, ready to plunge this county into complete and total anarchy.”
Damn agitators.
Poisoning the county.
Enough is enough.
Brockus looked across the crowd, meeting the eyes of this man, that man. They sat taller as they met his gaze, surer. Brockus held up his free hand, gesturing with his thumb, as if holding a holy writ before them.
“Now it’s up to you to determine the fate of your county. It’s for you men to decide whether disorder, violence, and agitation will carry the day, pitching Mingo into lasting darkness, or will you stand against the rising tide of lawlessness?”
Damn right we will.
It’s our patriotic duty, is what it is.
Sure as kicking the Krauts out of France.
Brockus reached into his pocket, pulling out a folded paper. “I have here a warrant to vest posse comitatus power in a force of able-bodied townsmen, deputizing this citizens’ militia to aid in the capture, arrest, and detainment of any person suspected of inciting riot or insurrection in Mingo County.”
The townsmen sat erect in their seats now, holding the handrails.
Somebody’s got to do it.
Give me a rifle, I’ll learn to shoot.
We’ll string up Hatfield and watch him dance.
“You will become the county’s Vigilance Committee, issued rifles and armbands, and asked to remain at the ready, casting aside all pursuits should you hear the call to arms. Four blasts on the town fire siren, repeated three times. I warn you, unless you are willing to take up a rifle, this county is all but doomed.”
The men were rocking in their seats now, their collars strained, their bowlers and top hats rumbling atop their heads. Brockus set his campaign hat on high, a slight rake of shadow across his face. His clear eyes shot across the courtroom. “Now, those of you willing to shoulder a gun for law and order, please rise.”
In a single movement, more than two hundred men shoved upright from their seats, thrusting their right arms high and straight as rifle barrels.
Doc Moo, standing in the shadows at the back of the courtroom, let himself out the door.