17

Claire Hamilton’s Case Notes

Tuesday, May 8, 1877
Chicago, Illinois

Tomorrow I leave for Colorado, my next great adventure and the most challenging one I’ve set for myself. It is strange, embarking on this investigation on my own. Though I’ve always worked alone, the safety of having an organization behind me, supporting me, was more comforting than I ever realized. The financial support was nice, as well. I estimate I have the funds to survive for three months. It is critical I convince Callum Connolly to hire me if I am to have any chance of starting an agency in my own right.

Thursday, May 10, 1877
Cheyenne, Wyoming

Twenty-four hours on a train is a miserable experience. No one tells you that when they tout the speed and ease of traveling across the country. From what I gather, the trip across the plains is the easy part. My train now leaves for San Francisco and will have to travel through, over, and around the mountains to get there. The description of the Dale Creek bridge west of Cheyenne is enough to make me never want to go one step farther west.

Only a few more hours until I arrive in Denver. I pray there is a soft bed waiting for me somewhere.

Tomorrow I go to Connolly Enterprises’ Denver office to state my case to Callum Connolly.

Friday, May 11, 1877
Platte River Boarding House
Denver, Colorado

After a wonderful night’s sleep and a hearty breakfast, I made my way down Colfax Avenue to Connolly Enterprises. A woman in half mourning, with salt-and-pepper hair pulled back into a tight bun, sat behind the desk in the main office. Her name is Dorcas Connolly and she is the sister of the late Colonel Connolly and the aunt to Callum Connolly. She was cordial, but stiff and professional, as if she thought, apparently without irony, it was quite out of the ordinary for a woman to be conducting business. I asked her what her role in the family business was, and she had the grace to blush, if ever so slightly. She informed me that Callum was out of town, in Columbia checking on their mine, most likely working it, if Dorcas knew her nephew. She offered to make me an appointment for when he returned, though she wasn’t sure when that would be. Callum tends to be single-minded when he is doing something he loves, and he loves mining, she said.

I asked about the possibility of me traveling to Columbia and received her full attention. She looked me up and down as if a new idea of my objective had been revealed. What is so pressing you want to travel by stage through rough country to talk to my nephew? I laughed and assured her my interest was purely in business, which seemed to offend her as well. There didn’t seem to be any winning with the woman. So I decided to take her into my confidence.

On my request to talk privately, she ushered me into Callum’s office and shut the door. I sat down without being asked, hoping to prompt her to sit behind the desk, which she did. She rubbed her hands on the desk with an expression of longing before remembering herself and shuttering her face with a bland, businesslike mien.

My plan had been to make the same case to Callum Connolly I’d made to Allan Pinkerton: a female operative was much more likely to infiltrate a female gang than a male, and I’d been trained by Kate Warne, the best undercover detective Pinkerton had ever hired, male or female. It was a straightforward and logical argument, which typically worked on men.

Pinkerton had laughed, saying that infiltrating wasn’t the goal. It took months, maybe years, to infiltrate a gang, to gain their trust. The client wanted the job done quickly, and Pinkerton had his best agent in Cheyenne available. I knew who Pinkerton’s “best” was, a reprehensible, violent man named Salter whom Pinkerton had bailed out of scrapes, usually involving dead women, many times. But Salter got results for our clients, which I’d come to realize was all Pinkerton cared about. Salter was the last detective to send after a group of women, and I pleaded with Pinkerton to reconsider and to send, if not me, at least a different male detective. He refused, and I resigned.

When I saw Dorcas Connolly’s expression, I knew straightforwardness and logic would need to be paired with a little manipulation.

I told her I was a detective, there to infiltrate the female gang terrorizing Connolly Enterprises and bring them to justice. “Mr. Pinkerton changed his mind, then? Or has he sent two detectives for the job?”

“No, he did not. I am here of my own accord.”

“If my nephew has already hired someone from your company, why would he hire you?”

“Because I am a woman.”

She laughed. “You don’t know my nephew.”

“I beg to differ.” I pulled a file out of my case, opened it, and read its contents to Dorcas: her nephew’s birth date, where he was born, when his mother died, his engagement to a southern belle, his estrangement from his father and his injury in the war, the severing of the engagement, years spent mining in South America, learning of his father’s death and returning to run the business.

“All very well and good, Miss Hamilton, but you do not know Callum’s temperament, and he would never hire a woman to do a man’s job.”

“Yet you sit in his front office.”

“I’m family.”

“Oh, you have an equal say in the running of his empire? No surprise, since the company flourished under your short tenure leading it after the colonel died. Congratulations, and I apologize.”

Dorcas’s nostrils flared and she told me Callum ran the business and she assisted him when asked.

I returned my file to my case and rose, but not to leave. I walked around to the map of Colorado on the wall. I asked if the pins were the locations of his businesses, and Dorcas said they were. I recited the holdups I’d copied from the agency file before I left.

“Late spring 1875, a stage carrying the payroll for the Sweetwater mine in Wyoming was held up by masked bandits between Rock Springs and South Pass City. October 1875, a Connolly bank was robbed in Golden in the middle of the night. No one saw the bandits, so everyone assumed it was men. May 1876, Connolly Enterprises’ mining office in Silverton was robbed by two white women. Fall 1876, the Breckenridge branch of Bank of the Rockies was robbed by two white women and a black woman. In each instance, they claimed they were part of the Spooner Gang.”

“You’ve done your homework.”

“Of course. Are there any more?”

“No.”

“The dates are consistent, which means …”

“They’re going to strike again, most likely this month,” Dorcas said.

“Has anyone been injured?”

“No.”

“Is there anything connecting the two masked robberies with the ones with the women?”

“The dates. The lack of violence. The efficiency.”

“Efficiency? Interesting word choice.”

“You live in the West long enough, you hear and read about robberies and outlaws weekly, at the very least. They’re nearly always caught; do you know why?”

“Why?”

“They can’t resist bragging. This gang does a job and disappears for months. Not a word. Does that sound like men to you?” Dorcas asked.

I had to grin. “No, it does not.”

“If you don’t work for Pinkerton, why are you here, Miss Hamilton?”

“Are men ever asked why they do the jobs they do? No, but for women there always has to be a reason. Here is my reason, Miss Connolly: I’m good at my job, and I love it. These women are criminals, and I want to catch them. I want to start my own agency and need an independent investigation, a successful one, to do so.”

“Pinkerton won’t give you a recommendation?”

“My work was unassailable, but our personalities weren’t always compatible. I think he kept me around mainly because Kate Warne was my best friend, my mentor, and he didn’t want to lose that connection. He wanted to have someone to talk to about her. To reminisce. She was a calming force on him, a moral compass if you will. I never had that amount of sway.” Because I wasn’t sleeping with him, I thought.

“You’re hired.”

“Excuse me?”

“I’m hiring you. Callum has his man for the job, I have my woman. I can pay you out of my own pocket.”

“I accept, of course, but now I must ask you why, Miss Connolly.”

“Imagine the headlines, Miss Hamilton, if a female detective catches a female gang, and on the eve of the vote for suffrage in Colorado. I think it would help the cause, don’t you? Showing female competence in a man’s profession?”

She’d hired me, so I agreed with her, but thought it more likely that the sight of a woman with four other women in chains might do more to defeat the amendment than help it.

There were two possible targets for the outlaws to hit: an eastbound train carrying a safe full of gold, the other a stage from Cañon City carrying the first payroll of the season to the Columbia miners. Callum was counting on the train to be the more enticing target, as it was what he would rob—why take a risk if the reward wasn’t large enough?—and had the train loaded with guns for hire. Dorcas disagreed, but her entreaties had been dismissed until Callum finally agreed to have his new clerk travel with the stage for extra protection. I told her I would bring my gun, as well, and asked her to tell me everything she knew of the gang’s previous heists. We spent the next hour discussing my plan.

As the payroll isn’t scheduled to leave for a week, I have time to settle in to Denver, look around the town, and get my bearings. Tomorrow I will go to the newspaper offices and read their dispatches on the robberies.