CHAPTER NINETEEN
Werner Schultz slowed the engine as it approached the bridge that spanned the Missouri River. Jefferson City lay across the Big Muddy. The city was green with trees, unlike Yuma down in Arizona Territory. Jeff City wasn’t what you might call hilly, but it was far from the flats and bleakness of Yuma. Yuma was a raw, frontier town in the middle of the desert in a territory that looked more like Mexico than the United States. In fact, most of the residents in the town spoke Spanish.
Jefferson City? Well, this was different. It was the Missouri capital and had been since the 1820s, although every once in a while, folks from St. Charles or Sedalia might try to stir up some support to claim the capital. Fallon could make out the dome to the state Capitol building. The city was spread out, with buildings crammed along the central business district and at least a dozen steamboats docked along the levees. It wasn’t Chicago, but it was a whole lot different from Fort Smith. As the train neared the city, Fallon looked to his left and saw the one thing Yuma, Arizona Territory, had in common with Jefferson City, Missouri.
The prison stood on a hill that rose above the Missouri River. The stone walls looked haunting. Yuma Territorial Prison was called “The Hellhole,” and Fallon had firsthand experience to know that nickname was well deserved. A lot of folks called the Missouri State Penitentiary “The Walls,” because of those towering, foreboding blocks that had been quarried by some of the first prisoners housed there. Yet the prison had another name, too.
The bloodiest forty-seven acres in the United States of America.
As the train eased toward the depot, Fallon spotted at least two cameras on tripods, with the photographers ready to hold up their flash and try to record a historic moment in the annals of Missouri law enforcement. Several newspaper reporters huddled about, maybe two dozen police officers, soldiers from the Army, and Fallon figured that among the masses had to be officials from the state pen.
“Hell,” Dan MacGregor breathed.
“What did you expect?” the engineer said as he eased down on the throttle.
“I know,” MacGregor relented, and he twisted in the sweltering cab of the Baldwin locomotive to face Aaron Holderman.
“Take the reporters to the express car. But don’t tell them anything. Just let them see the bodies and tell them that I will answer all questions but only after I have delivered a prisoner to the warden.”
He wiped sweat from his brow and looked at the engineer and firemen. “They’ll want to hear from you. Tell them the truth. Up to where Fallon joined us in the cab and we stopped the train. You can tell them about your brave conductor. But anything about Linc Harper—and don’t mention him at all.” He tilted his head toward Fallon. “You don’t even know his name.”
MacGregor twisted some more to stare at Fallon. “And you’re mute till we get to see the warden. And you don’t tell him a damned thing about the train robbery.”
Fallon said nothing.
The train screeched, hissed, and vented as it lurched to a stop. One of the cameras flashed, sending a cloud of smoke toward the blue sky, and men in sack suits with pencils and pads of paper stampeded toward the engine.
“Remember what I told you,” MacGregor said. “All of you. Don’t slip, or you’ll catch hell.” He nudged Fallon’s shoulder.
“Let’s go,” he said.
But no one could go too far. Fallon and MacGregor were surrounded by a mass of men who shouted questions that no one could understand. MacGregor kept both hands on Fallon’s shoulders, trying to use him to push through the horde, but that wall remained as solid as those a few blocks away that kept thousands of prisoners penned away from society.
“Gentlemen . . . gentlemen . . . gentlemen . . .” MacGregor begged.
The reporters tried to crush them more. Another camera flashed, filling the platform with the scent of sulfur.
“Is this one of the robbers?” . . . “What happened to Linc Harper?” . . . “Is the money safe?” . . . “How many bandits?” . . . “How did you manage to stop them?” . . . “How many passengers and crew were wounded or killed?” . . . “Who are you?” . . . “What’s your name?”
Fallon’s ears began to hurt again, this time from the shouting reporters. He could smell the stench of cigar and cigarette smoke on their breath, and some were so close he could breathe in their sweat and feel the saliva as it sprayed across his neck, cheeks, and clothes as they shouted their questions.
Eventually, Dan MacGregor stopped trying to get through the barricade of bodies.
He stood behind Fallon, his hands still gripping Fallon’s shoulders, and waited, not answering the questions, probably not even looking at any of the reporters. Another camera flashed. Fallon wondered if Aaron Holderman, Mr. Schultz, and Doolittle, the fireman, were fending off another herd of news-crazed inkslingers.
“Shut the hell up!” MacGregor’s words came at the split second of silence when every reporter seemed to be sucking in a breath before firing off another question. It almost deafened Fallon, but it managed to leave the reporters speechless for a moment.
MacGregor took advantage of what had to pass for silence on the noisy platform of the railroad station.
“Gentlemen of the press,” MacGregor said—and, to Fallon’s surprise, no one interrupted. “I will be glad to answer as many of your questions as I can. But right now, people, I have to get this man to the state penitentiary.”
“Is he one of Linc Harper’s owlhoots?” someone cried out.
Before MacGregor could answer, about a half dozen more questions were hurled in the faces of Fallon and the detective.
MacGregor waited until there was another pause.
“No. This man has already been sentenced and I and another employee of the American Detective Agency were transporting him to prison to serve his sentence.”
“Who is he?” someone shouted.
“What’s his name?”
“He looks beaten all to hell. Mister, did Linc Harper do all of that to you?”
“What’s he in for?”
“His name,” MacGregor answered, “is not important. My name is Daniel J. MacGregor.” He spelled out his name. “I am vice president and chief of detectives for the American Detective Agency out of Chicago, Illinois.”
“You’re a Pinkerton man?” someone in the back sang out.
Fallon had to hide his grin over that question.
“The American Detective Agency,” MacGregor said through tight lips. And he deliberately spelled out those words as well.
A million other questions fired out. MacGregor managed to catch his breath and lift his hands off Fallon’s shoulders to wave down the excited band of newspapermen.
“Gentlemen,” MacGregor said. “Please. Just give me time to take this man to where he belongs, and then I shall return and give you as much information as I can that will not jeopardize our search for the wounded Linc Harper.”
“Harper’s still alive?” . . . “Did he get away with any money?” . . . “How many men did he kill?” . . . “Was it Harper who beat up your prisoner?” . . . “Was Harper wounded?” . . . “Did you see Linc Harper in person?” . . . “How did Harper stop the train?” . . . “How many men were riding with Harper?” . . . “Did you Pinkerton men set up a trap to lure Harper to this robbery?”
“We are not Pinkertons,” MacGregor seethed.
“What about you?” A bearded reporter with a toothpick moving around his teeth nudged closer to Fallon. “You sure you weren’t part of Harper’s gang? Or are you a stoolie for the Pinkertons? Is that why Linc Harper beat you all to hell?”
Fallon wet his lips. He said, “You know, boys, there are about ten dead outlaws in the express car back yonder. Harper’s men blew the hell out of that car, too.”
“Criminy!” . . . “I’ll be damned.” . . . “Hell, that’s something I can get a good glass-plate negative of.” . . . “Dead outlaws!” . . . “Holy hell!” . . . “Gawd a’mighty, I bet that Harper’s Weekly contributor is already over yonder.” . . . “Let me through, boys! Let me through.”
Most of the crowd parted. MacGregor’s hands returned to Fallon’s shoulders, and both men managed to suck in air that did not stink of scribblers of newspaper articles or damned lies.
A couple of men, and one woman, remained.
One started to open his mouth, but MacGregor said, “If you say the word Pinkerton I’ll knock your teeth down your throat.”
The woman, a handsome blonde in a plain brown dress, laughed. “American Detective Agency,” she said, and spelled out Dan MacGregor’s name perfectly.
“Meet me here, ma’am. In thirty minutes. That’s all I should need to get my prisoner delivered. You gents can meet me here, too.”
“Maybe,” the woman said, “we can accompany you to see the warden.”
“No,” MacGregor said firmly. “Back here. In thirty minutes. You fill your time taking in the sights of the express car and talking to the engineer and the fireman.”
“What about the conductor?” the thinner of the two male reporters asked.
“He’s dead.”
“What was his name?”
“Ask the engineer.”
“How much dynamite did they use?” said the potbellied newspaperman with a bushy graying mustache and goatee.
“Enough to blow the express agent to pieces.”
“Gawd!” roared the younger, thinner reporter, who shoved his pencil and pad into the pocket of his sack coat and raced down the depot.
The fat man started toward the train, too, but stopped and looked back.
“Thirty minutes?” he asked.
MacGregor nodded. “Maybe a little longer, but I’ll be here. I always have time for the working press. It’s the policy of the American Detective Agency to support the free press.”
That left the woman, who smiled.
“You sure I can’t show you the way to the prison?” she asked.
MacGregor smiled. “You’d miss the big story back there.”
“Something tells me the bigger story is right here.”
That caused the young detective to laugh.
“I’ll see you here in a half hour. If I see you before then, I’ll forget the American Detective Agency’s policy and you’ll be out of luck.”
She grinned. “Very well.” She looked at Fallon. “And maybe I can talk to you.”
Fallon said: “I don’t know much, ma’am.”
“How long will you be behind ‘The Walls’?”
“Four years is his sentence,” MacGregor answered. “But with luck he will realize the error of his ways, reform himself so that he is fit to return to society and be a credit to the Missouri State Penitentiary’s rehabilitation.”
The woman laughed. “Mister,” she said, “you don’t know anything about ‘The Walls.’”
“A half hour,” MacGregor said.
“Very well. I look forward to talking to you, Daniel J. MacGregor, American Detective Agency, Chicago, Illinois.”
“Thank you.”
“And you as well.”
Fallon was already walking.
She called out to them as they began their way down the steps off the platform. “I’m Julie Jernigan. Kansas City Enterprise. That’s Kansas City, Kansas. Not Missouri.”
“Thirty minutes,” MacGregor said. “Or better yet, why don’t you meet me at the saloon at the Hotel Missouri on Jackson Street.”
“They don’t allow women inside the hotel’s bar, Mr. MacGregor. Not in Missouri.”
“Then maybe my room,” he said.
“I’m staying in that very hotel,” she said.
“Then . . .” Dan MacGregor looked hopeful.
“But I think it would be better if I just meet you here,” Julie Jernigan said. “In thirty minutes.”
Laughing, MacGregor turned Fallon’s shoulders down Water Street, and they headed toward those towering walls.