Port Hazard (4 page)

The first train
had pulled out with General Grant aboard by the time we got to the station the next morning. There were no seats on the second, so I bought a ticket on the third—Beecher showed his employee's pass—and we ate breakfast at a place called the Miner's Rest while waiting for departure. The proprietor sent us around to the kitchen, whether because of Beecher's color or the clothes I'd slept in up in the hills, I didn't know. In his corduroy coat, cotton twill shirt and trousers, flat-heeled boots, and slouch hat, my companion looked the more respectable member of our party.

The conductor, a stranger to Beecher, directed us to separate coaches, assigning the Negro to a twenty-year-old chair car well back of the Pullmans containing the dignitaries, most of whom required a porter's assistance to climb the steps from the station platform through a haze of whiskey and stale perfume. I recognized some of them from the train I'd come in on; promoted from fourth to third to fill vacancies left by those who'd taken the express back East.

I started to say I'd take the chair car, too, but in response to an infinitesimal shake of Beecher's head I asked for a pencil and paper, and when they were brought by a porter I scribbled a message and gave him a dollar to send a wire. Beecher and I separated. I lowered a window against the stink of cigars and digested barley, swung down the footrest, and got to work catching up on the sleep I'd lost lying on the iron earth under a borrowed blanket in the hills. Ten years more and I'd need a featherbed. Just plain surviving is fatal in the end.

Shortly after the train started moving, a fat fellow with a bad sunburn plunked himself down next to me, introduced himself as a reporter with a New York newspaper, and asked if I'd heard anything about a double shooting in Gold Creek. I said I hadn't.

“Someone said there was a renegade nigger involved,” he said.

“I wouldn't know.”

“Late night last night. I slept right through it, didn't catch wind of it till the train was pulling out. Any Indian trouble along the line?” He sounded eager.

“Not anymore. They're all on reservations.”

“What about train robbers? I understand they're thick as fleas in Montana.”

I said I didn't think the fleas in Montana were thicker than anywhere else, but he didn't take the hint. When he started in on grizzlies I changed seats.

In Deer Lodge, the porter I'd asked to send my wire shook me awake and handed me a Western Union envelope. I read the telegram and made my way back through the snoring payload to the ancient chair car, where I found Beecher jammed in between a mulatto in a valet's livery and a Chinese with a wooden cage on his lap containing a sitting hen. The car was so hot the flies were asleep in midair. I told Beecher to join me up front. He started to shake his head again, then thought better of it, got up, took down his duffel from the tarnished brass carrier, and followed me.

Five minutes after we sat down in the Pullman, the conductor appeared. He had a drinker's face, shot through with broken capillaries, and cardamom on his breath. Why anyone west of Chicago was in any business other than drumming whiskey was a puzzle.

“I'm sorry, sir,” he said. “I guess I didn't make myself clear in Gold Creek. The other, er, gentleman—”

I stuck the telegram under his nose. It read:

He sawed the flimsy back and forth, caught the focus, and paled a little behind the magenta.

“How do I know this is real?” Pricklets of sweat stood out like boiler rivets on his upper lip. He fanned himself with the paper, without any visible effect. “Anyone can send a wire and call himself the King of Prussia.”

I showed him my deputy's star. “Wire him back. He ought to be sitting down to dinner with General Sherman about now.”

For all I knew he was having his toenails painted by a harlot sent by the New York Port Authority, but the conductor knew even less than I did. He handed back the telegram and left the car, wobbling on his sore feet.

Beecher asked to see the telegram. I gave it to him. He read it and looked up. “Arthur really send this?”

“It's doubtful, but you can ask Judge Blackthorne next time you get to Helena. If he's in a generous mood he might even give you a straight answer.”

“What did you tell him?”

“You're the only thing keeping me alive.”

“He set this much store by all the help?”

“A good carpenter takes care of his tools.”

He read the flimsy again. Then he returned it. “My luck, it'll be this same train I work when I get back. I'll be emptying spittoons come the new century.”

“I wouldn't brood on it. If we make San Francisco, chances are we'll both end up on the bottom of the bay.”

“That being the situation, I believe I'll ask one of these here colored boys to bring me a cigar.”

“Open a window if you do. I'd as soon sit next to a chicken.” I put the telegram in a safe pocket. I had an idea I'd be drawing it as often as the Deane-Adams.

Three days and
as many train changes later, we rolled into San Francisco aboard the Southern Pacific through a swirling mulch as brown as brandy and nearly as thick, a combination of fog from the harbor and coal smoke from a thousand chimneys. The globes of the fabled gas lamps, their posts obscured, lay like fishermen's floats on its surface, glowing dirty orange. On the depot platform the porters wheeled trunks and portmanteaux with lanterns balanced atop the stacks toward waiting hotel carriages; the lanterns illuminated little but themselves, but they gave passengers something to follow and avoid stepping off the edge and breaking a limb. Telegraph Hill was an island in a dun sea, pierced here and there by the odd church spire and the tall masts in the harbor.

Beecher and I were looking for a porter to direct us to a hotel that didn't care which colors it mixed under its roof when a dandy materialized out of the mist in front of us. He was thirty or younger, with longish flaxen hair curling out from under a Mexican sombrero, wearing an olive-colored frock coat over an embroidered vest that looked as if it had been cut out of the carpet in the lobby of an opera house. His trousers were fawn-colored and stuffed into knee-high boots and he was carrying a walking stick too short to lean on, made for swinging when he walked. It was all good material but needed cleaning; and had for some time, from the smell of him. The stick, however, had been polished recently, gleaming in what light there was like the tongue of an exotic reptile.

“Carry your bags, cap'n?” He pointed at my valise with his stick. He was holding it by the handle, a heavy-looking blob of silver shaped into the head of some animal.

“I've just got the one,” I said.

“Half a hog for my trouble? I'm past two days without gruel.”

“What's half a hog?”

“A nickel, cap'n. First time in Frisco?” He showed me a gold tooth, which would have made a better impression if the one next to it weren't black.

“Is there a tax on that?”

He giggled, and twisted the handle off the stick.

He did it one-handed, with a neat, practiced flick of his wrist, but he'd have done better to use both hands, because it called attention to itself. The rest of the stick fell away from eighteen inches of bright metal narrowing to a point. I got my valise in front of it just as he underhanded it at the center of my rib cage. It sheared through the leather like a lance through a blister. Before he could pull it back out and try again, I gave the valise a twist, snapping the shaft clean in two.

He had good reflexes. Six inches of jagged metal still stuck out of the handle, and without hesitating, he drew back to jab it at my face. I swung up the valise, but the contents shifted, throwing off the angle, and in that instant I saw myself walking through the rest of my life sideways with my empty eye socket turned to the shadow. Then something cracked, a sharp, shocking explosion like a chunk of hickory splitting in a stove. The dandy's sombrero fell off and he followed it down to the platform. In his place stood a sad-faced stranger with black bartender's handlebars under a leather helmet. He had a blue uniform buttoned to his chin and an oak stick in one hand, attached to his wrist by a leather thong. His expression as he examined the results of his action looked as if he'd bashed in the head of a kitten.

However, young skulls are hard to break. The dandy pushed himself into a sitting position and blinked up through the blood in his eyes. “You can't pinch me! I'm a Hoodlum!”

The man in uniform appeared to consider this. Then he leaned down and tapped the young man behind the right ear. The arm the dandy was supporting himself on went out flat and he fell onto his back. His eyes rolled over white and a thread of drool slid out of one corner of his mouth. Apart from that, nothing moved.

I remembered Beecher then and looked his way just as he pulled out his shirttail and dropped it over the butt of the Le Mat stuck under his belt. A bit more practice and he'd have it in his hand the next time a foot and a half of sword let out my intestines. He was more reliable with a chair.

“This one ain't much older than my sister's boy,” the policeman muttered. His Irish was as thick as stout. “They're getting too small to keep. Ah, me.” He stuck his stick under one arm, produced a pair of manacles from a loop on his belt, and bent to work.

“I'm obliged, Officer,” I said when he straightened.

He had a bulge in one cheek, which he emptied into a brown mess on the platform near where the dandy lay on his stomach now, with his hands linked behind his back. “You gents need to check those weapons first stop you make. You have run out of wilderness when you're in San Francisco.”

Our pistols were out of sight, but there is no overestimating a policeman's eye. I told him my name, which meant nothing to him, and showed him my star, which meant very little more.

“What about your man?”

Beecher said. “I ain't—”

I snapped open the telegram with Arthur's signature for the policeman to read. He grunted, shifted his plug from one cheek to the other, pursed his lips to spit, thought better of it, and mopped his mouth with the back of a broken-knuckled hand. “I voted for Hancock. Come to clean up Barbary?”

“You seem to be doing a fair job of that all by yourself.” I put away the flimsy.

“This?” He toed the inert man in the ribs. “This pup wandered out of his yard. Past Pacific Street I'd of wanted the militia. Just because these Hoodlums own the waterfront don't mean they hold title to the rest.”

Beecher asked what a Hoodlum was. The policeman appraised him, worked up a fresh head of juice, and defiled the crown of the young man's sombrero lying on the platform.

“Dips and thieves what like to dress up like toffs,” he said. “That poetist fellow Oscar Wilde hared through here last year, piping up beauty for its own sake and decked out in purple velvet, which is milk and sugar to these lads. Come sunup next day, you couldn't find a bolt of brocade that wasn't spoke for, nor an unslashed pocket to pay for it. It's how they know each other. Going in after 'em's the same as putting your fist through a paper nest of hornets. This far inland all you got to do is step on 'em.”

“Are you sure he's a Hoodlum?” I asked.

“He ain't Wilde. I know, because the wife dragged me down to Platt's Hall to see him. I never wasted fifty cents worse in all my born days.”

“Would you mind checking his pockets?”

“What for, iron knuckles? He didn't need 'em as long as he had that trick stick.”

“I'm looking for a double eagle.”

He barked a short laugh. “Twenty crackers in his pocket, and he tries to nick you for a five-cent piece?”

“It could have been an excuse to get close.”

The policeman spat, sighed, knelt, and performed the chore. The young man moaned when he was jostled, but didn't wake up. He might have had a fractured skull. The policeman rose with his bounty displayed on his palm. “Two coppers and a busted watch. Fellow he nipped it from probably fell on it. If he ever had a double Ned, it's spent. Not on soap.” He pocketed the items and mopped his palm on his trousers.

“These coins aren't for spending. He's just a thief, like you said.”

“Wheelock's Wards, we call 'em here.”

I perked up at that. “Daniel Webster Wheelock?”

“If there's more than one, it's a bigger country than they told me when I shipped over. These lads are Cap'n Dan's eyes and ears outside the Bella Union. Employing unfortunates, he calls it. I wouldn't know. The only unfortunate thing I see about these lads is they're as many as ants. I wouldn't drop my drawers in a Donegan on Kearney without a squad to stand behind me.”

I remembered Wheelock was a fire captain as well as a city alderman. I only half understood the rest. I thanked him again for stepping in and hoisted my valise. The broken sword-end came loose of the rent in the leather and clattered to the platform.

“Thank Mr. Callahan,” he said, slapping his palm with his stick. “It's the only English these lads savvy. Where you gents billeted? Magistrate might need you to swear out a complaint, on account of the fog.”

“The fog?”

“If he's a Wheelock man, he might say I couldn't see what I saw. That's what makes these boyos so chesty when Callahan comes to call.”

“No billet yet,” I said. “All suggestions are welcome.”

He thought for a moment. “The Slop Chest on Davis is the crib for you. It ain't so bad as it sounds; Nan Feeny inherited it from her husband, the Commodore, who was soft on sailors and named it after a captain's tackle. Twelve cents the day, eighty the week if you pony up front. Either of you gents smoke tobacco?”

Beecher said he did.

“You'll want to run the tip down the mattress seams. Discourages the active citizens.”

“‘Active citizens'?” we said together.

The policeman spat and shook his head. “That's any with at least four legs more than you. Come morning, you'll think you was cut up by the tongs. You frontier folk might know your Injun palaver, but if you don't learn the local office, you'll finish up feeding fish in the bay.”

The Hoodlum was coming around, moaning something about taking the jolly off, or something equally enlightening. The policeman reached down and hauled him to his feet by his shackles. This brought a howl that made me feel as if my own arms were being torn from their sockets, which the policeman silenced by punching the young man in the ribs with his stick. As he was being pulled toward the end of the platform, the Hoodlum said, “My roofer,” which was the first thing he'd said that I could translate without help. The policeman bent, scooped up the tobacco-stained sombrero by its crown, and jammed it down over the prisoner's ears. Then he led him off into the fog.

Beecher said, “I didn't follow but one word that man said in ten.”

“Maybe Nan Feeny has a dictionary.” I tucked in the torn flap of my valise and started off in the path of the policeman and his captive.

The first cabman I told to take us to the Slop Chest ordered us out of his carriage. Since he was holding his whip we didn't argue. I told the next one in line before we got in, and we didn't get in. The third driver, who was the most polite, pretended he was too busy getting his cigar burning to hear me. When I spoke to the next one down I held up the late Charlie Worth's double eagle, turning it until it caught the light from the corner gas lamp. It brought no smile.

“That's too much.” He was a lean fifty in an old-fashioned stovepipe hat and neckstock, with the sandy complexion of someone who spent most of his time sitting out in the elements.

I said, “I thought if I showed it, you wouldn't think I was luring you out there to nip you.”

I must have got the vernacular wrong, or maybe amused contempt was the only other expression he had. He pointed his chin at Beecher. “He with you?”

I said he was. I'd already dismissed this driver and was thinking ahead toward the last carriage in the line. I wondered how long the walk was to Davis and what kind of hell the fog contained on the way.

“Twenty-five cents. I don't split fares.”

We got in.

Either the haze was lifting or my eyes were becoming accustomed to the stingy light that managed to penetrate it. We watched ornate gingerbread buildings sliding past, a stout, homely little brick box whose sign identified it as the United States Mint, which belatedly I realized was where the coin in my pocket had come from, and to where it had returned by way of circumstances unsuspected by the men who operated the stampers. Shortly after that, the gimcrackery faded out and even brick became scarce, replaced by buildings made of clapboard and scrapwood bearing unmistakable stains from exposure to the sea; ships that had sailed their last missions, broken up for what profit could be obtained from their corpses. A dozen or so blocks of that, and then the carriage came to a stop.

“Slop Chest,” the driver said.

“Holy Jesus,” Beecher said.

“Home,” I said; and loosened the Deane-Adams in its holster before getting out.