The furtive Claggart was not the enemy. A detective no less, and a shrewd one at that. Deadly, as Isaac said? No doubt deadly. She had seen what he was capable of. But never deadly to her. That she knew in her heart. He would never hurt her. He was not the enemy. He wanted to be her friend. She would let him be. A helpful friend who would lead her to the enemy.

Chapter 38

38

WHEN THE FOURTH BARGE FLEET STEAMED INTO THE dark with two thousand striking miners, their wives, and their children, Isaac Bell stepped into the beam of towboat Sadie’s searchlight and signaled to Archie to land. Captain Jennings had claimed that Sadie was the oldest of the riverboats, a Civil War relic that had run the Confederate gauntlet at Vicksburg, and Archie reported, as he stepped from her low hull onto the planks the miners had laid to stabilize the bank, her pumps were running full blast to keep up with leaks in her bottom.

“Don’t let anyone on that barge,” Bell told him, indicating the lead barge touching the shore farthest from the towboat. “I’m reserving it for the Defense Committee’s dynamite.”

Bell ran through the dark and now deserted trolley park to the gates.

Fortis, the head of the Defense Committee, was reeling with exhaustion. “I hope you’re ready for us. The jailbirds are fixing to bust in.”

Bell looked through a crack in the gate. Twenty strikebreakers were carrying a battering ram fashioned from lengths of trolley track. Fifty, at least, were arrayed behind them, each with a pick handle. And the Pinkertons were dismounting from their streetcar and spreading out, taking up positions with their rifles.

“Where are the Coal and Iron Police?”

“Look at the roof.”

Now Bell spotted them, dimly silhouetted against the McKeesport glow. They were crouching behind the ridgeline of the trolley barn roofs, rifle barrels leveled at the gates. “We,” he said, realizing as he spoke how totally he had cast his lot with the striking miners, “have to do something better than a running gun battle to cover our retreat.”

Fortis’s answer was a stark reminder that Bell had entered a war that was already well under way. “We’ve arranged a reception for the battering ram that’ll buy us some time— Wait! Now what are they up to?”

A trolley car glided from the mouth of one of the barns and stopped where a curve in the rails pointed it straight at the gate. If the rails continued to the gate, the car would have been an electrified battering ram, but the rails turned away. Puzzled, Bell looked more closely and suddenly realized that the front windows of the car had been removed. In their place, the strikebreakers had jury-rigged headlamps cannibalized from other cars.