“It so happens that young Bloom, who’s been goading his father to fight back and has given him spine where there was only jelly, is making a quick round-trip to Cincinnati. Four hours out, a secret meeting at the Queen City Club with some bankers, and four hours back. He’ll have a guest on board. A friend of the family asked to ride along. His name is Isaac Bell.”

Henry Clay was both delighted and astonished. “How do you know that?”

“Bloom’s resistance forced me to employ spies.”

Clay surged to his feet, sleep forgotten. “Three birds. A triple play.”

Chapter 40

40

ISAAC BELL COULD NOT FIND MARY HIGGINS. A NEW RENTER had moved into her room, and the landlady had no forwarding address.

He went next to the tent city, riding the Second Avenue trolley to the end of the line where the strikers had torn up the tracks. The expressions on the sullen Pittsburgh cops observing from a block away told Bell that they feared the obvious: The coal miners defending the tent city included Army veterans of the Spanish and Philippines wars, military men who knew their business.

They had installed an iron gate that was only wide enough to admit one man at time. Bell showed a pass signed by Jim Higgins. Only then was he allowed through. And while approaching and entering, he was under the watchful gaze of strategically posted riflemen. Lookouts were stationed on top of the coal tipple with views of the city in three directions. Any movement of cops or militia would be spotted a mile away before they reached the gates. And in the shallows beside the riverbank, the strikers had sunk the barges that had floated them there, creating a crude breakwater like a crenellated castle wall, which would make it difficult to land police launches.

Two thousand tents pitched in neat rows with straight walks between them further conveyed the atmosphere of a military camp. By contrast, well-dressed women of means from Pittsburgh’s churches and charities swept by in long skirts, directing the placement of kitchen tents and water taps. The ladies’ presence, Bell thought, must be constraining the cops as much as the miners’ riflemen. Not to mention the city fathers who were their husbands, and it was amusing to imagine how many Pittsburgh bigwigs were sleeping at their clubs until the strike was settled. But despite strong defenses and capable administration and charity, the coal miners’ tent city had a precariousness, which was expressed by one stern matron whom Bell overheard:

“This is all well and good until it snows.”