They brought him the light. They were edgy, he thought, less cock of the walk, less inclined to bully. “Where you going with this?”

“A walk,” said Bell. “Come along if you like,” knowing the Pinkerton would never enter the mine.

“The miners are talking strike.”

“When did that start?” Bell asked, recalling Jim Higgins’s promise There’s more where I came from.

“Damned fools are takin’ the bit in their teeth. Whole town’s about to blow sky-high. Wouldn’t be surprised if some of them took a swing at you.”

“I’ll run the risk,” said Bell. He carried the light through the timbered portal and hurried straight down the haulageway.

The ventilators were running, and he could hear the clatter of hundreds of miners picking in the galleries, the muffled screech of electric drills, and the occasional heavy crump of dynamite tearing open the seam. He recognized the doorboy he had helped out after the wreck and waved. The child did not know Bell in his sack suit and fedora and looked frightened that he had drawn the attention of a detective.

Bell stopped and pressed a small gold piece into the boy’s grimy hand. He stared at it with a combination of disbelief and terror. “It’s O.K.,” Bell assured him. “My grandfather left me a few bucks. You can keep it or give it to your mother and father.”

“I don’t got no father.”

“Give it to your mother.”

He started down. The boy called after him, “Are you a Pinkerton, mister?”

“No. I’m a Van Dorn.”

“Wow,” said the boy, willing, Bell noted ruefully, to accept a distinction that Mary Higgins had not.

He continued down the sloping passage to the end. The wrecked train had been removed and the tunnel dug deeper into the seam. Bell worked his way back up to the lowest gallery, then counted up four props and felt behind the fourth for the crack where he had hidden the broken bridle link.

• • •

WALLY KISLEY was deep in conversation with a miner for whom he had bought a schooner of beer in the dirtiest saloon he could recall when the man suddenly clammed up. Young Archie, who was doing a good job of standing around not appearing to be on lookout, rapped a warning on the bar, and Kisley looked up to see a pair of Gleason company cops sashay in like they owned the place.

They walked straight up to him, said “Get out of here” to the miner, who scooted away without finishing his beer. Then one said to Kisley, “That’s the ugliest suit of clothes I ever seen on a man.”

Wally Kisley studied his checkerboard coat sleeve as if seeing it for the first time.

The second cop said, “Looks like a clown suit.”

Wally Kisley remained silent. The first cop noticed Archie Abbott and said, “What the hell are you looking at?”

The tall, young redhead answered slowly and distinctly, “I am looking at absolutely nothing.”

“What did you say to me?”