“Let me revise that, if I may,” said Archie, staring back. “If it were possible to look at less than nothing, then you would provide the opportunity to look at less than nothing.”

Wally Kisley laughed. “Kid, you’re a blessing in disguise.”

“What?” said the cop.

The barkeep, who had been listening anxiously, left the room.

Wally replied conversationally, “My young redheaded friend sees the joke in the fact that a man who is so ugly his face would stop a clock would criticize the appearance of my garb.”

The cop pulled a blackjack, and his partner pulled his.

“Enough,” said Mack Fulton, materializing from a chair in a dark corner with a Smith & Wesson rock-steady in his hand. “Vamoose!”

• • •

FOUR GLEASON COPS and two Pinkerton detectives caught up with the Van Dorns in Reilly’s Saloon.

Kisley and Fulton and Wish Clarke and Archie Abbott were sharing a bottle while waiting for Isaac Bell. Archie was playing the piano, a dusty upright not too badly out of tune, and Mack and Wally were harmonizing in full-blown Weber-and-Fields style on the new Chicago hit, “If Money Talks, It Ain’t On Speaking Terms With Me.”

The cops and detectives walked in with pistols drawn.

Reilly vanished into his back office. The miners at the plank-and-barrel bar, who had been talking boldly about rumors of a strike, tossed back their whiskeys and hurried out the door.

Wally and Mack kept singing: “If money talks, it ain’t on speaking terms with me . . .”

Wish Clarke said, “If you boys are waving those firearms at us, you seem to be forgetting that the Van Dorn Agency is working for the Gleason Consolidated Coal & Coke Company, hired personally by Black Jack Gleason, who feared, with ample evidence to back him, that you boys were not up to detecting saboteurs.”

“Not for long,” a beefy West Virginia company cop drawled back. “Word is, company’s fixing to fire you all soon as Mr. Gleason returns from New York City.”

Kisley sipped whiskey and glanced at Fulton.

Fulton sipped whiskey and glanced at Wish Clarke.

Wish Clarke drained his glass, refilled it, and said, “When and if Mr. Gleason decides to terminate our employment, we may go home. Or, we may continue to enjoy the pleasures of fair Gleasonburg like the free citizens of America we are. In the meantime, we’re girding our loins for what this establishment claims will be supper. So if you boys care to gird with us, pull up a chair. If not, trundle on, and we’ll commence to eating.”

“You’re all under arrest.”

Wish Clarke said, “You can’t arrest us.”

“Why not?”

“Your jail burned down.”

Archie Abbott spewed a mouthful of whiskey in the sawdust.

The Pinkerton said, “We got temporary hoosegows lined up on a siding in case the miners take it in their damned fool heads to strike—old reefer cars for refrigerating meat. There’s one reserved for you boys ’til the judge gets around to filling out the papers. If you’re packing firearms, drop them while you can.”