The Mammoth Book of the West (38 page)

Soon I could hear the yelling of more than 1,000 throats as they came to get me. It wasn’t long until the street was jammed with angry men. I was directly under the center of our store and could hear the leaders command Mrs. Shipley to open the door, but she refused to do it. Then they broke it down and the mob rushed in. I could hear Dallas’ voice demanding that she tell where I was, but she denied having seen me since the night before. He told her that they knew better, as Miss Olsen had seen me crawl through the window, since which time a heavy guard had been kept around the house. I heard Mrs. Shipley ask why they wanted me. Then Dallas replied: “He’s a dirty Dickenson detective and we intend to burn him at a stake as a warning to others of his kind.” Mrs. Shipley asked why they didn’t kill me yesterday when they had a good chance. To this Dallas replied: “The time wasn’t ripe yesterday, but it is now and we will find him, so you might as well tell us or it will go hard with you.” Mrs. Shipley then told them to do their worst, as she didn’t know where I was. I felt like patting the lady on the back, as one out of 10,000 who wouldn’t weaken and tell the secret with that vicious mob around her. I feared the child would tell, as he was bawling as though his little five-year-old heart would break.

Now I could hear “We’ll find the——. He’s in this
house,” etc. Then a rush was made into Mrs. Shipley’s bedroom and out into the back yard and also upstairs. I couldn’t help but think of what a fine chance I was missing for making a world’s record as a man-killer; for had I carried out my first plan, this was the moment as the rush was being made upstairs, when there would have been “something doing.”

As I feared they might find the hole in the floor and then set fire to the building, I concluded to get out of there, even though I had to fight my way out.

The only opening was under the sidewalk, which was about a foot above the ground. I had no idea where it would lead me, but I thought of the old saying, “Nothing risked, nothing gained.”

Finally I started east, towards the Miners’ Union hall. The store buildings were built close together, except at my building where there was a narrow alleyway leading to the rear. It was in this narrow passage where Dallas had his policeman’s beat that morning. I had to crawl on my stomach, “all same” snake in the grass; but I had to move very slowly as I was afraid of being seen by the angry men who lined the sidewalk as thick as they could stand. Some of the cracks in the sidewalk were an inch or more wide. After going the width of two store buildings, I stopped to rest, and while doing so, I lay on my back so as to look up through a wide crack. I could see the men’s eyes and hear what they said. Most of their talk was about the “scabs” killed when they blew up the Frisco Mill with giant powder. Finally one big Irishman with a brogue as broad as the Atlantic Ocean, said: “Faith and why don’t they bring that spalpeen out. I’m wanting to spit in his face, the dirty thraitor. We Emericans have got to shtand an our rights and show the worreld that we can fight.” Of course I could have told this good “Emerican” citizen the reason for the delay in bringing me out to be burnt at a stake; and I could
also have told him that he was then missing a good opportunity of spitting in my face, while alive, for my mind had been made up not to be taken until dead.

This was a hint for me to be moving, knowing that I was exploring new territory.

Another twenty-five feet brought me in front of a saloon, and here I found an opening to get under the building, which was built on piles and stood about four feet from the ground. In the rear I could see daylight. At this my heart leaped with joy. The ground was covered with slush and mud and there were all kinds of tree-tops, stumps and brush under this building.

In hurrying through this brush, my watch-chain caught and tore loose. On it was a charm, a $3 gold piece with my initials C. L. A. I hated to lose this, so stopped to consider as to whether I should go back to hunt it. While studying, I wondered if I was scared. I had to smile at the thought, so I concluded to test the matter by spitting; but bless you, my mouth was so dry I couldn’t spit anything but cotton, or what looked like cotton. I decided that it was a case of scared with a big S. I had always heard that when a person is badly frightened he can’t spit; but this was the first time I ever saw it tested.

A week or so later I bought the watch-chain and charm from a boy who had found it while the union had “kids” searching for me under these buildings on the day of the riot. When the chain was found, I suppose they figured that the bird had flown, all but this relic of his breast-feathers.

On reaching the rear of the saloon, I found plenty of room to get out in the open, but before making the break, I examined my rifle and pistol to see that they were in working order.

All ready, I sprung from under the house and stood once more in glorious sunshine. The Winchester was up,
ready for action. Only three men were in sight and their backs were towards me. They stood at the corner of the saloon building, looking up a vacant space towards the main street. They had evidently been placed behind these buildings to watch for me, but in their eagerness to be at the burning, they were watching the crowd in the street, knowing that the movements of the, mob would indicate when the “fatted calf” was ready for the slaughter. My first impulse was to start shooting and kill these three men, but my finer feeling got the best of me. It would be too much like taking advantage and committing cold-blooded murder.

I glanced straight south. There, in front of me, about fifty yards distant, was the high railroad grade which shut off the view from the Gem mill where I knew my friends awaited me. But to undertake to scale this high grade I would be placing myself between the two fires, for the chances were, my friends would take me for an enemy and start shooting.

Quicker than a flash the thought struck me to fool these three men and make them think I was going up to the top of the grade to get a shot at the “scabs.”

A little to the left there was a swift stream of water flowing through a culvert under the railroad grade, and to avoid being shot by my friends I concluded to go through this and sink or swim.

I started in a slow run, half stooped like a hunter slipping upon game, as though intending to crawl up on the grade and get a shot at the enemy, my course being a few feet to the right of the boxed culvert. I didn’t look back, as I knew my footsteps would attract the attention of the three men, and I didn’t want them to see my face or to note that my movements were suspicious. When within a few feet of the rushing water, I made a quick turn to the left and into the culvert. Just then one bullet whizzed past
my head. This was the only one shot fired. It was all I could do to stem the force of the water, which reached to my arm-pits. The Winchester was now in my left hand while my right extended forward holding on to the upright timber on the west wall of the culvert. After I had worked my way far enough into this culvert so that I was in the dark and out of sight of my enemy, I braced myself against an upright timber and turned round to look back. There in plain view, was three drunken Swedes trying to see me so as to get another shot. Now I held the winning hand, and raised my rifle to take advantage of my opportunity; but my heart failed me at the thought of murdering a drunken Swede, for I had found them to be a hardworking lot of sheep who were always ready to follow heartless Irish leaders. I also thought of the danger of shooting, as the flash from my rifle would indicate my whereabouts and shots might be fired in that direction. Although from the way these Swedes or Finlanders were staggering around, I didn’t think they could shoot very straight. I began to work my way to daylight on the other side, a distance of about fifty feet. I would reach ahead and get hold of an upright timber and then pull myself forward against the raging torrent. I finally emerged from the culvert and found myself under a Swede’s house, which was built over the opposite end of this culvert, with the entrance to the house fronting on the railroad track. On walking from under the house, which was built on piles, a Swede woman at her back door recognized me. She called me by name and asked what I had been doing under her house. Her husband had been one of my best union friends. I told her that I was just prowling around a little for exercise. She laughed.

Now I had to march across a 200-yard open space to reach the Gem mill and I had to take chances of being shot at by both sides.

On reaching the “scab” forts – high ricks of cordwood with port holes — I was halted by a voice behind the woodpile which said: Drop that gun you — and walk up here with your hands up.” I replied that I was a friend. He answered: “It don’t make a d—d bit of difference; if you don’t drop that gun your head goes off.” I dropped it, and with both hands raised, I walked up to the port hole which was made by a stick of the wood being pulled out. The fellow then told me to pull off my hat so he could see my face. I did so, and he said: “Are you that detective who came to our camp last night?” I replied yes. Then he told me to hurry and get behind the fort before the union — took a shot at me. It was a relief to get behind the fort and shake hands with the Thiel guards there.

Siringo’s evidence convicted 18 union leaders, who received terms in penitentiary.

Labour matters continued to preoccupy the Denver offices of the Pinkertons. The new Western Federation of Miners battled mine-owners in Leadville (1894), Telluride (1901) and, most bitterly, at Cripple Creek (1894–1904). A dynamite attack on the Cripple Creek railroad station by union terrorist Harry Orchard left 13 strikebreakers dead. In 1905 the former governor of Idaho, Frank Steunenberg, was killed in a bomb attack, seemingly as punishment for calling in federal troops against striking miners at Coeur d’Alene. Pinkerton agents extracted a confession from Orchard, who in turn implicated officials of the Western Federation of Miners. A jury found Orchard guilty of the bombing, but other defendants, among them noted labour radical William “Big Bill” Haywood, were freed.

The charismatic Haywood went on to be a founder of the revolutionary labour union, the International Workers of the World (“Wobblies”), which garnered support far and wide across the West. Particular bastions of
support were the logging camps of the Pacific Northwest and the mines of Montana, but the Wobblies organized many types of worker, including hop-pickers. A Wobbly-led hop-pickers’ strike in 1913 in Wheatland, California, produced a gunfight between sheriffs and workers which left five dead. Two years later in Butte, Montana, a confrontation between the Wobblies and mine-owners resulted in Wobbly leader Frank Little being murdered. Little was one of the last victims of Western vigilantism. He was swung from the trestle at the end of a rope.

Pinkertons were involved in many of the conflicts, as guards, as union-busters, and as spies. The Agency’s willingness to act on behalf of management was occasioned by its belief that unions were unpatriotic and did the workers more harm than good. But the mood of the public shifted, and the Pinkertons’ somewhat heavy-handed methods (there were allegations of framing and forced confessions) set it behind the times. In 1937 Pinkertons abolished its industrial division, after Congress ruled that industrial spying was illegal.

Women were tamers of the West, not shoot-’em up perpetrators of wildness. When women began to arrive in raw cow towns and mining camps in significant numbers the invariable consequence was an outbreak of peace. “Streets grew passable, clean and quiet,” recalled one prospector in Helena, Montana, on the coming of women, and “pistols were less frequently fired.”

Women brought with them the perfume of civilization, the prospect of families and settlement. Respectable women worked as cooks, laundresses, schoolteachers and, above all, wives and mothers. By the mores of the time, they were not lumberjacks, railroad builders, doctors or miners.

And yet some women were not satisfied just to be “the Missus”. To them, as to men, the West was a land of promise and possibility, the chance to fulfil long-damped aspirations. Thousands homesteaded their own land, and a few vied for jobs normally filled by men. Minnie Mossman captained steamboats on the Columbia, Nellie Cashman worked the West as a prospector, and the African–American Mary Fields, an ex-slave, drove a US mail coach.

And some women chose – or were obliged – to pass beyond all bounds of respectability into the
demi-monde
, or even into full-scale outlawry.

Most women who inhabited the
demi-monde
did so as prostitutes. Outside of St Louis, San Francisco and other large towns, the fabled
maison de joie
hardly existed. Nearly every settlement had a Painted Lady or two, but most prostitutes worked the women-hungry, wide-open, cow, mining, rail and garrison towns. Attitudes to prostitution in the West tended to be that it was an evil necessity; the ratio of males to females was hugely unbalanced. San Francisco was a prime example. Before the Gold Rush the population of the town consisted of 459 people, of whom 138 were women. After the discovery of gold, the migration of 1849 brought 65,000 men to the city – but just 2,500 women. Not until towns and regions had been settled for some time did births reduce the disproportion between the sexes. In the meantime, there was prostitution on a large scale; in 1880, Leadville, Colorado was recorded as having a brothel for every 129 inhabitants.

Prostitutes had lives of hardship and tragedy. Many were forced into prostitution by poverty, or by abandonment by their husbands. Suicide and disease were commonplace. So was violence. In consequence, many prostitutes went armed with knives or Derringer-type pistols. A gun made a prostitute a formidable combatant. “Soiled dove” Martha Camp chased a customer out of a brothel in Bodie, California, in 1881 and fired five shots at him. According to the local paper, the man’s “hair stood on end, as he expected any second to be reduced to a state of perfect utility.”

Elenor Dumont also worked Bodie as a prostitute, although she began her career as a gambler in Nevada City in 1854, where she was employed as a dealer in the largest gambling establishment in town. The novelty of a woman gambler created a sensation, and customers flocked to her table. But Dumont was possessed by a wanderlust, and joined the miners in the rushes to British Columbia, Montana,
the Black Hills and Idaho. She committed suicide after losing $300 she had borrowed from a friend in a faro game.