Work Song (33 page)

Handling it as if it were the warrant that would put the whole crowd of us away, Jared scanned the single page. Then studied it with more deliberation. He sent Sandison a measuring look. Strangely, he had that fixed gleam toward the next objective when he passed the sheet up to me. “Better do what the man wants, Professor. We’ll sit tight until you get done.”

Apprehensively I read the piece of paper. I saw why Jared had done so twice. Once for the handprinted words, then for the dotted lines of musical notes.

“I shall need help,” I announced at once; this was too important for me to flub alone. “Quin, would you come up, please?” Next I singled out the Cornish leader: “And Jack? And, mmm, Griff?”

With no great willingness they joined me onstage and we huddled around the music sheet. The Cornishman’s eyebrows drew down in concentration, while Quinlan’s lifted as if liking what he saw. Griff ceremoniously cleared his throat. At my signal, the concertina wheezed a note for us. Somewhat ragged at first, our impromptu quartet gained harmony as we sang.

It was homely, it was distinctly old-fashioned, it was not particularly profound, but most of all, it was infectious. You could jig to it, march to it, swing a pick and chip out ore to it, hum it, whistle it, sing it in your sleep—it was as catchy as “Camptown Races,” what more can I say? The atmosphere in the auditorium changed for the better with every line we sang of that lucky combination of unifying words and bouncy tune, Sandison’s song working its magic like the proverbial charm. When we were done, the audience came out of its reverent spell and jumped to its feet, clapping and cheering.

Leaping to the stage, Jared seized the moment, raising his arms for attention. “Are we agreed? ‘The Song of the Hill,’ is it?” Unanimity answered him.

 

 

AFTERWARD, as Hoop and Griff and the cronies craftily discharged people into the street in imitation of whatever an eisteddfod is like when it winds down, I tended to last things, such as chairs, with Jared helping. At the back of the auditorium Rab was in one-way conversation with Sandison, enthusing about the evening’s outcome while he stood there like a totem.

“Well done, Professor.” Grinning keenly, Jared gave me credit I was not sure I entirely deserved. “It’s a dandy,” he was saying of the song. “It’ll help pull us through any strike. The Wobs can’t outsing us anymore. They can keep their pie in the sky, we’ve got hold of the Hill in one sweet damn tune. And the Anaconda bosses will hear it in their sleep before we’re done. They might bend us, but they can’t break us now,” he vowed. He stopped to whack my shoulder in appreciation.

Buoyant with relief, I admitted: “Now I can tell you, I half-expected that pair of goons and forty others to burst in on us tonight.”

He tugged his ear thoughtfully. “I guess you haven’t heard. Butte has seen the last of those two.”

Stunned, I visualized the two of them meeting the fate that had been hinted at for me, at the bottom of a glory hole.

I must have gasped, because Jared lifted his hands in clean denial. “None of it was our doing, and they’re still among the living. The word is”—I understood he was alluding to gossip on the Hill—“the Wobblies were pretty badly annoyed about that noose and decided to return the hint. So, when the goons went to turn in the other night, there was a dynamite fuse on each pillow and a note saying next time it would be the dynamite.” He grinned in admiration of a maneuver neatly done. “The last anyone saw, the pair of them were piling onto a train with their suitcases.”

Alas, then, for Eel Eyes and Typhoon, their part in the story flickered out as Rab surged over to us. “See? I knew the two of you could bring this off.” She linked arms with Jared and invited triumphantly, “Come celebrate with us at the Purity, Mr. Morgan.”

“You’ll manage nicely without me. I have one last thing to do here.”

I waved them on their way, and as they went out, Jared did an about-face in the doorway and snapped me a salute, while Rabrab blew me a kiss.

 

 

WHEN THE AUDITORIUM WAS CLEARED, I took a final look around and went upstairs in search of Sandison.

His desk lamp was on, an open catalogue of rare books in the pool of light, but the big chair was empty.

When Samuel Sandison was in a room, however, you could feel it. Over at the window, the stained glass muted in the darkness, he was peering steadily at the Hill through a whorl peephole. With the starry host of night lights at the mines, it was a rare Butte quietude to remember. Hearing me come in, he glanced in my direction and away again. “What are you doing here? You know we don’t pay overtime.”

“I came to say what a wonder ‘The Song of the Hill’ is, Sandy. Written with a pen of iron and the point of a diamond.”

Sandison grunted.

“And cleverly adapted,” I said the rest to his back, “from when the unheralded pastoral poet Jonathan Cartwright put it to paper as ‘The Song of the Mill’ a century ago.”

He stood deathly still, long enough that my heartbeats grew loud in my ears. At last the slope-shaped man swung around to me, the dim light making it hard to read the face that had taken other men off the earth.
Clomp, clomp,
the boots advanced toward me, the beard and summit of hair growing whiter as the lord of the library came looming into the lamplight. Just when I began to fear for my neck, he stopped short, an armlength away. “Morgan,” he sighed heavily, “you’re the only one in Butte who’s enough of an educated fool to know that. Sit down, nuisance.”

Relieved, I took to my chair while Sandison squashed into his. “All right, just between us, I helped myself to old Cartwright’s work where it seemed to fit.”

I could not resist: “Rustled it, might one say?”

Another gusty sigh. “That’s fair, I suppose. Who the hell ever knows what you end up doing in this life?” He rested his folded hands on his belly. “Anyhow, Dora touched up the tune a little,” he blandly shared the credit and guilt. “She’s musical, you know.”

“How did you know about the songwriting sessions?”

“Hah. Don’t you savvy anything yet about running an outfit? First rule is to keep track of what’s going on in the bunkhouse.”

“You sided with the union.”

He brushed away virtue, redemption, whatever it was, with a rough hand. “Anybody who puts a hornet up Anaconda’s nose, I’m with.”

“If I may say so, Sandy, you’ve given the miners one of those anthems authored into the mind beyond forgetting.”

“They’ll need it, won’t they.”

For a minute we sat in silence, in tribute to the workers’ battle ahead for a fair share of the yield of the Hill. Sandison stirred before I could. Gruff as a grindstone, at least trying to be, he appraised me. “You didn’t come by just to say nighty-night. Am I going to see that milk face of yours from now on?”

“I fear you won’t, Sandy. I have another chore to tend to, and the library is best left out of it.” Goodbye was not easy to say, no matter how I tried to dress it. “I must draw my wages and—what is the ranch phrase?—ride the grub line for a while.”

Sandison frowned sadly and reached for the cashbox. “Now I’ll have to hire a pack of flunkies to do whatever you’ve been doing.”

We both stood, and shook hands the way people do when they know it is for the last time. “One good thing about you, Morgan,” he looked down his beard at me. “You don’t stick around long enough for a person to get sick of you.”

 

 

FOR THE NEXT MATTER I needed the satchel, which I had brought with me and stowed in the sorting room. A full moon carpeted the library steps with silver as I departed the citadel of books, and there was a promise of frost in the air. Butte slept as much as it ever does. The main activity in the downtown streets was out front of the
Daily Post
building, where the night janitor was dismantling the scoreboard, and I tipped my hat to it as I strode by. Like everything else, baseball was over with the passing of its season.

A few blocks farther on, I turned in at the well-lit cigar store. The regulars telling stories at the counter fell silent and met me with stares, all except the messenger, Skinner, who jerked his head toward the back room.

When we were alone there, Skinner jittered from one foot to the other in agitation. “How’d you know?” he asked sourly. “The World Series stinks. The Sox should of won.”

“Rightly or wrongly, Cincinnati did,” I chided. With the kindness that can be afforded from picking a winner, I elaborated: “Use your noggin. If you were any of the White Sox being paid Maxwell Street wages, would you play your heart out for Cheap Charlie Comiskey?”

“It beats me,” he surrendered, and got down to business. “Like I told you, we had to lay your bet off with the big-city boys to cover it. The bookies back east in Chicago ain’t happy with this, but we pay off honest in Butte.”

“I was counting on that.” I opened the satchel. Sorrowfully, Skinner began dumping in the bundles of cash.

 

 

GRACE WAS WAITING UP.

“I heard.” Apronless there in the dining room, she nonetheless appeared to be laboring over something. She tried a smile that she couldn’t make stick. “Hoop and Griff came home to spruce up before they spend the night celebrating in a speakeasy. They went out of here singing the thing at the top of their lungs.”

“The union has its work song,” I concurred, “and its work cut out for it, as always.” I halted near one end of the dining table as she had stopped at the other. From her eyes, I could tell that a question was tugging hard at her. “What is it, Grace? You seem on edge.”

The catch in her breath audible, she made a flustered motion in my direction. “I wasn’t sure you would be back. I don’t know why, I just had a feeling—I peeked in your room and saw your satchel was gone.”

“I needed it for an errand.” Setting the satchel on the table, I opened it as wide as it would go. “Come and see.”

Bringing her quizzical expression, she looked inside, and looked again.

“Morrie,” she gasped, “did you hold up a bank?”

“Not at all. An honest wager on a sporting event paid off.”

Before she could tell me again what she thought of betting, I hastened to add: “It was very nearly a sure thing.” Still, it seemed only fair to give myself a bit of credit. “Although perhaps not everyone would have recognized it as the kind of chance that comes along only once in a lifetime.” History soon enough confirmed me in that, as several White Sox players were found to have been bribed and made miscues that let the Red Stockings win. So much for the 1919 Anklet Series.

Unable to resist, Grace peeked into the satchel for the third time. “There’s an absolute fortune in there!”

“Mmm, an adequate fortune, I’d call it.”

“I’m still in the dark.” She gestured helplessly at the trove on the table. “To win this much, didn’t you have to put up a whopping stake? Where did you get that?”

Her eyes widened with every word as I told her.

“YOU”—she had trouble finding her voice—“you bet the library books? ”

“Sandison’s, let us say.” I explained that the inventory with the accompanying assessment made a highly impressive asset, and Butte bookies had seen stranger things put up as a stake. “They don’t ask too many questions.”

Grace still fumbled for adequate words.

“But—then—what if you had lost?”

“Ah, that. Sandison would have told the gamblers in no uncertain terms the books belonged to him and not some minor functionary of the library, I felt quite certain.”

With an incredulous laugh Grace sank into a chair at the table and sat looking up at me as if I had grown wings. “You’re rich. How does that feel?”

“Better than most other choices,” honesty compelled me to say. I gestured to the satchel. “There’s enough to go around. Take what’s needed to put the boardinghouse on easy street, why don’t you. And the union strike fund will get a share. So will a certain pair of young lovers, as a wedding gift. Then another sum for them to help Russian Famine along in life and keep the copper collar off him.” I knew myself well enough to admit: “As for the rest, I’ll see how fast it wrinkles.”

I paused. The time had come. Sitting down across from Grace, I reached over and took her hand, patting it as she so recently had caressed mine before I set forth with Sam Sandison to Section 37. “There is a complicating circumstance, unhappily.” If I knew anything in this world, it was that the Chicago gambling mob was going to be angrily curious about the major betting loss in some outpost of the Rockies. So it had to be said, and pats of the hand did not really soften it: “I must move on.”