Two in the Field by Darryl Brock

cheap into the cushion cars even when we
got
cash.”
    Crooked passenger conductors bypassed the ticket system in order to pocket lower fares. The usual rate was ten cents a hundred miles or twenty cents a night. Slack and I traveled this way once. The trouble was that when you reached the end of a conductor’s geographical “division” and entered a new one, all deals were off.
    “They’re all being watched,” another said. “The rail bosses hired this spy outfit out of Chicago called Pinkertons. They do what they call
infiltrate
. Them Pink bastards are the worst devils of all.”
    “It ain’t just the railroads,” another tramp said. “The Pinks are in the coal mines, too. In Pennsylvania they’re settin’ the miners against each other and tryin’ to bring ’em down for bargaining together and daring to ask pennies more than starvation pay.”
    That spurred angry reactions. The anthracite miners had been on strike for months. It was common knowledge that the operators had brought in scabs and armed thugs, but not that they’d stooped to using paid deceivers and informers.
    “In K.C. I heard ’bout them Pinkertons,” another said. “I believe they’re the ones that blowed off Mother James’s hand.”
    “Who’s Mother James?” he was asked.
    “Why, Frank and Jesse’s ma, you ignorant fool. The cowardly Pinkertons threw a bomb inside the family house, but the James and Younger boys wasn’t there.”
    “You’re talking ’bout bank robbers,” the first objected. “Not workers.”
    “Banks been robbin’
us
long enough!” came the rejoinder, which provoked howls. “Anyway, I heard Jesse’s up in Chicago lookin’ to take vengeance on ol’ Pinkerton hisself.”
    A flash of memory:
Cold hazel eyes nervously blinking … soft southern accents with a faint stammer … ready to shoot a man who’d
jokingly slighted the Confederacy … firing his revolvers with deadly calm in a hail of bullets in the Promontory gambling saloon …
    I’d seen Jesse James in action.
    I wouldn’t want him looking for me.

    We jumped down from a coal car a quarter-mile or so outside Hartford’s Union Station, the Connecticut River off to our left. It was Sunday about eight o’clock, darkness settling. After making sure no bulls were around, we set out for Twain’s mansion. I remembered it being on Farmington Avenue, which lay several miles to the northwest.
    That direction again.
    “Stay out of public squares,” cautioned a tramp who’d directed us. “They’ll book you for vagrants, sure as cherry pie. Good luck with all the Puritans here.”
    “I’m lookin’ to work,” Slack told him.
    “For that,” the other said wryly, “you’ll require more than luck.”
    In the past—the future—I’d visited Twain’s mansion as a museum. So recognizing it was no problem. What I’d forgotten was that it shared a compound with exclusive neighbors: Charles Dudley Warner, Twain’s collaborator on
The Gilded Age
, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, the famed author of
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
—the “little woman who started the war,” as Lincoln had called her.
    Their houses loomed against the night sky.
    Incredible that I was here and they were too.
    Our shoes stirred the fine gravel of the curved driveway as we neared the massive structure that had cost Twain well over $100,000 to build. I hadn’t given the figure much thought. Now I knew what a staggering amount it was in these times. We stared up at windows glowing like cheery ornaments. For some reason the entrance faced the rear, while the service wing fronted on the street. Slack wanted to go there to knock.
    “I’m using the main entrance,” I said.
    “Sam …” He motioned at our clothes.
    “Not my fault,” I said. “Twain’s my friend, dammit.
That’s
the important thing.”
    Slack ran a dubious eye upward over the myriad turrets and balconies and gables and chimneys. By the time we stood beneath the porte cochère, where carriages dropped