Chapter 1: Skirmish

August 1916

The engineer had just eased the steam feed to slow us for the approach to Yakima Depot when my heart gave a little flip. The rest of me stayed still but I let my eyes open to a slit under the brim of my sombrero. It was completely dark with only the reflection of the firebox on the trees we were passing lightening the gloom.

Even in the deep darkness, I was cautious because a glint reflected off my pupils might alert the two men now carefully checking me and the six would-be workers sharing the flat car. They had sprawled like the rest of us since we boarded but now they were on their feet, prowling about and I was ready with a muffled oath when one of them kicked my foot as he passed. Total stillness might have made them suspicious if they were as strung up as I was.

The presence of the two men at the jungle outside the stock yards at Everett had been the first indication that old Spade hadn’t sent me on a wild goose chase. He had sauntered into my office in Minneapolis yesterday morning with my receptionist making a futile effort to hang onto his coat-tails – figuratively speaking, that is, because she would never have risked actually touching the stained and threadbare garment.

“It’s tomorrow at Yakima. After midnight. The owners are bringin’ in troops.”

He turned on his heel and left as he finished his message, shooing the receptionist out of his path. I wondered if she would stay in the job – the last three hadn’t.

I work for the Agricultural Workers Organisation, a labour union; officially I’m a field worker or recruiter in the North-West States but actually I’m their trouble-shooter. Our members elect the officers and there are more than a few who can’t stomach the idea that we’re at war with farmers and gang masters, so officially I’m elected to recruit more members; what I actually do is to keep our existing members alive and in paid employment. Hand on heart, I can promise you that I use fair means where it is possible to do so. I’m seldom asked about my methods, and I never speak of them – they’re something our members would rather know nothing about.

I’m not the only trouble-shooter, of course, but I sometimes think that I’m the only one who believes that lasting peace is possible. The others talk about ‘elimination’ of the threat to our livelihood and that gets the cheers at conferences, but the truth is that you have to have farmers growing crops before our members can earn a living wage harvesting them. Talk is cheap and glib speakers seldom step down from the soapbox to take a hand in the action in the enemy’s stronghold.

There is a lot of hot-headed talk about the workers in Russia planning to take over the farms and other businesses, but I can’t get worked up about who owns the wheat just so long as there’s enough growing for us all to get a fair share. That describes my job in a nutshell: I’m employed to make sure that the guys that bring in the harvest can live decent lives with enough money to survive on and raise a family. You’d be surprised how many people think that’s an outrageous demand and are prepared to go to war to stop my members eating regularly.

The truth is that most of our members couldn’t be trusted to run a farm if the way they run their own lives is any guide. The first essential for a landowner is to hold back enough seed to plant the next crop. Then you must tend the land for nine months while nature gets to work. If they’ve more than they can eat and drink, the people I’m paid to help will gamble what’s left. Most of them ride the rails from job to job because they don’t even save enough to buy a rail ticket.

I suppose it’s because I watched my dad kill himself trying to make a living farming back in Scotland that I say Good Luck to any farmer in the Pacific North-West that is earning good money. All I want is that a fair share of that cash finds its way into the pockets of our members. It’s the farmers that take the risks with weather and plant diseases, nursing the land for twelve months through ploughing to harvest to make their profit.

While I was mulling things over, I had locked my office door to change from my city suit into the worn jeans, plaid shirt and work-boots that were my working clothes. I was pleased to see that Ellen was back at her desk when I unlocked the door and went into reception snagging my hat from the rack as I passed.

“I should have warned you about Spade Docherty,” I apologised. The other receptionists had been city girls who knew nothing about farming far less about itinerant labourers, but Ellen’s Dad is a truck farmer supplying salad vegetables to greengrocers as far north as Chicago.

“I’ve worked shoulder to shoulder with worse than him, Mr Clooney,” she smiled.

“He’s a prospector and he works on the harvest just to get a grub-stake to spend the rest of the year finding gold.”

The other trouble shooters think the old man’s a bit weak in the head, but I can’t see much wrong with an obsession that takes him out into some of the most beautiful places on the whole planet. My guess is that he’d keep on prospecting even if he discovered a new motherlode. It helps that the information he gives me has always proved reliable!

After I left Ellen in charge, telling her to expect me when she sees me, I walked towards the freight yards on the look-out for Spade. I found him quietly drinking a beer in a shebeen close to the jungle. I paid for another drink by way of thanks before I eased out to the camp beside the rails as close as possible to the depot fence. It wasn’t chance that had taken the old man to the tavern where I go to leave details of my plans to be passed to my bosses. He knows how to keep secrets but the fewer people who know my routine the safer I’ll be.

An hour later I had stepped into my side-door Pullman and was on my way to Everett where I would change to the local train I was now riding. There is a bit of a truce in place between the railway companies and the free travellers at the moment so it was easy to board the freight train as it crawled past the jungle, as they call the shanty town where the hobos and bums hang out close to the fence where they can board before the train gathers speed.

I spend a lot of my time riding trains but I still haven’t completely figured out how the railroads operate at a profit. Paying passengers don’t realise that they’re window dressing – they provide the companies with pennies, but the dollars come from hauling freight. The train I rode to Everett was probably carrying goods destined for shops and stores in towns along the way but it’s too expensive to have the train stop to unload there. On arrival at Everett the goods are transferred to the Northern Pacific Railroad and then travel back along the route we had just taken. Maybe it’s a deal the big companies do to keep the little guys in business.

Having to go to the end of the track and come back suited me very well. As we passed through the depots on the way to Everett, I was able to check for any signs of unusual activity. I was particularly alert as we slowed to pass through Yakima where Spade had said trouble was brewing. I could see nothing that supported the old man’s contention. I suppose there were a few more people in the camp waiting to jump onto trains but there was nothing to indicate unrest. It’s harvest time when all’s said and done so you would expect to see more people about.

When I arrived at Everett, I first wandered around inside the jungle to get the mood of the hobos and tramps and then I took a stroll around the town itself where I reported my progress to the Union in yet another seedy tavern. The general level of tension is higher now than when I rode the rails as a tramp a few years ago but I could sense no great excitement.

In fact, I was beginning to think Spade had got bad information when I readied myself for the return trip down the local line. I had picked out an empty flatcar while the train was still in the depot, but I thought I was wasting my time until two men came to wait a foot or two away from me.

It was dark with the depot lights two hundred feet away giving what little illumination reached the jungle, but it was enough to make the hairs stand on the back of my neck. This is my first year as a Union trouble shooter, but I’ve ridden the rods long enough to distinguish the different kinds of folks that camp alongside the tracks waiting to hop on a freight train. I didn’t have to see the two men standing beside me to know they meant trouble – I could sense it through my pores.

Many of the hobos are fit and strong but they appear unthreatening most of the time. The troublemakers have a wholly different way of holding themselves, exuding confidence, sort of daring you to question their right to rule the area around them. If the light was stronger, I’m sure this pair would have looked better fed and better dressed than the rest of us but their inherent arrogance needed no better illumination. If you stood in their way, they would hardly bother to push you aside but would just walk on forward expecting you to give way or be trampled underfoot.

I first encountered labour bosses and their enforcers when I signed up to bring in the wheat on a farm in northern Oklahoma. A dozen men like the two thugs beside me had halted the work of several hundred workers with the threat of violence. Neither the farmer nor the workers were prepared to stand against the bullyboys; it was this experience that eventually brought me to the office of Walter Nef, the founding father of the AWO, and my present job.

When the two men had eased up beside me at Everett jungle, I didn’t need to see their business cards to recognise their profession. I made sure that I was on the car they chose; wherever they were going, they were worth watching. Now they were on their feet preparing to fight and I was still sitting but my eyes were wide open in the shadow of my sombrero. The two were standing close to the edge of the flatcar looking ahead towards the lights of Yakima. We had slowed but I reckon we were still travelling at fifteen miles an hour.

I still had no idea what was planned. The two men were certainly part of the ‘forces’ Spade had told me were going to show up presumably in support of the farmers. Not that the thugs always side with the farmers but there usually isn’t enough money on the Union side even to buy these guys a drink at the bar and thugs do like to be paid.

I rose to a crouch and moved swiftly to push one of the thugs headfirst off the car; when the other half-turned to see what was going on, I punched him hard, and he went over the edge backwards. From the single scream that followed his departure, I guessed that he had fouled a moving part in his haste.

You see, I don’t have to know exactly who plans to do what tonight in Yakima to be absolutely certain that everyone will benefit from the absence of these two thugs. Their intention to alight here had confirmed Spade’s information and they did not need to take any further part in the proceedings. As I said, my members really don’t have to have their consciences troubled by my methods of securing them full employment and a living wage!

You are at liberty to point out that I had absolutely no evidence that the two men were anything other than innocent travellers. My preference would have been to hold on to one of them to ask a few questions about who was paying them, but I couldn’t be sure that the other men on the flatcar were innocent bystanders. I might even concede that the thugs, despite appearances, could have been a couple of the poets that have recently taken to riding the rods but if so I probably did them a favour – poets should be saved from the scenes of violence I anticipated when we halt at Yakima in about two minutes.

Before the second man had fallen, I dropped flat and looked towards the other six men riding the car. They were all showing signs of agitation and two of them had stood up although they were making no move in my direction. Just at that moment they were thrown off balance as we crossed the first of the switches on the approach to Yakima; they both sat down and stayed still. I was pretty sure none of them was part of the fight we were running into.

To be safe, I kept all six men in sight as I edged to the side of the flatcar furthest from the station office. I still didn’t know what was going on but there were certain inferences I could draw. In the first place there was nothing on the Union grapevine to suggest that the harvesters were particularly unhappy. I thought it likely, therefore, that they were going to be the victims of the attack not the perpetrators.

The presence of the departed thugs implied something bigger than a local skirmish whipped up by the farmers or the sheriff; it would be safest to assume that all three parties would be involved. There had been action by farmers on their own in some other places, but it was most likely that the local law officers would be in on, if not leading the raid. In any event it was safe to assume that the depot would be the rallying point for their side.

The biggest danger was that there would be no single leader of the townsfolk accepted by all the parties; even if such a person existed it was doubtful if his authority would survive the first exchange of un-pleasantries. The farmers wanted to intimidate the hobos into accepting the pay and conditions on offer, but they did not want to incapacitate their work force, imprison them, or frighten them away. The attraction of gang bosses providing the work force, from the point of view of the landlords, was that the thugs would police the harvest guaranteeing a complaisant workforce.

The local law officers were in a difficult position. They were based in the towns nestling around the railroad depots and relied on votes to keep them in office. The arrival of a thousand itinerant workers to fill a central location with tents and shacks made townspeople very uneasy. The hobos had very little money to spend in local shops and they brought in their wake the bums who would steal if begging didn’t work. In the bigger towns with expanding industries the farmers found themselves under pressure to get the harvesters out of town. Given time, I hoped to convince city fathers that a well-paid work force would spend money in their shops and saloons so everyone would benefit.

Yakima is probably too small for that to be a problem. The valley farms own much of the property and directly support most of the businesses within the town boundaries. Even so, there will be many citizens who believe that the town carries too much of the burden of the migrant workers. The sheriff is likely to be the leader of this group and his aim will be to chase the vagrants out of town without the expense of jailing or burying them.

It would be wrong to assume that all the thugs are in Yakima tonight simply to pick up a wage. I’ve met enforcers who just like killing and there is still a threat from the anarchists who want to destroy pretty much everything. If a store is broken into in Yakima, or a woman molested on the street, everyone will believe that the culprit was an itinerant worker.

My members would be in or near the jungle outside the depot boundary. I would have to break out to get to them if I was going to have any impact on the evening’s entertainment. I was getting closer to the edge of the flatcar while listening intently. An open car clanking over the switches around a depot is not a quiet environment but I expected that the noise of a full-blown war would have reached me.

Given time, I planned to talk the inhabitants of the jungle into quietly withdrawing to the fields and dispersing. You can only hope to succeed with that advice before the battle commences. A man can be talked into walking away from impending trouble but once the first blow has been delivered, once the first shot has been fired, there is no stopping him from retaliating as best he can.

I don’t want you to run away with the idea that I love my members of the Union. I want to make their lives a little better, it’s true, but I don’t think they’re the salt of the earth; most of the ones I meet complain constantly that their problems are caused exclusively by others. The fault, as Shakespeare says, lies not in our stars but in ourselves that we are underlings in my humble opinion.

The fewer bad incidents, the easier it will be for me to negotiate a lasting peace. My solution, when despair at human nature has me by the throat, is that I get all my workers on a train and leave the wheat to rot in the fields of Yakima Valley. It sometimes seems that it will need that to happen before all the parties realise how much they need each other. For the moment, I will try to prevent a clash that will move a solution still further into the future.

My problem at present is that my members are opposed to people who hate them! The farmers and law officers will have spent the evening working themselves into a killing mood helped by the liberating amount of alcohol they’ll have consumed. They may be outnumbered by hobos, but each one will be armed; most will have both a side-arm and a rifle or shotgun. If I could be sure that none of my men had a gun, I would be a lot less worried.

Sadly, there will be men moving amongst the harvesters inciting violent action against the locals. The parent union of the AWO has a core of fanatics who see anarchy as the only solution to the problems that beset the world. Every death tonight will lift their spirits. If the money dries up, the enforcers will go back to beating up old ladies but how do you stop people who are convinced that the only way to save society is to destroy it?

It will be dark in the jungle and people will be milling around so there is every possibility that stray shots will end up in the wrong bodies. Tomorrow morning, when sanity has returned, the sheriff will round up any guns belonging to the itinerants, and he will solemnly declare that it was shots from those weapons and no others that caused all the gunshot wounds. Respectable farmers and storekeepers will not remember, far less admit, that they lost control and got caught up in a killing spree where anything that moved was a legitimate target.

We were now entering the lighted depot at walking pace, but I waited until we had passed the station buildings before I slipped off on the far side ready to move quietly towards the jungle. As my feet hit the ground there was a shot that knocked out one of the two loading arc-lights. This was followed by a fusillade of shots, perhaps thirty or forty in twenty seconds before shouts of ‘stop firing’ prevailed.

I spent the time flat on my face behind the bogey of a truck that had stopped close by. I had jumped in amongst a somewhat confused mass of people and my sanctuary gradually collected several other cautious citizens. By the time the bullets stopped I had the bones of the story. The migrant workers had been warned of the attack by a friendly or squeamish farmer and they had decided that they could use their superior numbers to mount a counterattack.

There had been two voices advocating a response and I recognised both from the descriptions given by my fellows crouching in the shelter of the wheels. The voice of reason was that of the local travelling delegate of the AWO, ‘Swede’ Larsen. His father farms in Montana but Swede prefers the freedom to harvest wheat, or plant potatoes or cut lumber.

While the forces of law formed up in the station buildings, Swede encouraged our members to withdraw to the fields on the other side of the tracks. “The need your labour,” he argued. “Come back in the morning when they have calmed down and I’ll get you working. You all know me!” The other speaker opposed this idea after he saw the mass of Swede’s listeners start to move in across the tracks.

In the relative peace after the fusillade, I began to crawl towards the fields away from the track. My first impression was that I had landed into a huge crowd, but I could now see that there were only a few hundred people milling about beside the freight train I had arrived on. Many of my members had eased their way back into the fields leaving the war zone and I was pretty sure that even more of them had made off before battle commenced.

“I’m glad you didn’t miss all the fun, Ewan my friend.”

The speaker was peeking round a pile of timber, and I would have recognised Swede Larsen from his bulk even if he hadn’t spoken in his distinctive accent, almost American but with a cadence that was entirely Scandinavian. I stood up and dusted myself off before I joined him.

“Where’s that bastard Lewis?”

Swede whistled.

“It didn’t take you long to find out what’s going on. Lewis is quietly searching the train looking for someone. He shot out the light, you know.” I have a dossier on this man back in my office; what I had seen since I stepped off the train had his hallmark on it. His was the other voice I had heard.

“I heard that you and him made speeches and it’s no surprise that he fired the shot but I know next to nothing. I wouldn’t have known even as little as I do if it hadn’t been for Spade Docherty.”

The farmers and their allies in the depot buildings seemed to be content to stay where they were and made no attempt to move either towards the jungle or across the tracks to get at us. I hadn’t spotted Lewis, and I couldn’t think why he would be searching the train unless he expected reinforcements. The crowd of itinerant workers was growing smaller with every passing minute, and it looked as if the battle had fizzled out.

“I don’t know who’s in charge over there,” Swede told me gesturing towards the station buildings. “But he figured things out pretty well. They placed a strong force across the obvious escape route into the fields beyond the jungle, and they would have caught us if we had gone that way. I think Lewis had got word of it because he was all in favour when I told the men to cross the tracks and take to the fields – he just wanted them to take a different route that would have brought them into range of the guns.”

I was not enjoying myself. Swede had done a great job and most of our members were safely clear of the opposition. When we were more settled, Swede would tell me why Yakima had been chosen – if anyone knew! My problem was Lewis who was here to stir up trouble. I needed peace and quiet to think things out. When I first met the man, he was an enforcer for a gang boss but he is now working for the Wobblies – at least, that’s what they think although I don’t believe Lewis is loyal to anyone but himself.

In the meantime, Swede and I cajoled the people around us to withdraw and that was going quite well because some of our members recognised us – we collect their Union dues so we’re hard to forget!

That was the moment when the farmer’s men waiting in the fields beyond the jungle to pick off escaping workers, decided that they should move in amongst the shanties and cooking pits to clean up the stragglers. There had been no sign of life from the jungle for more than half an hour so I have no idea why the farmers chose to attack – I guess nervous men start seeing substance in shadows and waiting without news would wind up the tension.