Chapter 9

That November had seen significant changes in the administration of Jackson County.

After a diligent campaign against Arthur Coates -- who had practically papered the county with colorful signs and handbills -- voters elected Sean Edwards as sheriff in a landslide. Arthur Coates was not a likable man, while Sean Edwards was not only personable, but he had an outstanding record as a county law officer in Franklin County, where he had been chief deputy. And he was the older brother of the much-beloved Jackson County chief deputy, Bill Edwards, who had been gunned down in an ambush in the spring of the year.

Matthew Trilby, an attorney who’d moved down from Fort Birney, had run unopposed for county attorney and prosecutor. Trilby had run on an anti-corruption platform and seemed an honest and caring man, in the conversations Malik had had with him. His experience was more in business law, contracts, and taxes, much like Malik’s own, but lawyers in the towns and small cities of the west tended to do a bit of everything, so he had criminal court experience, too.

Amos Feinman, the state auditor Malik had met two years prior, when Jackson County’s books had been examined by the state, had kept tabs of developments in the county. He had moved to Waypoint early in the summer, specifically to run for the county treasurer’s job. Herb Arnsworth, the incumbent, had thrown his hat in the ring, but, other than a few newspaper advertisements, he had done no campaigning. Feinman, on the other hand, had shown his face at all sorts of functions, shaking hands, and distributing campaign literature, going door-to-door in both rich neighborhoods and poor.

Feinman won, but the race was surprisingly close. The Malik brothers, who’d contributed a hundred dollars to both Feinman’s and Trilby’s campaigns, decided that Feinman had lost votes simply on the fact he was Jewish. There’d even been some veiled negative references from the pulpits of some churches, including St. Francis Xavier, which the Maliks attended when they were in town. Still, Feinman had won.

Practically overnight, with the arrival of the Lewins, Dr. Fagan, Feinman, and, as it turned out, the new stationmaster, Emma Watts, there was a noticeable Jewish community in Waypoint, though not a particularly devout or active one. There were others of the faith, a few workingmen and their families, who had lived there for years, but now there were prominent members of the community adding to Waypoint’s diversity, whether some folks were happy about it or not.

One big surprise was the new chief judge of the Jackson County Board of Judges. Maylon Rademacher had run against Rufus Hornsby, one of the incumbent judges on the governing board. The board of judges was similar to a board of county commissioners in other states, save that the chief judge was the jurist for civil or criminal matters within the county’s purview. While Hornsby had a strong following among the farmers and ranchers on the north side of the county, Rademacher was well known both in Waypoint and Ranch Home and he won the office handily.

But the biggest surprise turned out to be in the election of the county clerk. One candidate was Edwin Nestor, a thirty-one year old red-haired stockman from east Texas. Nestor had recently moved in with his uncle, Bertram Nestor, on the uncle’s ranch, which straddled the Wagon Road on the north edge of the county. Nestor apparently enjoyed some manner of political connections, as he had been appointed by the county judges to fill the brief remainder of Timothy Banks’s term as county clerk. Earlier that year, Banks, along with Chief County Judge John Gunderson, had been murdered by their partner in crime, Pete Ranford, who had worked under the guise of a railroad detective, calling himself Martin Doyle.

Nestor’s election opponent was none other than Mitchel Anderson, General Manager of the Old Courthouse Inn, who, after long discussions with his business partners, had decided to venture into a larger management role

Neither Nestor nor Anderson was well known, but both campaigned actively. However, Nestor’s manner was snide, superior, and abrupt whereas Anderson was able to project an air of interest and concern, which was, in fact, genuine. For purposes of the campaign, Anderson, born a London cockney, assumed a Yorkshire accent, eschewing both the posh London intonations he so easily affected as the Inn manager, as well as the East End guttural that was his birthright. He felt the Yorkshire inflection carried an air of the earnest and honest everyman.

Anderson won by a margin of eleven percent.

At the Inn, with Anderson’s successful bid for the clerkship, Juanita Garcia took over supervision of the lodging service. Her nineteen-year-old brother-in-law, Jorje Garcia, became the dining room’s maitre d’hotel, filling Juanita’s former role. Anderson retained his executive position at the Inn, but it was not a significant demand on his time, due to the competence of the supervisors on site. Joe Collins, former slave and retired Buffalo Soldier, remained in his position of chef de cuisine and food services manager.

And so, in the course of events, Mitchel Anderson went to a week-long meeting in the state capitol, a training event intended specifically to provide new county clerks with a grounding in their responsibilities, which amounted to, in the main, administering their county’s essential regulatory functions and services within a framework of state laws and administrative rules.

Anderson returned to Waypoint on Saturday, the twenty-eighth of January. After stepping off the train, his first instinct was to seek out Malik. The Malik brothers, however, had gone out Ranch Home. Anderson debated riding to the ranch, himself, but he was exhausted from an intense week of training that started at eight in the morning and continued, with meal and comfort breaks, until eight o’clock in the evening. Nor was he accustomed to riding, seldom mounting a horse or even using a buggy. So his news would have to wait until Monday.

Late that Monday morning found Anderson in his second floor, corner office in the new county courthouse. His secretary, twenty-four year old, mustachioed Grover Yardley, tapped on the door frame and stepped into Anderson’s office.

“Mister Anderson, Mister Emil Malik is here to see you.”

Anderson immediately rose from behind the stack of paper he’d been sorting, saying, “Show him in, please, Mister Yardley.”

Yardley backed out the door and Anderson walked around his desk and met Malik as he entered the office. Anderson stopped short, though, and from a defiant stance with hands on hips, said accusingly to Malik, “You knew, did you not, and yet you let me go ahead?”

Malik stopped short himself, uncertain, but then a slow smile crept across his face. “So the orientation was thorough, then?”

As Anderson reached to shake hands, he said, “Had I attended the orientation first, I would never have campaigned for the office.”

“Seems the secretary of state boys knew what they were doing, to give you a few weeks to get comfortable in this office before lowering the boom. I imagine it will be the same with Maylon’s meeting over the next two weeks. You didn’t warn him did you? That would have ruined the surprise.”

“I saw him at church, but only told him it would make the job ‘more interesting.’” Anderson shook his head, gesturing to the six-inch high stack of papers he had been examining, one of five such stacks on the desk top. “I knew that this was a mess before I left, but I had not fully grasped the extent, until those blokes at the capitol rubbed my nose in it.

“But I’m glad you’re here, Emil. I had thought to catch you for lunch, though I would as soon deal with this now. Please sit down. There’s another matter of which to speak.”

Malik made himself comfortable in one of the dark-lacquered side chairs in front of the desk. Anderson took its mate.

Malik said, “Mitchel, this job is just your cup of tea. I’m sure it feels overwhelming, and it may very well be, but you’ve got a handle on it, now, and you can start working with it. It’s a service job, just like the Inn. It’s just you’re dealing with a county full of people instead of a house full of guests. And just like lodging management, you’ll tend to hear from the unhappy few rather than the satisfied majority. Believe me, you won’t have to do much to do better than Tim Banks, though. And Nestor did more harm to his cause than good, the way he treated people.”

“I appreciate the encouragement, Emil, and I suspect I will get things under control. It is just that it would be so much easier to sign on as a miner, right now, or to take a job mucking out stables. But you mention Nestor and it is from him I learned of something you may find disturbing. At least, it bothered me.”

Malik leaned forward, between the arms on the chair. “What is it?.”

Anderson intertwined his fingers in an unconscious wringing movement. “I ran into my opponent for this office on the Santa Fe train, returning from Meseta. He had obviously been drinking and he sat down next to me, unbidden. He was immersed in playing the sore loser to the hilt, utilizing all of the usual commonplace moans: sour grapes, belittling, claims of unfairness, voter fraud, and the like.

“But he also let drop that he was about to be offered a better federal appointment. He said he was going to be the new Indian agent at the Sonora reservation and that it would be his job, as he said, to ‘get those redskins in line and settle that silver mine business once and for all.’ He refused to elaborate when I asked what he meant, and he soon returned to his insulting manner. Since I had a first class ticket, I excused myself to return to the sleeper car, which accommodation he had not afforded himself, so I could avoid him the remainder of that trip. He wasn’t on the train from Fort Birney.”

“And you found his claim credible?”

“It seemed so to me.”

Malik slowly sat back in the chair, releasing a long breath as his gaze turned toward a window that looked south, toward Dorado Springs and the Sonora reservation, some scores of miles distant. After a minute, he pulled his watch from his vest pocket and consulted it. Then he looked back at Anderson.

“Mitchel, I think I’ll catch the train down to the Springs, if you won’t be offended by my abrupt departure.”

“Of course not, Emil. I fully understand. I knew you might find the news of some urgency.”

Malik rose from his chair and Anderson did the same. Malik offered his hand and said, “I know that this job may be giving you nightmares, Mitchel, but my sleep has become much more restful since you were sworn in. I wish you the very best, and whatever help I can offer. Just let me know.”

Forty-one year old Emma Watts was the widow of a stationmaster on the Kansas Southern Railway, one of the first two short lines purchased by the Kansas & Arizona Southern Railroad. After his death, the result of a fall from the icy station platform in between moving railroad cars, his widow was hired as an assistant dispatcher for the other initial railroad purchased by the K&ASR, the Arizona Southern Railroad. Eventually, she rose to be chief dispatcher for that trunk.

When a company bulletin listed the stationmaster vacancy in Waypoint, following the death of the former stationmaster, Joshua Trent, she applied for the position. Trent was one of seven men killed during a murder spree by Petrus Ranford, alias Martin Doyle.

Watts was medium height, with dark, naturally curly hair, a pleasant face, and had what might be termed a matronly physique, though she had never given birth. In the five months she had been stationmaster, she had proven herself competent, professional, and personable.

Malik walked in the front door of the depot and strode quickly across the floor.

Watts rose from the stool on which she had been working and said, “Good morning, Mister Malik. May I be of service?”

“Morning, Missus Watts. Indeed you may,” Malik said as he came to stand at the counter. “I’d like to take my car to Dorado Springs today, please. I also want to send a wire.”

Watts, who was dressed in a long black skirt and a white blouse that sported a black bow tie -- the standard white-over-black livery of a K&ASR stationmaster -- pulled a pocket watch from within the folds of her skirt, then checked it against the clock on the wall.

“I should be able to catch Mister McGillycuddy at Texas Bend. I’ll send the orders while you write your message, if that suits you.”

“It does. Please go ahead.” He reached for the message pad and the pencil cup. Watts switched the apparatus to the Division’s dedicated company wire and keyed the attention code for Texas Bend. When the response came back, she began the side-to-side movement of thumb and forefinger that allowed the message to be keyed against two opposing electrified surfaces, significantly reducing transmission time.

Meanwhile, Malik wrote:

Morton Quincy, Dorado Springs, Aren 30Jan1888

Arriving SB this date. Request meeting you, BMaize, EQuincy.

E Malik Waypoint Aren

Watts came back to the counter and took the message and Malik’s payment, then went back to the key, switching it back to the general wire. When there was a pause, she keyed the Dorado Springs code. When it was acknowledged, she keyed Malik’s message. Then she stopped and waited for a receipt. Once it came, she looked back at Malik, who was still standing at the desk.

“Sir?” she queried. “Something else?”

“I should have been more specific. I won’t need the stock car, today.”

She stood up and walked back to the counter, saying, “Oh, don’t worry about that. Unless it matters to you, they’ll likely take both cars because it will be faster than trading them around.”

“I don’t know,” Malik said, as a mischievous smile played on his lips. “I’d hate to think I was making Mister McGillycuddy’s job easier. Which makes me wonder what’s become of Mister Healy and Mister Timmons? Or is Jimmy McGillycuddy the only conductor working this line anymore? I haven’t seen hide nor hair of the others in weeks.”

“No, they’re all three still taking their turns in the rotation. Just your luck, I expect.”

“Then bad luck, ‘tis,” Malik said, affecting, abysmally, an Irish accent, “as Jimmy McGillycuddy could get his train lost on a single track line, don’t you know.”

Emma Watts covered her ears. “Eek” she mocked, “An Hispanic Pole slaughtering the lyrical Irish accent.” Then Watt’s tried her version. “They’ll be burnin’ ye in effigy come Saint Paddy’s Day, they will, an’ no mistake.”

“Still,” Malik said, in his normal voice, “if he were to hear I’ve been lamenting the absence of the other conductors, I wouldn’t mind.”

“Fergus Healy’s told me of the mock battle between Mister McGillycuddy and your brother. Are you now getting in on the act?”

“Why should Andy have all the fun? Besides, Mister McGillycuddy’s involved me, often enough. He’s practically begging me to take a hand.”

“Ah, boys,” Watts sighed. “They never grow up.”

The train brought Malik to Dorado Springs by one-thirty that afternoon. At Malik’s suggestion, the men met in Quincy’s office, though Blue Maize preferred to conduct tribal business in the open, where his clansmen could observe, if not always directly participate.

“I recognize that, Blue Maize,” Malik said, “and I believe it best, too. But, in this instance, others could hear, as well. I think that, the only way the information I have is valuable is if it’s contained. To be specific, I would not want word getting back to Arthur Coates. The reason will become clear once I explain what I know.”

“I have already agreed, Shadow. You need not speak of it, more. Again, should anyone ask me why I did this, I will say that the white men forced it on me.” Blue Maize shrugged, smiling, and took another draw on his Guardia Real.

Morton Quincy, the tribe’s Indian agent, said, “I’ll take the blame, Blue Maize. I think we’ve all come to trust Mister Malik’s judgment.”

His nephew, Emmet Quincy, the mining engineer hired to oversee mining operations at the Sonora clan’s silver mine said, “I presume this affects the mine?”

Malik said, “I believe so, but allow me to explain.

“There is a man named Edwin Nestor, a Texan, who moved to his uncle’s ranch along the north edge of Jackson County, some months ago. Despite the fact that he was new and unknown in most of the county, the county judges chose him to serve out the term of our county clerk, Timothy Banks, after Banks was murdered by that man who called himself Doyle.” All were more than familiar with Martin Doyle, aka Paulus Ranford II, and the mayhem and misery he had caused.

“In our election this fall, Mitchel Anderson, who is my business partner at the Inn, ran against Nestor for that county clerk office and Mitchel Anderson received more votes, so he now holds that office.

“Last week, Mister Anderson encountered Nestor on the train. Nestor was drunk and intruded on Anderson, and he was bragging that he had been appointed to a federal government job -- as the Indian agent for the Dorado Springs Sonora. Not only that, but he indicated his intent to take a much more direct role in tribal matters, including the mine, but he refused to give any more details.”

Malik looked at Morton Quincy, who looked perplexed. “I presume you’ve had no word about this?”

“I have not, nor am I inclined to give certain credence to a drunken boast. Nonetheless, I have heard of stranger events in this service, as the BIA often plays fast and loose with its governance of Indian resources.”

Blue Maize observed, “Perhaps you have not been harsh enough.”

Quincy said, “If this news is true, it is more likely a product of political machinations elsewhere and has little to do with my actual management.”

Blue Maize said, “You use a word, ‘ma-shin-ay-shuns.’ I do not know that word.”

Quincy said, “Machinations is a form of the word machine. It means that someone has caused something to happen through indirect manipulation -- like a locomotive engineer causes the train to move by throwing a lever which, in turn, causes the wheels to turn. Machination means using people and their organizations like a machine. For instance, I wanted privy pits dug in the village. I did not dig them, I asked you to see to it. You discussed it with the council. They approved it, and you asked for men to do the work. Those men dug the holes and built the shelters that I wanted.”

“I understand, Friend Quincy. I am concerned with this development.”

“As am I,” added Malik.

Emmet Quincy said, “I knew things were going too well. We’re finally ready to ship ore. We just need our donkey engine and I’m told it’s already on the siding at the Kylie yard.”

The Kylie rail yard was over fifteen miles from the village of Kylie. The yard was named for the Utica-Kylie trail which it adjoined. In fact, the yard was closer to the village of Utica, but there was already a yard called Utica Switch, which happened to be over nine miles from the village of Utica. So, to avoid one form of confusion in favor of another, it ended up being called the Kylie transfer yard. It was the yard specifically created to transfer the cargo between the narrow gauge and the standard gauge rolling stock, “rolling stock” meaning railroad cars and conveyances of any type which moved on the rails.