Dinosaur Wars

Chapter eighteen - Prison

As his left eye swelled closed and the bruises on his ribs showed yellow and purple, Adam had time to go over the events that had landed him in prison. His cellmate, Drew Kelly, had similar injuries, though his had mostly healed over in the fortnight he had been there. The Irishman must have been the same age as Adam, but seemed much older, wistful and fatalistic.

"They've earmarked us as Mollys. We're going to swing, sure as apples."

The cells were like a cage, iron bars for walls and doors made of the same bars. A corridor ran down the center with three cells each side. Drew and Adam's side appeared to be for longer term inmates. The opposite side was mostly a drunk tank. Each night - and as early as mid afternoon - drunks were brought in to sober up, then fined and let go.

Drew spoke at length about the mass execution that Adam saw on the day he arrived in the town, the trial that had stirred the place into hysteria, and Madden's persuasive rhetoric. The chief prosecutor, Tyrone Madden, was also the president of the railroad company the Molly Maguires had supposedly sabotaged.

"They came from the Emerald Isles and glance at Rome, that's their only error. He could talk the pigeons out of the trees and into the oven."

Adam had heard this lavish talk firsthand from Madden. After a time in Reading, in which he wired Smale every day - and sometimes twice a day - he decided to see the railway president for himself. There had been no word from Smale. No per diem had showed at the bank. And the promised letter of introduction from the Governor hadn't materialized. His money and patience ran low. He considered asking Dita for help, but this felt like putting out a begging hand to her father. And besides, Dita seemed buried in her own investigations of the coal mining operations. He'd seen her disappear mornings and night, her boyish disguise so obvious to him now that he feared for her safety every minute. If he mentioned this to her, the comment was met with derision - she was independent, fierce as her father, and proud, no doubt, as her mother had been.

On Monday morning, two weeks after arriving in Reading, Adam stepped into the stone building of the railroad offices on Market Street. Under the presidency of Tyrone Madden, the Reading railroad had also became the major owner of coal mines in Pennsylvania. It created a monopoly between the coal producer and the coal hauler, but no one seemed to be able to stop the juggernaut that was the railroad with Madden driving the engine. He was surprised to be immediately admitted to the president's office.

Madden was a compact man with black hair and quick blue eyes. He came from behind his desk to take Adam's hand in a tight grip.

"So, safety is it you've come to talk to me about?"

"Yes. This is a sort of informal review. Governor Wheeler has asked that we look into mining operations here, with a view to improve work practices and production. I'm sorry, he was meant to furnish a letter of introduction. Some communication hiccup ..."

"Wheeler? A liberal minded man, to be sure. The truth of it is that lawlessness is the enemy of coal miner and railway engineer alike. Saboteurs stalk these very streets and workshops that decent working men call their safe haven. I have no doubt you've heard the stories, the secret society imported into this great land, set against its freedom and prosperity."

"I know there's been trouble."

"Hah! Trouble! Good working men harassed in their jobs, a foreman with his throat cut and seven children and a wife left destitute, dynamite on a track set to blow a engine off the face of the earth and its passengers to the hereafter. It's more than trouble, it's anarchy. It's murder. It's terror in the heart of good working folk."

"Why?"

"To say who holds the reins to the future. To challenge the interests that make such an enterprise likely. And to squeeze an extra dollar into their hands so that the company suffocates in debt. I wish I knew the true motives - but I only know the tactics of these hidden bandits. They disguise themselves in shadows, and meet in secret so that their real faces aren't known. Weeding out such scoundrels takes the skill and patience of men committed to progress and right thinking."