Captains and the Kings

  Chapter 12

  Joseph discovered that Mr. Healey had been somewhat modest about his holdings and activities and financial worth and prospects. He had hinted that his main interests were in Titusville, but Joseph found that Titusville was merely his base of operations and that he preferred not to conduct his business in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia because of a certain stringency on the part of the police and political enemies. However, his operations in Titusville were only a small part of his affairs. In Titusville he could protect himself from impertinent investigations with the aid of the men he employed. He also "owned" the sheriff and the latter's deputies, something he could not do in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia where the thieves were bigger than himself and had greater financial resources even than his. Yet his fortunes came from Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, and even from New York and Boston. "Everything is organization, wit and an eye for opportunity, Irish," he would say to Joseph, and Joseph soon understood that this was a profound truth. In most ways he was typically Irish, but not an Irish which Joseph knew, which was reserved, cold, restrained, melancholy, powerfully but secretly emotional, aristocratic, disdainful, proud, unforgiving, unrelenting, austere, "high-nosed," poetic and reluctantly mystical. Mr. Healey understood, if humorously resenting, Joseph's Irishness, but Joseph could never accept Mr. Healey's kind of Irishness which he considered vulgar, ostentatious, demeaning, and noisy. Mr. Healey's steel files were kept in a room next to his "suite of offices," as he called the dirty and dingy rooms he rented, or owned. There were bars on the windows here, too. There was a cot with blankets. In this room each man in his employ slept for two nights a month, or at least dozed, with pistols and a shotgun. Mr. Healey dealt with banks in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, and with a new one in Titusville, but he always kept a large sum in gold in the enormous iron and steel safe in that central arsenal in his offices. His men had orders to shoot to kill any intruder, and this was known well in the township. Each of his men was an expert marksman, and practiced in the country at frequent intervals. Joseph was not exempt. His immediate mentor, Mr. Montrose, was his teacher, and Mr. Montrose reported to Mr. Healey that "that boy has an eye like a hawk, and never missed from the beginning." "Never mind the law if you should shoot somebody trying to get into this room," Mr. Montrose said to Joseph who had proffered the suggestion. "Mr. Healey is the law hereabouts. Besides, it's legal to kill a thief on your own property. Or maybe you don't like the idea of killing?" Joseph thought of the desperate and murderous and bloody battles between his people and the English military, and he said, "I have no objection to killing. I just wanted to be sure that I wouldn't be hanged if I did it." "Careful, aren't you?" asked Mr. Montrose, but not with ridicule or rancor. "Only a fool is careless and doesn't know the odds before he acts." Joseph soon learned that Mr. Healey despised rashness and impulsive actions, and as he disapproved of them himself he cultivated his native cautiousness. None of the men knew the history of his companions, and none confided in anyone. It was obvious, however, from their accents that they had come from various sections of the country. Mr. Montrose had a soft deep-South accent, was courtly of speech and had gentle natural manners. He was also the most deadly of Mr. Healey's men, in spite of his Cavalier appearance, his fascinating voice, his air of polite consideration, and his unfailing civility and the unmistakable signs of superior breeding. He was always urbane and elegant and quietly patrician, so Joseph guessed that he had come of a family of gentlemen and had chosen to be a rascal either out of sudden poverty or innate inclination. He guessed the latter. Mr. Montrose's allusions were the allusions of a well-educated man, and not the absurd pretensions of a vulgarian. He was a man about thirty-eight and very tall and slender with graceful postures and movements. He dressed expensively, but with taste. Joseph thought of the ginger cat which his grandmother had owned in Ireland, or, rather, who had owned her in the way of cats. Mr. Montrose had light ginger-colored hair and wide yellow eyes and dainty if effective mannerisms. His face was long and creamily pale and unreadable in its expressions, and his nose was almost delicately fine and his mouth handsome with its good teeth. He was rarely known to frown or to raise his voice or to speak insultingly or to show anger. His attitude was disciplined yet Strangely tolerant. A man might make a mistake once, but only once. If more than that Mr. Montrose was his enemy. Joseph found something military about him though Mr. Montrose smilingly denied that he had ever been in the Army. However, Joseph did not quite believe this. Authority and discipline over self and others came from command, and' ''* Mr. Montrose, in spite of his elegance, was commanding. His companions respected him and feared him, and he was their superior. They knew that he was even more ruthless and lethal than themselves. They remembered two of their number who had inexplicably disappeared from one day to another in the recent past and Mr. Montrose had expressed no surprise. The two were soon replaced. For Mr. Healey all the men had devotion. Joseph had at first thought they only feared him, but Mr. Montrose enlightened him. "The man they fear and detest and who is the subject of their nightmares is not Mr. Healey, who is a considerate gentleman," Mr. Montrose told Joseph. "They know he is human as they are human themselves, and is frequently sentimental. They trust him. Certainly, they will avoid any opportunity to annoy him-for various reasons. Their real hate and fear, is Bill Strickland, the white trash with the soul of a tiger." (It was the first time that Joseph had heard the term "white trash," but he understood it at once.) "Bill Strickland," Mr. Montrose continued, with the first glare Joseph had ever seen in his eyes, "is atavistic. He is mindless, as you have possibly observed yourself, Mr. Francis. He is a living and murderous weapon and Mr. Healey holds the trigger. There is something in mankind, Mr. Francis, which is horrified at primeval wildness and unthinking savagery, no matter how contemptible a man is, himself, or how despicable and conscienceless. If men have enemies, they know that those enemies are impelled by something they, themselves, can understand, for are we not all men? But creatures like Bill Strickland are outside humanity, and are incapable of even the most distorted reason. They kill impersonally without malice or enmity or rage-and that is something other men cannot comprehend. They kill like swords or cannon or guns-at the pull of the trigger of the man who owns them. They ask no questions. They do not even demand money for their slaughter. They simply-are. Do you understand me?" "Yes," said Joseph. "Is he an idiot, or feebleminded?" Mr. Montrose smiled, showing his excellent teeth. "I have told you: He is an atavism. Once, I have read, all men were like that, before they became fully men, homo sapiens. The alarming thing is that their number is not small. You will find them among the mercenaries, and you will even find them in the best of families. You will find them everywhere, though frequently they are disguised as men." Mr. Montrose smoked reflectively. "I have never feared any man in my life. But I confess to fearing Bill Strickland-if he is behind my back. He makes my flesh crawl." "And Mr. Healey employs him." Mr. Montrose laughed, and touched Joseph lightly on his shoulder. "Mr. Francis, he employs him as men employ guards or guns. He is a weapon. If Mr. Healey carried a pistol you would not fault him, would you? You would say he is a man careful of his safety. Mr. Healey does not carry a pistol. He has Bill Strickland." "Why is such a creature devoted to Mr. Healey?" Mr. Montrose shrugged. "Ask that of a dog, Mr. Francis, who has a good master." It came as a mortifying shock to Joseph, who had reached his conclusions about Bill Strickland through his own reason and observation and the conversation with Mr. Montrose, that young Haroun Zieff knew all about Bill by pure and artless instinct. Yet Haroun was the only one of Mr. Healey's entourage who felt no mystic horror of the man or instinctive revulsion and loathing. "I'd never cross him, and I'd stay away from his muzzle," he told Joseph. His great black eyes shone with a light that Joseph could not interpret. "But I wouldn't run away from him. You don't do that-with a jackal." For the first time Joseph encountered the quiet courage and peculiar ferocity of the desert-born, though he did not recognize it as such at that time. "Don't you ever be afraid of him, Jo
e. I'm here, your friend." Joseph had laughed, his brief cynical laugh which was only the slightest sound. For the first time he was unpleasantly aware that he was beginning to trust Haroun, who now answered to the name of "Harry." To trust was to betray one's self. He tried repeatedly to mistrust Haroun, to find occasions when the boy was ambiguous and devious, or to catch a look in his eye that would reveal the general malice of men. He never found them. He did not know whether to be relieved and touched, or vexed. Haroun now occupied a small but comfortable room over Mr. Healey's stables. His wounds had healed, though sometimes he limped. He never complained. He accepted life with high-heartedness and a simple wisdom which was beyond Joseph's capabilities. He was never resentful nor grudging. He gave largely of himself and his big glowing smiles, and his native merriment. He appeared to trust everyone, and to take them to himself, which was deceptive. He had his secret thoughts, but never betrayed the more somber of them except to Joseph, who, startled, would stare, and this would make Haroun burst out laughing-another thing which baffled Joseph. "You are never serious," he said once to Haroun, to which the boy answered, "I am always serious." It was not for many years that Joseph began to realize that Haroun was subtile and not to be understood completely by the Western mind. Haroun was proud, but it was not the pride of Joseph Armagh. It had something of the Spaniard about it: a point of honor. Mr. Healey, on Joseph's insistence, paid Haroun ten dollars a week to haul nitroglycerin from the depot in Titusville to the deeper-drilled wells. Mr. Healey had looked with smiling meditation at Joseph. "Now, then, your lordship is very concerned with the vassals-is that the word?-all at once. Are you not the one who told me that Harry was nothing to you, and that you wished to be rid of him? Yet now you say 'a laborer is worthy of his hire.' Irish, you are a conundrum." "If you hire Haroun, he must not be robbed, as he has been robbed all his life."