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  Praise for AMERICAN RED

  “This is amazing storytelling. In American Red, David Marlett expertly creates a time and place so real that you can’t help but be taken in and enthralled by this most American of stories; the legal thriller. Add in the politics and the people — a deeply drawn cast of characters from lawmen to lawyers — and you have a page turner that holds you until the last train out.”

  — Michael Connelly, multiple New York Times bestselling author

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  “A cracking good tale! Part love story, part espionage thriller.”

  — Jacquelyn Mitchard, New York Times bestselling author

  of The Deep End of the Ocean

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  “Vivid, well-researched, and told bare-knuckled across a tapestry that is both broad and nuanced. American Red brings to life the 1907 West and the actual war that raged there between mine owners and their assassins, and labor leaders and their bomb makers. David Marlett’s characters are outsized and real, from Chief Detective James McParland of the Pinkerton Agency — to ruthless union boss Big Bill Haywood and his polio-stricken wife — to famous attorney Clarence Darrow, who lies down with murderers and thieves, and defends the bombers, to realize a life-long dream. This is a historical novel to get lost in.”

  — Mark Sullivan, international bestselling author of Beneath a Scarlet Sky

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  “A stellar novel of intrigue, adventure, engaging characters, and a fascinating backdrop. A historical legal thriller that will take you back to another time — bringing that world into pristine focus — when American justice was loaded with mischief and mayhem. A true gem of a story.”

  — Steve Berry, multiple New York Times bestselling author

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  “With a gripping story and unforgettable characters, David Marlett breathes new life into one of the most fascinating chapters in American history. A country in transition, lurching into modernity, as its heroes and villains — lawyers, hitmen, spies, politicians, union bosses, and captains of industry — battle for the upper hand.”

  — Adam Benforado, New York Times bestselling author

  Praise for David Marlett’s national bestseller FORTUNATE SON

  “A masterful blend of historical fact and detail, of adventure and peril and courtroom drama. This rousing murder-mystery adventure that was the life of James Annesley and his battle to reclaim his stolen heritage in the precedent setting case of Annesley v Anglesea, also gives us the story of the first Kennedys in America.”

  – Vincent Bugliosi, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Helter Skelter

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  “David Marlett sets a wonderful historical novel against beautiful descriptions of Ireland in telling the story of a disputed earldom. Fortunate Son offers rich history, well-developed characters, and a unique conclusion.”

  – Christian Science Monitor

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  “I’ll be recommending this book far and wide to anyone who loves historical novels and characters who stay in the reader’s mind long after the last page.”

  – Views from the Countryside

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  “I could tell that Mr. Marlett knew his subject inside and out and I truly believe that this is what made this book so very readable…. The blood, sweat and tears, of the characters and the author are ever-present in this book. I really recommend this book to adventure fans, historical fans, and legal fans. It’s a great book and I thoroughly enjoyed it!”

  – Tales of a Book Addict

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  “If every book I read were as textured and well-written as Fortunate Son by David Marlett, I would need to live a lot longer just to read. I was enthralled from the first sentence.”

  – Bags & Books

  AMERICAN RED

  A NOVEL

  DAVID MARLETT

  Though based on a true story and real characters, this novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.

  Studio Digital CT, LLC

  P.O. Box 4331

  Stamford, CT 06907

  Copyright © 2019 by David Marlett

  Story Plant Paperback ISBN-13: 978-1-61188-178-3

  Fiction Studio Books E-book ISBN-13: 978-1-945839-30-6

  Visit our website at www.TheStoryPlant.com

  All rights reserved, which includes the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever except as provided by U.S. Copyright Law. For information, address The Story Plant.

  Cover and map design by BlueRun Media

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  For my mother

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  OVERTURE

  Nature is loath to swallow us whole, flesh and soul,

  Rather the raptor rips, devouring us in bits.

  Yet we resist, with scythe cut and hammer bang,

  with bomb, bullet, and bitter blade.

  And for a measured time we thrive,

  Tearing loose Her elements for our design,

  Shaping expressions into mechanical lives.

  But all man’s measures are artifice contrived,

  For Nature triumphs when we transcend,

  returning us to our granular end,

  tumbling our existence into Her shadows,

  from where we once went and will again.

  ***

  But in that imagined land where man is alive,

  What centers his weight is fire inscribed.

  Where conflict is duty and pugilists survive.

  In peace he kills, in war saves, but only in living does he die.

  For man finds right in strain from tribe.

  Nature wove it in his grain, particles entwined.

  Thus in snarling fits and clashing plight,

  Are not some more honorable, more right?

  Some gain—some kill—some turn the key.

  The blood-red feathers of a cardinal in keep,

  at war with itself, with justice to find,

  the sirening of splendor and peril aligned.

  ***

  Yet woman reflects and in silence goes.

  She sings with their Mother of grace bestowed,

  Her womb, Her heart, Her plumes aglow,

  Yet with falcon talons and eyes of crow.

  She rules man’s summit, the Empress plateau.

  Though too in her time her grain falls fallow,

  She remains chosen—and all men know.

  Thus he strips to knight and burro, star and stone.

  Vined he beats cattails, while she in willows weeps.

  Blind he digs diamonds, while she in meadows sleeps.

  Thus does her warmth make his failings flow.

  Thus do her wings raise him from below.

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  PROLOGUE

  In the early 1900s, across the Rocky Mountains, what the bears didn’t maul, the sun didn’t burn, or the snows didn’t freeze, the silver and gold mines consumed, gorging themselves on the bones, sinews, bowels and lungs of those who entered the gaping jowls of earth. And as the mine consumed their bodies, the mine’s masters destroyed their spirits. Those owners, many gluttonous and detached persons and corporations alike, often saw working men as mere commodities covered in sweat and blast chalk whose need for breath and sustenance was a bothersome necessity, a fuel cos
t of production. Miners were walking machines to be used, lost, replaced, ignored—to treat them as such was apt capitalism, utilitarian mastery, superior economics. And when the virtue of American business required teeth, the Pinkerton Detective Agency was there to engage on its behalf, even if it paled civility. The system paid, bloating the owners’ wealth and political power while fattening the pockets of their shareholders. And why should it not? The corporation was the creator of society, the engine of progress, the queen bee of the quivering hive. The working class existed to serve her and her leaders—for she alone provided life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Thus when those owners saw paths to colossal profits, though they be paved by cruel measures and inhumane conditions, they seized them in both fists, defending them vigorously—and they declared themselves just.

  ***

  But mired in the wretchedness of the mine owners’ creation, men were lost to the endurance, the sixteen-hour shifts, the pittance wages, the searing heat and broken bones, the unsafe reaches, the suffocating air where only their hatred found breath. Still they came by the thousands, replenishing the ranks, clamoring for work—no man’s dream of the American West. Where was their promised land, their adventure and plenty? Where was their hope of providing for their wives and little ones? Where was their dream of independence and honor? By the late 1800s, those were mostly vaporous ideas for the working men who migrated west of the prairie expanse. When they finally saw the mirage for what it was, and no other work possible, they turned to the mines for work, supplicating themselves for the rudimentary resources of life, lowering themselves into the sweltering darkness where only the tommyknockers dwelled. There those ghosts of miners killed in the deep would tick and tap, knock and pop, sometimes saving a life, sometimes heralding their living comrade’s doom—not that those outcomes were much different. When the owners brought in industrial inventions and bigger machinery, deaths rose, and the miners felt the chill of human weakness—tears to rivers to seas that never fill. Thus they federated into a labor union, the Western Federation of Miners. They found strength in numbers, in their collective force. Nevertheless, whether unioner or not, the men descended into the choking holes each dawn carrying their pick, lunch, helmet and the steadfast hope of returning to the surface by nightfall, preferably on their feet. But tens of thousands did not, and when enough men died in the course of provisioning other men’s avarice; when sufficient blood was spilled without recourse or remorse, the leaders of the Federation reached for the only weapon they saw remaining: murderous revolt—and they declared themselves just.

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  – 1 –

  WEDNESDAY

  July 18, 1906

  The lawyer lobbed a verbal spear across the courtroom, piercing the young man, pinning him to the creaky witness chair and tilting the twelve jurymen forward. Their brows rose in anticipation of a gore-laden response from the witness as he clutched his bowler, his face vacant toward the wood floor beyond his shoddy boots. When the judge cleared his throat, the plaintiff’s attorney, Clarence Darrow, repeated the question. “Mr. Bullock, I know this is a strain upon you to recount that tragic day when fifteen of your brothers perished at the hands of the Stratton—”

  “Your Honor! Point in question,” barked the flint-faced defense attorney representing the Stratton Independence Mine, a non-union gold operation near Cripple Creek, Colorado. On this warm summer afternoon in Denver, he and Darrow were the best dressed there, each wearing a three-button, vested suit over a white shirt and dull tie.

  The robed judge gave a long blink, then peered at Darrow. With a chin waggle, his ruling on the objection was clear.

  “Yes, certainly. My apologies, Your Honor,” feigned Darrow, glancing toward the plaintiff’s table where two widows sat in somber regard. Though his wheat-blonde hair and sharp, pale eyes defied his age of forty-nine, his reputation for cunning brilliance and oratory sorcery mitigated the power of his youthful appearance: it was no longer the disarming weapon it had once been. No attorney in the United States would ever presume nascence upon Clarence Darrow. Certainly not in this, his twenty-sixth trial. He continued at the witness. “Though as just a mere man, one among all …” He turned to the jury. “The emotion of this event strains even the most resolute of procedural decorum. I am, as are we all, hard-pressed to—”

  “Whole strides, shall we, Mr. Darrow?” grumbled the judge.

  “Yes,” Darrow said, turning once again to James Bullock who seemed locked in the block ice of tragedy, having not moved a fraction since first taking the witness seat. “Mr. Bullock, we must rally ourselves, muster our strength, and for the memory of your brothers, share with these jurymen the events of that dark day. You said the ride up from the stope, the mine floor, was a swift one, and there were the sixteen of you in the cage made to hold no more than nine—is that correct?”

  “Yes, Sir,” Bullock replied, his voice a faint warble.

  “Please continue,” Darrow urged.

  Bullock looked up. “We kept going, right along, but it kept slipping. We’d go a ways and slip again.”

  “Slipping? It was dropping?”

  “Yes, Sir. Dropping down sudden like, then stopping. Cappy was yelling at us to get to the center, but there was no room. We was in tight.”

  “By Cappy you mean Mr. Capone, the foreman?”

  “Yes, Sir. Our shift boss that day.” The witness sucked his bottom lip. “He was in the cage ’long with us.” He sniffed in a breath then added, “And his boy, Tony. Friend of mine. No better fella.”

  “My condolences,” said Darrow. “What do you think was the aid in getting the men to the middle of the cage?”

  “Keep it centered in the shaft, I reckon. We was all yelling.” Bullock took a slow breath before continuing, “Cappy was trying to keep the men quiet, but it wasn’t making much a difference. Had his arms around Tony.”

  A muscle in Darrow’s cheek shuddered. “Please continue.”

  “So we was slipping, going up. Then the operator, he took us up about six feet above the collar of the shaft, then back down again.”

  “Which is not the usual—”

  “Not rightly. No, Sir. We should’ve stopped at the collar and no more. But later they said the brakes failed on the control wheel.”

  “Mr. Bullock, let’s return to what you experienced. You were near the top of the shaft, the vertical shaft that we’ve established was 1,631 feet deep, containing, at that time, about twenty feet of water in its base, below the lowest stope, correct?”

  “Yes, Sir. Before they pumped that water to get to em.”

  “By ‘them’ you mean the bodies of your dead companions?”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “Ok, you were being hoisted at over 900 feet per minute by an operator working alone on the surface—near the top of the shaft, when the platform began to slip and jump. Is that your testimony?”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “That must have been terrifying.”

  “Yes, Sir, it was. We’d come off a tenner too.”

  “A ten-hour shift?”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  Darrow rounded on the jury, throwing the next question over his shoulder. “Oh, but Sir, how could it have been a ten-hour work day when the eight-hour day is now the law of this state?”

  The defense lawyer’s chair squeaked as he stood. “Objection, Your Honor.”

  “I’ll allow it,” barked the judge, adding, “But gentlemen …”

  The witness shook his head. “The Stratton is a non-union, gold ore mine. Supposed to be non-union anyway. Superintendent said owners weren’t obliged to that socialist law.”

  “Hearsay, Your—”

  “Keep your seat, Counsel. You’re going to wear this jury thin.”

  Darrow stepped closer to the witness. “Mr. Bullock, as I said, let’s steer clear from what you heard others say. The facts
speak for themselves: you and your friends were compelled to work an illegal ten-hour shift. Let’s continue. You were near the top, but unable to get off the contraption, and it began to—”

  “Yes. We’d gone shooting up, then he stopped it for a second.”

  “By ‘he,’ you mean the lift operator?”

  “Yes, Sir. He stopped it but then it must have gotten beyond his control, cause we dropped sixty, seventy feet all the sudden. We were going quick. We said to each other we’re all gone. Then he raised us about ten feet and stopped us. But then, it started again, and this time it was going fast up and we went into the sheave wheel as fast as we could go.”

  “To be sure we all follow, Mr. Bullock, the lift is the sole apparatus that hoisted you from the Stratton Mine, where you work?”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “And the sheave wheel is the giant wheel above the surface, driven by a large, thirty-year-old steam engine, run by an operator. That sheave wheel coils in the cable”—he pantomimed the motion—“pulling up the 1,500-pound-load platform, or lift, carrying its limit of nine men. And it coils out the cable when the lift is lowered. But that day the lift carried sixteen men—you and fifteen others. Probably over 3,000 pounds. Twice its load limit. Correct?”

  “Yes, Sir. But, to be clear, I ain’t at the Stratton no more.”

  “No?” asked Darrow, pleased the man had bit the lure.

  “No. Seeing how I was one of Cappy’s men. Federation. And, now ’cause this.” His voice faded.

  Darrow frowned, walked a few paces toward the jury, clapped once and rubbed his hands together. “The mine owners, a thousand miles away, won’t let you work because you’re here—a member of the Western Federation of Miners, a union man giving his honest testimony. Is that right?”