UNDERCOVER IN THE OLD WEST

True Spies, Episode 105: Undercover in the Old West

NARRATOR: Welcome to True Spies. Week by week, mission by mission you’ll hear the true stories behind the world’s greatest espionage operations. You’ll meet the people who navigate this secret world. What do they know? What are their secret skills? And what would you do in their position? This is True Spies.

CHARLIE SIRINGO: So he leaned across and said: “I warn you, these men are bloodthirsty killers. And that is why I chose you for the case.”

NARRATOR: Episode 105: Undercover in the Old West.

CHARLIE SIRINGO: Well, my vanity was tickled, for sure. 

NARRATOR: In the American West of the 1880s and 1890s, catching criminals and bringing them to justice was famously the job of sheriffs, posses, and bounty hunters. But there was another way in which villains could be caught: through the work of private detectives, working undercover and gathering evidence for paying customers, men able to blend into the frontier outlaw culture while all the time working on the side of law and order - or at least something close to it. 

CHARLIE SIRINGO: Late at night I did have a habit, when short of recreation in some of the less refined saloons, of climbing up on the bar and howling like a wolf.

NARRATOR: One of the most successful - and notorious - of these was Charlie A. Siringo, known as the 'cowboy detective'. 

CHARLIE SIRINGO: Declaring to all who might be interested that I had two sets of razor-sharp teeth. One for digging up graveyards, and the other for tearing up human flesh. Well, it certainly helped to relieve the monotony of frontier life. 

NARRATOR: Charlie Siringo was a man of action - never without his trusty Colt 45 revolver - but he was also a storyteller, an enthusiastic spinner of yarns about the Old West. Some of his exploits have passed into legend, living on through film, literature, and song. What you’re about to hear is a recreation inspired by Charlie Siringo’s memoirs and the writings of others about him. His words are spoken by an actor, who we’ve tasked with capturing Charlie’s love of a good story. The events described are real, although this account may reflect Charlie’s viewpoints - Colorado, 1890, the small mining town of Fairplay, one of the town’s saloons, a drinking den, dancehall, and brothel. Sometime in the small hours. 

CHARLIE SIRINGO: I’ll tell you, uncouth behavior is sometimes required in the detective’s line of work. In order to persuade a ‘bad man’ to drop his guard, you gotta convince him first that you’re one of his kind too. Not somebody you wanna mess with.

NARRATOR: Charlie is in town undercover under a false name. And he’s in the saloon trying to gain the trust of the main suspect in a case, a man known as ‘Mr. Jacky’. 

CHARLIE SIRINGO: Well, we had a glorious drunk on, by this stage, although I was trying to convince him that I was drunker than was truly the case.

NARRATOR: Mr. Jacky is a convicted felon suspected of involvement in a gold mine fraud amounting to hundreds of thousands of dollars. 

CHARLIE SIRINGO: My role? At that stage? To convince Mr. Jacky that we were peas in a pod. I had been hinting that I was an outlaw wanted by the authorities. 

NARRATOR: But in order to convince Jacky to trust him, Charlie needs something more than hints.

CHARLIE SIRINGO: A group of fellows came over to our table. Swaggery. And they began to speak to one of Jacky’s friends. The place was so loud, I couldn’t hear the words but you could see the demeanor of the largest of them - a big, tough-looking fellow, even by the standards of this saloon. And he was acting disrespectful and everything. Anyway, so naturally, Jacky’s friend did not wish to be talked to in any such way. Now, In my line of work, you learn to spot when a man is fixing to speak with his fists. In this case, it was a blade. 

NARRATOR: The man holds the knife up to Jacky’s friend's neck. 

CHARLIE SIRINGO: Put simply, they wanted our table to know that while we might think that we were running things here - we were mistaken in that regard. They believed, and I mean firmly, that they were running things. 

NARRATOR: And Charlie knows that he has a choice: To calm the situation and maybe lose face or to escalate and risk a more violent outcome. 

CHARLIE SIRINGO: I stood up, felt for the butt of my Old Colt’s 45, and took a step forward.

NARRATOR: Charlie Siringo was born in rural Texas in 1856, the child of an Irish mother and Italian father. Cowboy culture was all around during his childhood. 

CHARLIE SIRINGO: Yeah, I wanted to be one of those glorious fellows on horseback more than I can say. Even as a schoolboy, I spent every free minute learning to ride, lasso, and follow trails. 

NARRATOR: Aged just 11, he began training at a local ranch. Throughout his teenage years and most of his 20s, he traveled the country, catching and herding cattle - a crucial training period for his future career as a cowboy detective. 

CHARLIE SIRINGO: Being a cowboy wasn’t a costume or a disguise for me. It was my life, which at least meant I could never be exposed as a fraud in that regard. And the cowboy life is very close to that of an outlaw. And it’s the life I still dream of. Even now, if I’m honest.

NARRATOR: One evening, while Charlie is still working with cattle, he attends a public event that changes things. He’s in the small town of Caldwell, Kansas. 

CHARLIE SIRINGO: There were fly posts across the place: Come see the Great Blind Phrenologist! Discover your destiny written in your skull. Or something to that effect. Well, I had always seen phrenology as little more than hot air and fortune-telling in a doctor’s coat. However, I attended, and presently the Great Blind Phrenologist called me up on stage. 

NARRATOR: In front of the audience, the performer begins massaging Charlie’s head, feeling for bumps that might reveal his true nature.

CHARLIE SIRINGO: He first identified my ‘obstinacy’ bump which got a good laugh from the crowd, most of whom knew me. But then he went further, pressing over my left ear. He waited a moment. And then said that with such a skull I would find the greatest success as a newspaperman, a writer, or a detective. Well. Here I am. 

NARRATOR: Soon after, Charlie travels to Chicago and applies to join America’s largest and most powerful detective company, the infamous Pinkerton’s Detective Agency. 

CHARLIE SIRINGO: I knew little of the detecting business by tracking cattle thieves. And becoming a good shot with a revolver, would, I presumed, prove useful. Correctly, as it happened. 

NARRATOR: This is the height of the Old West and law and order in many towns and cities across America is fragile. Police forces are in their infancy. It is easy for criminals to move from town to town assuming new identities as they go, so private detective agencies are growing to fill a need. Pinkertons at this stage employs tens of thousands of armed agents and detectives across the country - it’s been described as more like a private army than a detective agency. Pinkerton agents provide security to politicians, solve crimes, chase criminals, and provide muscle to those who are willing to pay. You don’t want to be on the wrong side of Pinkerton. 

CHARLIE SIRINGO: Walking into the central Chicago office on my first day felt like a marvel; dozens of detectives working together in a secret section of the office. The entrance was through a disguised door so that no one would know of their true employment, you understand.

NARRATOR: The Pinkerton offices were a beehive of activity, and, for the time, surprisingly diverse. The agency needed a variety of faces to successfully infiltrate its targets.

CHARLIE SIRINGO: They even employed women.

NARRATOR: In fact, the phrase ‘private eye’ comes from Pinkerton. Their logo? A watching eyeball, and the slogan: We never sleep.

CHARLIE SIRINGO: Over time, I became disillusioned by many of the dishonorable things I saw happen under the eyeball but when I first joined I was impressed. 

NARRATOR: In Chicago, Charlie learns the essential skills of undercover work, the ability to build and inhabit a cover story. The knack for building trust with a target. The need to think on your feet. 

CHARLIE SIRINGO: Some of it came naturally. I enjoyed the freedom to create new histories for myself. And I always had a taste for danger. 

NARRATOR: Some of it he’s taught by other agents. 

CHARLIE SIRINGO: From the others, I learned how to gather evidence, frame a report, and the essentials of criminal law for prosecutions. And how to double my expenses every time I bought a meal or rented a hotel room. In those days, it was The Pinkerton Way. The Great Blind Phrenologist was right, I guess, if there is a ‘detecting’ bump on my skull, it has served me well.

NARRATOR: After a few months, Charlie is called into the office by his manager and told that there is so much demand for Pinkerton detectives out West that they urgently need new staff - cowboy detectives - to help. Would he agree to move to the new office in Denver? 

CHARLIE SIRINGO: And that was how I found myself on the trail of the Keeline Ranch gang. 

NARRATOR: An attorney in the city of Cheyenne, Wyoming has written to Pinkerton requesting help. A large group of suspected outlaws is known to be living at a remote ranch on the Laramie River and amongst them is believed to be an escaped murderer: Bill McCoy.

CHARLIE SIRINGO: So, Mr. McCoy had killed a man - a deputy sheriff - and he’d been tried and convicted of murder out in Cheyenne. But he and his friends had shown great resourcefulness in busting him out of jail before the day he was supposed to hang. They disappeared and our people figured they were living under new identities at that ranch. 

NARRATOR: Siringo is put on the case. 

CHARLIE SIRINGO: I knew this would be a testing assignment. 

NARRATOR: He would have to live among his targets for some time, far from any support from other Pinkerton men. If he was discovered, he’d be on his own.

CHARLIE SIRINGO: They were gonna be on their guard. Three agents from a rival detective agency already tried to infiltrate the gang, and they’d been rooted out. They escaped with their lives, just about. 

NARRATOR: The last stop before the gang’s camp was a rough but hospitable staging post called the Round-Up Number 5 Saloon. Charlie was the only customer. The owner and his wife begged the cowboy detective to abandon his pursuit, warning him - entirely correctly - that there were dangerous men further up the trail, men who didn’t take kindly to outsiders.

CHARLIE SIRINGO: I thanked them for the advice - and their whisky - but saddled up and continued. 

NARRATOR: Charlie needs a story to explain why he is paying the gang a visit, something that will establish him as worthy of respect but unthreatening. 

CHARLIE SIRINGO: A few hours after I’d left the saloon, I came upon a small bluff, a rocky outcrop, with a sheer drop of maybe 20 feet onto the sand on the other side. Now it truly pained me to do this, but I dismounted, led my faithful horse up to the edge of the drop, and then pushed him over the ledge.

NARRATOR: The horse hits the ground hard but is not seriously hurt. Charlie throws himself after it, earning himself a sore arm in the process. But now, the imprints of man and beast are clear in the sand. Now, he attends to his appearance.

CHARLIE SIRINGO: I ripped off my left pant leg below the knee and created a tight bandage around the leg.

NARRATOR: He rubs the flesh of his leg raw so that it begins to swell and turn red. Don’t worry - there's a method to his madness.

CHARLIE SIRINGO: I rode with it out of the stirrups, sticking at an angle. 

NARRATOR: A few miles on, at sunset, he reaches a fence at the edge of the ranch land. 

CHARLIE SIRINGO: I was nervous, I won't deny it, and did wonder whether this might be my last adventure. Bill McCoy had already killed one lawman, and I was sure he wouldn’t mind repeating the experience. As I drew up to the fence, men started pouring out, about 14 of them, all armed. 

NARRATOR: The leader - a man called Tom Hall - asks Charlie to identify himself and why he has come to their ranch. 

CHARLIE SIRINGO: A sad story of course. I’d been riding near the trail and became lost and then met with a most unfortunate accident. The evidence of my broken leg and bruised horse being clear for all to see. Would you kind sirs be able to afford me a little time and shelter to recuperate? 

NARRATOR: The gang is unsure but Tom Hall lets Charlie inside and puts him by the fire. 

CHARLIE SIRINGO: I acted the part of the grateful invalid, but he took a real interest in my broken leg, asking me if I could move it, bringing hot towels, suggesting a new bandage, and so on. I attempted to distract him as best I could but I couldn’t shake him. And he had questions.

NARRATOR: Charlie reveals the second part of the story. Hinting that he too is on the run.

CHARLIE SIRINGO: When he asked why I had left home in Texas for such a cold climate, I just smiled and I told him that the good people of Texas were very keen for me to stay. And that if I were to return, it was possible I would never again have the chance to leave. 

NARRATOR: Tom Hall doesn't seem to be buying it. The atmosphere is tense. Even though it is now dark, two of the gang are sent to examine the spot where Charlie claims he had his accident. When they return, the whole group holds a meeting out of earshot of Charlie. They are gone for a long time. 

CHARLIE SIRINGO: I later discovered the cause of the debate. One faction was strongly in favor of taking me to a tree in the yard and hanging me gradually to see if I would confess to being a detective. The other group argued for letting me stay a while and seeing if I gave myself away as a lawman.

NARRATOR: And if he did? Put it this way - there’d be nothing gradual about what happened next.

CHARLIE SIRINGO: That faction prevailed. 

NARRATOR: A stay of execution. 

CHARLIE SIRINGO: That first night was not restful. The men slept all in the main room on cots and, as a guest and an invalid, I was allowed a small room to one side. I suspected that half of them were waiting for me to attempt to creep out during the night. They might also have rushed me in my sleep. 

NARRATOR: Luckily for Charlie, the gang had missed the revolver hidden in his undershirt.

CHARLIE SIRINGO: I clutched it under the blankets like a baby girl with a china doll until the sun came up. 

NARRATOR: The next few days are a delicate dance between Charlie and the group - both sides attempting to find out the real identity of the other, both sides waiting to see if the other will slip up. And there is another problem. Charlie realizes that he knows one of the men, Jim McChesney, another Texan, who our detective had known in his youth.

CHARLIE SIRINGO: At first I wasn’t sure if he remembered, but one morning, in the kitchen he started to fix a stare on me. 

NARRATOR: If McChesney recognizes Charlie, he may know that Charlie’s stories about an outlaw past in Texas are lies. Just what the gang suspects.

CHARLIE SIRINGO: So often I’ve found that hesitation is more hazardous than bold foolish action. So I asked him, loudly, so everybody could hear: “When did you finish courting with that pretty Miss Matilda Labaugh?” That had been his sweetheart in those days. He burst out laughing and asked who the hell I was, that I knew that. I told him that from now on he could call me Charlie Leon and that I knew all about him and his youth.

NARRATOR: It works. McChesney is persuaded that Charlie is really a wanted member of a Texan crime family called the Pumphreys and begins to relax around him. 

CHARLIE SIRINGO: As a detective, one grows used to being trusted only when people believe you to be a liar, a vagabond, or a wanted killer. 

NARRATOR: The decision has been made. Charlie is part of the gang now. Over the next few weeks, he slowly gathers together evidence against all of them. 

CHARLIE SIRINGO: We went on these tremendous drinking sprees, sometimes the saloons we passed through looked like a hurricane had hit them. And strangely, I grew to like them fellas although it was my intention to betray every one of them and send them all to the penitentiary. 

NARRATOR: The leader of the gang admits to being the accomplice of a notorious murderer. Others confess to taking part in robberies and jailbreaks. 

CHARLIE SIRINGO: But I discovered that my true prey - Mr. Bill McCoy, the sheriff's killer - had already run off down to New Orleans. The gang was in correspondence with him, and they heard that he was planning to leave for Buenos Aires, Argentina. 

NARRATOR: During drinking binges, Charlie often slips away to a hotel to write and post reports to Pinkerton head office. 

CHARLIE SIRINGO: I invented a girl in town who I was most attached to, and would need to visit until daybreak while they were out carousing. And one evening I decided it had come time to elope with this irresistible sweetheart of mine. I left the gang at the bar, rode to the station, and hopped on the next train out of town. 

NARRATOR: A few days later, at daybreak, the ranch is surrounded by a posse of over 100 men led by local law enforcement. Every man in the gang is taken away in irons. Tom Hall is heard cursing Charlie’s name.

CHARLIE SIRINGO: I had a job to do. And I did it well.

NARRATOR: Charlie investigates many cases across the West in the following years including train heists, attempted political assassinations, and gold mine robberies. In Utah, he’s called on to investigate a massacre of native Americans instigated by a local sheriff.

CHARLIE SIRINGO: A shameful, disgusting business. The sheriff claimed there had been an uprising by the Ute Indians of White River and called out the militia to put it down - which they did, with deadly force. But cold-blooded murder of the Utes by the white man would be a better description. We used to call the Utes and other peoples ‘savages’ but after that? I had to wonder who the real savages were.

NARRATOR: Charlie is also becoming disillusioned with the corruption he witnesses at the Pinkerton Agency. He sees agents framing innocent people. Agents use torture to get confessions. And agents taking part in electoral fraud. 

CHARLIE SIRINGO: I saw a lot of things and I am ashamed to say my honor and my manhood were many times insufficient to allow me to protest or prevent the injustice. So I was happiest when working alone, far from the office on the cases that I could choose.

NARRATOR: One such case comes up in 1889, a case that will test all his abilities as an undercover agent. 

CHARLIE SIRINGO: I was called into the Denver office of the Agency and told that we had acquired a very high-class and respected client: The Lord Mayor of London himself needed our help. 

NARRATOR: America’s Gold Rush is in full swing and wealthy people across the world are keen to get their slice of the riches - even in London, England. 

CHARLIE SIRINGO: His Lord Highness had paid more than $250,000 for shares and equipment in the Mudsill Mine in Park County, Colorado. 

NARRATOR: That would be about $7.5m in today’s money. 

CHARLIE SIRINGO: He had been assured that the Mudsill was filled with untouched gold. Well, the name of the nearest town should have been a warning - the mine was built next to the town of Fairplay, Colorado. And ‘course, in a Gold Rush, there is no such thing.

NARRATOR: Before buying the mine, the Lord Mayor had two experts check the quality of the ore - the amount of gold in each ton of earth. And both surveys had come back good. But after he had bought the mine, something worrying had emerged. 

CHARLIE SIRINGO: Another expert inspected the samples and he noticed that there wasn’t just gold in the test samples, but silver too. 

NARRATOR: Either the Lord Mayor has accidentally bought a silver mine as well as a gold mine, or someone has been tampering with the test samples to make them look more valuable, a process known as ‘salting’. 

CHARLIE SIRINGO: My job was secretly to investigate whether the mine had been salted and, if it had been, to catch the culprits. 

NARRATOR: The situation was made doubly sensitive by the fact that Mr. Pinkerton, Charlie’s boss, had a close relative with an interest in the mine. Charlie assumes the false name he has used on other cases - Charlie Leon - and just as with the ranch case, he builds a cover story as a wanted man from Texas. The owner of the mine has been in London negotiating the sale. But Charlie learns that that man has a local agent: Mr. Jacky.

CHARLIE SIRINGO: Now. Mr. Jacky was not the kind of fellow you would take for high tea and crumpets at Buckingham Castle. He was what we would call a ‘bad man’. 

NARRATOR: He carried a pistol openly on his belt at all times, and was feared and loved in equal measure by local bartenders. His entourage also enjoyed the benefits of his reputation.

CHARLIE SIRINGO: I suspected - strongly - I would need to earn a place in Jacky’s circle in order to crack the case. 

NARRATOR: Things start badly. The owner of one of the town’s saloons recognizes Charlie from his cowboy days and nearly breaks his cover. 

CHARLIE SIRINGO: I had to impress on him that I was now Charlie Leon and that it would be best if he forgot the name Charlie Siringo entirely. 

NARRATOR: Then Charlie’s work/life balance becomes a liability. 

CHARLIE SIRINGO: I knew this would be a long case, so I had arranged for my wife Mamie and our little daughter Viola to move into lodgings near the town. But for discretion and safety, Mamie was introduced as the niece of a friend. We let people know that we were ‘courting’ - all very romantic, you know. That story came under question when Viola started calling me Papa in front of the landlord. I couldn’t be sure how long it would be until my story was fully exposed. 

NARRATOR: All of which explains the choice that Charlie faces that night at the dancehall in Fairplay, the incident that began this episode. He is drinking with Jacky’s group when a rival gang enters the bar and puts a knife to Mr. Jacky’s friend’s throat. Charlie’s choices at that moment are to de-escalate or to risk a gun battle to prove himself to Jacky. What would you do? 

CHARLIE SIRINGO: As I said, bold foolishness is often the wisest course. I stood up, felt for my 45, took a step forward, and struck the man quite brutally across his nose with the butt of my revolver.

NARRATOR: The assailant drops his knife, raising his hands to his face, which is now bleeding profusely. No one reacts for a moment. Then…

CHARLIE SIRINGO: The situation became confused. Fists and bottles flying freely. In the brawl, one of them dealt me a good punch to the stomach and I doubled over in front of him. As I went down I saw he was reaching for his pistol. 

NARRATOR: But Charlie is quick. Before the man can raise his weapon, the cowboy detective’s 45 is pointing at his face.

CHARLIE SIRINGO: He froze and so did his friends after a moment or two. I pushed them back on the point of the Colt, toward the door, and indicated that he and the rest of his gang should leave. Depart. Scram. Which they did. We were quite the heroes after that. But a few hours later, the girls of the establishment heard word that the same group was returning, even drunker, along with reinforcements and ammunition. The ladies insisted that Jacky and myself should lock ourselves in the saloon cellar for our own protection. I protested, saying I wanted to fight every one of them hand-to-hand. But I was secretly relieved when the ladies insisted. They let us out the next morning. 

NARRATOR: By which point Charlie’s relationship with Jacky has deepened. 

CHARLIE SIRINGO: Well, I was alive. And Mr. Jacky was now convinced that I was a ruthless outlaw just like himself. He saw me as a brother. A number of the town folks warned my ‘sweetheart’ Mamie to steer clear of me as a ruffian and an associate of dancehall girls after that. Prudent advice, no doubt.

NARRATOR: The rest of Jacky’s gang remains suspicious of Charlie, however. So he decides on a new strategy.

CHARLIE SIRINGO: I was convinced that he had salted the mine or at least knew the full story. But with his boys around all day, watching me, I was never going to hear a confession. I needed to get him on his own so I suggested that we enter business together as prospectors and travel alone for a few weeks trying our luck with this gold business. Most unwisely, he agreed. 

NARRATOR: The trust-building is complete. While they are camping out in the mountains, Charlie takes on the job of collecting Jacky’s mail from a local town. 

CHARLIE SIRINGO: His boys were still writing to him, warning him I might be a detective.

NARRATOR: Charlie created his own special mailbox for this correspondence - a hole in the ground, covered by a rock.

CHARLIE SIRINGO: So he never saw a word they wrote.

NARRATOR: And, gradually, around the campfire, the truth comes out. 

CHARLIE SIRINGO: He told me his real name, not the one he lived under, and that he had spent time in the penitentiary in Nebraska. Naturally, I passed all that on to our office. 

NARRATOR: And talk turns to the strange ore found in the Lord Mayor’s mine.

CHARLIE SIRINGO: Of course he’d salted it, under instruction from the owner. He told me he had spent weeks secretly adding foreign ore to the mineshaft they’d sampled. His Highness the Mayor was a true victim of Fairplay. 

NARRATOR: And the confession goes further.

CHARLIE SIRINGO: This wasn’t even the first time. Years ago they’d sold the same mine before to a gentleman from Cincinnati who also fell for the trick. That man sold it back to them at a loss of tens of thousands of dollars. 

NARRATOR: Charlie has what he needs. 

CHARLIE SIRINGO: Mr. Jacky was tricked into paying a visit to Denver, where other Pinkerton agents confronted him and obtained a confession. I heard he was shocked when they showed him a copy of his Nebraska mug shot. And Sir Lord Mayor in merry old England? He had the evidence he needed to take the owner of the mine to court. I believe he obtained some sizable fraction of the money he had so foolishly expended. 

NARRATOR: Charlie is by now one of Pinkerton’s most valuable and experienced undercover agents in the West. He is often called on when other detectives have failed or been found out. And this is the situation, at first, with one of Charlie’s most famous and influential cases. The Agency offers him the Coeur d'Alene union case. 

CHARLIE SIRINGO: I refused it at first on principle. I don’t hold - in general - with union-busting.

NARRATOR: But the Pinkerton Agency has a reputation for union-busting, providing mine and factory owners with the muscle to break up strikes and protests by labor unions, often by force. And in frontier towns, the battles between union and management can be deadly. Pinkerton’s undercover agents are also used to infiltrate unions, planting misinformation and gathering intelligence for the bosses. And it is this kind of undercover work that Charlie is being asked to do in Coeur d'Alene.

CHARLIE SIRINGO: A big fuss was brewing in the gold and silver mines in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. The workers were protesting - as I heard - for higher wages. Although I had worked cases like this, my sympathies, generally, were with the working man, not with the plutocrat.

NARRATOR: But Charlie’s supervisor asks him to reconsider. The last undercover agent they had sent had been quickly sniffed out by the union. In fact, he’d barely made it out with his life.

CHARLIE SIRINGO: Pinkerton needed someone with my experience to have a chance of finding out what was being planned. So my manager, Mr. McCartney, made me an offer: “Charlie - if you go to Idaho, and you find that those union boys are in the right, you can drop the case. But if you find otherwise we’ll need your help.”

NARRATOR: A few weeks later, Charlie arrives at the small mining settlement of Gem, near Coeur D’Alene, posing as a manual laborer. The mining company fixes the books so that he is offered a job close to senior union members. 

CHARLIE SIRINGO: I kept my head down for a while then joined the union, and after a couple of months rose to become recording secretary. a useful position, because my presence was needed for every meeting where plans were laid. 

NARRATOR: In the Old West, joining a labor union requires a certain commitment.

CHARLIE SIRINGO: In the initiation ceremony I swore an oath that I was willing to bleed and die for the sake of the honorable Gem Miners Union - and that if I betrayed my brothers, death would be my justified fate. 

NARRATOR: And these are not idle threats. What Charlie sees in the town shocks him. The union leadership is preparing for a full ‘war’ with management. They begin systematically targeting ‘scabs’ - nonunion members working in the mines, or living in the town. The leadership has a policy of publishing the names of scabs who are suspected of disloyalty and then marching them out of their homes.

CHARLIE SIRINGO: You’d hear handbells ringing and this cacophony of spoons on frying pans through the streets. That was the signal that a scab was being expelled often with a weeping wife and young family in tow. Union members came out on the street to abuse and spit on them as they went by. At that time it was winter, and the union would march them to the edge of the town, in the snow with no provisions, and tell them to start walking to the next settlement, on foot, 30 miles away - a few gunshots overhead to encourage them. By now, I no longer had doubts about the justice of my employment. 

NARRATOR: As usual, Charlie takes care to drink with the leaders and to build his reputation as a tough man to be trusted. He finds out that the union is planning to declare its war formally in the Spring and that a secret death squad of union members has been put together to kill any traitors in the town suspected of opposing the union. 

CHARLIE SIRINGO: My official job was now drinking whiskey and watching anarchy grow. But by night I had to write reports and convey them to the Agency. The nearest post office out of union control was a few miles away. Used to have to walk out there before dawn so I didn’t get suspicioned.

NARRATOR: And when the union officially declares its war, the mine owners are ready thanks to Charlie’s reports. Several hundred armed ‘scabs’ are brought in by train to occupy the mine. It’s a stand-off: hundreds of men on both sides. And the question is raised. Who tipped off the mine owners? 

CHARLIE SIRINGO: An all-hands union meeting was called to discuss the issue of the traitor in our midst. And naturally, as recording secretary, I was expected to attend. 

NARRATOR: Charlie knows to expect trouble.

CHARLIE SIRINGO: A few days before, a union member who I was friends with warned me that I was suspected of being the spy. I thanked him for his advice. 

NARRATOR: Of course, Charlie’s friend didn’t believe a word of it. But, as he explained, Charlie had been seen mailing too many letters and was too recent a recruit for suspicion not to land on him. The day of the big union meeting arrives.

CHARLIE SIRINGO: On the day, I made sure to have my old Colt 45 safely tucked in my undershirt and my bowie knife. But if it came to that, it would be a question of hundreds against one. Any attempt by me to go out fighting would be purely a matter of honor. 

NARRATOR: The union president introduces the session, and then hands it off to their appointed investigator, Mr. Dallas.

CHARLIE SIRINGO: A beast walking on two hind legs, in my considered view.

NARRATOR: Dallas began by standing up and taking a long look at Charlie. It is not a nice look.

CHARLIE SIRINGO: “Brothers. We have a traitor and a spy in our midst.” Or words to that effect. “And if he is found to be in this hall tonight? I warned him. He should not expect to leave this place alive.” 

NARRATOR: Mr. Dallas continues for some time and begins listing the evidence that Charlie is a traitor.

CHARLIE SIRINGO: I can attest that the threat of a noose around your neck, or of a bullet reordering the insides of your skull, is a quite wonderful stimulus to concentration. 

NARRATOR: Eventually Charlie is given the chance to answer for himself. 

CHARLIE SIRINGO: I was aware that guilt in these situations is assessed as much by demeanor as by evidence so I kept a calm exterior. But inside, my heart was racing. And lucky for me, Mr. Dallas had blundered. He asked why one of the pages from our meeting notes was missing. Had I cut it out to send to my detective agency employers? Well, there was a simple explanation.

NARRATOR: Charlie pointed out that none other than the union’s president had asked him to strike the offending page from the record, as its contents implicated the union in plans to commit violent acts against its enemies. 

CHARLIE SIRINGO: So its absence was a sign of loyalty, not betrayal. 

NARRATOR: Charlie sways the audience to some degree - at least enough to avoid being lynched on the spot. In the days that follow, he makes new preparations for his escape. 

CHARLIE SIRINGO: I sawed a hole in the floorboards of the living room of the house I was renting. It was the ground floor, and there was no cellar below, but there was a small space between floorboards and packed earth - enough for a hiding place. And I prepared my rifle and pistol with plenty of ammunition. 

NARRATOR: The stalemate between the union and the anti-union forces grows ever more tense. The scabs control the mine. The union controls the town. In Gem, suspected traitors are beaten in the streets. A detective from another agency is exposed and shot dead and Charlie receives another warning.

CHARLIE SIRINGO: This time, it was even more direct. Another union member warned me that a man called Black Jack had recognized me and knew that I was a Pinkerton man. And he had spoken with Mr. Dallas. The union’s plan? Simply to tie me up and burn me to death at the stake. 

NARRATOR: For the next few days Charlie goes on the run, hiding at different locations, slipping in and out of the town to provide intelligence to the non-union forces. Until one day he is cornered in his lodgings. Dozens of union members surround the building, crowding the street. 

CHARLIE SIRINGO: I made my apologies to my landlady, took my rifle and 45, and descended through the trapdoor. She was considerate enough to replace the carpet and place furniture over the entrance to my escape hole.

NARRATOR: Through the floorboards, Charlie could hear the mob’s entrance and their interrogation of the long-suffering landlady. Inches from his face, the boots of his would-be executioners pounded out an ominous tattoo.

CHARLIE SIRINGO: God bless her, she stayed firm and gave them no clue as to my location. 

NARRATOR: There is a problem with this hiding place. Charlie has not thought to create an exit. 

CHARLIE SIRINGO: I surveyed my position. There was a chink of light coming from the side of the building facing the street. Crawling forward on my belly, I realized that there was a small space - about a foot high - underneath the boardwalk in front of the building. And that this boardwalk continued in front of all the buildings in the street. 

NARRATOR: By crawling through this space, Charlie is able slowly to move along the main street. 

CHARLIE SIRINGO: Through cracks I could see the crowds waiting in the street, hoping for me to be dragged out. At one point, I even had a clear line of sight through the boards to Mr. Dallas, sitting with his shotgun. And for a minute I considered making him the prey. I had a clear shot with my gun but drawing attention to my position with gunfire did not appeal. 

NARRATOR: He continues crawling from house front to house front. 

CHARLIE SIRINGO: At several points, I thought myself stuck completely and wondered whether this would be the end - either discovered and killed like a rat or expiring slowly beneath the boardwalk. I asked myself whether I was afraid and, to test, I tried spitting in the dirt in front of me. The experiment was a success. My mouth was utterly dry. I was most assuredly afraid. 

NARRATOR: Eventually, he reaches a saloon on a corner of the street, where there is a gap in the planks at the back of the building. The main street is still filled with union members. 

CHARLIE SIRINGO: Fortunately the exit point was at the rear of the building in a side street. I raised myself up and saw the sky again. Then I got another opportunity. Facing away from me were three union members watching the commotion, hoping to take part in my lynching. I held my rifle in my hand and took aim but it seemed ungentlemanly. 

NARRATOR: Charlie makes it across the frontline to the non-union forces occupying the mine, and soon after is able to return to Pinkerton’s offices in Dallas. In Coeur d'Alene, an armed siege of the mine develops with casualties on both sides. Eventually, the union forces are put down when the governor calls in the Army. Thanks to Charlie’s intelligence, the plans of the union leaders are known well in advance. 

CHARLIE SIRINGO: I was informed that my information played a notable role in the outcome of that conflict and of the eventual triumph of the Constitution and justice. And I have no regrets on that part, whether or not it makes yours truly a ‘scab’. 

NARRATOR: Charlie eventually retires from the Pinkerton Agency and becomes a bestselling author of books about his life as a cowboy detective. In his old age, he found a final career advising Hollywood scriptwriters making films about the Old West.

CHARLIE SIRINGO: Remember, that ‘Great Blind Phrenologist’. He had predicted success for me as a detective and an author and I venture to suggest that my writing ‘bump’ has served me well too. Nevertheless, I still miss the days of sleeping by the campfire with the stars for a blanket and my pack for a pillow. But isn’t that just what you’d expect an old cow puncher to say? 

NARRATOR: You can read more of Charlie’s life and adventures in his memoirs A Texas Cowboy, and Cowboy Detective. We also made use of Charlie Siringo’s West by Howard R. Lamar. I'm Vanessa Kirby.