Reborn in 1878: America's Number One Bandit

Chapter 78: The Irish Gang Taught Everyone a Lesson

Buck reacted quickly: "FUCK, how was I supposed to know your Pinkerton agents surrendered to the gang? They were attacking our positions! What did I do wrong?!"

Thorne roared, "You're talking nonsense! Didn't you see our agents were carrying wooden sticks and their mouths were gagged? They were forced, coerced. They came to us for help, and you killed them!"

"Just wait, I'll telegraph our headquarters. Your governor needs to give us an explanation."

Buck couldn't hold back any longer and frantically pulled the trigger at the white mist.

"Bang! Bang! Bang!"

"Come out! You bunch of sons of bitches, cowards! Come out!"

"Enough! Lieutenant!"

Kane grabbed him.

“We’ve been tricked. You’re only making those bastards happier.”

"What a brilliant plan! What a fucking brilliant plan!"

Almost everyone present understood what was going on.

The first wave of attacks was not intended to start a war, but to push their nerves to the limit.

Then make them wait, wait indefinitely.

The silence of several hours, amidst the cold and exhaustion, stretched the already taut string tighter and tighter.

The thick fog at dawn provides perfect cover.

It not only obstructs the view but also amplifies the fear.

Finally, there are these human baits.

Those damned Irish bastards tied the prisoners' hands to fake guns, gagged them, and then forced them to charge toward their own camp in the thick fog!
These soldiers and agents, whose nerves were on the verge of collapse, had completely lost the ability to identify each other!
In that situation, they could only rely on instinct to fire wildly, turning the entire enemy into sieves!
They executed their own people!

"devil……"

"They are devils who crawled out of hell!"

At this moment, a hint of dawn appeared on the eastern horizon.

The sun has risen.

The fog gradually thinned and eventually dissipated.

The full panorama of the massacre was also presented to everyone.

The bodies of twenty-eight Pinkerton agents lay scattered in pools of blood less than twenty yards from the defensive line.

The soldiers on the defensive line, who had just been cheering for victory, were now completely dumbfounded.

"Seal the scene!"

Thorne's bloodshot eyes looked like he wanted to devour people: "Carry all the corpses..."

"My God! Look there!"

A loud shout suddenly rang out!
Thorne and Kane felt a sinking feeling; their worst fears had come true.

Those damn reporters are here again.

A dozen or so reporters from newspapers in San Francisco and Sacramento were rushing over like madmen, carrying cameras and tripods.

They were clearly drawn over by the three-minute-long burst of gunfire.

"My God! Amen! Amen!"

"Oh my god, what is that!"

"Pinkerton's badge? These people who were killed were Pinkertons? FUCK!"

"Bang bang bang!"

The spotlights went off like crazy, and the reporters went wild!

"Captain Thorne, what happened? Why are your men dying here!"

"Lieutenant Buck, did you order the shooting?"

"Are they Irish bandits? Obviously not! They're Pinkertons! You killed your own people!"

"Get the hell out of here!"

Kane drew his revolver and fired a shot into the air: "Get out of here! This is a military restricted area!"

"Buck! Keep your men in line! Get these sons of bitches of reporters out of here!"

Thorne roared.

The militiamen then seemed to wake from a dream, frantically raising their guns and trying to form a human wall.

But it was still too late.

"You can't stop us! The public has the right to know the truth!"

"This is a massacre! A scandal!"

Why are you killing your own people? Is there something you're hiding that you want to silence?

"They must have had a really tough time escaping back, and you killed them!"

The reporters shouted as they were roughly shoved backward.

But they don't care.

They've got everything they wanted!
It's pointless to drive the reporters away.

Pandora's box has been opened.

Thorne and Kane remained silent, their faces dark.

Buck slumped onto the ammunition box beside him, his hands haphazardly running through his hair.

I got tricked! I got tricked again!

These bastards never intended to have a final showdown tonight. The first attack was just a feint, meant to provoke their anger and fear.

They didn't even actually show themselves, yet they destroyed the entire army's morale without shedding a drop of blood.

asshole!

……

The following day, the San Francisco Chronicle featured a news item on its front page, published in unprecedentedly large font:
The Dawn of San Raphael: Pinkerton Shoots 28 Captured Agents with His Own Hands!

The subtitle is even scathing:
"The Wolverine Squad is wiped out! — Killed by friendly fire. A deadly joke by an Irish gang, a century-long disgrace to America's greatest detective agency!"

The photo that took up half the page was even more shocking.

In the pale morning light, twisted corpses piled up in the mud.

The close-up shot of the Pinkerton badge, soaked in black blood, makes it even more glaring.

The crowd was in uproar!

An earthquake has erupted violently in the media.

Inside the Pacific Union Club in San Francisco, a railroad company director, his face ashen, exclaimed: "A bunch of useless idiots! A bunch of high-paid, fucking idiots! That's the assurance Alan Pinkerton gave me—they're being led by the nose by a bunch of potato vendors!"

Inside the state capitol building in Sacramento, Governor William Irwin's secretary handed him the newspaper.

The governor was so angry after just one glance at the headline that he almost overturned the table!
In a squalid pub in the Irish Straits ghetto south of San Francisco, the bartender laughs as he nails the front page of the Chronicle to the mirror behind the bar.

After a brief silence, the tavern erupted in near-hysterical cheers and stomping.

Pinkerton's reputation plummeted overnight!

What shocked people was not the brutality of the gangs; in the West, brutality was simply standard practice.

What truly shocked them was Pinkerton's stupidity!
Readers were discussing it intensely in pubs, clubs, and barbershops.

"The infamous Pinkerton, with sixty elite troops wiped out, and now he's personally killed twenty-eight of his own prisoners. Are these guys all terrified? Hahaha!"

"I heard they sent three hundred men, plus the militia, making eight hundred men in total. The eight hundred men were completely outmaneuvered by the Irish!"

"Seriously, when did these Irish people become so damn smart?"

Once the seed of doubt is planted, it will grow wildly.

The once invincible and all-knowing Pinkerton Eye has now become the biggest laughing stock in the United States.

While Irish laborers were celebrating their victory, the atmosphere was quite the opposite in a luxurious office on Montgomery Street in San Francisco.

“FUCK!” Patrick O’Malley, a shipping magnate and one of the highest-ranking elites among Irish immigrants, crumpled the Chronicle into a ball and angrily slammed it to the ground.

"These brainless potato vendors!"

"Do they think this is throwing stones at the British in the streets of Dublin? This is America! This is business!"

Sitting opposite him, banker Fitzwilliam, who was wiping his gold-rimmed glasses, had an equally gloomy expression.

"Patrick, calm down. Anger won't solve anything."

The main problem now is that, whoever these thugs are, they are burning all our efforts of the past twenty years to ashes!

He's right!

Another whisky importer present added, “Last week, I was at the Pacific Union Club, and Colton of the Southern Pacific Railroad was there.”

"He said right in front of everyone that he would never hire an Irish employee again in his life!"

O'Malley's office fell silent again.

Everyone present had crawled out of the mud of the Great Famine.

They got to where they are today by using methods that are even more ruthless and cruel than those of the Americans.

They had long since abandoned their compatriots and considered themselves as members of mainstream society.

Now, this pack of stray dogs from Northern California is turning them back into their original forms.

"Mainstream society, ah!"

Fitzwilliam sneered, "They'll never truly accept us, but at least they'll tolerate us as long as we bring in profits. But now, we've become the trouble!"

"The biggest problem is that damn Dennis Kearney!"

"Just a fool who incites a mob!"

Fitzwilliam snorted in disgust: "His speeches about Chinese people having to get out have made our business very difficult!"

"Now, he's been rescued by this gang of thugs, and they even found his head on him! He's a political plague!"

"He has nailed the faces of all Irish people to the pillar of shame!"

O'Malley's face was grim as he said, word by word, "The rift between us and this country is irreparable."

"As long as Kearney remains the leader of the Irish workers, we are all gangsters!"

"What should I do?"

"What do we do? Cut off contact, immediately!"

“Fitzwilliam, draft a statement in the name of our Chamber of Commerce, publicly condemning the atrocities of these thugs and calling them a disgrace to the Irish nation.”

"anything else?"

"besides……"

O'Malley thought for a moment: "Publicly announce that Dennis Kearney is expelled from the Workers' Party and that he no longer represents any decent Irishman."

"He's just a madman blinded by hatred, a criminal!"

"This……"

"It's nothing! We're in a very passive position right now!"

O'Malley slammed his fist on the table: "We need to take the initiative now! Quickly make our position clear to the governor, to Washington, and to those railroad tycoons!"

"We have absolutely nothing to do with this trash! If we don't kick this rock away, it will drag us all down with it!"

……

Chicago, West LaSalle Street.

Pinkerton National Detective Agency Headquarters.

Alan Pinkerton sat behind his desk with a dark expression.

His two sons, William and Robert, stood straight in front of the desk.

"Sixty elite soldiers, twenty-eight prisoners, my best Wolverine Squad is gone!"

"This is no longer a battle, it's a humiliation! A humiliation!"

"Father, Thorne and Kane..."

Robert tried to explain.

"They're idiots!"

Old Pinkerton interrupted him directly: "They were made a fool of like monkeys by a bunch of savages, and now, everyone outside is laughing at us!"

"The contract for the Southern Pacific Railway is hanging by a thread, and the coal mines in Pennsylvania are also watching and waiting!"

"Our clients pay us, not to have our people riddled with bullets by their own people and make headlines!"

"This isn't about how much money we lost; it's about our brand and our reputation!"

“These Irish bastards, every shot they fire isn’t killing our people, it’s killing our business!”

“Father, you are right.”

William finally spoke: "The enemy is very difficult to deal with. They don't play by the rules, and our reputation is constantly being damaged, which is even more terrible!"

"so."

Old Pinkerton looked up at the two men and said, "Tell me, your solution is not an excuse, but a way to solve this problem!"

Robert and William exchanged a glance.

They had been discussing this issue outside the door for a full hour.

Robert stepped forward: "Father, our first mistake was treating them like ordinary outlaws and using a large force to hunt them down. But in reality, they are wolves, ghosts!"

"Tell the important point!"

"The key point is strategic shift!"

Robert's expression was sinister: "Before they slip up, sending more people to Northern California is just throwing money into a quagmire!"

"So, you're giving up?"

"No!"

William chimed in, "We should stop our reckless actions and start hunting!"

He unfolded a list.

“This group didn’t just spring from the ground; there are hundreds of them, well-equipped, and tactically skilled. They need supplies, lots of supplies!”

"We can start our investigation from these areas!"

"Bullets, liquor, food, medicine, horses..."

Robert added, "They can't be self-sufficient. I will personally send people to investigate every gun dealer, wholesaler, and arms dealer in California, starting from San Francisco. Any unusual large transaction is a clue!"

"And also, disposing of stolen goods!"

William continued, "They stole at least $100,000, and they'll have to spend that money eventually. I'll have our agents on the West Coast infiltrate every casino, brothel, and bank to keep an eye on any suspiciously obtained foreign dollars!"

"One last thing, intelligence."

Robert pointed to the map: "Send men into every Irish community in Marin and Sonoma counties and find out who is tipping them off!"

Old Pinkerton listened in silence, his wrinkles smoothing out a little.

This is Pinkerton's style.

It wasn't the brute force of the army, but the ingenuity of the detectives!
"very good."

He nodded: "William, what about public relations?"

"I have already drafted the announcement."

William pulled another sheet of paper from the folder: "We strongly condemn the inhuman cruelty of these Irish thugs who kidnapped prisoners and forced them to charge into the guns of their own troops. This is a declaration of war against the civilized world! We declare them enemies of all America!"

"Secondly, we extend our deepest condolences to the twenty-eight agents murdered in San Rafael; they are heroes, and Pinkerton will pay three times the compensation to their families!"

William's expression was grim: "We swear that we will spare no expense, no matter where we are, to hunt down these murderers and avenge our brothers!"

"it is good!"

Old Pinkerton sat down again: "That's it! Robert, William, don't let me down, make sure they have their heads hanging in front of the Chicago headquarters!"

(End of this chapter)