The Cold Millions: A Novel, стр. 11
“Snake’s head,” replied Jules.
Then Early leaned over to Rye. “Your brother’s going to talk himself right into jail.” He stood. “As for me, I do not want to be here when that big cop comes back out and asks what tramp knocked his boy at the river today.” Then he looked over at Jules. “You’ll be easy to identify, too, you know.”
Jules shrugged. “I think I will stick around and see what happens.”
“Suit yourself,” Early said. “It’s been a pleasure, boys.” He offered Jules his hand. “Bonne chance, Jules.”
“Tout le plaisir etait pour moi,” said Jules.
Gig had seen Early stand and he stepped over. “You leaving, Early?”
“For now.”
“Where to?”
Early looked like he hadn’t fully considered this question. “West,” he said. “Seattle, maybe. Although I’ve been known to hole up south of here, in Lind. You know it?” Gig nodded. Lind was a little wheat farming town two hours southeast. “Then again.” Early grinned. “I might not make it past Jimmy Durkin’s place.”
“I’ll start there,” Gig said.
They shook hands, and Early clapped Gig on the shoulder. “Be careful with this bullshit.”
Early was still shaking Gig’s hand when he looked over and smiled. “And Rye, next time your brother won’t shut up about the inherent rights of man, you have my permission to crown him with a shovel.” He put his hat on. “Okay, then. See you princes down the line—” Then he walked out the door and was gone.
It wasn’t five minutes later that the office door flew open and Sullivan exited as boldly as he’d entered, followed by Walsh, Little, and a thin Italian man in a brown suit named Charlie Filigno, the unhappy secretary of the union.
Wobblies stepped out of Sullivan’s way as the big chief marched up the aisle to where the double doors stood propped open. He turned back to face the room like a stern priest. “I told your man Walsh and I’m telling you. Don’t do this thing you’re planning. One of my cops was killed two nights past—”
Walsh interrupted. “You said yourself, the killer posed as a real estate man. Does that sound like anyone here?”
“No,” Sullivan admitted dolefully, as if it would be easier if it did. “But it won’t matter. For me boys are in a state. One of them got jumped cleaning out a hobo camp this morning.”
Rye flinched and Gig shot him a hard glance.
Sullivan held up the newspaper and slapped the free speech headline. “You do this and you will pay in bone and teeth.”
He turned on his heel and marched out and a second later the door to the street slammed. In the quiet that followed, Rye looked around the room, at his brother, at Jules, at Walsh and Little, at the porter Everett and the ranch hands, at a half dozen others in threadbare clothes and whiskered faces, this army of the poor and broken, in it together now, but alone, too, each man moving toward the horizon of his own end.
The Kid, 1864
AFTER BONIN liberated the Scots’ pelts, me and him rode along the lower trail on the south bank till we come to a rocky ford where this Frenchman run the cable ferry that crossed the wild river. But the barge was tied the other side and we saw no sign of the old trapper Plante.
Liberate is an awful rich word for what you done, I said to Bonin.
No dust rose behind us on the Mullan Trail and I thought maybe we had not been followed.
We’d just struck camp that morning to ride north when Bonin come with that thick pelt-pack tied to the cantle of his saddle. He said the Scots made him a bargain, and if we crossed at Plante’s Ferry we could sell the pelts at Fort Colville.
But the way he kept looking back I became of a mind that Bonin had stole them pelts. I asked him outright and that’s when he come up with that word liberated. A God-fearing man would’ve rode off and let him take his own lashings, but my own weakness and Bonin’s knowledge of that strange country had my nerve.
And now Plante’s Ferry lay unmanned and our plan in waste. The ferryman had a cabin the other side of the river but no one appeared about. Even when Bonin put his hands together and called Hallo! across the river, the cabin stayed dark.
We could swim the ponies, I said, but Bonin’s cheeks colored as he looked down that powerful river. Snow still shaded the foothills and that river bulged with fierce current.
Might swamp the furs, he said. I knew the truth that Bonin could not swim more than a thrash or two. And that early in spring, the Spokane River might sop the pelts, pull his little saddler downstream, and dump him in the froth.
Just then a boy appeared from the brush on the other shore, a hundred feet across from us. He was dark and little, maybe twelve years old, with a black knot of hair, from that river band of Indians that Plante lived among.
Where’s your Frenchman? Bonin called.
I can cross you, the boy called back.
Do it then, Bonin yelled.
The boy started untying his barge.
As it was the only crossing of that river, the posted price was high: four dollars a wagon, six bits a man, and four bits per animal. We had no wagon, just us and our horses and that bundle of pelts.
The young Indian worked the punt toward us, using a pole to push against the shore. Thick ropes led from both ends of the boat to pulleys on another rope suspended above the river and tied to big trees. Near the middle, the current pulled at the barge, trees straining and the guide rope bent in the center like a hunter pulling a bow.
Ashore, Bonin gave a yank to his skittish pony’s bit. I wish that boy would hasten, he said. Bonin and I looked together