The Cold Millions: A Novel, стр. 43
Rye was sitting when all around him people rose up, stomping, cheering. A bucket passed, slopping change and small bills. Gurley, speech over, was swamped by men and women wanting to talk or to touch her, but as Rye stood nearby watching, she ignored them all and walked to the edge of the stage and called over a ragged-looking young woman who had been sitting off by herself.
The woman looked to be twenty at most, no stranger to trouble, an opium girl or rustle boxer, Rye guessed. He had noticed her just before the speech, matted hair and a fresh black eye. Now, while the crowd milled, Gurley bent down, took the young woman’s hands, and said something to her. She pulled away and said in a louder voice, “You can do it.” Then she walked along the stage, thanking people as the raggedy woman made eye contact with Rye and hurried from the union hall.
Most people waiting at the stage just wanted to thank Gurley or to hand her an envelope with a donation it. These went so swiftly into the big coat that Rye thought she’d have made a good sleight-of-hand grifter if she hadn’t been such a terrific union agitator.
A few people wanted to talk to Rye, too—a woman in a bonnet asking about his brother, an older man thanking him, a floater saying he’d be in Spokane at the end of the month for the next free speech action. One woman said she had a sister in Spokane, “Agnes Poole? Married to a furniture man? Carl Poole? I don’t like Carl much, no one does. Do you know him?”
Rye was relieved when a tall man in a Stetson grabbed his arm to make a plea for sabotage instead of peaceful protest. “Son, you know all this talk ain’t worth a well-placed spike in a tree.”
“That’s what I’ve tried to tell him,” said a familiar voice.
Rye turned to see Early Reston, still as a rock in a stream in that crowd, hands in his trousers pockets, hat tilted forward.
“Early!” Rye left the saboteur and walked over.
“Look at you,” Early said. “I leave for two weeks and you go become a famous radical.”
They had a tussling handshake and Early put a hand on Rye’s shoulder and became serious. “I’m sorry about your brother. And Jules.” He shook his head. “I should have made him come with me.”
Early said that after leaving Spokane, he’d made his way to Seattle and was scraping up day jobs when he saw on a poster in Pioneer Square that Elizabeth Gurley Flynn was in town to talk about the trouble in Spokane. “I figured Gig might be caught up in this, but I didn’t imagine I’d find you here.” He chewed his bottom lip. “I hope what I did to that cop didn’t make things worse for you fellas.”
Rye shrugged. “They were going hard at us anyway.”
“Well, I’m still sorry for it, Rye.”
Their reunion was cut short by raised voices.
Rye turned to see an older, gray-haired man yelling at Gurley from just below the stage. The man was possibly hard of hearing, or just angry, because in his opinion, her speech had “devolved into a screed about women’s suffrage!”
“A screed—” she said.
“Yes, a screed!” the man said. He reminded Rye of the older labor bosses in the union office, yelling at Gurley like she was a child. “A screed that hardens the listener’s heart against the merits of what could be an otherwise honorable message, the cause of justice for the poor!”
Rye could see that from the edge of the stage, Gurley was smiling at the old man. He marveled at her calm but thought he saw something else in her eyes, too—a hint of mischief. “With all due respect, sir,” she said, “I do not believe justice will ever be truly possible, economic or otherwise, for any human being, until we have once and for all emancipated the vagina.”
The man sputtered. He took a step back and was still sputtering, red-faced above his priest’s collar, when he rushed past Rye and out the door.
18
They had raised nearly $250, a fourth of their goal, the Seattle IWW leader, Garrett, pointing out that they might’ve done even better “if you hadn’t decided to end the evening by yelling profanities at a priest.”
“He was yelling,” she said, “I was quite calm.”
In addition to the money, a dozen men had promised to come to Spokane for the second free speech protest, including, to Rye’s great surprise, Early Reston.
Rye had just introduced Gurley Flynn, “Early here was the man at the river I was telling you about who got some good licks in the day we got rousted,” when Early surprised Rye by taking off his hat and bowing.
“You are some speaker,” he said to her. “By the time you finished, you’d half convinced me to come back to Spokane and join up.”
“Just half?” she said.
“Maybe more than that,” he said.
Rye looked sideways at Early.
“I’d do it for Gig,” he said. “And you and Jules. You all took a beating for me.”
“Why don’t you come with us now,” Gurley said. “To Montana. I’m supposed to travel with two men anyway, for security, and Ryan speaks well of you.” She said she had union funds to buy him a train ticket.
“Yeah?” He looked at Rye and then back to Gurley. “Well. Okay. But I’m not singing. And if some cop comes at me with a nightstick, I can’t promise I won’t—”
“No,” she said. “No violence. That’s the one rule.” She put out her