The Cold Millions: A Novel, стр. 61
I opened my eyes. He was standing above me, wiping clean the blade, which was smaller than I’d have thought, long and narrow, barely wider than an ice pick. The sky was low and gray behind him.
“What are you going to do?”
“Me? Finish the job I was hired for and go collect my money.”
“I didn’t know”—wince weep shame—“he said you were a dangerous bum—said you punched a cop.”
“Oh, I did more than that,” he said.
It hit me then. “The cop who was shot?”
He said again, “You hire me to rile, I rile.”
It became clear then: Brand hires Reston, but he kills a cop, so Brand hires me to fix that problem. I pictured his consortium. “If anyone found out he hired you—” I didn’t finish the sentence.
“Hey! Look at there.” A smile crept over Reston’s face. “The great Del Dalveaux has solved his last crime.”
Weeping sorrow.
“I’m sorry, Del,” he said, and started to come at me again.
“The kid,” I said. “Brand got to him, too.”
This stopped him. “What?”
“The kid. Dolan. I met with him in Seattle. He’s the one who told me you were going to Wallace. Brand bought him for twenty bucks.”
The look on his face. “Ryan?”
“Yeah.” I hoped he’d kill the kid. Hoped he’d finish the whole lot, the bums, Gurley Flynn, Brand. I imagined him going door-to-door, killing the whole city, marching those millionaires into that big fireplace, all that pig-fat wealth crackling and melting, him killing every booster and setting fire to that bloated theater stage. I imagined the whole city gone, and it was a great feeling, picturing Reston wiping the morb town from the planet. He was like no Pinkerton I’d ever known, those priggish bookkeepers—and I felt a terrible respect for whatever he was—
“You’re not—” Even to my own ears, my burbling words made no sense. “I need to—” I stared at the sky. Old prayers.
“Okay, quiet, now,” he said. He bent over me and blocked the sky, looked in my eyes—such warm eyes, you’d never know—and then I felt one of his hands open my coat. He reached for my wallet, but I got the strength to push his hand away. Terrible form while a man still breathed. Would he go for my fillings next?
“Sorry, Del,” he said. “You’re right.”
Oh blessed weeping shame—“Wait,” I said, “wait—” Oh cold morbs—and he bent again and covered my eyes, and I tried again, “W—” but he drew the blade across my throat and the warmth spread and my arms went out in wide embrace and that’s when—
24
Rye stared out the window as they crossed the Idaho border. Winter air had blasted down from Canada and dropped the temperature forty degrees in two days. A thick band of fog belted the valley. That morning, a freight train had slammed a junk wagon at a foggy crossing, its cowcatcher tearing an old dray in two, and so the Great Northern 1356 slowed to a crawl. The passenger train eased into Spokane like a man feeling his way into a dark room—ghost buildings, pale faces in the mist.
They’d left Missoula before dawn, Gurley spending the whole trip writing articles for the Industrial Worker and penning letters to supporters. She’d decided at the last minute to come to Spokane instead of going to Butte and had convinced the train agent to exchange her ticket. “I’ll go home when this is done,” she told Rye.
“What about your husband?”
“He knows who he married.”
The closer they got to Spokane, the more energized she became. She read lines from her articles aloud. She looked up from her writing to tell Rye new ideas. Five days wasn’t much time, but she could go to nearby granges to rally farmhands; wire organizers in nearby towns for immediate help; recruit better in Chinatown and among the Negro hotel and street workers, and at the new Balkan hotel. In the meantime, she’d give a daily speech in the hall, maybe even on the street.
“I’ll give the first today,” she said.
She sounded a little frantic, Rye thought, and he worried something was wrong with her. “Today?”
“We’ll be back by noon. I’ll speak at seven.”
“I just mean, you don’t want to take a day to rest?”
“I don’t have a day, Ryan. We have to keep the pressure up.”
“But you said yourself, we have no money and no bodies.”
“The other side doesn’t know that,” she said. “We could have another five hundred floaters coming to town.”
But they didn’t, and Rye thought about his conversation with Early, who sat two rows back, slumped in his seat, hat pulled over his eyes. He’d spent most of the trip like this, after a few hours in a Missoula saloon. He was still drunk at five-thirty in the morning when they boarded the train, and announced it would be “my last official duty. All due respect, I tenderly tender my resignation.”
Now, as they pulled into the Spokane station, Early coughed, leaped up like he’d remembered an appointment, grabbed his pack from the luggage rail, and patted Rye on the shoulder. “I’m off, kid,” he said. “Take care.” He tipped his hat to Gurley. “Good luck, believers,” he said, then darted down the aisle. The train hadn’t even come to a full stop when Early dropped to the platform outside. Through the window, Rye watched his friend slide away again.
“He does that,” Rye said.
“We don’t need him,” Gurley said, Rye thinking, Maybe it’s time to blow up the castle. He helped Gurley up and got both of their bags down from the luggage rack. She rose belly first, pushing on her lower back. With the other hand, she took Rye’s arm, and he carried their bags through the crowded station, like husband and pregnant wife, past newsboys hawking the dailies and men selling ales and sandwiches. By the time they were outside, Early was long gone. Like being friends with a storm cloud, thought Rye.
Cars and carriages lined the