The Cold Millions

by Jess Walter

  Rye had just gone back for seconds when the street door flew open and the big police chief, John Sullivan, came in. He looked around like he was thinking of buying the building, stood bow-legged in the anteroom between newsstand and canteen, eyes scraping the pamphlets, posters, and flyers on the walls until they landed on Rye, who was holding a bowl of oatmeal. A scowl rose on the chief’s face, a good two inches behind his brush mustache—facial hair of such heft and dimension that Rye half expected it to part and reveal Ursula the Great singing to a live cougar.

  “Walsh,” he rumbled.

  Rye could do nothing but point through the open double doors to the office at the other end of the meeting hall.

  Sullivan dug in his pocket for a nickel, slapped it on the newsstand, and grabbed a copy of the Industrial Worker. He folded the paper and, with the headline FREE SPEECH DAY peeking out from under his heavy coat, marched through the double doors into the meeting hall. Rye had heard stories about the big chief, but he’d never seen the man up close. He walked with a rolling hitch, like he was mounted on his own hips, and the way his feet pointed out and his eyes bulged, you might think him awkward, but Rye knew the man’s reputation with a stick—you did well to avoid his shadow on the street.

  In the meeting hall, a dozen pairs of eyes followed Sullivan as he strode down the center aisle until he got to the stage, where another man pointed left, toward the office door. The police chief pivoted and covered the distance in three steps, rapped with a knuckle, and honked again: “Walsh!” The office door opened, Sullivan went inside, the door closed, and a dozen tramps exhaled at the same time.

  Rye took a seat between Early and Jules, who were finishing their coffee. The three of them watched as Gig and two other Wobblies stood in the aisle, debating the nature of the police chief. One man said Sullivan showed courage coming in without a bunch of other cops. Another said Sullivan would “smack your ass and drive you from town himself.” Still, he said, he preferred Sullivan to a cop like Hub Clegg, who “knocks you down to go through your pockets.”

  “Sullivan’s character is beside the point,” Gig said. “He runs that brutal police department, ergo, failing to hold him to account for that outfit’s rank corruption is like believing the snake’s head ignorant of what happens to the rat it swallows.”

  Early and Jules turned and nodded at each other in appreciation of Gig’s speaking gifts. “Ergo,” Early repeated.

  “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 at the trail behind us.

  Finally, the boy settled the barge on the bank and we walked our clomping animals onto the wooden deck. The boy was older in face than his small body and he looked at me like he knew the trouble I was. Bonin paid for him and his horse. You are the cause of this, I said. So he dug out six bits for me, too.

  As the boy pushed us off the shore and began poling to the other side, I saw something strange on that far bank, a glittering white mound in a clearing above the river. The boy followed my eye. Horse bones, he said.

  Then Bonin straightened and pointed behind us. Dust was rising on that southern road, not a quarter mile back. Riders coming our way. We weren’t half crossed the river when four men rode into view on the south bank.

  Gimme the pole! Bonin yelled. But the boy would not and they tussled for it. Bonin grabbed the boy by his shirt and breeches and hurled him over the side. He hit the water with barely a ripple. Then Bonin pulled his knife from its scabbard and began cutting the guide ropes.

  I saw what he meant to do. And I will give Bonin credit. It was likely our only hope. Those riders could ford faster than we could pole. But the current was strong enough that the river would float us downstream at a good pace, and since the trail departed the riverbank, we ought to make a bend or two and find a spot for a proper escape in the grassy fields on the north shore.

  Even in that cold current, the boy swam to shore with easy strokes. I envied him. I wanted to tell him I was sorry, but there was much I was sorry for since Bonin and I first rode out of Kansas.

  Bonin had finished cutting the guide ropes and for a moment we spun in the current, then swung free off the pulley and our barge started downstream. I laughed. Well I’ll be damned, I said. That’s how it was with Bonin. Scared and thrilled minute to minute. Horse bones and cantle pelts and suddenly you’re running a river. My own pony stirred but I gripped her bridle and bid her quiet.

  Looking back, I could see both shores: On the south, the men’s horses were settling in dust, on the north bank, the swimming boy was wading out of the river. He pulled his hands to his mouth and yelled for the ferryman.

  Something I ought have told you, Kid, said Bonin.

  I looked over at him.

  The Scots trapper and I quarreled with knives.

  Those words were barely free of his mouth when I was yanked by the shoulder and heard the thudding report of a rifle.

  My horse was shot through her neck. She pulled the cheekpiece from my hand and leaped from the barge, breaking the railing and causing the boat to dip and rise and Bonin’s little saddler to stagger and fall off the other side, the other railing going with her, both animals now in the river and swimming to shore, mine with a wound in her neck, Bonin’s with our prize pelts dragging waterlogged behind. My shoulder burned where a piece of the ball that hit my pony had burrowed into my meat and socket.

  I’m shot, I said to Bonin. We were both on our stomachs, clinging to the barge. We rounded another bend and I could see the man who shot me tracking us on a trail above the south bank of the river. He’d fired from the saddle, a fancy piece of aim, and now he bore down again. A report cracked and echoed in the rocks. But this one missed and the river raced us past a cluster of boulders that rose between him and us, and the expert shot could not get off another round.

  The river was in full churn and we bumped along, rising and falling over rapids and unseen rocks, our raft turning this way and that. The barge pole had gone over with the horses and we had nothing to brake or steer. We held flat to the thrashing vessel. The pain raking my shoulder with each bump.

  Next eddy we’ll pull out, Bonin said, though the speed of that current did not bode well for it. And still the dust of those riders trailed us from the south shore.

  I called to Bonin, Was the Scots alive after your quarrel?

  He didn’t answer. But I knew. I knew the minute he rode into camp with the pelts. Maybe I knew the minute we rode out of Kansas fleeing conscription. I wondered if those men would treat my shoulder before hanging me.

  Still the river bucked, like a new colt. Ridges and stands of trees falling away.

  I cannot give account of this river except that it was wide and fast, a torrent out of the mountain lake from which it drained, a blast of angry water over hard rock bed, eager to ocean. And even when we emerged in a slower stretch or our boat snagged a tree limb, we could not disembark, for the banks were bouldered or hung with brush and no snag could hold us. The trappers on the south shore had fallen back as the trail departed, and their dust grew faint. Perhaps the speed and harshness of that river might be our salvation after all.

  Bonin crawled across the boards and looked at my shoulder.

  Is it bad? I asked.

  I don’t think so, he said. But then he crawled back to his side of the barge.

  That’s when I saw the dust of men on horseback on the north side of the river as well.

  So now we were being pursued on both shores. Sure enough, two riders emerged at a full gallop on the north river trail, on a rise above us. One was older and bearded and I guessed him to be the French ferryman. The ferry boy was leading him on a smaller mount.

  I was our doom, Bonin said.

  I’ll not quarrel with it, I said.

  The river picked up speed again, rose and fell and twice snaked us through rapids. We clung to our barge and watched behind us, both banks, as our pursuers dropped down to the river and were forced to ride up and circle back on the bluff again, as terrain and brush warranted. I waited for the saddle-aim to try us again, but he could not get a clear shot.

  I was aware then of a sapping from my wound, as if I were leaking out of my own skin. I lay with my face on the cold, wet boards and drifted in and out, rising and falling on that river, and I don’t know how much time passed. We slowed once more but the current pulled us away before Bonin could get us to shore. A shoreline willow had reached out a hand for us and Bonin grabbed hold but he was left with nothing but a handful of leaves stripped from bough.

  I feared I was becoming too weak to swim. The river was high and fast and freezing and the few calm stretches where we might have made shore were also reachable from the two river roads and the men chasing us—trappers on the south side, the boy and Plante on the north.

  So we held tight. And rose and fell, slapped by water, scraped by rocks and limbs, my arm numb like the empty sleeve of a coat.

  Shame you fell in with me, Kid, said Bonin.

  I suspect my own character is at fault, I said.

  We talked this way as we clung to that ferry, looking across the wet boards into each other’s eyes. I can tell you, at the end, you marvel at eyes. I thought of my mother’s easy blues and the bark browns of the boy who took us across the river. How many hundreds in between? And how many more I would never see, Bonin’s green demons to be my last.

  He seemed to know my gloomy thinking.

  Listen, he said, I need to tell you about this river. There is a great falls ahead, six or seven steps, the last a rocky drop of forty feet into a canyon. In summer the local Indians gather there to fish, but now, with the river so high with melt— He shook his head.

  Maybe we’ll ride it, I said. Maybe we will be the first men to go over and tell about it. I smiled as I thought of the western adventures we had sought.

  Bonin did not answer.

  The current finally slowed a bit and the trail on the north shore dipped down to us. The boy and the ferryman descended and rode at a fast trot, the boy almost as close as when we were on the barge. Like we were traveling together, two by road and two by river. I wondered if the boy had a rope to throw.

  Forgive me, Bonin said, and at first I thought he was talking to the boy, saying what I was thinking about stealing the barge. But when I turned back Bonin had slid off our punt into the river and was swimming for shore. He made that awful stroke of his, flailing, flapping, his heavy long coat spread like wet wings, the current pulling him alongside the barge. I coul
d see his face until it went under and resurfaced ten feet away, him still trying to make shore. He glanced back my way and our eyes caught again.

  Sure now of his folly, Bonin tried thrashing back to the barge and scrabbled his hands on the side. I tried to pull myself over to help but I was too weak. And the next time I saw Bonin he was just hair floating alongside our barge—and then gone.

  I forgive you, I said. And even though I was the one who come up with that whole Kid nonsense, I wished Bonin had called me once more by my Christian name before he went over, just to hear it again.

  I did not see the trappers on the south bank after that, but the Indian on the north shore was a fine rider, and he separated from the ferryman and rode along the bluff ahead, as if to cut me off. Water sloshed the side of the barge and I could taste my blood in it.

  I thought again of my mother and wondered if my sisters had all married. I wished I could see them once more. Perhaps in another world.

  Foolish thought. There is no other world. Ahead came a dip, the river carving into two channels, and I wondered if this was the first step of the great falls.

  I thought again of the glory of being the first man to go over alive. And I thought about the ferry boy and the horse bones and his tribe living forever on these banks and what the boy would make of me claiming to be the first over the falls, like the first white man to see some lake or first to cross some mountain pass, naming streams the boy’s people had fished for centuries.

  Maybe one of them had gone over the falls and lived to tell of it. Maybe they did it all the time, like swinging from a river rope. Maybe the boy had even done it. This thought gave me hope and I sat up to see where the adventure led. I felt dizzy and had the strangest thought—I need to stay awake for this.

  An island split the river and I could hear the roar of white water ahead of me. The boy and his pony were on a basalt ridge thirty yards downstream, and as I approached, I raised my good arm. He still had that curious look on his face.