“Couldn’t have put it better myself.”

“Here comes the boy.”

Luke led them the final hundred yards up the logged slope and into the cave, which Bell surmised, by its timber propping, was actually an old mining hole cut into the side of the hill by backwoodsmen digging for fuel to heat their cabins long before the Gleason Consolidated Coal & Coke Company commenced its commercial venture. Zeke, Luke’s father, could not risk lighting a fire. He had a thin blanket for the cold, and he tore hungrily into the biscuits, after first asking whether Bell and Wish had eaten and they answered that they had. Between bites he explained that union men were coming from Pennsylvania and that he and scores of others were going to join them and call a strike.

Sounds drifted faintly up the mountain—the chug of a locomotive across the river, a steamboat whistle, bursts of raucous laughter from the saloons, and, once, the clang of the trolley. The ill-lit Gleasonburg itself appeared as a distant glow, softer than the thin moonlight filtered by river mists.

Bell said, “Luke, maybe you ought to tell your father what you told me you overheard.”

“What’s that, boy?”

“The cops said the scabs are coming.”

“What scabs? From where?”

“Italians and Poles.”

“Then we’ll block the trolley. Maybe even get the Brotherhoods to stop the trains.”

“I’m afraid it won’t be that easy,” said Bell. “What Luke heard suggests that the company will barge them up the river from Pittsburgh.”

“That’s not possible.”

“That’s what they said.”

“Well, that just plain ain’t possible. We haven’t even begun to strike. What would give them the idea to bring scabs? How could they know our plans? We just made ’em. Now, what are you Van Dorn fellows doing here?”

Isaac Bell said, “Do you need our help?”

“What kind of help? Fighting strikebreakers? We can barely feed ourselves. How we gonna pay your fees?”

Luke said, “Pa, I asked them to help you get away.”

“I can’t go away, son. I gotta stay here. The fight is here.”

“But—”

“No buts.”

“But the Pinkertons said they’re calling up militia if you strike.”

“I hope that’s not true.”

Isaac Bell cocked his ear. He heard a strange sound and stepped out of the cave to hear better. Wish followed. “What the heck is that?”

“Sounds like music.”

It grew slightly louder, as if climbing on the vapors from far below.

“I’ll be,” said Wish. “Recognize that?”

Bell picked up the tune and sang softly.

“You can hear them sigh and wish to die,

You can see them wink the other eye

At the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo.”

The source was a mystery. None of the plank-and-barrel saloons had the means to hire orchestras. It certainly was not Reilly’s upright. Bell heard violins and horns, in addition to a piano, clarinets, and a double bass. And while there was no denying there were brothels in Gleasonburg, no one had the money to support a dance hall.