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“Letter came for you,” said Wish, pulling an envelope from his vest. “Lady’s handwriting.”
He stepped aside to give Bell privacy to read it.
Bell tore it open. It was from Mary. But it contained only four lines.
My Dearest Isaac,
What I am going to do, I must do.
I hope with all my heart that we’ll be together one day in a better world.
He read it over and over. At length, Wish stepped closer to him. “You’re looking mighty low for a fellow about to fight a naval battle.”
Bell showed him Mary’s letter.
“Write her back.”
“I don’t know what to say. I don’t know where to send it.”
“Write it anyway. If you don’t, you’ll wish you had. You’ve got a moment right now before all hell breaks loose.”
Bell stood aside while the firemen wheelbarrowed coal and tried to pen an answer in his notebook. The words would not come. He stared at the crowded tent city. They’d flown a defiant red flag from the top of the tipple. But people were staring at the river, bracing for attack. He saw Archie Abbott, running down the slope, waving to get his attention, and, in that instant, he suddenly knew what to write.
Dear Mary,
When you hope we’ll be together in a better world, I hope you mean a changed world on Earth so we don’t have to wait until Heaven, which your words had the sound of. Wherever it is, it will be for me a better world with you by my side. If that’s not enough for you, then why don’t we do something here and now to fix it, together?
He paused, still grasping for clarity. Archie was almost to the stage and calling him. Bell touched his pen to the paper again.
What I’m trying to say is, come back.
All my love
“Isaac!” Archie bounded up the stage, out of breath. He spoke in a low and urgent voice. “The miners got a cannon.”
“What?”
“I heard that someone — presumably, our friend Mr. Clay — gave the strikers a cannon. I found it. They told me it’s a 1.65 Hotchkiss Mountain Gun. Fast-firing and accurate. Look up, right at the foot of the tipple. They just pulled the canvas off it.”
Bell focused his eyes on the distant emplacement. It was a wheel-mounted gun, and largely hidden behind stacked gunnysacks of coal and thick masonry at the base of the tipple.
He said, “
The first shot the miners fire at the Vulcan King will give the militia all the excuse they need to pounce ashore shooting — unless the miners get lucky and sink her with their first shot, which is highly unlikely. Even if they did, it would just prolong the inevitable and make it worse.”
“What are you going to do, Isaac?”
Bell called, “Hey, Wish, do you have a cigar?”
“Of course,” said Wish, tugging a Havana from his tailcoat. “What dapper bon vivant attends a ball without cigars?”
Bell clamped it between his teeth.
“Want a light?”
“Not yet. You got a sawed-off in your bag for Archie?”
Wish beckoned Archie and handed him the weapon. “Try and make sure no innocents are downwind.”
