Bold Sons of Erin by Owen Parry, Ralph Peters Read Free Book Online Page B

tipping my hat I went, amid the noontide hubbub, wishing I had bought a double portion of chestnuts.
    Footsteps rushed up behind me.
    A hand dropped onto my shoulder.
    A voice roared into my ear.
    “Jones, Jones! Major Jones! I saw you going in and coming out! I saw you! Had to catch you, had to come out after you! Gowen can’t be trusted in the least! Don’t trust that man!”
    A very storm of spittle and breath swept over me, nor was the breath as sweet as one might wish. Twas Mr. Bannon, the editor of our newspaper and commissioner of the draft, a man in the prime of life and well respected. The Republican Party looked to him for sagacity and the anthracite industry looked to his paper for figures, and he and his brothers owned at least half the town.
    Mr. Bannon’s hands were smudged with ink, as was his cheek, and his shoulders jumped as he spoke. He had abandoned his office without his hat and his gray hair streamed down to his mighty beard. A drop of wet hung from his nose, and I was not certain its predecessors had not found rest in his whiskers.
    “Waste of talent, waste of talent!” Mr. Bannon warned me. “Can’t believe he went over to the Irish. Can’t be trusted, in little things or big. Traitor to his class. I thought that you should know, you—”
    I backed me up most delicately. I did not wish to offend his august personage, for even Mr. Lincoln paid him heed on political matters, while Governor Curtin viewed him as an equal. But a conversation should not resemble a rainstorm. And I fear his breath recalled the dead girl’s smell.
    “—can’t believe a single thing he says. Democrat, you know. Traitor to his kind. You can’t believe a single thing Gowen says.”
    Suddenly, he changed his tack and his tone. “What did he say, Jones? What did Gowen tell you? Anything for the pages of the Miners’ Journal ? What did he say to you?”
    “He said that I should buy railroad shares,” I told him. For newspapermen must be answered with a caution, no matter their political allegiances.
    “But . . . but you’ve been buying railroad shares for the past year! Everyone knows that, everyone knows! Evans at the Miners’ Bank told me that you . . . I mean to say, why would Gowen tell you to buy railroad shares?”
    “He told me to buy more railroad shares,” I responded. And I would need to speak to Evans the Bags at the bank, who was no relation to my Mary’s uncle, Mr. Evan Evans, and who should not have been telling the town my secrets.
    “But what did he say about General Stone’s murder? What did he say?”
    “We barely spoke of it.”
    His eyes narrowed at that, and his shoulders jumped again, as if they were unhappy in his coat. “I know why you’re here,”he informed me. “I know everything, know it all. I know you’ve been sent here straight from Washington. And I know why.”
    He leaned in closer and shared his breath, while his latest nasal effusion found a pillow in his beard. Now, Mr. Bannon was a great, high fellow, with a house of some magnificence on a hill across the valley and brothers with houses still finer, including Cloud House, a wonder of our age. I did not wish to give the man offense. As a stout adherent of Methodism, I would not even slight a beggar’s feelings, for that matter. But Mr. Bannon’s breath stank like an open latrine on a summer day when the commissary has run out of quicklime. I do not mean that unkindly, you understand.
    “So . . . what can you tell me about the general’s murder?” he asked. “What about it?”
    Now, that is how these journalist folk are, see. First, they tell you they know all there is to know, then they beg for scraps of information. And though I think our free press is a glory, a journalist is a spy without a cause.
    “He is certainly dead,” I answered. “I believe that has been confirmed.”
    “But do you believe that nonsense about the Irishman, Brogan or whatever his name was? Don’t tell me you believe that Irishman