He took another, more cautious gulp from the canteen, and looked up as the sounds of boys entering filtered through from the far end of the tunnel. He squinted into the darkness, but it didn't take long to figure out which of the teams was returning from their midday scavenging run.
He leaned over to Spot to mutter in his ear. "That's Blink, Mush, and Snitch just come in."
The three of them made their way over to where the rest of the group was gathered. They looked to be each carrying several things, tins and a few unwieldy bundles. As they drew nearer, Race caught their gazes, silently pointed at them then jerked a thumb back towards himself. Not that they needed reminding, but he could see that Jack's eyes had drifted closed again, his face drawn with fatigue and pain. Intercepting them early wouldn't hurt anything.
They slowed to a stop in front of Race. Mush and Blink paused their animated conversation, their glances darting and uncertain in the presence of Spot and his boys. Race gave them a single meaningful nod, letting them know it was fine to proceed.
Snitch's stare, as usual, was fixed on nothing in particular.
Blink tilted his chin in Jack's direction. "How's Jack doin'?"
Race had answered countless variations on that question today. Not that he minded, really. It hadn't been all that long ago that he wouldn't have put good odds on having a good answer to give. "Same, I guess," he said. "Gotta be still in pain, though he'll be damned if he so much as breathes a word of it to anybody, so he don't move around much. Just sits over there with Davey."
He'd done his best to keep his reply easy and neutral, but from the way Mush started blinking, it hadn't done all that much good. Jack had come through so much and had made it through at every turn, but this time was cutting it close.
Race hastily added, "But at least he ain't demanding we put him back on the duty roster right this minute, so I'se counting my blessings. I could do with the peace an' quiet."
Mush nodded glumly until Blink nudged him with his elbow. "Well, you can count this one, too," Blink said. "Go on, show him."
Mush's expression lit up instantly. Before Race could even open his mouth to ask how their run had gone, Mush said with irrepressible eagerness, "Yeah, Race—look what we found—"
He left one of the large, thick bundles draped over his arm so that he could use both hands to hold up and awkwardly shake out the other. The bulky garment unrolled and hung from his hands, more heavily than Race had expected. It practically brushed the ground.
"It's a big fur coat!" Mush said. He was practically bouncing with excitement. "Like them Wall Street bankers wear!"
Race let out a low whistle. It was indeed a fur coat, thick and glossy and such a rich brown that it was nearly black. He leaned back a bit to get a good look at the full length, propping an elbow on the metal plating behind him and nonchalantly draping his arm over Spot's nearer shoulder in the process. Spot stiffened at the casual contact, but Race ignored it. "Now that's a swell coat," Race told them. "Where'd you boys find it?"
Blink wasn't quite as breathless as Mush, but his grin was no less pleased. "In one of them big houses up in Murray Hill. Was only one bedroom still standing in the whole house. At first we thought there wasn't nothin', but all the walls was still in all right shape so we thought, there's gotta be a good chance there's something left. We had to do some digging under piles of stuff, but they was in a big trunk or chest or whatever you'd call it, all the way at the bottom. There's another, too."
Mush nodded, indicating the second one over his arm.
It was a lucky find. Sure, the old-fashioned mansions of Murray Hill might have seen their heyday eclipsed by the more glamorous abodes farther uptown, but they were nothing to be sneezed at. For all their opulence, however, they were not necessarily a sure thing when it came to searching for usable items. Many of their owners—or, at least, their owners' servants—had apparently still found time to pack a great deal of valuables even in the midst of fleeing. The boys had dared a few runs to the area in the early days, before things had gotten so scarce. In the subsequent months, fire and scavengers had done away with much of the rest.
Under his arm, Spot's shoulder remained tense. Irritably, Spot shifted, but Race refused to let himself be dislodged, mentally crossing his fingers and betting on the hope that Spot would be unwilling to cause a scene over something so petty.
"We didn't see no one around there," Blink went on. He adjusted the several tins in his arms to a more stable position; Snitch had his arms full of the same. "Around the house, I mean. We caught sight of a few people when we was going there an' coming back, but we didn't get close to nobody."
Race put out his free hand, touched the material. His fingers practically sank in. The fur felt supple and luxurious, worlds away from any clothes he or the other boys had ever worn in their lives.
"What d'you think it's made of?" Mush asked.
Race shrugged. "Dunno. That ain't never been my area of expertise." He'd never paid close attention to Wall Street bankers and the like, let alone their fancy fur coats. He hadn't been one for pulling the "cute and pitiful" racket that many of the younger newsies had resorted to, and that kind of thing tended to work best on the fat cats, with their high silk hats and cigars and ostentatious displays of pity disguised as charity. The Lower East Side and the route through Brooklyn leading to Sheepshead Bay, that had been more his territory. It was true he'd always kept one eye out for money, but he was an honest gambler, not a swindler, and so he'd never had the need to watch for well-heeled targets.
Out of the corner of his eye he could see Spot's fingers flex and tighten on his walking-stick. The gesture was akin to a wolf's curling its lip in warning, and it spoke directly to the same deeply-rooted part of Race's self-preservation instincts. It took some effort to continue pretending not to notice.
Mush's face fell a little as though he'd truly expected Race to magically have an answer ready, but he brightened up again as Race went on, "It don't matter though, whatever they are, we sure could use these beauties. Especially the youngest kids, huh? They'se goin' to have a high time living it up in 'em."
For such seemingly common items, clothing and warm material were surprisingly difficult to find. They caught fire far too readily, for one; and for two, a large percentage of what hadn't burned, by the time the boys found them, was so saturated with mold or decay or the smell of smoke as to render them completely unusable.
What none of them said, what none of them needed to say, was that winter would be on their heels in no time. It was only the end of September now, that was true. But the passage of a few short months was all it would take to usher in the bitter winds, and the snow, and the deadly cold.
Snitch made a wordless sound of discontent. "I still say we coulda gotten more if we'd gone uptown to them really big mansions."
"No. It ain't safe there." From the readiness and measured cadence of Blink's reply, more a reminder than a rebuttal, it was evident that this wasn't the first time they'd had this discussion today.
"It ain't safe anywheres," Snitch muttered.
Race let a little incredulity seep into his tone. "You ain't talking about Fifth Avenue."
"Sure I am."
"Blink's right, then," Race said. "You remember, Snitch. We talked about this."
Snitch shook his head. "Murray Hill is yesterday's news. But if we make a run up to those houses, that's where we'll hit it big."
It was tempting, of course. The residences in Murray Hill were already half a century old: by contrast, the recent decades had seen New York's most elite situate themselves farther north along fashionable Fifth Avenue. Grand palatial homes had sprung up seemingly overnight, occupying vast chunks of the city's huge street blocks. The fine delicacy of their marble facades had been rivaled only by the intricacy of their wrought-iron gates and trim. That these massive modern structures had housed but single families simply staggered the mind. Many of the names that the boys had seen splashed across the financial headlines and on the society pages had dwelt there: the Vanderbilts, the Astors, the likes of such men as Harry Payne Whitney and Henry T. Sloane and...
...and all of them gone now, to god knew where.
"There's too many gangs up there now," Race said, both to remind Snitch and to let Spot know.
Snitch gave an unconcerned shrug. "We can take 'em."
"No," Race said, "we can't."
"We ain't even tried."
To anyone else, Race would have said, are you outta your mind? but he reined in his impatience; this was Snitch he was talking to, after all. "No. Come on, Snitch. Think about it. Last time we scouted it out, there was even more guys there than before. We went with two teams and we couldn't even get close."
"Plus there's the churches too, right, Race?" Mush put in.
"Right. Can't hardly throw a stick without hittin' one of 'em around there."
"And I bet," Spot spoke up, sounding grim, "dragons like church spires just as much here as they did in Brooklyn."
Race nearly started at the sound of Spot's voice after the other's long silence, but recovered quickly. "Yeah. 'Fraid so."
Spot straightened a little, letting out a long breath. "Where besides Fifth Avenue?"
"Too many to count," Race said. "You might be better off saying where ain't there a church steeple nearby. You gotta watch your step around Madison Avenue for one, it's as bad as Fifth."
Snitch rolled his eyes. Race knew it must have been one more bone of contention for him, having to avoid the area; the best mansions in Murray Hill were often found along Madison Avenue and the boys would have had to settle for the lesser houses farther east.
"Grace Church," Race went on, "that's on Broadway near Tenth Street. Smack in the middle of the city."
"There's that one with the big tower in Washington Square," Blink put in.
"The really huge one up in Morningside Park," Mush added.
"One near the Bowery over on East Houston, you know the one with the big cross on top that used to be all lit up—"
"St. Mark's with the weathervane, on the corner of Second and Tenth—"
"The old one across from the freight depot—"
"And there's St. Brigid's," Blink said.
Silence followed.
Race's shoulders slumped at the name. Spot must have felt the movement, because he turned slightly in Race's direction. "St. Brigid's?"
"The...well, you know the Lodging House at Tompkins Square." At Spot's nod, he continued. "St. Brigid's, that's the name of the church it's across the street from." Race paused. "Was across the street from." He suppressed a shudder. The memory of that gruesome discovery was still too vivid in his mind's eye. The bricks burned and crushed, the glass melted to slag...ash everywhere, all that was left of its residents. The crunch of cinders underfoot, the dry, choking smell. It was very similar, far too gut-wrenchingly similar, to what had happened to their own Lodging House on Duane Street...
He knew he wasn't the only one thinking the same. Snitch's eyes were glazing over in an all-too-familiar way. Mush let the heavy fur coats he was carrying slide to the floor and laid a hand on Snitch's arm.
"St. Brigid's had two spires," Blink said quietly. "Sometimes, if there's a coupla steeples so close together like that, on the same building, the dragons don't really hang around. They fight too much with each other for 'em, day and night."
"We noticed," Spot said.
"We gots that around here in this neighborhood, too," Race added. "Buncha tall buildings all in a cluster, practically down the street from us. Newspaper Row, for one. And turns out the way the Park Row Building's right next to the St. Paul Building, then the Chapel spire right across from that—it's just the kinda thing they don't like. That's our best guess, anyway. Dragons might come by, but the important thing is they don't move in. We'se better off than most places around town."
"We gots lucky," Mush nearly whispered.
"So Tompkins was a little bit safe." Blink swallowed. "For a while."
"Then one of the spires came down," Race said. "They'se pretty thin—probably wasn't gonna last long. And...well." He glanced at Snitch, decided against saying anything more. Probably had said too much already, trying to get him to understand the risk. "Only one spire left. You can guess the rest."
Spot cursed under his breath. "That's rough, boys."
"Yeah," Race said.
Snitch blinked suddenly, like a man coming out of a trance. "I still say we can take 'em."
It took Race a moment to trace the conversation back. "Take on the gangs? No."
Snitch was breathing a little harder. "Ya don't think I can do it?"
Race traded an alarmed glance with Blink. They'd definitely said too much. Mush, who still had hold of Snitch's arm, murmured, "Hey...hey, shhh..."
"It ain't that," Race said carefully. "It just—"
"Ya don't think I can do it," Snitch repeated. Blink hastily set down the cans of food he was carrying and began to pull away the ones Snitch held. The other boy didn't resist their removal at all, hardly even seemed to notice. His gaze, growing hotter by the minute, was still fixed on Race.
They'd learned the hard way that trying to tell Snitch to calm down at times like this didn't work, often only resulted in pushing him further in the opposite direction. "Maybe you could," Race told him steadily. "But it ain't worth it."
Blink stooped to set down the other set of tins he'd taken, letting them tumble the last couple of inches to the floor so that he could hurriedly straighten up again. The metallic thumps as they landed on the brick floor and on old iron rails echoed loudly in the narrow space.
Race softened his tone. "Jack's told you before, remember?"
He regretted bringing Jack up immediately as Snitch's jittery gaze swung in that direction. "And he'd tell you again, if he wasn't asleep," Race amended quickly. "And I'se telling you now."
Fortunately, it was enough to turn Snitch's attention back towards their small group. Subtly, Blink shifted closer to Snitch, not coincidentally blocking Jack from his view.
Spot, who only a few minutes ago had finally begun to stop bristling beneath Race's deliberate touch, tensed up again at the sound of Snitch's obvious agitation, fingers sliding into a new position on his cane, ready if needed to bring it into play. At his far side, his boys twitched, growing wary.
Scenes of chaos flashed through Race's mind at the thought of the Brooklyn boys getting involved. "Spot, don't," he muttered urgently. "Let us handle this."
To his relief, Spot didn't hesitate, only gave him a curt nod and his boys a silent hand signal that had them sitting back but staying alert.
"You done a lot for today," Blink was saying reasonably. "Why don't you come sit down and—"
Snitch shook Mush off. Blink shot Mush a look, but the latter only shook his head, and Blink made no move.
Race gestured to his own left ear. "You remember this, Snitch?" he asked quietly, making sure to keep any hint of provocation out of his tone. "You remember how I got it?"
Snitch's eyes flicked to him, to where the long crooked scar trailed from behind his ear, permanent souvenir of an attacker's blade. "Yeah. So what?"
Mush started at the blatantly callous answer, mouth falling open, but Race did his best not to react. "So, I ain't looking to get another one. Unless you think I oughtta?"
Snitch stared at him a long moment, the question seeming to ring in the air around them. Then slowly, his belligerence started to crumble. "No, you—I don't want anyone else to get hurt—"
Race nodded. "That's right, we knows you don't—"
"I ain't no coward!" Snitch burst out desperately, backing away a step, and Race rose cautiously to his feet, giving Spot a lingering squeeze on the shoulder as he did so, letting him know to stay put.
"'Course you ain't—" Blink tried, but Snitch cut him off.
"I'd go in anywheres! I woulda gone in there with him! I wouldn't have given one damn about the dragons...who gives a damn about the dragons." The words trailed off into a moan. "I woulda gone back into the Lodging House when he did."
"Snitch—"
"An' he wouldn't have been alone. Not—not all alone when he—when he—died—"
Mush turned away. Race pulled in a breath, made a quick decision. Sometimes saying his name made things worse, but sometimes it was the only thing that could get through. "Snitch, listen to me. Itey—Itey wouldn't want you to go in. He went back in there to make sure everybody got out. That means you, too. You hear me?"
No reply.
Race kept going. "Itey'd want you to stay safe. Out here, with us."
Snitch shuddered. "Stay safe."
"Yeah. He'd want you to stay with us."
"I wants to stay with him."
Race briefly let his eyes slide shut. "I know. Listen. You'd do anything to help him, right?"
The response was immediate. "Anything."
"Itey wants you in one piece. He wants you out of danger. He wants you keepin' yourself out of fights. Can you help him do that?"
"Yes. No. No, I want to, but...I-I don't know how to do...Nothing makes sense no more."
"That don't matter," Race said. "It's all right even if it don't make sense. You just stick with us, we'll figure things out, as much as we can. But together, huh?"
Snitch's gaze was slowly returning from wherever it had been. "Stick...with you," he echoed.
"Stay with us, Snitch," Blink said. "All right?"
The last few drops of confusion in Snitch's expression gradually drained away. And if what replaced it still wasn't exactly clarity, then it was at least probably as close as they were going to get. Race sighed.
"Be good if you got some rest," Race told him. When there was no objection forthcoming, Race and Blink traded meaningful nods, then Blink set a hand on Snitch's elbow to guide him away, reaching out with his other arm to pull Mush to him and letting the younger boy press his tear-damp face against his shoulder.
Behind them, the fur coats and precious cans of food littered the floor, momentarily forgotten.