An unknown assailant shoots and kills police officer Alfred Waterbury while he patrols a wealthy Spokane neighborhood.

Early Reston knocks down a mob leader to rescue Rye, Gig, and Jules from a gang assault near the river.

Rye secretly follows Gig to the free speech protest despite Gig's explicit orders to stay home.

The free speech protest erupts into a riot, and Rye stands on a soapbox, is beaten, and is arrested.

Hub Clegg interrogates Gig in the prison courtyard and beats him after Gig refuses to name Early Reston.

A clerical error listing Rye as 61 years old instead of 16 leads a judge to release him from prison.

Jules dies of pneumonia caused by Clegg's beatings, and Rye learns of his death when he visits Jules's family.

Elizabeth Gurley Flynn recruits Rye as her traveling escort and plans a second protest to hire lawyer Clarence Darrow.

Lem Brand tricks Rye into revealing Early Reston's whereabouts and pays him twenty dollars to spy on Gurley Flynn.

Taft work camp workers rob Gurley and Rye at knifepoint, but Gurley's passionate speech stuns the attackers and enables their escape.

Early Reston kills hitman Del Dalveaux and reveals he personally murdered Waterbury to ignite the police-union conflict.

Police raid the IWW Hall and arrest Gurley Flynn; in prison, she witnesses the systematic abuse of female inmates.

Gig is released from prison but is psychologically broken and abandons Rye to disappear on a drinking spree.

Gig drives Early's car off a cliff to stop Early from using Rye as an unknowing bomb carrier, dying in the explosion.

Gurley Flynn is acquitted of conspiracy charges, and Rye later redistributes Lem's money by donating the remainder to the Salvation Army.

The Cold Millions follows Rye and Gig Dolan, two brothers drawn into the violent conflict between Spokane's police and the IWW labor union after a mob attack introduces them to the mysterious Early Reston. When Gig attends a free speech protest, Rye follows, and both brothers are beaten and jailed alongside their Salish friend Jules, who dies from injuries inflicted by the brutal officer Hub Clegg. After Rye's accidental release, he is recruited by IWW organizer Elizabeth Gurley Flynn for a speaking tour while secretly working as a paid informant for mining baron Lem Brand. The anarchist Early Reston, covertly employed by Brand, kills Brand's hitman and is revealed as the man who murdered a police officer to ignite the entire conflict. When Gurley is arrested in a police raid, she witnesses the abuse of female prisoners, while the newly freed Gig returns home broken and adrift. In the story's climax, Gig sacrifices his life to stop Early's bombing plan from inadvertently killing Rye, and Gurley wins her conspiracy trial as Rye ultimately redistributes Lem's money to the Salvation Army.

The brothers, the riots, and the fall of the working class.

Gig takes Rye to see Ursula the Great perform, only to find mining baron Lem Brand entertaining her backstage.

Acting Police Chief Sullivan visits the IWW hall to personally warn union leaders not to hold the free speech protest.

Sullivan forces prisoners to break rocks and rations their food, prompting union leaders to call a hunger strike in response.

Rye is transferred from the Spokane jail to an old school as prisoner overflow, where he broods over his lack of education.

After Jules's body is taken away, Gemma privately acknowledges that Jules was her biological father, not her uncle.

At Gurley's invitation, Rye narrates his story of wrongful imprisonment to a room of IWW union leaders in Spokane.

After a Seattle IWW speech, Gurley quietly gives a young woman named Carol Anne fifty dollars to escape her abusive home.

Lem Brand briefs private detective Del Dalveaux and provides him dossiers on Rye, Gig, Gurley, and Early as targets.

Gurley defies her husband Jack's orders to return to Butte and travels back to Spokane to resume her organizing work.

Rye buys two pairs of expensive gloves with Lem's money and hands one box back to Lem when he quits as informant.

Rye starts work as a stock boy at a machine shop and befriends the machinist Dom, his coworker's husband.

Rye confesses his informant arrangement with Lem Brand to Gurley, who forgives him and sends him to Seattle on a mission.

Rye smuggles Gurley's article about women's prison abuse to a Seattle newspaper, which publishes it as a front-page story.

Gig spends three days drinking at Ursula's hotel before she cleans him up and shares her own life story with him.

Sullivan fires Clegg over a scandal, physically assaults Lem Brand at the Spokane Club, and resigns as acting police chief.

Behind the headline conflict between the union and the police lies a web of secondary pressures and personal struggles that quietly shape the course of events. From the beginning, Lem Brand uses his wealth to manipulate those around him, entertaining Ursula the Great, briefing hitman Del Dalveaux, and pulling Rye into his schemes through a carefully staged deception at his mansion. Inside the prison, Sullivan's brutal tactics of forced labor and rationed food provoke the union members into organized resistance, while Rye wrestles with shame over his lack of education during his transfer to the overflow school. On the speaking tour, Gurley acts on her values quietly and personally, giving money to a woman in danger and championing all workers even as union leaders and her own husband undermine her at every turn. After returning to Spokane, Rye confesses to Gurley, smuggles her explosive article about women's prison conditions to a Seattle newspaper, and watches Gig lose himself to alcohol before Ursula helps him find his footing again. The arc closes with the institutional fallout as Sullivan resigns in disgrace after assaulting Brand, and the machinery of power that had crushed the union begins to fracture from within.

The people and pressures behind the fight for free speech.

Early Reston reveals he abandoned pacifism after his pregnant wife was murdered while he was imprisoned at a labor strike.

Sullivan's arrival at the IWW hall causes Early Reston to flee, leaving Rye, Gig, and Jules exposed to police scrutiny.

Jules laughs at Clegg's interrogation demand in the prison courtyard, and Clegg cracks one of Jules's ribs in retaliation.

A Salvation Army visitor discovers the prison booking lists Rye as 61 years old, flagging the error ahead of his arraignment.

Rye weeps alone in Lem Brand's vast private library, overcome by the gulf between Lem's wealth and his own poverty.

Early Reston reappears unexpectedly at Gurley's Seattle IWW Hall speech and agrees to accompany the tour into Montana.

Union guide Al secretly arranges for Taft work camp workers to rob and kill Gurley, Rye, and Reston.

Saboteur Al reveals to Del Dalveaux that Early Reston has been secretly working as a private detective for Lem Brand.

Rye reads in the newspapers that Gig faces near-certain conviction that week, shattering his faith in the union's power.

Gurley admits to Rye that she does not always know how to fight and win against the city and the police.

Early asks Rye to negotiate a large payment from Lem, secretly planning to use the exchange as cover for a bomb delivery.

Ursula refuses to entertain Lem Brand until he honors his promise to her predecessor, then negotiates her own hotel ownership deal.

Early reveals to Gig that Rye had been Lem Brand's paid informant, turning Gig against Rye to recruit him as a getaway driver.

The city council releases all remaining IWW prisoners and revokes the operating licenses of several exploitative employment agencies.

Ursula reveals to Rye that she was the anonymous source who sent police the note implicating Lem in Waterbury's murder.

Beneath the surface of the free speech conflict runs a series of hidden truths and pivotal choices that ultimately determine every character's fate. Early Reston enters the story as an apparent ally but is gradually revealed as the novel's true instigator, having worked as a paid agent for Lem Brand while secretly pursuing his own anarchist agenda of escalating chaos. The turning points in prison—Jules's laughter earning him a cracked rib, the age error that frees Rye—show how chance and small decisions carry enormous consequences for the powerless. Gurley's vulnerabilities surface on the road as she admits her uncertainty to Rye even while acting with quiet integrity, while Rye's breakdown in Lem's library lays bare how deeply the wealth gap has wounded his sense of self. The conspiracy deepens as Al's betrayal in Taft and Early's manipulation of both Rye and Gig reveal how thoroughly Brand's money has corrupted everyone around him. In the end, Ursula's anonymous note implicating Lem comes full circle, proving that solidarity and quiet courage can outlast even the most powerful men.