"Yeah."
"I have been making my living," he said, emphasizing the past tense, "as a designer. Fashion, you know."
The girl's smile thawed a little. "Ladies' fashions?"
"In a way," Francis told her. "Designs for the theater, you know."
She looked more and more interested. "The theater?"
"The cancan shows, in fact," Francis said. He said it proudly, though he knew there were those who misunderstood the visual element in the cancan shows, and thought of them as nothing but unredeemed sex. He himself knew better and was prepared to defend the shows at the drop of a sneer.
But the girl didn't sneer. Leaning closer she said, "That must be real interesting," and Francis realized that, like most women, this girl Evangeline was stage struck.
"Oh, it is," Francis said. "Or it has been, at any rate. Unfortunately the Philistines just closed us again. They do that every so often." To Gabe he said, "You may have seen the posters X-ed out all over town."
"Yeah, I think I did." Gabe was spending most of his time looking around the room, waiting for his drink; it was the girl who was doing the listening.
Nevertheless, it was to Gabe that Francis preferred to address himself. "This city," he said, "is full of gambling, harlots, swindlers, and an array of vice you wouldn't believe, Gabe. I mean, it's absolutely wide open. Not that I object personally; I mean, live and let live is my motto. But every once in a while the city fathers go on a puritan spree, announcing they're going to clean up the whole city and turn us into some sort of Boston or something-and what do they wind up doing? They close the cancan shows!"
"Yeah," Gabe said, looking around the room.
"Even out on the frontier," Francis said sadly, "men are full of hypocrisy."
"Yeah, probably."
At that point the waiter finally came back with the drinks and thudded them onto the table, one by one. Then he stood there waiting.
Francis looked at Gabe and saw Gabe looking back at him. He looked at the girl, and she too was looking at him. Even the waiter was looking at him.
"Oh, dear," Francis said.
"I thought so," the waiter said.
Francis felt terribly embarrassed. "Gabe, I thought… Well, I did tell you we'd been closed down, I thought you understood, uh…"
Gabe said, without expression, "You don't have any money."
"I've been in dreadful financial shape these past few weeks."
"Right," the waiter said. He started putting the drinks back on the tray.
"Hold it, you," Gabe said. He produced a wallet from his overstuffed pockets, turned it around a bit in his hands as though unfamiliar with how to get into it, and then slid a bill at the waiter. Francis caught a flash of a five-dollar greenjacket.
After the waiter had made change and gone heavily away, Francis said, "The worst of it is, I wouldn't be in this awkward condition if it weren't for some utter scoundrels who lied to me."
"Is that so," Gabe said.
"But it did seem such a marvelous opportunity at the time," Francis insisted. "I couldn't pass it up, you know. I mean, you could actually see the glinting veins of it on the surface of the shaft wall."
The girl gave him a look. "You bought a gold mine."
Francis nodded. "Like a fool I trusted them. Well, one in particular. I couldn't believe that after… well, I just didn't think he'd treat me that way."
"They'd salted it?"
"Not really. They'd played the mine out, that's all. A few traces of gold left, but they'd emptied out all the worthwhile ore. It's nothing but a gutted hole in the hillside now. And like a fool I sank all my savings in it, only to find it's as empty as a drummer's promises."
Gabe lifted his glass and Francis caught a hard gleam in his eye. "Anyhow," Gabe said, "here's to gold. Lots of gold."
"Oh my, yes," Francis agreed.
The girl gave Gabe a bit of a mulish look, he noticed, but she drank.
Gabe leaned closer to Francis. "Listen, do you know many guys around this burg?"
"Why old cock, I know everybody, just everybody."
"Well, I'm looking into something big, and I might need some good people to help out."
Francis smiled. "Just like the old days."
"Um," said Gabe.
The girl gave Gabe a suspicious look and said, "Is it still that same idea?"
"Sure," he said. "I didn't use it up yet."
"Well, I wish you would," she said. "You're just going to go along bullheaded and not listen to anybody else that knows more about things around here than you do. The first thing you know you're going to get yourself in a lot of trouble."
Gabe tucked his head down in like a man who's made a conscious decision to be stubborn and said, "I know what I'm doing."
Alarmed on Gabe's behalf, Francis turned to the girl and said, "Is it really dangerous?"
Now she too was looking stubborn. "Dangerous," she echoed. "It's goddam stupid, is what it is."
"We'll see about that," Gabe said.
Francis touched the girl's wrist. "My dear," he said, "you can't stop a man if he's determined to go ahead and do something. Believe me I've tried, and it just can't be done."
"Don't I know it," she said. "You can talk yourself blue in the face."
"Exactly," Francis said, in long-suffering sympathy.
Their eyes met, with identical rueful expressions. They lifted their Pink Ladies and smiled at one another in perfect warmth and understanding. She was, he realized, much better than he had at first thought.
Across the room a cattleman in a huge hat turned his head and spat something into a bell-mounted brass-bellied spittoon. The clang echoed throughout the ornate room. Francis winced.
Gabe said, "Francis, you want to keep in touch with me."
"Where are you staying?"
Gabe and the girl looked at each other. Francis couldn't quite fathom the expression that passed between them. Finally Gabe said, "Well we'll be around, one place and another. Where can I reach you?"
"I have a room on Kearny Street. Twenty-eight and a half. I have the entire top floor."
The girl said, "I imagine it's fixed up grand."
"Well, a few touches perhaps."
Gabe was pouring himself another whisky, distracted evidently by private thoughts. Francis sought to revive the conversation; gold had been mentioned and he wanted to dwell on that, but there was something else to be covered. "You certainly are a long way from home, old cock," he said.
"Yeah. So are you."
"To be sure. The difference being, I can go back."
He let it drop in a very casual tone, watching closely as Gabe picked it up and examined it.
Finally Gabe said, "I don't believe it."
The girl looked at him. "You don't believe what?"
Gabe ignored her. He put his glass of whisky down and faced Francis with an I-should-have-known nod. "So Twill got in touch with you."
"I've never been so surprised as when I got his telegram," Francis said. "I mean, he's hardly my type, old Patrick Twill." He screwed up his face and shivered. "Fat ugly old…"
"Twill," Gabe said, pronouncing the word as if it were chipped out of hard steel.