He darkened immediately. "Are you trying to besmirch my good mother's sainted memory?"
"I'm sure I'd have loved her," Vangie said soothingly. "She has… passed on, then?"
"Yeah," he grunted, then he gave her a suspicious look, but she was smiling guilelessly.
Francis said, "So Twill told you to leave town because his mother-in-law was angry with you."
"Yeah." Gabe made a fist. "It wouldn't have happened if I hadn't been broke at the time."
Vangie said, "Why not?"
Gabe glowered at the tabletop. "Listen, you can buy a lot of smiles with money. If I'd only had a few thousand dollars to grease the right people I'd still be running that neighborhood. Instead of out here in the sticks. But I'm gonna get enough money out of this burg to fix all that. A man with a million dollars doesn't have enemies. Not even mother-in-law enemies."
Francis said, "A million dollars?"
"What do you think they keep up there at the Mint? Chicken feed?"
"You don't really think you can… The Mint?"
Gabe leaned forward earnestly. "Kid, you know me from the old days. Now if Gabe Beauchamps says he's going to do a thing, does he do it?"
Francis beamed. "He does. He certainly does."
Vangie turned angrily on Francis. "You… double-crosser!"
"What?"
"What do you mean agreeing with him? You can't possibly agree with him. Nobody on earth could rob the United States Mint."
"Well, I don't know, Vangie," Francis said. He was in the middle again. "If anybody could do it," he said, "I guess Gabe would be the one."
"But nobody can," she insisted.
Gabe had heard enough of this. "I can," he growled.
Francis looked from Vangie to Gabe, from Gabe to Vangie, and from Vangie to Gabe again. His mouth opened a few times, but he didn't say anything.
Gabe finally took the poor fish off the hook. "Don't worry about it, Francis," he said. "Vangie just feels protective toward me, that's all."
"I suppose that's it," Francis said, giving them both a shaky grin.
"Though I don't know why I should," Vangie said, glowering at the table at large.
Gabe grinned at her. She was a feisty little thing and that was a lot of her charm. He could put up with a certain amount of disagreement, just so she didn't overdo it. "That's okay, honey," he said. "You make me think things over an extra time, and that's good."
"It would be," she said, "if it would ever change your mind."
He grinned again, patted her hand, and turned back to Francis. "I told you," he said, "there's room in this for you, if you want in."
Francis looked interested. "Do you know how you're going to do it?"
"I've got my idea pretty well worked out," Gabe said.
Vangie said, "Francis, do you want to go to jail?"
Which put Francis in the middle again. "Well," he said, and moved his hands around.
This time he was saved by a tremendous crash. Gabe was almost inured to spectacular noises around here by now but this one was so close it almost knocked him off his chair. He whipped around, ready to duck, run, or fight, and at first saw nothing but a thick cloud of dust in the middle of the saloon. But then he made out what had happened.
It was the main chandelier, which must have weighed half a ton, all heavy crystal and pewter. It had fallen to the floor as though going to China the quick way. Smoke, dust, and debris filled the air in a big billowing cloud; the echoes of the crash rang back and forth like mission bells in a thunderstorm.
And out of the cloud came Ittzy Herz, unruffled, dusting himself off.
"Him," Gabe said. "I want him in the gang."
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Ittzy was checking to make sure he'd brushed all the plaster dust off himself when someone touched his arm. He thought at first it was just another prospector hoping for good luck, but it was Vangie Kemp.
"Hi, Ittzy."
"Why, uh, hi, uh, Miss, uh, Kemp."
He wished he didn't get tongue-tied around pretty girls. It was really embarrassing.
"Come on over to the table," she said. Her smile almost paralyzed him, but he managed to shuffle over to the table in her wake.
"Ittzy, this is Gabe Beauchamps, and that's Francis Calhoun. We wondered if we could talk to you for a minute."
Ittzy shook hands with the two fellows and pulled out the chair Vangie indicated.
Vangie said, "You ran away from your mother again, huh?"
"I'm thirty-four years old," Ittzy said. "I want to have a life of my own."
The tough-looking one, Gabe, stared at him in awe. "You're thirty-four years old?"
"Well, I know I look a little younger."
"You look goddam nineteen."
Vangie explained, "It's because he never worries."
"But I got to thinking this morning," Ittzy said. "I mean, the Book says I get threescore and ten, and next month's my birthday. You know what that means?"
"What does that mean?" Francis Calhoun asked.
Ittzy wasn't sure about the look this Calhoun fellow was giving him. If he didn't know better he'd think it was jealousy. But that couldn't be. He said, "Well, it means I've used up half my time next month. You know? Thirty-five gone, thirty-five to go. I mean, it's time I got out on my own."
"It sure is," Gabe Beauchamps said. "Vangie told me about your problem, Ittzy, and she thinks you're a fine fellow. It occurred to us we had something you might just consider a possibility right along those same lines, so we thought we'd let you in on it."
This Gabe fellow certainly was talking fast. Ittzy said, "You are?" And looked at Vangie. "You, uh, uh, are?"
"What you need," Gabe Beauchamps said, "is financial independence. What I mean to say is money of your own."
Ittzy had never heard anybody talk so fast in his life. He looked at Vangie, "Uh, uh?"
Gabe was leaning toward him, elbows on the table, gesticulating to emphasize his words. "If the farthest your finances will take you is the other side of the Bay, how can you ever get away from your mother's emporium? No, my friend, I have exactly the prescription you need right here. And what it is, what you need, is money. Big money."
Ittzy frowned. He certainly did like Vangie. And he had nothing against her friends. But this was beginning to sound familiar. "I don't want to go prospecting," he said.
"Huh?"
Francis Calhoun looked alarmed. "Prospecting?"
Ittzy said, "People always want me to go prospecting with them. I hate prospecting."
Gabe was grinning from ear to ear. "My friend those are exactly my sentiments, isn't that a coincidence? I mean to say, I couldn't agree with you more, you're exactly one-hundred-percent entirely right. Even a rinky-dink town like this is better than slogging around in all the rain and mud out in the sticks there. Yes sir, you are absolutely right."
"You mean you don't want to go looking for gold?"
"Well now, I wouldn't go exactly that far. We are looking for gold, yes indeed."