“To grab me, in Cache Creek.”
“How did he get that idea?”
“From a note, that was sent by Wells, Fargo.” By now, that money and the way they were looking for her were riding me plenty, but I couldn’t help laughing at the slick way she had cleared the ground for a good time that night. The only people in Sacramento that knew what she looked like were the deputy and the woman. It didn’t look like the woman would be in the fast places, and that left the deputy. But there he was, chasing his tail in Yolo County dust.
I clipped out some stuff to mail, and when I went in the bedroom it was a sight. She had taken her dresses out and hung them up, to pick out which one to wear. But how so many clothes could come out of one small trunk was something you couldn’t believe. There were red ones and blue ones and green ones and silk ones with ruffles and satin ones with nets to go over them. They caused me to go on one or two more trips across the river before we started out. One was to get a white shirt in place of the red flannel ones I’d been wearing, like they had in ’49, and most of them haven’t been washed since, if you ask me. The other, once I got into the gray suit and topper I brought from Annapolis with me and hadn’t even unpacked, was to get a cab. She decided on a black lace dress, with a great red flower pinned to the belt, and a little bonnet with ribbons, like a poke bonnet except it was all black lace, and I just couldn’t bear fetching her there in a rowboat. The driver whistled when we pulled up at the shack, and she was something to see all right, as she came stepping out, holding up her skirt with both hands and looking so slim a breeze might blow her away. Talk stopped when we went in the Western for dinner, and all over the dining room you could hear them whispering about her and asking who she was. I tried to think about the money, but I couldn’t, and all I could think of was how proud I was of her and how much I loved her.
We hit the gambling halls as soon as we put away some Hangtown fry and bear steak. She had a system gambling, and I never forgot it and it’s made me plenty since. She’d stand at the roulette table as icy cold as something made of marble, and look at the wheel and yet not look at it, and never show any feeling at all, whether she was winning, losing, or just yawing along. She’d bet a buck on the first twelve, then as soon as she was playing on their money she’d up the bet to two dollars. Then when she got a little ahead she’d keep betting two dollars on the first twelve, but put one dollar on the first four. Then when she cashed her first double bet, she’d up the bet on the first twelve to five dollars, on the first four to two dollars, and lay a dollar bet on number one. That way, instead of coppering her bet, the way most of them do, she was lining it up for a killing when she really got one. The bets on the first twelve, when she cashed one, paid enough to keep her nearly even. But when she cashed on the first four, that was good odds, and she cashed on the first twelve too. And when she cashed number one, which she did a couple of times, it was real odds, plus good odds, plus some odds, and it wasn’t long before she had a pile. It surprised me she could figure it up like that and didn’t just trust to luck. Between those dresses and the silver that was stacked up so it touched her breasts, I began to see something I hadn’t known was there.
I won a little too, and when I bought her a little gold bracelet with a ruby in it, that was turned in by a woman having bad luck, she kissed it, and took me out in the street and kissed me, and when we went in the next place didn’t gamble any more, but just stood by and watched me. One thing, though, seemed funny. Every place we went, we had hardly started to play before somebody would be alongside of her, whispering things in her ear, and three or four times I stepped in between and asked what they wanted. The last place, it was a slim, sunburned fellow with a little silky mustache. But when I stepped in between and asked him what he wanted, I was drawn to him like a breeching was behind me pulling me along, because he stepped back and something told me he had a gun and I had to keep close to him because my only chance was to hit him before he drew. The place stopped gambling like it had suddenly been froze, and he kept going backward and I stayed right with him, my belly almost touching his. But in one way I had the best of it. I could tell when he was going to bump the wall, and when he did I let him have it, right on the chin. He went down and I banged his head on the floor and felt his pockets.
When I had the gun I stuck it in my pocket and pitched a ten-dollar gold piece at the proprietor. “Will you have that mess cleaned up?”
“I’ll attend to it, sir.”
Back at the table she was looking at me with eyes as big as moon agates, but when I started to play again she hooked her hand in my arm and took me outside. She flagged another cab, and when we got in she kept holding tight on to my arm. When we were in the shack she took me in her arms and held me tight and began taking off my coat and hat and necktie. “I just love it you hit him for me.”
“The dirty son of a bitch.”
“I was so scared he’d shoot you.”
“Me too, but I got him.”
But later on, when it was just getting light, and I said I was going to give her a wedding ring a half inch wide so the bastards would know she was my wife and let her alone, she raised up and looked at me so long I knew it was the same old thing on her mind, whatever it was, that had set her off yesterday. And in the half dark her eyes always got so much bigger and blacker than they seemed in the daytime that it gave me a creepy feeling up my back, because I knew they said something I didn’t understand. “Roger, you got no more idea than a June bug what I am, have you?”
“What do you mean, Morina?”
She burst out crying, and it was deep, ugly crying that shook her way down inside, so I knew that whatever it was about, it was terrible to her. I took her in my arms, but when I woke up she was gone, and so were her things and her trunk and my boat. It wasn’t till three or four o’clock in the afternoon that a boy came rowing across with it, with a note. It said she had to leave and good-bye and she loved me.
I addressed my envelopes, put in my dispatches, and wrote Annapolis a note about the battalion of recruits that had started downriver that morning on a transport, bound for San Francisco. Then I rowed across, mailed my stuff, came back, and ate my supper. But when I brought a chair outside and sat down to wait till it was time to go to bed, I thought I’d die. Every boat that went clunking by reminded me of her, every frog in the tule patch made me pine for her. I tried to tell myself I was glad she was gone, that she was a thief, that she could only mean trouble and I ought to be dancing a hornpipe I was rid of her. It was no use. Around nine I put on my gray suit and white shirt again and rowed over to the city, looking for her. First I went to the restaurants, thinking she might still be at dinner. Then I went to the hotels. I didn’t ask for her by name. I was afraid to, for fear they’d been notified to watch out for her, and it didn’t look smart to, because she’d know better than to give herself away. I would go up to the desk, spin the register around, and start looking over the names, figuring I could spot her if she had come in that day. If they said anything, I told them I’d heard that a bunch had started out from my home town for the West, and I didn’t know who they were, but could spot my friends if there were any. That looked harmless and I didn’t have any trouble. Then I went to the gambling halls, which was where I really expected to find her. I visited every roulette wheel, but what I found was nothing.