Plus there was Twill, and that associate of Twill's waiting for Gabe to show up in San Francisco. It would be a very very poor idea to disappoint him.
Also, there was that gold. For some reason Gabe liked the idea of traveling with a wagonload of gold for companionship. It made a voyage by boat almost worthwhile.
Almost. Taking a step closer to the ticket window, Gabe gave the sign beside it an affronted look. To hear that sign talk, you'd think California was nothing but major metropolises. Pittsburg, Port Chicago, Richmond indeed. The truth was that these gully-jumpers wouldn't know a city if it fell on them.
The ticket clerk said, "You goin' someplace, or you just practicin' your lip-readin'?"
Gabe lifted one eyebrow in a big-city stare. "You in a hurry?"
"No, I'm not, but you ought to be. The boat's about to leave."
Gabe looked over at the boat, and damn if they weren't starting to pull the gangplanks in. "Yeah," he said. "I'm going to San Francisco."
"You are if you run for it." The clerk slapped a ticket down on the counter. "That'll be sixteen and four bits."
"Ah. Well, I…"
Gabe hadn't known about this extra expense at the end of the line and wasn't sure exactly how much cash he still had. He'd left New York in something of a hurry and hadn't been able to scrounge together too much of a road stake. Did he even have sixteen dollars and fifty cents?
He watched the gangplanks sliding upward over there at the boat while he fumbled in his pockets. A ten-dollar eagle. A five-dollar half eagle.
He dug. He dug fast now because he had sudden thoughts of the telegram that would go out to Twill if Gabe didn't show up in San Francisco. He dug through every pocket and, counting the dime in his left trouser cuff, he had seventeen dollars and five cents.
"There you are," Gabe said at last, dumping a double handful of coins onto the counter.
"And there you are," the clerk said. "Have a great trip."
That just had to be sarcastic. Clutching his ticket Gabe peered at the clerk's face, but saw only a guileless smile as the man closed the board shutters over his window.
And a lot of shouting was taking place over at the riverboat. Gabe saw only one gangplank still connecting ship to pier, and he made a run for it, waving the ticket and shouting, "Hi! Hi!"
The scenery was moving. Hills were going by. There was open water between Gabe and the nearest land. And the water was moving and the boat was moving.
Slowly, like a statue toppling off a pedestal, Gabe bent over the rail.
CHAPTER TWO
She came walking happily along the deck, smiling in the sunshine. It was good to be sailing the Sacramento River once again. I really ought to do it more often, she thought. A change of air, a couple of days in the sun-it could do wonders for a girl's complexion.
She turned into the saloon lounge and cast her eye over the crowd. Pilgrims, most of them. The crowd was denser in the men's bar, but she wasn't allowed in there of course. In the saloon lounge ladies in stays and heavy dresses sat fanning themselves against the heat. Fools-but they'd learn.
She went out again to take a turn on deck; she hadn't explored the port side yet. She knew she was drawing stares from the gentlemen passengers but she didn't acknowledge any of them although she knew how-the droop of an eyelash, the loss of a handkerchief. Today she was not interested in romance.
Toward the bow she turned past the lifeboat and suddenly a huge tough loomed, blocking her way.
"Sorry, Miss. You can't go up no further."
The rifle was large in his fists. His eyes were sizing her up in appreciation.
She blinked at him. "But I always ride up front. I love to ride up front."
"Sorry, Miss. Everybody stays back of this line today."
"Oh," she said. "Another gold shipment."
"Yes, Miss."
"They're such a bore."
She felt the guard's eyes on her when she turned away. She glanced up and saw the Captain on the Texas deck. He was watching her, too. It made her smile a little and it put a little extra bounce in her step.
She went through the forward corridor to the starboard side. A few gentlemen stood at the rail. She saw a thin young fellow in an Eastern suit, alone. His face was loose and grey and filled with alarm and unease. His shoes looked a bit worn, and he was clutching a cloth cap in one trembling hand. He looked as if he'd come from way back East somewhere, maybe from as far as St. Louis or Indianapolis. From the condition he was in it appeared he'd had a rough trip.
He might be worth checking out, she thought, but first there were the two prosperous merchants talking business by the davits. She headed sedately in their direction.
CHAPTER THREE
Gabe clung to the heaving, pitching deck of the boat while it tied up at the dock of Pittsburg.
Pittsburg, he observed without believing. Maybe five buildings and a pier. If you counted a tack shed as a building.
He clutched a passing nautical type by the sleeve. "How long will we be tied up here?"
"Ten minutes. Maybe fifteen."
Gabe rushed to the gangplank and staggered down to the little pier. Got on solid ground and stood there taking deep breaths. His vision began to clear.
He looked up toward the forward deck. The big guys stood like trees. So San Francisco had a U. S. Mint, did it? And gold was shipped there.
That was interesting. Very interesting.
He was still thinking about that when a sailor in a striped shirt went by bawling, "All aboard-all aboard," which suggested these Westerners couldn't tell the difference between a steamboat and a train.
Gabe dragged himself aboard.
He draped himself over the rail as near as he could get to the gold stack, because he thought maybe if he could keep looking at all that gold it would take his mind off being seasick.
It didn't work out that way. But between spells of being violently sick and spells of dry heaves, there were the occasional merciful moments of respite. During one of those moments he caught sight of a girl drifting unhurriedly along the deck, stopping here and there to look around her with pert wide-eyed interest. A slip of a girl, a delicate innocent flower of a girl. She wasn't looking in his direction; she stopped not too far away, a little beauty of a girl sweetly taking deep breaths of the warm and sunny afternoon air.
The lovely wisp of a girl, wearing chaste innocence like a clean fragrance, moved daintily past Gabe. He would have turned to watch her go, but his time was up. He lurched back over the rail, clutched a stanchion with one hand, and hung his head weakly, keeping his eyes tight shut so he wouldn't have to watch the water roll past below him. Desperately his mind clung to a vision of the girl he had just seen. The simple dainty frock she wore; the wind gently whipping the long blonde hair around her little face…
Something jostled him slightly. In his wracked condition, he hardly noticed.
The first he knew anything was wrong was when he heard the shot and the scream.
He whipped around, as fast as he could under the circumstances, and slapped his right hand against his hip pocket where his knuckle-duster was.
Except it wasn't.
He realized the pocket was empty at the same time that he saw the girl. The same girl he'd been dreaming about, trying to distract himself from his stomach. Damn if Gabe's knuckle duster wasn't in her hand, still smoking at the muzzle as she held it out away from her as though it were a dead rat.
"Well, by God," Gabe muttered. He pushed himself away from the rail and reached for his property. "I'll take that."
But she held onto it; partly from panic, it seemed, and partly from a grasping nature. She glared at him, her jaw set, and held on tight.
Gabe felt as weak as railroad beer. He yanked at the knuckle-duster, clutching his cap in his other hand, and panted, "Gimme that. Give it to me."
"No." She said it through clenched teeth and held on.
The knuckle-duster was turning this way and that in their hands, neither of them
able to keep a firm grip on it. One of them-probably the girl, who obviously had no idea what it was she'd stolen-accidentally touched the concealed button on the side. The duster's knife-blade snapped open, flipping up between all those fingers without quite removing any of them.
"Sheee!" The girl let go in a sudden hurry and jumped backward.
Gabe slapped his cap on his head to free his other hand, then disengaged the blade and folded it shut. Opening the single-shot chamber, he rummaged in his cluttered pockets for a new cartridge. At the same time he kept one eye on the girl and the other on the corner of the forward cabin beyond which the gold guards were clustered. They weren't visible from here, but it was curious that the sound of the shot hadn't brought them on the run.
No. It wasn't curious after all. They knew their business, those guys. They weren't about to be distracted from the gold by some trivial diversion like a gunshot sounding within forty feet of them.
He found a .41 cartridge and thumbed it into the knuckleduster in the chamber between the brass knuckles and the knife. Then he shoved the weapon back in his hip pocket where it belonged and took two steps backward to bring the gold stack in view.
The guards down there were all staring in his direction, and now when he came in sight they all took fresh grips on their shotguns and stared at him a little harder.
The girl had recovered fast. Indignant, she demanded, "What sort of thing is that?"
Gabe moved back into the shadow, out of the gold guards' line of sight-and fire. "None of your business," he muttered.
The girl was rubbing her knuckles and frowning like a folded-up awning. "Mister," she said, "there ought to be a law against you."
He stared at her. "Against me!"
"Going around with that… thing in your pocket. You could hurt some-"
"Now just wait one minute!"
"-body." She stamped a little foot. "You've got no right to carry a thing like that in a pocket where you ought to be carrying your wallet. And furthermore…"
"And furthermore," he said, leaning close over her to drown her out, "I'm thinking I ought to turn you in to the captain for picking pockets."
The girl opened her mouth, but this time didn't manage to say anything. Gabe glanced toward the cabin corner to see if any of the gold guards planned to mosey on down this way. None were in sight, but at that moment a wide man with a rolling gait and an official-looking cap came swinging around the corner instead. He came bearing down on them like an express wagon. "I heard a shot."
Gabe glanced at the girl. Her eyes were very round and large.
Gabe shrugged. "We didn't hear anything." He tipped his head toward the girl. "You hear anything?"
"No. Not a thing."
"I didn't either," Gabe said. "A shot, you say?"
"Sounded like a pistol to me," the wide man said suspiciously. His nostrils were wrinkling. "I could swear I smell powdersmoke."
"I don't smell a thing," the girl said.
The wide man stood with his shoes planted three feet apart and scratched his head in bafflement. The girl moved closer to him, looked up into his downcast face, and then reached up and thumbed one of his eyelids back. "You sure you're feeling all right?"
The wide man jerked his head back. "I feel fine. What are you talking about?"
"Maybe a touch too much sun," the girl said, mostly to herself. "I'd stay under cover for a while if I were you. Do you hear things very often? Smell things?"
"I… uh…"
"I'm a nurse, you see. I've seen cases before."
"Cases? Cases of what?"
She had the wide guy worried now. But she only smiled sweetly. "It's nothing to worry about, I promise you. A little too much sun can do it, you know. Take my advice, Captain, stay out of the…"
"I ain't the Captain. I'm the Mate."
"All right, Mate. Stay out of the sun for a day or two. That's my advice." The girl turned smartly, hooked her arm in the bend of Gabe's elbow, and promenaded off with him along the deck.
Near the stern Gabe stopped and shook her arm off. Up forward the Mate was still scratching his head, but presently he put his cap back on and his wide shape rolled into the corridor doorway and disappeared.
"Nurse," Gabe snorted.
"Thanks for not turning me in." She was doing her demure-little-girl act again. So sweet, so pretty. Sweet as laudanum poison, he thought.
But she was pretty all right.
Frowning, which didn't spoil her prettiness at all, she said, "What was that horrible thing anyway?"
"What thing? Oh you mean my knuckle-duster." He looked around-they had no witnesses. So he took it out of his pocket and slipped the brass rings over his fingers and showed her. "Like that. See, you can hit him with it. Or you can cut him with it. Or if you're really mad you can shoot him."
Wide-eyed, she looked at him in wonder mixed with doubt. "What sort of a person," she said, "would carry a thing like that?"
Feeling pretty expansive, Gabe stowed the knuckle-duster away in its pocket again and said, "Well, I'm from New York, see. Back there, you know, men are men, and you got to be prepared to defend yourself. Not like these joskins out here."
She glared. "Out where?"
"Out here in the hicks."
She took a deep breath and her lips pinched into a thin line. "I guess," she said coldly, "you mustn't ever have been to San Francisco."
"Sweetheart, I haven't seen anything you could call a city since I stepped on the train in Manhattan, and I don't have very high hopes for San Francisco."
"San Francisco," she said, standing up very straight, "is the Paris of the West."
"Well, that's real nice," Gabe said. "New York isn't the Paris of anyplace. It's the New York of the world, the only one, and all I want from my life is to get back to it."
The angrier she got, the taller she wanted to be. She was now up on the balls of her feet, teetering there like a beer bottle when you thump your fist on the table. "If New York is so wonderful," she demanded, "why'd you leave it?"
It's not as if I had a choice, he thought. But what he said was, "Well… a man's got to see the world. How'd I have known New York was the only place in the world worth being in if I never went anywhere else?"
"That's not true."
"What do you mean it's not true? I haven't seen a single-"
"That's not what I mean. You're not telling me the whole story."
"What whole story?"
"Hah," she said in disgust. "Here you are three thousand miles from home with that-knuckle-duster thing in your pocket, and no money, and a tough line of…"
"What do you mean no money?"
"Brother, I went through your pockets like a squirrel through a bag of peanuts. I can tell you what color lint you're carrying around. And you haven't got a cent in your kick. Well, to be exact, you haven't got a cent in your kick now."
He jammed his hand into his trouser pocket where he'd put the change after he'd bought the boat ticket.
Nothing.
"You used to have fifty-five cents," she told him sweetly.
Gabe peeled his lips back from his teeth. "Give… it… back."
"Fifty-five cents." She made a face, produced the six coins from the enormous bag she had slung over her shoulder, and dropped the money coin by coin into his open palm. "There you are my good man."
"Of all the…"
"Now you've got fifty-five cents. But I'd still call that no money."
"Maybe my money's waiting for me in San Francisco."
She grinned. "So's mine," she said. "In somebody else's pocket. Exactly the same as you."
"A pickpocket calling me a crook. I've heard a lot of…"
"Oh come on. You didn't turn me in."
"I should have. I still should." But he felt he was losing control of the conversation, and it irritated him.
"But you didn't and you won't. Because you don't want to talk to the police any more than I do."
He said truculently, "I'm not wanted anywhere."
"I can well believe that."
"The only reason I didn't turn you in was because " He stopped abruptly. It wasn't true anyway. There were two reasons. One, he'd never turned anybody in to the law; it was against his philosophy. And two, she was too pretty to turn in. But he was damned if he was going to tell her that out loud.
Besides, his stomach suddenly reminded him he was on a boat.
"Because what?" she challenged.
"Never mind."
"You're turning a little green. Don't tell me you're going to be sick again."
"Shut up."
"You've already thrown up everything you've had to eat for the past six months. How can you have anything left to throw up?"
"Urp…"
He knew the riverboat was slowing again because he could feel the alteration of its motion in the pit of his stomach. He swallowed painfully and lifted his head to look toward shore. "What the hell is that?"
"Port Chicago."
Four buildings and a pier. "Chicago."
"Port Chicago. There's a difference."
"I can see there is." Gabe's eyes rolled upward, seeking inspiration from the sky. "Pittsburg was bigger than this!"
"Wait till you see Richmond."
"What's San Francisco? Two stovepipes and a tent?"
CHAPTER FOUR
She found herself liking this self-proclaimed city slicker. It was hard to tell why. He didn't have any money. He didn't like California. He thought everybody who didn't have an accent like his was a hick. She had met plenty of snob dudes with their Boston drawls and their noses in the air, but this one wasn't like that-he was even worse.
She looked at him fondly. He was drooping over the rail in terminal agony and somehow he made her feel protective. Maybe it was because he talked so tough and blustered so much. Her father had been just like that. Underneath he'd been a lamb.
Gangway! Page 2
