“You know better than that. He may have thought so, and you may have believed it, but I never saw a man look at a bank-roll the way he looked at you. Why, old as I was, I was embarrassed to see it!”
“I hope he wanted something more than that!”
“You do, do you? Take it from me, honey, if they want you that way, be glad of it. You can always feed them into quietness afterwards. “No man stands hitched of his own free will. You have to bait your trap, and when they nibble at the bait, why, you just make them happy, make them comfortable, and you can tie them tighter than with chains. An’ believe me, the ones you can’t keep that way ain’t worth keepin’. “Make a man easy in his home life, and he won’t stray, not if you have a mind to his needs. He may think about kickin’ over the traces, but let him feel he can go when he likes—if you’re as smart as I think you are, he’ll never want to go.” The paddle-wheel steamer Sacramento Queen was a little smaller than the Mississippi river boats he had known, but the passengers were much the same. On the whole, though, they dressed somewhat more roughly and were somewhat more ostentatious in handling their money, of which they all seemed to have a good deal.
On the Mississippi you could tell a gentleman by the way he dressed … there was no such easy classification on the Sacramento. Here the best-dressed men were almost invariably the gamblers. The exceptions were a few businessmen from San Francisco or an occasional traveler from the East or from Europe. The miners, ranchmen, or farmers usually dressed in a somewhat dressed-up version of the clothes they wore every day.
Cleve van Valen glanced at his cards. Before him was a comfortable-sized stack of gold coins, in his hand a pair of aces and a pair of deuces. His luck had rarely been good, yet he managed to be successful in a small way without it, relying on his knowledge of cards, of men, of percentages, and on his memory. His memory for cards played, as well as for how each man played the various hands, was remarkable. Months after a game had been played he could relate the exact sequence of hands; and he could estimate from past performances how each man was apt to play the various hands.
He had rarely found it necessary to aid the percentages. The average gambler was not a professional, and flattered himself that he understood cards. Moreover, the average gambler could be led to back his belief with money. Very few understood their chances of filling any particular hand. As every gambler knows, there are runs of luck that have nothing to do with percentages or even logic, and these Cleve was careful to steer clear of when they happened to others. They rarely happened to him.
Faint music came from the main salon, and unconsciously he began to hum with the sound. The song was “A Home in the Meadow.” The opening bars were played, and then a girl began to sing the words and Cleve stiffened in his chair. He strained his ears to be sure of the voice, and there was no mistaking it. He sat a little straighter. The cards seemed to have blurred a little. Another card was dealt him and almost unconsciously he added it to his hand. It was the third ace—he had a full house.
He looked at his cards, then swept the table with a quick glance. Suddenly he realized he was himself riding a streak of luck—and if a man was smart, he rode that streak hard.
Of the others at the table, there was not one whose measure he had not taken. Properly handled, there was three or four hundred dollars in that full house, and it was his for the taking.
The words of the song came to him more clearly, a song and a voice heard many times before over the open fires out upon the plains. It was Lilith, of course. Of late he had even been hearing her voice in his sleep.
A wise gambler rode his winning streaks, but which way should he ride this one?
The man in the gray vest said, “Check.” The man next to him said, “I’ll listen.” And it was Cleve’s turn to open. He looked again at his cards, then folded them neatly and placed them face down on the table. He got to his feet abruptly. “What’s the matter with you?” the gray vest asked. “Gentlemen, my regrets. I am checking out.” Abruptly, he swept the stacks of gold coins into his hands and filled his pockets, then he started to turn away. “Now, see here!” the gray vest began. “I—“ With his left hand Cleve turned over the hand he had laid down, turned them over in his palm, but kept the face of the cards concealed. “Gentlemen, I am quitting, but if any of you think you have a better hand than mine—the one I am laying down—I will be glad to bet card for card that mine are better: I am laying down a hand that would have cost you gentlemen five hundred dollars, but if you doubt me—“ “No,” the gray vest said, “we don’t doubt you, but you’ve won a good bit of our money.”
“So I have, and this hand would win more of it. But come on … card for card.” With the hand he held he was sure to win three bets and lose two, and with those odds he was prepared to gamble all day.
The man in the gray vest shrugged. “You can quit if you want to—I am not going to walk into a game when you are so willing to bet. Besides,”—and he smiled—“only one ace has showed. With three still out, there is a chance you might have one or two of them.”
Cleve grinned at him. Turning his hand outward he spread the five cards open before them. “See for yourself, gentlemen. And with that, good day!” The main salon was more than two-thirds filled with men and women seated at tables. Some were eating, others merely drinking. At one table, Agatha sat alone. Lilith, gowned beautifully, stood in the center of the stage, ending her song.
Cleve van Valen paused, taking a cheroot from his breast pocket Carefully, he clipped the end and lighted up. If anything, Lilith was more beautiful than when he had last seen her.
Deliberately, he stepped through the doorway and started down the length of the salon toward her. She could see him coming, and when she completed her song she turned swiftly to leave.
Lilith had seen him the instant he stepped through the door, and her knees went weak. Her heart pounding, she started off-stage, but Cleve stepped up on the stage and confronted her. “Lily, I’ve got to talk to you.” She was unable to reply. Somehow she seemed to have lost the faculty of speech.
Her lips were dry, and when she tried to swallow she could not. He knew that everyone was watching but he did not care. “Lily, a few minutes ago when I heard your voice I threw away a winning hand and with it a streak of luck such as I haven’t had in a long tune—something I did not believe I would do for any girl in the world. I threw in my hand because I hoped my winning streak would extend to you.”
He took both her hands in his. “Lil … how would you like to hook up with a no-good gambler?”
Suddenly everything within her seemed to well up and burst in a warm, wonderful flood. The next thing she knew her arms were around him and she was ignoring the outburst of applause from the audience.
“Then we’re on our way! Twelve hundred dollars I’ve got—right here.”
“What will we do? Open a gambling house?”
“A married man should spend his evenings at home,” Cleve objected. “How about a music hall? You can sing and dance, and—“ “Nothing doing,” she interrupted. “A married woman should spend her evenings with her husband.”
Worried, she looked up at him. “But Cleve, how long will twelve hundred dollars last? We can’t just sit at home and—“ “Lil, have you seen, really seen San Francisco? It’s ugly and small and full of fleas, and it burns down every five minutes, but each time they rebuild it gets bigger and finer. It’s alive, Lil, alive and kicking and nothing can stop it! It makes a man want to get into the action, to build something, to start something—a steamship line, a railroad, something that will help that baby city grow—“ “On twelve hundred dollars?”
“Men have started on less. Besides, Gabe French is there—he is operating a freight line to the Nevada mines. He’s always liked me, and I think I could buy a working interest.