Past All Dishonor by James M. Cain Page B

built around it. Then he picked up a rock and heaved and it hit the privy like a grenade or something. Three rats jumped out the backside of it, and began running along the bottom of the board fence toward a pile of crates in one corner. I plugged them before they’d gone five feet. He stared at the bunches of blood and fur that were kicking around, and then he turned to me, but by now I had the gun back in the holster. “... You spit that stuff, or what?”
    “That’s it, pardner.”
    “You that good on a man?”
    “When I’m scared, I’m fast.”
    “I’ll take a chance, I think.”
    “What’s the pay, by the way?”
    “Fifteen a day, and you work at night.”
    “I hear you pay twenty.”
    “To the right man, yes.”
    “I’m checking in tonight.”
    “You wear a black suit. I require that.”
    In the West a gambler wears the black suit, and some places even have the lookout do it. I said it was all right, I’d have one on, and he said: “And I’d get a haircut if I were you. I hear some of those generals at the Battle of Gettysburg wore curls right up to the mouth of the cannon, but anybody that tries it in my place is going out on his ear.”
    “And anybody that tries to cut mine is going out in a box. Have we got that matter straight?”
    “Well, don’t get excited.”
    “So it’s understood.”
    I wasn’t wearing curls. I had been sick, and neglected to get a haircut, that was all. But I wasn’t having him telling me, so that’s how I combed them out the way the girls wear them in school. Mine are yellow and curly, and all next afternoon, out on the back porch, I could feel Morina looking at me out the corner of her eye, when I showed up in the black velvet suit with silver buttons, the stitched boots, the black felt hat, the red shirt, and nice gold curls rippling around on my collar. I kept figuring what I’d say if she started to laugh at me, and I had a joke figured up. But once our eyes crossed, and I saw she wasn’t laughing. Then a throb went through my mouth, and I knew she liked how I looked. I picked her up, carried her inside, and pushed my face against hers. It was hot, and couldn’t lie to me about what it wanted. She didn’t lie. She just fought me, bit me, kicked me, and threw me out.
    Two or three nights later, I found out what I’d do when it wasn’t just target practice. I don’t know if you know how it works in a gambling hall. On one side is the bar, pretty long, with a brass rail and three or four men mixing drinks. At both ends are the big fixtures, wheels of fortune and stuff like that, that run straight up and down and have mirrors and pictures and gaudy stuff all over them. Opposite the bar is faro, with four or five layouts, girls dealing at each table. On one side of the faro are dice games, like crap, and on the other side cards. In the middle of the room, between the bar and the faro, are three big roulette tables, each running a different limit. My place was up front, in the corner between the wheels of fortune and the dice, and for the purpose of seeing better I sat in a high chair. The lookout’s high chair is not any different from a baby’s high chair, and it works on the same principle, with a cross bar for your heels, arm rests, and everything else, but of course with no attachment to come down over your head and get in the way of free movement.
    I was sitting there, getting used to my job, which was to keep an eye on things, and in case I saw something peculiar, like maybe a pair of dice coming out of a coattail, to drift over and walk past the gambler on that table. Those hombres, they don’t need any assay report to know there’s quicksilver in the ivory, so there was nothing exciting about it, and the only time I was to do something quick was in case of real trouble. So this night a fellow was at the bar, putting down liquor. I noticed him because it seemed to me he was working at it, and besides he was wearing two .44’s, butts facing. I