Reckoning of Boston Jim by Claire Mulligan

call and all are hale and hearty and tumbling about in the rooms nearby.
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    From the saloon below someone scrapes at a fiddle. A quarrel begins, then fades as the men are sent to grapple in the murk of the street. Eugene has earned his evening now. He takes the narrow, treacherous steps to the saloon. From five paces calls to the barkeep: “Mr. Culky! A glass of HB , no, of your finest cognac.”
    â€œTry your luck at the Frog’s place, then. All we got is Old Tom and grog. We don’t put on the frills here.”
    â€œThe question was not meant as a criticism of your establishment, sir. I merely assumed . . . ah, a glass of your finest Old Tom then.”
    Culky’s expression does not change as he pours. His face seems, indeed, to have long ago frozen into a wince.
    Now, Eugene Augustus, how will this evening progress? Concen-trate, man. He surveys the room. Sees seated men and standing men and milling-about men, sees stumbling men and fiddle-playing men and billiard-playing men there in another small room. Sees men of all nations united by a thirst for gold. A masculine landscape inhabited by not even one example of the fairer sex. Ah, what Eugene would give for a whiff of rosewater, a sea swirl of skirt.
    He drinks and the whiskey is a pale burn in his throat. Difficult to predict this evening, difficult indeed.
    At the faro table the dealer sweeps up cards from the green felt. The case keeper, a Chinaman, records the cards on an abacus. A simple game, the odds against the house. One merely has to bet which card will now turn up and in which order. All it takes is a good head for numbers and an honest table for one to eventually win. Unfortunate that Eugene has never had a good head for numbers. It is why he avoids the cards and the dice and the wheel, bets only on those outcomes over which he has some control. Now Dora, she could have been a regular sharper, for though she can barely read and write she can add, subtract, divide, even juggle large sums. “I see them falling into place,” she said with an irresistible shrug that engaged her entire form. “I see them like it were raining numbers.”
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    The faro dealer gestures to an empty space at the table. Eugene smiles and shakes his head, calls over to Mr. Culky for another shot. “And two for the gentlemen at the end of the bar.” He points to the Welsh brothers who are holding onto the bar railing as if assailed by a whirlwind. They stare dubiously as he approaches. When he met them on board the SS Champion he had not realized their English was so poor. Finds he must rely on broad gestures and loud, clearly spoken words. After they are finally made to understand they shake their heads. They are meeting their brethren in Camerontown, Eugene gathers. A mine is started there already. They have no need for partners. Eugene sighs. Looks about again. The Italian is not in sight, neither are the Missouri men. Les Canadiens are at the faro table now. They are cursing in their peculiar French. Their backs form a barricade. At the chuck-a-luck table an Indian man in a cocked hat tosses dice with a practiced hand. The light is fading and for a time the raucous crowd is half-figured and ghostly. Now an Indian boy lights tallow candles that are speared upright in wax-heaped bottles and give off trails of black smoke. They smell more foul than most tallow candles—of burning sheep fat, of carcass. Nothing like an odour to stir the pot of memory—a battlefield in the gloaming and all about corpses of horses and men are afire like a scene from some medieval poet’s hell. Eugene mouths a curse. He is excellent at forgetting many things, why not that scene? He gestures to Culky who fills his glass without a word. Eugene straightens. The evening is not yet over. There is still hope, still reason to stay.
    The door cracks open. Oswald. Behind him is Herr