Reckoning of Boston Jim by Claire Mulligan Page B

grins. Schultheiss mops his brow and smiles apologetically. The moths rise at the back of Eugene’s neck. He is tempted, nay, determined, to return to his room for his revolver and take out this dwarfish fiend with one shot. Easy Eugene Augustus. Consider how that would set the evening on a course entirely different from the course which you had planned. And was the insult so great? Perhaps in the staid environment of the Old World it might have been. But here the old rules no longer apply. And look. The men about Oswald are not taking it so seriously; rather they are chuckling and snorting.
    Let the Prussian be taken in with this piglet-brained Yank, then. In any case, what profits can he expect from such a quotidian item as boots? Some novelty might bring him fortune, but boots ?
    Eugene makes his way outside. The air smells of pine and wood smoke. The night is cloud-dark, edged with winter. Men jostle past him on their way from one saloon and grog shop to the next. There is the California House, the American flag lifting feebly in the breeze. There is the dirt street and then the sandy bank sloping sharply to the river. What happens at high water? Perhaps the denizens huddle in that diminutive church higher up. Perhaps, indeed, another line of buildings once faced these. It almost appears so. Perhaps the opposing street was seized by the thick muscle of the river and smashed to pieces, leaving only the steep sandy bank. He straightens his shoulders, his hat. Another man, without his confidence, might well be discouraged by that troglodyte, Oswald.
    â€œOver here! Find the lady! Find the lady!” The man calling this is setting up three cards on a crate. Now holds up a candle lantern. “Easy to do. Anyone can win. Come look. Just look. You there, and you.”
    Men pause. Glance. One steps to the challenge. He loses the first attempt, then the second. On the third he wins three dollars. The tosser hands the money over grudgingly. “Good eye, sir, good eye. How about another round while your luck holds?”
    The winner shakes his head, stuffs money in his pockets.
    A man steps up. He has an impressive dark beard that falls near to his belly. He sways slightly. “My father won a quid at Find the Lady once. At a fair it was.”
    â€œPlay a round for free. For your father’s sake, then.”
    Eugene watches from just out of the circle of lamplight. The man at play is young, he notices, and the beard only a young man’s attempt at a fierce countenance. He also notices a man leaning against a nearby stable wall, and then another man by the river, squatting near a tree.
    The tosser shifts the cards one over the other. He is hatless, his features there for all to see—the greying hair reduced to a monk-like fringe, the sloping chin that gives him the appearance of weakness, of indecision. As for his accent. Some hint of the emerald isle in his ancestry. The colony of Nova Scotia? New Found Land? No matter, such dealers are a race apart whatever colony or country they have scrabbled from.
    The young man loses the first game, plays another for free and wins. Now is the time. Yes. The tosser suggests a small wager. A mere quarter dollar. Shillings acceptable as well. The young man is fumbling in his pocket. Is humming a cheerful tune when Eugene steps up. My God, he may know little of mining, but he has spent enough time slumming to know of sharpers and their tricks.
    â€œI would not recommend it, young sir. You will not find the lady. You will never find the lady.”
    â€œMind your own affairs there,” the tosser says.
    â€œYou have already been duped. The player before was an accomplice, a shill as it were. Another two are on the lookout should an authority come about and question the dealings.”
    The tosser stares at Eugene. “You calling me a cheat?”
    â€œMy father won a quid at Find the Lady once,” the young man says. “At the fair it was. He bought us