3

Bordoni’s white frame house was very quiet, almost broodingly quiet, and the shades were pulled down. Samuel dismounted at the stoop, untied his bulging saddlebags, and gave his horse to Lee. He knocked and got no answer and went in. It was dusky in the living room after the outside light. He looked in the kitchen, scrubbed to the wood grain by Lee. A gray stoneware pilon coffeepot grunted on the back of the stove. Samuel tapped lightly on the bedroom door and went in.
It was almost pitch-black inside, for not only were the shades down but blankets were tacked over the windows. Cathy was lying in the big four-poster bed, and Adam sat beside her, his face buried in the coverlet. He raised his head and looked blindly out.
Samuel said pleasantly, “Why are you sitting in the dark?”
Adam’s voice was hoarse. “She doesn’t want the light. It hurts her eyes.”
Samuel walked into the room and authority grew in him with each step. “There will have to be lieht,” he said. “She can close her eyes. I’ll tie a black cloth over them if she wants.” He moved to the window and grasped the blanket to pull it down, but Adam was upon him before he could yank.
“Leave it. The light hurts her,” he said fiercely.
Samuel turned on him. “Now, Adam, I know what you feel. I promised you I’d take care of things, and I will. I only hope one of those things isn’t you.” He pulled the blanket down and rolled up the shade to let the golden afternoon light in.
Cathy made a little mewing sound from the bed, and Adam went to her. “Close your eyes, dear. I’ll put a cloth over your eyes.”
Samuel dropped his saddlebags in a chair and stood beside the bed. “Adam,” he said firmly, “I’m going to ask you to go out of the room and to stay out.”
“No, I can’t. Why?”
“Because I don’t want you in the way. It’s considered a sweet practice for you to get drunk.”
“I couldn’t.”
Samuel said, “Anger’s a slow thing in me and disgust is slower, but I can taste the beginnings of both of them. You’ll get out of the room and give me no trouble or I’ll go away and you’ll have a basket of trouble.”
Adam went finally, and from the doorway Samuel called, “And I don’t want you bursting in if you hear anything. You wait for me to come out.” He closed the door, noticed there was a key in the lock, and turned it. “He’s an upset, vehement man,” he said. “He loves you.”
He had not looked at her closely until now. And he saw true hatred in her eyes, unforgiving, murderous hatred.
“It’ll be over before long, dearie. Now tell me, has the water broke?”
Her hostile eyes glared at him and her lips raised snarling from her little teeth. She did not answer him.
He stared at her. “I did not come by choice except as a friend,” he said. “It’s not a pleasure to me, young woman. I don’t know your trouble and minute by minute I don’t care. Maybe I can save you some pain--who knows? I’m going to ask you one more question. If you don’t answer, if you put that snarling look on me, I’m going out and leave you to welter.”
The words struck into her understanding like lead shot dropping in water. She made a great effort. And it gave him a shivering to see her face change, the steel leave her eyes, the lips thicken from line to bow, and the corners turn up. He noticed a movement of her hands, the fists unclench and the fingers turn pinkly upward. Her face became young and innocent and bravely hurt. It was like one magic-lantern slide taking the place of another.
She said softly, “The water broke at dawn.”
“That’s better. Have you had hard labor?”
“Yes.”
“How far apart?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, I’ve been in this room fifteen minutes.”
“I’ve had two little ones--no big ones since you came.”
“Fine. Now where’s your linen?”
“In that hamper over there.”
“You’ll be all right, dearie,” he said gently.
He opened his saddlebags and took out a thick rope covered with blue velvet and looped at either end. On the velvet hundreds of little pink flowers were embroidered. “Liza sent you her pulling rope to use,” he said. “She made it when our first-born was preparing. What with our children and friends’, this rope has pulled a great number of people into the world.” He slipped one of the loops over each of the footposts of the bed.
Suddenly her eyes glazed and her back arched like a spring and the blood started to her cheeks. He waited for her cry or scream and looked apprehensively at the closed door. But there was no scream--only a series of grunting squeals. After a few seconds her body relaxed and the hatefulness was back in her face.
The labor struck again. “There’s a dear,” he said soothingly. “Was it one or two? I don’t know. The more you see, the more you learn no two are alike. I’d better get my hands washed.”
Her head threshed from side to side. “Good, good, my darling,” he said. “I think it won’t be long till your baby’s here.” He put his hand on her forehead where her scar showed dark and angry. “How did you get the hurt on your head?” he asked.
Her head jerked up and her sharp teeth fastened on his hand across the back and up into the palm near the little finger. He cried out in pain and tried to pull his hand away, but her jaw was set and her head twisted and turned, mangling his hand the way a terrier worries a sack. A shrill snarling came from her set teeth. He slapped her on the cheek and it had no effect. Automatically he did what he would have done to stop a dog fight. His left hand went to her throat and he cut off her wind. She struggled and tore at his hand before her jaws unclenched and he pulled his hand free. The flesh was torn and bleeding. He stepped back from the bed and looked at the damage her teeth had done. He looked at her with fear. And when he looked, her face was calm again and young and innocent.
“I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “Oh, I’m sorry.”
Samuel shuddered.
“It was the pain,” she said.
Samuel laughed shortly. “I’ll have to muzzle you, I guess,” he said. “A collie bitch did the same to me once.” He saw the hatred look out of her eyes for a second and then retreat.
Samuel said, “Have you got anything to put on it? Humans are more poisonous than snakes.”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, have you got any whisky? I’ll pour some whisky on it.”
“In the second drawer.”
He splashed whisky on his bleeding hand and kneaded the flesh against the alcohol sting. A strong quaking was in his stomach and a sickness rose up against his eyes. He took a swallow of whisky to steady himself. He dreaded to look back at the bed. “My hand won’t be much good for a while,” he said.
Samuel told Adam afterward, “She must be made of whalebone. The birth happened before I was ready. Popped like a seed. I’d not the water ready to wash him. Why, she didn’t even touch the pulling rope to bear down. Pure whalebone, she is.” He tore at the door, called Lee and demanded warm water. Adam came charging into the room. “A boy!” Samuel cried. “You’ve got a boy! Easy,” he said, for Adam had seen the mess in the bed and a green was rising in his face.
Samuel said, “Send Lee in here. And you, Adam, if you still have the authority to tell your hands and feet what to do, get to the kitchen and make me some coffee. And see the lamps are filled and the chimneys clean.”
Adam turned like a zombie and left the room. In a moment Lee looked in. Samuel pointed to the bundle in a laundry basket. “Sponge him off in warm water, Lee. Don’t let a draft get on him. Lord! I wish Liza were here. I can’t do everything at once.”
He turned back to the bed. “Now, dearie, I’ll get you cleaned up.”
Cathy was bowed again, snarling in her pain. “It’ll be over in a little,” he said. “Takes a little time for the residue. And you’re so quick. Why, you didn’t even have to pull on Liza’s rope.” He saw something, stared, and went quickly to work. “Lord God in Heaven, it’s another one!”
He worked fast, and as with the first the birth was incredibly quick. And again Samuel tied the cord. Lee took the second baby, washed it, wrapped it, and put it in the basket.
Samuel cleaned the mother and shifted her gently while he changed the linen on the bed. He found in himself a reluctance to look in her face. He worked as quickly as he could, for his bitten hand was stiffening. He drew a clean white sheet up to her chin and raised her to slip a fresh pillow under her head. At last he had to look at her.
Her golden hair was wet with perspiration but her face had changed. It was stony, expressionless. At her throat the pulse fluttered visibly.
“You have two sons,” Samuel said. “Two fine sons. They aren’t alike. Each one born separate in his own sack.”
She inspected him coldly and without interest.
Samuel said, “I’ll show your boys to you.”
“No,” she said without emphasis.
“Now, dearie, don’t you want to see your sons?”
“No. I don’t want them.”
“Oh, you’ll change. You’re tired now, but you’ll change. And I’ll tell you now--this birth was quicker and easier than I’ve seen ever in my life.”
The eyes moved from his face. “I don’t want them. I want you to cover the windows and take the light away.”
“It’s weariness. In a few days you’ll feel so different you won’t remember.”
“I’ll remember. Go away. Take them out of the room. Send Adam in.”
Samuel was caught by her tone. There was no sickness, no weariness, no softness. His words came out without his will. “I don’t like you,” he said and wished he could gather the words back into his throat and into his mind. But his words had no effect on Cathy.
“Send Adam in,” she said.
In the little living room Adam looked vaguely at his sons and went quickly into the bedroom and shut the door. In a moment came the sound of tapping. Adam was nailing the blankets over the windows again.
Lee brought coffee to Samuel. “That’s a bad-looking hand you have there,” he said.
“I know. I’m afraid it’s going to give me trouble.”
“Why did she do it?”
“I don’t know. She’s a strange thing.”
Lee said, “Mr. Hamilton, let me take care of that. You could lose an arm.”
The life went out of Samuel. “Do what you want, Lee. A frightened sorrow has closed down over my heart. I wish I were a child so I could cry. I’m too old to be afraid like this. And I’ve not felt such despair since a bird died in my hand by a flowing water long ago.”
Lee left the room and shortly returned, carrying a small ebony box carved with twisting dragons. He sat by Samuel and from his box took a wedge-shaped Chinese razor. “It will hurt,” he said softly.
“I’ll try to bear it, Lee.”
The Chinese bit his lips, feeling the inflicted pain in himself while he cut deeply into the hand, opened the flesh around the toothmarks front and back, and trimmed the ragged flesh away until good red blood flowed from every wound. He shook a bottle of yellow emulsion labeled Hall’s Cream Salve and poured it into the deep cuts. He saturated a handkerchief with the salve and wrapped the hand. Samuel winced and gripped the chair arm with his good hand.
“It’s mostly carbolic acid,” Lee said. “You can smell it.”
“Thank you, Lee. I’m being a baby to knot up like this.”
“I don’t think I could have been so quiet,” said Lee. “I’ll get you another cup of coffee.”
He came back with two cups and sat down by Samuel. “I think I’ll go away,” he said. “I never went willingly to a slaughter house.”
Samuel stiffened. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. The words came out.”
Samuel shivered. “Lee, men are fools. I guess I hadn’t thought about it, but Chinese men are fools too.”
“What made you doubt it?”
“Oh, maybe because we think of strangers as stronger and better than we are.”
“What do you want to say?”
Samuel said, “Maybe the foolishness is necessary, the dragon fighting, the boasting, the pitiful courage to be constantly knocking a chip off God’s shoulder, and the childish cowardice that makes a ghost of a dead tree beside a darkening road. Maybe that’s good and necessary, but--”
“What do you want to say?” Lee repeated patiently.
“I thought some wind had blown up the embers in my foolish mind,” Samuel said. “And now I hear in your voice that you have it too. I feel wings over this house. I feel a dreadfulness coming.”
“I feel it too.”
“I know you do, and that makes me take less than my usual comfort in my foolishness. This birth was too quick, too easy--like a cat having kittens. And I fear for these kittens. I have dreadful thoughts gnawing to get into my brain.”
“What do you want to say?” Lee asked a third time.
“I want my wife,” Samuel cried. “No dreams, no ghosts, no foolishness. I want her here. They say miners take canaries into the pits to test the air. Liza has no truck with foolishness. And, Lee, if Liza sees a ghost, it’s a ghost and not a fragment of a dream. If Liza feels trouble we’ll bar the doors.”
Lee got up and went to the laundry basket and looked down at the babies. He had to peer close, for the light was going fast. “They’re sleeping,” he said.
“They’ll be squalling soon enough. Lee, will you hitch up the rig and drive to my place for Liza? Tell her I need her here. If Tom’s still there, tell him to mind the place. If not, I’ll send him in the morning. And if Liza doesn’t want to come, tell her we need a woman’s hand here and a woman’s clear eyes. She’ll know what you mean.”
“I’ll do it,” said Lee. “Maybe we’re scaring each other, like two children in the dark.”
“I’ve thought of that,” Samuel said. “And Lee, tell her I hurt my hand at the well head. Do not, for God’s sake, tell her how it happened.”
“I’ll get some lamps lit and then I’ll go,” said Lee. “It will be a great relief to have her here.”
“That it will, Lee. That it will. She’ll let some light into this cellar hole.”
After Lee drove away in the dark Samuel picked up a lamp in his left hand. He had to set it on the floor to turn the knob of the bedroom door. The room was in pitch-blackness, and the yellow lamplight streamed upward and did not light the bed.
Cathy’s voice came strong and edged from the bed. “Shut the door. I do not want the light. Adam, go out! I want to be in the dark--alone.”
Adam said hoarsely, “I want to stay with you.”
“I do not want you.”
“I will stay.”
“Then stay. But don’t talk any more. Please close the door and take the lamp away.”
Samuel went back to the living room. He put the lamp on the table by the laundry basket and looked in on the small sleeping faces of the babies. Their eyes were pinched shut and they sniffled a little in discomfort at the light. Samuel put his forefinger down and stroked the hot foreheads. One of the twins opened his mouth and yawned prodigiously and settled back to sleep. Samuel moved the lamp and then went to the front door and opened it and stepped outside. The evening star was so bright that it seemed to flare and crumple as it sank toward the western mountains. The air was still, and Samuel could smell the day-heated sage. The night was very dark. Samuel started when he heard a voice speaking out of the blackness.
“How is she?”
“Who is it?” Samuel demanded.
“It’s me, Rabbit.” The man emerged and took form in the light from the doorway.
“The mother, Rabbit? Oh, she’s fine.”
“Lee said twins.”
“That’s right--twin sons. You couldn’t want better. I guess Mr. Trask will tear the river up by the roots now. He’ll bring in a crop of candy canes.”
Samuel didn’t know why he changed the subject. “Rabbit, do you know what we bored into today? A meteorite.”
“What’s that, Mr. Hamilton?”
“A shooting star that fell a million years ago.”
“You did? Well, think of that! How did you hurt your hand?”
“I almost said on a shooting star.” Samuel laughed. “But it wasn’t that interesting. I pinched it in the tackle.”
“Bad?”
“No, not bad.”
“Two boys,” said Rabbit. “My old lady will be jealous.”
“Will you come inside and sit, Rabbit?”
“No, no, thank you. I’ll get out to sleep. Morning seems to come earlier every year I live.”
“That it does, Rabbit. Good night then.”
Liza Hamilton arrived about four in the morning. Samuel was asleep in his chair, dreaming that he had gripped a red-hot bar of iron and could not let go. Liza awakened him and looked at his hand before she even glanced at the babies. While she did well the things he had done in a lumbering, masculine way, she gave him his orders and packed him off. He was to get up this instant, saddle Doxology, and ride straight to King City. No matter what time it was, he must wake up that good-for-nothing doctor and get his hand treated. If it seemed all right he could go home and wait. And it was a criminal thing to leave your last-born, and he little more than a baby himself, sitting there by a hole in the ground with no one to care for him. It was a matter which might even engage the attention of the Lord God himself.
If Samuel craved realism and activity, he got it. She had him off the place by dawn. His hand was bandaged by eleven, and he was in his own chair at his own table by five in the afternoon, sizzling with fever, and Tom was boiling a hen to make chicken soup for him.
For three days Samuel lay in bed, fighting the fever phantoms and putting names to them too, before his great strength broke down the infection and drove it caterwauling away.”
Samuel looked up at Tom with clear eyes and said, “I’ll have to get up,” tried it and sat weakly back, chuckling--the sound he made when any force in the world defeated him. He had an idea that even when beaten he could steal a little victory by laughing at defeat. And Tom brought him chicken soup until he wanted to kill him. The lore had not died out of the world, and you will still find people who believe that soup will cure any hurt or illness and is no bad thing to have for the funeral either.

4

Liza stayed away a week. She cleaned the Trask house from the top clear down into the grain of the wooden floors. She washed everything she could bend enough to get into a tub and sponged the rest. She put the babies on a working basis and noted with satisfaction that they howled most of the time and began to gain weight. Lee she used like a slave since she didn’t quite believe in him. Adam she ignored since she couldn’t use him for anything. She did make him wash the windows and then did it again after he had finished.
Liza sat with Cathy just enough to come to the conclusion that she was a sensible girl who didn’t talk very much or try to teach her grandmother to suck eggs. She also checked her over and found that she was perfectly healthy, not injured and not sick, and that she would never nurse the twins. “And just as well too,” she said. “Those great lummoxes would chew a little thing like you to the bone.” She forgot that she was smaller than Cathy and had nursed every one of her own children.
On Saturday afternoon Liza checked her work, left a list of instructions as long as her arm to cover every possibility from colic to an inroad of grease ants, packed her traveling basket, and had Lee drive her home.
She found her house a stable of filth and abomination and she set to cleaning it with the violence and disgust of a Hercules at labor. Samuel asked questions of her in flight.
How were the babies?
They were fine, growing.
How was Adam?
Well, he moved around as if he was alive but he left no evidence. The Lord in his wisdom gave money to very curious people, perhaps because they’d starve without.
How was Mrs. Trask?
Quiet, lackadaisical, like most rich Eastern women (Liza had never known a rich Eastern woman), but on the other hand docile and respectful. “And it’s a strange thing,” Liza said. “I can find no real fault with her save perhaps a touch of laziness, and yet I don’t like her very much. Maybe it’s that scar. How did she get it?”
“I don’t know,” said Samuel.
Liza leveled her forefinger like a pistol between his eyes. “I’ll tell you something. Unbeknownst to herself, she’s put a spell on her husband. He moons around her like a sick duck. I don’t think he’s given the twins a thorough good look yet.”
Samuel waited until she went by again. He said, “Well, if she’s lazy and he’s moony, who’s going to take care of the sweet babies? Twin boys take a piece of looking after.”
Liza stopped in mid-swoop, drew a chair close to him, and sat, resting her hands on her knees. “Remember I’ve never held the truth lightly if you don’t believe me,” she said.
“I don’t think you could lie, dearie,” he said, and she smiled, thinking it a compliment.
“Well, what I’m to tell you might weigh a little heavy on your belief if you did not know that.”
“Tell me.”
“Samuel, you know that Chinese with his slanty eyes and his outlandish talk and that braid?”
“Lee? Sure I know him.”
“Well, wouldn’t you say offhand he was a heathen?”
“I don’t know.”
“Come now, Samuel, anybody would. But he’s not.” She straightened up.
“What is he?”
She tapped his arm with an iron finger. “A Presbyterian, and well up--well up, I say, when you dig it out of that crazy talk. Now what do you think of that?”
Samuel’s voice was unsteady with trying to clamp his laughter in. “No!” he said.
“And I say yes. Well now, who do you think is looking after the twins? I wouldn’t trust a heathen from here to omega--but a Presbyterian--he learned everything I told him.”
“No wonder they’re taking on weight,” said Samuel.
“It’s a matter for praise and it’s a matter for prayer.”
“We’ll do it too,” said Samuel. “Both.”

5

For a week Cathy rested and gathered her strength. On Saturday of the second week of October she stayed in her bedroom all morning. Adam tried the door and found it locked.
“I’m busy,” she called, and he went away.
Putting her bureau in order, he thought, for he could hear her opening drawers and closing them.
In the late afternoon Lee came to Adam where he sat on the stoop. “Missy say I go King City buy nursey bottle,” he said uneasily.
“Well, do it then,” said Adam. “She’s your mistress.”
“Missy say not come back mebbe Monday. Take--”
Cathy spoke calmly from the doorway. “He hasn’t had a day off for a long time. A rest would do him good.”
“Of course,” said Adam. “I just didn’t think of it. Have a good time. If I need anything I’ll get one of the carpenters.”
“Men go home, Sunday.”
“I’ll get the Indian. Lopez will help.”
Lee felt Cathy’s eyes on him. “Lopez dlunk. Find bottle whisky.”
Adam said petulantly, “I’m not helpless, Lee. Stop arguing.”
Lee looked at Cathy standing in the doorway. He lowered his eyelids. “Mebbe I come back late,” he said, and he thought he saw two dark lines appear between her eyes and then disappear. He turned away. “Goo-by,” he said.
Cathy went back to her room as the evening came down. At seven-thirty Adam knocked. “I’ve got you some supper, dear. It’s not much.” The door opened as though she had been standing waiting. She was dressed in her neat traveling dress, the jacket edged in black braid, black velvet lapels, and large jet buttons. On her head was a wide straw hat with a tiny crown; long jet-beaded hatpins held it on. Adam’s mouth dropped open.
She gave him no chance to speak. “I’m going away now.”
“Cathy, what do you mean?”
“I told you before.”
“You didn’t.”
“You didn’t listen. It doesn’t matter.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Her voice was dead and metallic. “I don’t give a damn what you believe. I’m going.”
“The babies--”
“Throw them in one of your wells.”
He cried in panic, “Cathy, you’re sick. You can’t go--not from me--not from me.”
“I can do anything to you. Any woman can do anything to you. You’re a fool.”
The word got through his haze. Without warning, his hands reached for her shoulders and he thrust her backward. As she staggered he took the key from the inside of the door, slammed the door shut, and locked it.
He stood panting, his ear close to the panel, and a hysterical sickness poisoned him. He could hear her moving quietly about. A drawer was opened, and the thought leaped in him--she’s going to stay. And then there was a little click he could not place. His ear was almost touching the door.
Her voice came from so near that he jerked his head back. He heard richness in her voice. “Dear,” she said softly, “I didn’t know you would take it so. I’m sorry, Adam.”
His breath burst hoarsely out of his throat. His hand trembled, trying to turn the key, and it fell out on the floor after he had turned it. He pushed the door open. She stood three feet away. In her right hand she held his .44 Colt, and the black hole in the barrel pointed at him. He took a step toward her, saw that the hammer was back.
She shot him. The heavy slug struck him in the shoulder and flattened and tore out a piece of his shoulderblade. The flash and roar smothered him, and he staggered back and fell to the floor. She moved slowly toward him, cautiously, as she might toward a wounded animal. He stared up into her eyes, which inspected him impersonally. She tossed the pistol on the floor beside him and walked out of the house.
He heard her steps on the porch, on the crisp dry oak leaves on the path, and then he could hear her no more. And the monotonous sound that had been there all along was the cry of the twins, wanting their dinner. He had forgotten to feed them.

Chapter 18


1
Horace Quinn was the new deputy sheriff appointed to look after things around the King City district. He complained that his new job took him away from his ranch too much. His wife complained even more, but the truth of the matter was that nothing much had happened in a criminal way since Horace had been deputy. He had seen himself making a name for himself and running for sheriff. The sheriff was an important officer. His job was less flighty than that of district attorney, almost as permanent and dignified as superior court judge. Horace didn’t want to stay on the ranch all his life, and his wife had an urge to live in Salinas where she had relatives.
When the rumors, repeated by the Indian and the carpenters, that Adam Trask had been shot reached Horace, he saddled up right away and left his wife to finish butchering the pig he had killed that morning.
Just north of the big sycamore tree where the Hester road turns off to the left, Horace met Julius Euskadi. Julius was trying to decide whether to go quail hunting or to King City and catch the train to Salinas to shake some of the dust out of his britches. The Euskadis were well-to-do, handsome people of Basque extraction.
Julius said, “If you’d come along with me, I’d go into Salinas. They tell me that right next door to Jenny’s, two doors from the Long Green, there’s a new place called Faye’s. I heard it was pretty nice, run like San Francisco. They’ve got a piano player.”
Horace rested his elbow on his saddle horn and stirred a fly from his horse’s shoulder with his rawhide quirt. “Some other time,” he said. “I’ve got to look into something.”
“You wouldn’t be going to Trask’s, would you?”
“That’s right. Did you hear anything about it?”
“Not to make any sense. I heard Mr. Trask shot himself in the shoulder with a forty-four and then fired everybody on the ranch. How do you go about shooting yourself in the shoulder with a forty-four, Horace?”
“I don’t know. Them Easterners are pretty clever. I thought I’d go up and find out. Didn’t his wife just have a baby?”
“Twins, I heard,” said Julius. “Maybe they shot him.”
“One hold the gun and the other pull the trigger? Hear anything else?”
“All mixed up, Horace. Want some company?”
“I’m not going to deputize you, Julius. Sheriff says the supervisors are raising hell about the payroll. Hornby out in the Alisal deputized his great aunt and kept her in posse three weeks just before Easter.”
“You’re fooling!”
“No, I’m not. And you get no star.”
“Hell, I don’t want to be a deputy. Just thought I’d ride along with you for company. I’m curious.”
“Me too. Glad to have you, Julius. I can always fling the oath around your neck if there’s any trouble. What do you say the new place is called?”
“Faye’s. Sacramento woman.”
“They do things pretty nice in Sacramento,” and Horace told how they did things in Sacramento as they rode along.
It was a nice day to be riding. As they turned into the Sanchez draw they were cursing the bad hunting in recent years. Three things are never any good--farming, fishing, and hunting--compared to other years, that is. Julius was saying, “Christ, I wish they hadn’t killed off all the grizzly bears. In eighteen-eighty my grandfather killed one up by Pleyto weighed eighteen hundred pounds.”
A silence came on them as they rode in under the oaks, a silence they took from the place itself. There was no sound, no movement.
“I wonder if he finished fixing up the old house,” Horace said.
“Hell, no. Rabbit Holman was working on it, and he told me Trask called them all in and fired them. Told them not to come back.”
“They say Trask has got a pot of money.”
“I guess he’s well fixed, all right,” said Julius. “Sam Hamilton is sinking four wells--if he didn’t get fired too.”
“How is Mr. Hamilton? I ought to go up to see him.”
“He’s fine. Full of hell as ever.”
“I’ll have to go up and pay him a visit,” said Horace.
Lee came out on the stoop to meet them.
Horace said, “Hello, Ching Chong. Bossy man here?”
“He sick,” said Lee.
“I’d like to see him.”
“No see. He sick.”
“That’s enough of that,” said Horace. “Tell him Deputy Sheriff Quinn wants to see him.”
Lee disappeared, and in a moment he was back. “You come,” he said, “I take horsy.”
Adam lay in the four-poster bed where the twins had been born. He was propped high with pillows, and a mound of home-devised bandages covered his left breast and shoulder. The room reeked of Hall’s Cream Salve.
Horace said later to his wife, “And if you ever saw death still breathing, there it was.”
Adam’s cheeks hugged the bone and pulled the skin of his nose tight and slimy. His eyes seemed to bulge out of his head and to take up the whole upper part of his face, and they were shiny with sickness, intense and myopic. His bony right hand kneaded a fistful of coverlet.
Horace said, “Howdy, Mr. Trask. Heard you got hurt.” He paused, waiting for an answer. He went on, “Just thought I’d drop around and see how you were doing. How’d it happen?”
A look of transparent eagerness came over Adam’s face. He shifted slightly in the bed.
“If it hurts to talk you can whisper,” Horace added helpfully.
“Only when I breathe deep,” Adam said softly. “I was cleaning my gun and it went off.”
Horace glanced at Julius and then back. Adam saw the look and a little color of embarrassment rose in his cheeks.
“Happens all the time,” said Horace. “Got the gun around?”
“I think Lee put it away.”
Horace stepped to the door. “Hey there, Ching Chong, bring the pistol.”
In a moment Lee poked the gun butt-first through the door. Horace looked at it, swung the cylinder out, poked the cartridges out, and smelled the empty brass cylinder of the one empty shell. “There’s better shooting cleaning the damn things than pointing them. I’ll have to make a report to the county, Mr. Trask. I won’t take up much of your time. You were cleaning the barrel, maybe with a rod, and the gun went off and hit you in the shoulder?”
“That’s right, sir,” Adam said quickly.
“And cleaning it, you hadn’t swung out the cylinder?”
“That’s right.”
“And you were poking the rod in and out with the barrel pointed toward you with the hammer cocked?”
Adam’s breath rasped in a quick intake.
Horace went on, “And it must have blowed the rod right through you and took off your left hand too.” Horace’s pale sun-washed eyes never left Adam’s face. He said kindly, “What happened, Mr. Trask? Tell me what happened.”
“I tell you truly it was an accident, sir.”
“Now you wouldn’t have me write a report like I just said. The sheriff would think I was crazy. What happened?”
“Well, I’m not very used to guns. Maybe it wasn’t just like that, but I was cleaning it and it went off.”
There was a whistle in Horace’s nose. He had to breathe through his mouth to stop it. He moved slowly up from the foot of the bed, nearer to Adam’s head and staring eyes. “You came from the East not very long ago, didn’t you, Mr. Trask?”
“That’s right. Connecticut.”
“I guess people don’t use guns very much there any more.”
“Not much.”
“Little hunting?”
“Some.”
“So you’d be more used to a shotgun?”
“That’s right. But I never hunted much.”
“I guess you didn’t hardly use a pistol at all, so you didn’t know how to handle it.”
“That’s right,” Adam said eagerly. “Hardly anybody there has a pistol.”
“So when you came here you bought that forty-four because everybody out here has a pistol and you were going to learn how to use it.”
“Well, I thought it might be a good thing to learn.”
Julius Euskadi stood tensely, his face and body receptive, listening but uncommunicative.
Horace sighed and looked away from Adam. His eyes brushed over and past Julius and came back to his hands. He laid the gun on the bureau and carefully lined the brass and lead cartridges beside it. “You know,” he said, “I’ve only been a deputy a little while. I thought I was going to have some fun with it and maybe in a few years run for sheriff. I haven’t got the guts for it. It isn’t any fun to me.”
Adam watched him nervously.
“I don’t think anybody’s ever been afraid of me before--mad at me, yes--but not afraid. It’s a mean thing, makes me feel mean.”
Julius said irritably, “Get to it. You can’t resign right this minute.”
“The hell I can’t--if I want to. All right! Mr. Trask, you served in the United States Cavalry. The weapons of the cavalry are carbines and pistols. You--” He stopped and swallowed. “What happened, Mr. Trask?”
Adam’s eyes seemed to grow larger, and they were moist and edged with red. “It was an accident,” he whispered.
“Anybody see it? Was your wife with you when it happened?”
Adam did not reply, and Horace saw that his eyes were closed. “Mr. Trask,” he said, “I know you’re a sick man. I’m trying to make it as easy on you as I can. Why don’t you rest now while I have a talk with your wife?” He waited a moment and then turned to the doorway, where Lee still stood. “Ching Chong, tell Missy I would admire to talk to her for a few minutes.”
Lee did not reply.
Adam spoke without opening his eyes. “My wife is away on a visit.”
“She wasn’t here when it happened?” Horace glanced at Julius and saw a curious expression on Julius’s lips. The corners of his mouth were turned slightly up in a sardonic smile. Horace thought quickly, He’s ahead of me. He’d make a good sheriff. “Say,” he said, “that’s kind of interesting. Your wife had a baby--two babies--two weeks ago, and now she’s gone on a visit. Did she take the babies with her? I thought I heard them a little while ago.” Horace leaned over the bed and touched the back of Adam’s clenched right hand. “I hate this, but I can’t stop now. Trask!” he said loudly, “I want you to tell me what happened. This isn’t nosiness. This is the law. Now, damn it, you open your eyes and tell me or, by Christ, I’ll take you in to the sheriff even if you are hurt.”
Adam opened his eyes, and they were blank like a sleepwalker’s eyes. And his voice came out without rise or fall, without emphasis, and without any emotion. It was as though he pronounced perfectly words in a language he did not understand.
“My wife went away,” he said.
“Where did she go?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know where she went.”
Julius broke in, speaking for the first time. “Why did she go?”
“I don’t know.”
Horace said angrily, “You watch it, Trask. You’re playing pretty close to the edge and I don’t like what I’m thinking. You must know why she went away.”
“I don’t know why she went.”
“Was she sick? Did she act strange?”
“No.”
Horace turned. “Ching Chong, do you know anything about this?”
“I go King City Satdy. Come back mebbe twelve night. Find Missy Tlask on floor.”
“So you weren’t here when it happened?”
“No, ma’am.”
“All right, Trask, I’ll have to get back to you. Open up that shade a little, Ching Chong, so I can see. There, that’s better. Now I’m going to do it your way first until I can’t any more. Your wife went away. Did she shoot you?”
“It was an accident.”
“All right, an accident, but was the gun in her hand?”
“It was an accident.”
“You don’t make it very easy. But let’s say she went away and we have to find her--see?--like a kid’s game. You’re making it that way. How long have you been married?”
“Nearly a year.”
“What was her name before you married her?”
There was a long pause, and then Adam said softly, “I won’t tell. I promised.”
“Now you watch it. Where did she come from?”
“I don’t know.”
“Mr. Trask, you’re talking yourself right into the county jail. Let’s have a description. How tall was she?”
Adam’s eyes gleamed. “Not tall--little and delicate.”
“That’s just fine. What color hair? Eyes?”
“She was beautiful.”
“Was?”
“Is.”
“Any scars?”
“Oh, God, no. Yes--a scar on her forehead.”
“You don’t know her name, where she came from, where she went, and you can’t describe her. And you think I’m a fool.”
Adam said, “She had a secret. I promised I wouldn’t ask her. She was afraid for someone.” And without warning Adam began to cry. His whole body shook, and his breath made little high sounds. It was hopeless crying.
Horace felt misery rising in him. “Come on in the other room, Julius,” he said and led the way into the living room. “All right, Julius, tell me what you think. Is he crazy?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did he kill her?”
“That’s what jumped into my mind.”
“Mine too,” said Horace. “My God!” He hurried into the bedroom and came back with the pistol and the shells. “I forgot them,” he apologized. “I won’t last long in this job.”
Julius asked, “What are you going to do?”
“Well, I think it’s beyond me. I told you I wouldn’t put you on the payroll, but hold up your right hand.”
“I don’t want to get sworn in, Horace. I want to go to Salinas.”
“You don’t have any choice, Julius. I’ll have to arrest you if you don’t get your goddam hand up.”
Julius reluctantly put up his hand and disgustedly repeated the oath. “And that’s what I get for keeping you company,” he said. “My father will skin me alive. All right, what do we do now?”
Horace said, “I’m going to run to papa. I need the sheriff. I’d take Trask in but I don’t want to move him. You’ve got to stay, Julius. I’m sorry. Have you got a gun?”
“Hell, no.”
“Well, take this one, and take my star.” He unpinned it from his shirt and held it out.
“How long do you think you’ll be gone?”
“Not any longer than I can help. Did you ever see Mrs. Trask, Julius?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Neither did I. And I’ve got to tell the sheriff that Trask doesn’t know her name or anything. And she’s not very big and she is beautiful. That’s one hell of a description! I think I’ll resign before I tell the sheriff, because he’s sure as hell going to fire me afterward. Do you think he killed her?”
“How the hell do I know?”
“Don’t get mad.”
Julius picked up the gun and put the cartridges back in the cylinder and balanced it in his hand. “You want an idea, Horace?”
“Don’t it look like I need one?”
“Well, Sam Hamilton knew her--he took the babies, Rabbit says. And Mrs. Hamilton took care of her. Why don’t you ride out there on your way and find out what she really looked like.”
“I think maybe you better keep that star,” said Horace. “That’s good. I’ll get going.”
“You want me to look around?”
“I want you just to see that he doesn’t get away--or hurt himself. Understand? Take care of yourself.”

2

About midnight Horace got on a freight train in King City. He sat up in the cab with the engineer, and he was in Salinas the first thing in the morning. Salinas was the county seat, and it was a fast-growing town. Its population was due to cross the two thousand mark any time. It was the biggest town between San Jose and San Luis Obispo, and everyone felt that a brilliant future was in store for it.
Horace walked up from the Southern Pacific Depot and stopped in the Chop House for breakfast. He didn’t want to get the sheriff out so early and rouse ill will when it wasn’t necessary. In the Chop House he ran into young Will Hamilton, looking pretty prosperous in a salt-and-pepper business suit.
Horace sat down at the table with him. “How are you, Will?”
“Oh, pretty good.”
“Up here on business?”
“Well, yes, I do have a little deal on.”
“You might let me in on something sometime.” Horace felt strange talking like this to such a young man, but Will Hamilton had an aura of success about him. Everybody knew he was going to be a very influential man in the county. Some people exude their futures, good or bad.
“I’ll do that, Horace. I thought the ranch took all your time.”
“I could be persuaded to rent it if anything turned up.”
Will leaned over the table. “You know, Horace, our part of the county has been pretty much left out. Did you ever think of running for office?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you’re a deputy--did you ever think of running for sheriff?”
“Why, no, I didn’t.”
“Well, you think about it. Just keep it under your hat. I’ll look you up in a couple of weeks and we’ll talk about it. But keep it under your hat.”
“I’ll certainly do that, Will. But we’ve got an awful good sheriff.”
“I know. That’s got nothing to do with it. King City hasn’t got a single county officer--you see?”
“I see. I’ll think about it. Oh, by the way, I stopped by and saw your father and mother yesterday.”
Will’s face lighted up. “You did? How were they?”
“Just fine. You know, your father is a real comical genius.”
Will chuckled. “He made us laugh all the time we were growing up.”
“But he’s a smart man too, Will. He showed me a new kind of windmill he’s invented--goddamnedest thing you ever saw.”
“Oh, Lord,” said Will, “here come the patent attorneys again!”
“But this is good,” said Horace.
“They’re all good. And the only people who make any money are the patent lawyers. Drives my mother crazy.”
“I guess you’ve got a point there.”
Will said, “The only way to make any money is to sell something somebody else makes.”
“You’ve got a point there, Will, but this is the goddamnedest windmill you ever saw.”
“He took you in, did he, Horace?”
“I guess he did. But you wouldn’t want him to change, would you?”
“Oh, Lord, no!” said Will. “You think about what I said.”
“All right.”
“And keep it under your hat,” said Will.
The sheriff’s job was not an easy one, and that county which, out of the grab bag of popular elections, pulled a good sheriff was lucky. It was a complicated position. The obvious duties of the sheriff--enforcing the law and keeping the peace--were far from the most important ones. It was true that the sheriff represented armed force in the county, but in a community seething with individuals a harsh or stupid sheriff did not last long. There were water rights, boundary disputes, astray arguments, domestic relations, paternity matters--all to be settled without force of arms. Only when everything else failed did a good sheriff make an arrest. The best sheriff was not the best fighter but the best diplomat. And Monterey County had a good one. He had a brilliant gift for minding his own business.
Horace went into the sheriff’s office in the old county jail about ten minutes after nine. The sheriff shook hands and discussed the weather and the crops until Horace was ready to get down to business.
“Well, sir,” Horace said finally, “I had to come up to get your advice.” And he told his story in great detail--what everybody had said and how they looked and what time it was--everything.
After a few moments the sheriff closed his eyes and laced his fingers together. He punctuated the account occasionally by opening his eyes, but he made no comment.
“Well, there I was on a limb,” Horace said. “I couldn’t find out what happened. I couldn’t even find out what the woman looked like. It was Julius Euskadi got the idea I should go to see Sam Hamilton.”
The sheriff stirred, crossed his legs, and inspected the job. “You think he killed her.”
“Well, I did. But Mr. Hamilton kind of talked me out of it. He says Trask hasn’t got it in him to kill anybody.”
“Everybody’s got it in him,” the sheriff said. “You just find his trigger and anybody will go off.”
“Mr. Hamilton told me some funny things about her. You know, when he was taking her babies she bit him on the hand. You ought to see that hand, like a wolf got him.”
“Did Sam give you a description?”
“He did, and his wife did.” Horace took a piece of paper from his pocket and read a detailed description of Cathy. Between the two of them the Hamiltons knew pretty much everything physical there was to know about Cathy.
When Horace finished the sheriff sighed. “They both agreed about the scar?”
“Yes, they did. And both of them remarked about how sometimes it was darker than other times.”
The sheriff closed his eyes again and leaned back in his chair. Suddenly he straightened up, opened a drawer of his rolltop desk, and took out a pint of whisky. “Have a drink,” he said.
“Don’t mind if I do. Here’s looking at you.” Horace wiped his mouth and handed back the pint. “Got any ideas?” he asked.
The sheriff took three big swallows of whisky, corked the pint, and put it back in the drawer before he replied. “We’ve got a pretty well-run county,” he said. “I get along with the constables, give them a hand when they need it, and they help me out when I need it. You take a town growing like Salinas, and strangers in and out all the time--we could have trouble if we didn’t watch it pretty close. My office gets along fine with the local people.” He looked Horace in the eye. “Don’t get restless. I’m not making a speech. I just want to tell you how it is. We don’t drive people. We’ve got to live with them.”
“Did I do something wrong?”
“No, you didn’t, Horace. You did just right. If you hadn’t come to town or if you had brought Mr. Trask in, we’d of been in one hell of a mess. Now hold on. I’m going to tell you--”
“I’m listening,” said Horace.
“Over across the tracks down by Chinatown there’s a row of whorehouses.”
“I know that.”
“Everybody knows it. If we closed them up they’d just move. The people want those houses. We keep an eye on them so not much bad happens. And the people that run those houses keep in touch with us. I’ve picked up some wanted men from tips I got down there.”
Horace said, “Julius told me--”
“Now wait a minute. Let me get all this said so we won’t have to go back over it. About three months ago a fine-looking woman came in to see me. She wanted to open a house here and wanted to do it right. Came from Sacramento. Ran a place there. She had letters from some pretty important people--straight record--never had any trouble. A pretty damn good citizen.”
“Julius told me. Name of Faye.”
“That’s right. Well, she opened a nice place, quiet, well run. It was about time old Jenny and the Nigger had some competition. They were mad as hell about it, but I told them just what I told you. It’s about time they had some competition.”
“There’s a piano player.”
“Yes, there is. Good one too--blind fella. Say, are you going to let me tell this?”
“I’m sorry,” said Horace.
“That’s all right. I know I’m slow but I’m thorough. Anyways, Faye turned out to be just what she looks like, a good solid citizen. Now there’s one thing a good quiet whorehouse is more scared of than anything else. Take a flighty randy girl runs off from home and goes in a house. Her old man finds her and he begins to shovel up hell. Then the churches get into it, and the women, and pretty soon that whorehouse has got a bad name and we’ve got to close it up. You understand?”
“Yeah!” Horace said softly.
“Now don’t get ahead of me. I hate to tell something you already thought out. Faye sent me a note Sunday night. She’s got a girl and she can’t make much out of her. What puzzles Faye is that this kid looks like a runaway girl except she’s a goddam good whore. She knows all the answers and all the tricks. I went down and looked her over. She told me the usual bull, but I can’t find a thing wrong with her. She’s of age and nobody’s made a complaint.” He spread his hands. “Well, there it is. What do we do about it?”
“You’re pretty sure it’s Mrs. Trask?”
The sheriff said, “Wide-set eyes, yellow hair, and a scar on her forehead, and she came in Sunday afternoon.”
Adam’s weeping face was in Horace’s mind. “God all mighty! Sheriff, you got to get somebody else to tell him. I’ll quit before I do.”
The sheriff gazed into space. “You say he didn’t even know her name, where she came from. She really bullshitted him, didn’t she?”
“The poor bastard,” Horace said. “The poor bastard is in love with her. No, by God, somebody else has got to tell him. I won’t.”
The sheriff stood up. “Let’s go down to the Chop House and get a cup of coffee.”
They walked along the street in silence for a while. “Horace,” the sheriff said, “if I told some of the things I know, this whole goddam county would go up in smoke.”
“I guess that’s right.”
“You said she had twins?”
“Yeah, twin boys.”
“You listen to me, Horace. There’s only three people in the world that knows--her and you and me. I’m going to warn her that if she ever tells I’ll brush her ass out of this county so fast it’ll burn. And, Horace--if you should ever get an itchy tongue, before you tell anybody, even your wife, why, you think about those little boys finding out their mother is a whore.”

3

Adam sat in his chair under the big oak tree. His left arm was expertly bandaged against his side so that he could not move his shoulder. Lee came out carrying the laundry basket. He set it on the ground beside Adam and went back inside.
The twins were awake, and they both looked blindly and earnestly up at the wind-moved leaves of the oak tree. A dry oak leaf came whirling down and landed in the basket. Adam leaned over and picked it out.
He didn’t hear Samuel’s horse until it was almost upon him, but Lee had seen him coming. He brought a chair out and led Doxology away toward the shed.
Samuel sat down quietly, and he didn’t trouble Adam by looking at him too much, and he didn’t trouble him by not looking at him. The wind freshened in the treetops and a fringe of it ruffled Samuel’s hair. “I thought I’d better get back to the wells,” Samuel said softly.
Adam’s voice had gone rusty from lack of use. “No,” he said, “I don’t want any wells. I’ll pay for the work you did.”
Samuel leaned over the basket and put his finger against the small palm of one of the twins and the fingers closed and held on. “I guess the last bad habit a man will give up is advising.”
“I don’t want advice.”
“Nobody does. It’s a giver’s present. Go through the motions, Adam.”
“What motions?”
“Act out being alive, like a play. And after a while, a long while, it will be true.”
“Why should I?” Adam asked.
Samuel was looking at the twins. “You’re going to pass something down no matter what you do or if you do nothing. Even if you let yourself go fallow, the weeds will grow and the brambles. Something will grow.”
Adam did not answer, and Samuel stood up. “I’ll be back,” he said. “I’ll be back again and again. Go through the motions, Adam.”
In the back of the shed Lee held Doxology while Sam mounted. “There goes your bookstore, Lee,” he said.
“Oh, well,” said the Chinese, “maybe I didn’t want it much anyway.”

Chapter 19


1
A new country seems to follow a pattern. First come the openers, strong and brave and rather childlike. They can take care of themselves in a wilderness, but they are naïve and helpless against men, and perhaps that is why they went out in the first place. When the rough edges are worn off the new land, businessmen and lawyers come in to help with the development--to solve problems of ownership, usually by removing the temptations to themselves. And finally comes culture, which is entertainment, relaxation, transport out of the pain of living. And culture can be on any level, and is.
The church and the whorehouse arrived in the Far West simultaneously. And each would have been horrified to think it was a different facet of the same thing. But surely they were both intended to accomplish the same thing: the singing, the devotion, the poetry of the churches took a man out of his bleakness for a time, and so did the brothels. The sectarian churches came in swinging, cocky and loud and confident. Ignoring the laws of debt and repayment, they built churches which couldn’t be paid for in a hundred years. The sects fought evil, true enough, but they also fought each other with a fine lustiness. They fought at the turn of a doctrine. Each happily believed all the others were bound for hell in a basket. And each for all its bumptiousness brought with it the same thing: the Scripture on which our ethics, our art and poetry, and our relationships are built. It took a smart man to know where the difference lay between the sects, but anyone could see what they had in common. And they brought music--maybe not the best, but the form and sense of it. And they brought conscience, or, rather, nudged the dozing conscience. They were not pure, but they had a potential of purity, like a soiled white shirt. And any man could make something pretty fine of it within himself. True enough, the Reverend Billing, when they caught up with him, turned out to be a thief, an adulterer, a libertine, and a zoophilist, but that didn’t change the fact that he had communicated some good things to a great number of receptive people. Billing went to jail, but no one ever arrested the good things he had released. And it doesn’t matter much that his motive was impure. He used good material and some of it stuck. I use Billing only as an outrageous example. The honest preachers had energy and go. They fought the devil, no holds barred, boots and eye-gouging permitted. You might get the idea that they howled truth and beauty the way a seal bites out the National Anthem on a row of circus horns. But some of the truth and beauty remained, and the anthem was recognizable. The sects did more than this, though. They built the structure of social life in the Salinas Valley. The church supper is the grandfather of the country club, just as the Thursday poetry reading in the basement under the vestry sired the little theater.
While the churches, bringing the sweet smell of piety for the soul, came in prancing and farting like brewery horses in bock-beer time, the sister evangelism, with release and joy for the body, crept in silently and gravely, with its head bowed and its face covered.
You may have seen the spangled palaces of sin and fancy dancing in the false West of the movies, and maybe some of them existed--but not in the Salinas Valley. The brothels were quiet, orderly, and circumspect. Indeed, if after hearing the ecstatic shrieks of climactic conversion against the thumping beat of the melodeon you had stood under the window of a whorehouse and listened to the low decorous voices, you would have been likely to confuse the identities of the two ministries. The brothel was accepted while it was not admitted.
I will tell you about the solemn courts of love in Salinas. They were about the same in other towns, but the Salinas Row has a pertinence to this telling.
You walked west on Main Street until it bent. That’s where Castroville Street crossed Main. Castroville Street is now called Market Street, God knows why. Streets used to be named for the place they aimed at. Thus Castroville Street, if you followed it nine miles, brought you to Castroville, Alisal Street to Alisal, and so forth.
Anyway, when you came to Castroville Street you turned right. Two blocks down, the Southern Pacific tracks cut diagonally across the street on their way south, and a street crossed Castroville Street from east to west. And for the life of me I cannot remember the name of that street. If you turned left on that street and crossed the tracks you were in Chinatown. If you turned right you were on the Row.
It was a black ’dobe street, deep shining mud in winter and hard as rutted iron in summer. In the spring the tall grass grew along its sides--wild oats and mallow weeds and yellow mustard mixed in. In the early morning the sparrows shrieked over the horse manure in the street.
Do you remember hearing that, old men? And do you remember how an easterly breeze brought odors in from Chinatown, roasting pork and punk and black tobacco and yen shi? And do you remember the deep Waiting stroke of the great gong in the Joss House, and how its tone hung in the air so long?
Remember, too, the little houses, unpainted, unrepaired? They seemed very small, and they tried to efface themselves in outside neglect, and the wild overgrown front yards tried to hide them from the street. Remember how the shades were always drawn with little lines of yellow light around their edges? You could hear only a murmur from within. Then the front door would open to admit a country boy, and you’d hear laughter and perhaps the soft sentimental tone of an open-face piano with a piece of toilet chain across the strings, and then the door would close it off again.
Then you might hear horses’ hoofs on the dirt street, and Pet Bulene would drive his hack up in front, and maybe four or five portly men would get out--great men, rich or official, bankers maybe, or the courthouse gang. And Pet would drive around the corner and settle down in his hack to wait for them. Big cats would ripple across the street to disappear in the tall grass.
And then--remember?--the train whistle and the boring light and a freight from King City would go stomping across Castroville Street and into Salinas and you could hear it sighing at the station. Remember?
Every town has its celebrated madams, eternal women to be sentimentalized down the years. There is something very attractive to men about a madam. She combines the brains of a businessman, the toughness of a prize fighter, the warmth of a companion, the humor of a tragedian. Myths collect around her, and, oddly enough, not voluptuous myths. The stories remembered and repeated about a madam cover every field but the bedroom. Remembering, her old customers picture her as a philanthropist, medical authority, bouncer, and poetess of the bodily emotions without being involved with them.
For a number of years Salinas had sheltered two of these treasures: Jenny, sometimes called Fartin’ Jenny, and the Nigger, who owned and operated the Long Green. Jenny was a good companion, a keeper of secrets, a giver of secret loans. There is a whole literature of stories about Jenny in Salinas.
The Nigger was a handsome, austere woman with snow-white hair and a dark and awful dignity. Her brown eyes, brooding deep in her skull, looked out on an ugly world with philosophic sorrow. She conducted her house like a cathedral dedicated to a sad but erect Priapus. If you wanted a good laugh and a poke in the ribs, you went to Jenny’s and got your money’s worth; but if the sweet world-sadness close to tears crept out of your immutable loneliness, the Long Green was your place. When you came out of there you felt that something pretty stern and important had happened. It was no jump in the hay. The dark beautiful eyes of the Nigger stayed with you for days.
When Faye came down from Sacramento and opened her house there was a flurry of animosity from the two incumbents. They got together to drive Faye out, but they discovered she was not in competition.
Faye was the motherly type, big-breasted, big-hipped, and warm. She was a bosom to cry on, a soother and a stroker. The iron sex of the Nigger and the tavern bacchanalianism of Jenny had their devotees, and they were not lost to Faye. Her house became the refuge of young men puling in puberty, mourning over lost virtue, and aching to lose some more. Faye was the reassurer of misbegotten husbands. Her house took up the slack for frigid wives. It was the cinnamon-scented kitchen of one’s grandmother. If any sexual thing happened to you at Faye’s you felt it was an accident but forgivable. Her house led the youths of Salinas into the thorny path of sex in the pinkest, smoothest way. Faye was a nice woman, not very bright, highly moral, and easily shocked. People trusted her and she trusted everyone. No one could want to hurt Faye once he knew her. She was no competition to the others. She was a third phase.
Just as in a store or on a ranch the employees are images of the boss, so in a whorehouse the girls are very like the madam, partly because she hires that kind and partly because a good madam imprints her personality on the business. You could stay a very long time at Faye’s before you would hear an ugly or suggestive word spoken. The wanderings to the bedrooms, the payments, were so soft and casual they seemed incidental. All in all, she ran a hell of a fine house, as the constable and the sheriff knew. Faye contributed heavily to every charity. Having a revulsion against disease, she paid for regular inspection of her girls. You had less chance of contracting a difficulty at Faye’s than with your Sunday School teacher. Faye soon became a solid and desirable citizen of the growing town of Salinas.

2

The girl Kate puzzled Faye--she was so young and pretty, so lady-like, so well educated. Faye took her into her own inviolate bedroom and questioned her far more than she would if Kate had been another kind of girl. There were always women knocking on the door of a whorehouse, and Faye recognized most of them instantly. She could tick them off--lazy, vengeful, lustful, unsatisfied, greedy, ambitious. Kate didn’t fall into any of these classes.
“I hope you don’t mind my asking you all these questions,” she said. “It just seems so strange that you should come here. Why, you could get a husband and a surrey and a corner house in town with no trouble at all, no trouble at all.” And Faye rolled her wedding band around and around on her fat little finger.
Kate smiled shyly. “It’s so hard to explain. I hope you won’t insist on knowing. The happiness of someone very near and dear to me is involved. Please don’t ask me.”
Faye nodded solemnly. “I’ve known things like that. I had one girl who was supporting her baby, and no one knew for a long, long time. That girl has a fine house and a husband in--there, I nearly told you where. I’d cut out my tongue before I’d tell. Do you have a baby, dear?”
Kate looked down to try to conceal the shine of tears in her eyes. When she could control her throat she whispered, “I’m sorry, I can’t talk about it.”
“That’s all right. That’s all right. You just take your time.”
Faye was not bright, but she was far from stupid. She went to the sheriff and got herself cleared. There was no sense in taking chances. She knew something was wrong about Kate, but if it didn’t harm the house it really wasn’t Faye’s business.
Kate might have been a chiseler, but she wasn’t. She went to work right away. And when customers come back again and again and ask for a girl by name, you know you’ve got something. A pretty face won’t do that. It was quite apparent to Faye that Kate was not learning a new trade.
There are two things it is good to know about a new girl: first, will she work? and second, will she get along with the other girls? There’s nothing will upset a house like an ill-tempered girl.
Faye didn’t have long to wonder about the second question. Kate put herself out to be pleasant. She helped the other girls keep their rooms clean. She served them when they were sick, listened to their troubles, answered them in matters of love, and as soon as she had some, loaned them money. You couldn’t want a better girl. She became best friend to everyone in the house.
There was no trouble Kate would not take, no drudgery she was afraid of, and, in addition, she brought business. She soon had her own group of regular customers. Kate was thoughtful too. She remembered birthdays and always had a present and a cake with candles. Faye realized she had a treasure.
People who don’t know think it is easy to be a madam--just sit in a big chair and drink beer and take half the money the girls make, they think. But it’s not like that at all. You have to feed the girls--that’s groceries and a cook. Your laundry problem is quite a bit more complicated than that of a hotel. You have to keep the girls well and as happy as possible, and some of them can get pretty ornery. You have to keep suicide at an absolute minimum, and whores, particularly the ones getting along in years, are flighty with a razor; and that gets your house a bad name.
It isn’t so easy, and if you have waste too you can lose money. When Kate offered to help with the marketing and planning of meals Faye was pleased, although she didn’t know when the girl found time. Well, not only did the food improve, but the grocery bills came down one-third the first month Kate took over. And the laundry--Faye didn’t know what Kate said to the man but that bill suddenly dropped twenty-five per cent. Faye didn’t see how she ever got along without Kate.
In the late afternoon before business they sat together in Faye’s room and drank tea. It was much nicer since Kate had painted the woodwork and put up lace curtains. The girls began to realize that there were two bosses, not one, and they were glad because Kate was very easy to get along with. She made them turn more tricks but she wasn’t mean about it. They’d as likely as not have a big laugh over it.
By the time a year had passed Faye and Kate were like mother and daughter. And the girls said, “You watch--she’ll own this house some day.”
Kate’s hands were always busy, mostly at drawn worn on the sheerest of lawn handkerchiefs. She could make beautiful initials. Nearly all the girls carried and treasured her handkerchiefs.
Gradually a perfectly natural thing happened. Faye, the essence of motherness, began to think of Kate as her daughter. She felt this in her breast and in her emotions, and her natural morality took hold. She did not want her daughter to be a whore. It was a perfectly reasonable sequence.
Faye thought hard how she was going to bring up the subject. It was a problem. It was Faye’s nature to approach any subject sideways. She could not say, “I want you to give up whoring.”
She said, “If it is a secret, don’t answer, but I’ve always meant to ask you. What did the sheriff say to you--good Lord, is it a year ago? How the time goes! Quicker as you get older, I think. He was nearly an hour with you. He didn’t--but of course not. He’s a family man. He goes to Jenny’s. But I don’t want to pry into your affairs.”
“There’s no secret at all about that,” said Kate. “I would have told you. He told me I should go home. He was very nice about it. When I explained that I couldn’t, he was very nice and understanding.”
“Did you tell him why?” Faye asked jealously.
“Of course not. Do you think I would tell him when I won’t tell you? Don’t be silly, darling. You’re such a funny little girl.”
Faye smiled and snuggled contentedly down in her chair.
Kate’s face was in repose, but she was remembering every word of that interview. As a matter of fact, she rather liked the sheriff. He was direct.

3

He had closed the door of her room, glanced around with the quick recording eye of a good policeman--no photographs, none of the personal articles which identify, nothing but clothes and shoes.
He sat down on her little cane rocking chair and his buttocks hung over on each side. His fingers got together in conference, talking to one another like ants. He spoke in an unemotional tone, almost as though he weren’t much interested in what he was saying. Maybe that was what impressed her.
At first she put on her slightly stupid demure look, but after a few of his words she gave that up and bored into him with her eyes, trying to read his thoughts. He neither looked in her eyes nor avoided them. But she was aware that he was inspecting her as she inspected him. She felt his glance go over the scar on her forehead almost as though he had touched it.
“I don’t want to make a record,” he said quietly. “I’ve held office a long time. About one more term will be enough. You know, young woman, if this were fifteen years back I’d do some checking, and I guess I’d find something pretty nasty.” He waited for some reaction from her but she did not protest. He nodded his head slowly. “I don’t want to know,” he said. “I want peace in this county, and I mean all kinds of peace, and that means people getting to sleep at night. Now I haven’t met your husband,” he said, and she knew he noticed the slight movement of her tightening muscles. “I hear he’s a very nice man. I hear also that he’s pretty hard hit.” He looked into her eyes for a moment. “Don’t you want to know how bad you shot him?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Well, he’s going to get well--smashed his shoulder, but he’s going to get well. That Chink is taking pretty good care of him. Course I don’t think he’ll lift anything with his left arm for quite a spell. A forty-four tears hell out of a man. If the Chink hadn’t come back he’d of bled to death, and you’d be staying with me in the jail.”
Kate was holding her breath, listening for any hint of what was coming and not hearing any hints.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly.
The sheriff’s eyes became alert. “Now that’s the first time you’ve made a mistake,” he said. “You’re not sorry. I knew somebody like you once--hung him twelve years ago in front of the county jail. We used to do that here.”
The little room with its dark mahogany bed, its marble-top wash stand with bowl and pitcher and a door for the pot, its wallpaper endlessly repeating little roses--little roses--the little room was silent, the sound sucked out of it.
The sheriff was staring at a picture of three cherubim--just heads, curly-haired, limpid-eyed, with wings about the size of pigeons’ wings growing out of where their necks would be. He frowned. “That’s a funny picture for a whorehouse,” he said.
“It was here,” said Kate. Apparently the preliminaries were over now.
The sheriff straightened up, undid his fingers, and held the arms of his chair. Even his buttocks pulled in a little. “You left a couple of babies,” he said. “Little boys. Now you calm down. I’m not going to try to get you to go back. I guess I’d do quite a bit to keep you from going back. I think I know you. I could just run you over the county line and have the next sheriff run you, and that could keep up till you landed splash in the Atlantic Ocean. But I don’t want to do that. I don’t care how you live as long as you don’t give me any trouble. A whore is a whore.”
Kate asked evenly, “What is it you do want?”
“That’s more like it,” the sheriff said. “Here’s what I want. I notice you changed your name. I want you to keep your new name. I guess you made up someplace you came from--well, that’s where you came from. And your reason--that’s when you’re maybe drunk--you keep your reason about two thousand miles away from King City.”
She was smiling a little, and not a forced smile. She was beginning to trust this man and to like him.
“One thing I thought of,” he said. “Did you know many people around King City?”
“No.”
“I heard about the knitting needle,” he said casually. “Well, it could happen that somebody you knew might come in here. That your real hair color?”
“Yes.”
“Dye it black for a while. Lots of people look like somebody else.”
“How about this?” She touched her scar with a slender finger.
“Well, that’s just a--what is that word? What is that goddam word? I had it this morning.”
“Coincidence?”
“That’s it--coincidence.” He seemed to be finished. He got out tobacco and papers and rolled a clumsy, lumpy cigarette. He broke out a sulphur match and struck it on the block and held it away until its acrid blue flame turned yellow. His cigarette burned crookedly up the side.
Kate said, “Isn’t there a threat? I mean, what you’ll do if I--”
“No, there isn’t. I guess I could think up something pretty ornery, though, if it came to that. No, I don’t want you--what you are, what you do, or what you say--to hurt Mr. Trask or his boys. You figure you died and now you’re somebody else and we’ll get along fine.”
He stood up and went to the door, then turned. “I’ve got a boy--he’ll be twenty this year; big, nice-looking fellow with a broken nose. Everybody likes him. I don’t want him in here. I’ll tell Faye too. Let him go to Jenny’s. If he comes in, you tell him to go to Jenny’s.” He closed the door behind him.
Kate smiled down at her fingers.

4

Faye twisted around in her chair to reach a piece of brown panocha studded with walnuts. When she spoke it was around a mouth full of candy. Kate wondered uneasily whether she could read minds, for Faye said, “I still don’t like it as well. I said it then and I say it again. I liked your hair blond better. I don’t know what got into you to change it. You’ve got a fair complexion.”
Kate caught a single thread of hair with fingernails of thumb and forefinger and gently drew it out. She was very clever. She told the best lie of all--the truth. “I didn’t want to tell you,” she said. “I was afraid I might be recognized and that would hurt someone.”
Faye got up out of her chair and went to Kate and kissed her. “What a good child it is,” she said. “What a thoughtful dear.”
Kate said, “Let’s have some tea. I’ll bring it in.” She went out of the room, and in the hall on the way to the kitchen she rubbed the kiss from her cheek with her fingertips.
Back in her chair, Faye picked out a piece of panocha with a whole walnut showing through. She put it in her mouth and bit into a piece of walnut shell. The sharp, pointed fragment hit a hollow tooth and whanged into the nerve. Blue lights of pain flashed through her. Her forehead became wet. When Kate came back with teapot and cups on a tray Faye was clawing at her mouth with a crooked finger and whimpering in agony.
“What is it?” Kate cried.
“Tooth--nutshell.”
“Here, let me see. Open and point.” Kate looked into the open mouth, then went to the nut bowl on the fringed table for a nut pick. In a fraction of a second she had dug out the shell and held it in the palm of her hand. “There it is.”
The nerve stopped shrieking and the pain dropped to an ache. “Only that big? It felt like a house. Look, dear,” said Faye, “open that second drawer where my medicine is. Bring the paregoric and a piece of cotton. Will you help me pack this tooth?”
Kate brought the bottle and pushed a little ball of saturated cotton into the tooth with the point of the nut pick. “You ought to have it out.”
“I know. I will.”
“I have three teeth missing on this side.”
“Well, you’d never know it. That made me feel all shaky. Bring me the Pinkham, will you?” She poured herself a slug of the vegetable compound and sighed with relief. “That’s a wonderful medicine,” she said. “The woman who invented it was a saint.”