Outside, she pecked my cheek. “I’m off to prepare for my show. Come see it . . . wait!” She gave me an accusing glare. “I read that the ballists are attending Maguire’s Opera House tonight.”
“So?”
“Oh, Sam, they’d like my show ever so much more!” She clutched my arm. “Won’t you come as my guests? Tomorrow night?”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“Oh, yes, I’ll put you in the dress circle—you must wear your lovely uniforms!—and I’ll advertise in the papers too!” Oblivious to passers-by, she leaned close to kiss me again, flicking my ear with her tongue. “Then I might see you afterward.”
I’d been thinking along those lines myself, but having trouble with it. Each time I imagined myself with Elise, an image of Cait filled my mind.
“I’m taken, sort of.”
“Oh, well,” she said brightly, “then we’ll be chums.”
She could at least have sounded disappointed, I thought sourly. “Listen, there’s someone on the team I’d like you to make a little fuss over, all right? He thinks you’re the greatest thing since popsicles.”
“Since what?”
“His name’s Andy Leonard.”
“Wasn’t he beside you on the field at Troy?”
“Good grief, you know the name of every man who stares at you?”
“When one looks at me like that, yes! He’s a darling pup, isn’t he?”
Her tone triggered a faint alarm in me. “You go easy on him.”
She laughed and turned away, boots thumping on the planks, bustle swaying. When she vanished around the corner I felt a certain relief. But also that things abruptly had grown duller.
Gold was up to 164 dollars. That settled it. I forced my way up to the counter and showed my letter of credit.
“You have three thousand four hundred and forty-four dollars, sir,” said the clerk. “How much are you putting into gold?”
“All of it.”
“Very well.” He filled out forms.
“Wait,” I told him. “Keep forty dollars out.”
“Certainly.”
I instructed that a gold double eagle be placed in each of two new Wells Fargo accounts. In the names of Susanne and Hope Fowler. Maybe they would somehow, someday get them—plus interest compounded over 120 years.
I tucked the receipt for twenty-one more ounces of gold into my wallet. I was in up to the hilt now. So was Twain. I’d sell well before the price hit two hundred dollars, I told myself. And pocket my fortune.
As I walked I couldn’t stop trying to remember where buildings would be in the future. It was dislocating to know that directly opposite Marriott’s office, on the site of the four-story Montgomery Block, the Transamerica pyramid would rise. At California and Du-pont I finally found an old acquaintance—Saint Mary’s Cathedral, its bricks fresh and red, its stained-glass windows fewer and smaller than I remembered, its resonant bell booming over the neighborhood. I gazed at it for a long time, feeling absolutely lost. I felt an urge to seal myself between the bricks, a human time capsule.
“Sam! Where the devil you been!”
Andy was striding toward me. Behind him came the Stockings in their uniforms, looking for all the world like tourists. My mood brightened as I hugged Andy.
“Figured this time you got plugged for good,” Brainard said dryly.
“He wanted to wager with us on it,” Andy said.
They had just finished touring Chinatown. Allison and Gould did bad Chinese imitations for me. Harry asked if I wanted to suit up and play in my hometown, in front of my friends.
“They’ve mostly moved away,” I told him. “But I’ll stand in if you need me.”
“Can you show us the main sights?” said Waterman.
“The ones you’d probably like most,” I said, “we can see in Elise Holt’s show tomorrow night.”
Andy’s face lit up. His whoop sounded over the others’ wolf whistles.
Harry had worked them diligently all the way out from Omaha, Andy told me as we walked to the hotel. At every water stop they’d limbered their arms beside depots and sidings. To their considerable surprise, several times Indians had shown some facility for the game and even a knowledge of the rules. One group had wanted to play a match.
“How’d they learn?” I said. “Soldiers?”
“That’s what we figured, but an old Injun who knew some English said a man with whiskers taught ’em when he passed through in a wagon, a generation or so back. Harry finally guessed that it must’ve been Cartwright himself, the old Knickerbocker who invented the game and later settled in the Sandwich Islands.”
“Sounds pretty farfetched,” I said.
“How else’d them Injuns know the New York rules from fifteen years ago?” Andy demanded.
“You got me there.”
The Cosmopolitan stood at Bush and Sansome. It was five years old, with four floors and an elegant saloon. It was expensive, but Hatton was picking up the tab. Andy roomed with Sweasy, so I had to share quarters with Millar. I found him bent over a writing table in our room.
“I had to file several pieces for you,” he said sourly. “I doubt the Enquirer is pleased, since naturally I didn’t put in all the quality that went into my own.”
“Naturally,” I said. “Thanks. I’ll have to get back on it right away.”
“You most certainly will.”
I lay down to rest a moment. I didn’t realize I’d fallen asleep until the door opened with a bang and Millar came in bearing a stack of the latest editions.
“Big fuss up on Montgomery,” he said.
“What, a fire?”
He shook his head. “Folks are running around like an earthquake hit. I guess that’s how it feels to the banks and brokerage houses.”
“I know,” I said smugly. “It’ll go on for a while, too.”
“Yes,” he said, “it certainly will.”
“What’s the price up to now?”
“We are talking about the gold market?”
“Of course, what’s the price?”
“That’s the thing,” he said. “Nobody quite knows.”
I sat up. “Why not?”
“The bottom just fell out.”
Chapter 28
They called it Black Friday. Two unscrupulous New York speculators, Jay Gould and Jim Fisk, had cornered the private market, possessing orders to buy every ounce of gold in circulation. As prices soared, their profits—and mine—would have been almost
