Eureka

1900

The two young men who rode over the crest of the hill were a study in contrast. One was tall and lean, his black hair curling around his ears, his dark brown eyes bright and naive. The other was an inch or two shorter, with a tight, muscular body, light brown hair clipped short, and pale blue eyes that were wary and cautious.

Ben Gorman, the taller of the two, was Jewish. The other, Thomas Brodie Culhane, was Irish. Gorman, seventeen, was the son of Eli Gorman, the richest man in the San Miguel valley. Culhane, six months younger, was the orphaned son of a deep-sea fisherman and a washerwoman.

The two young men had been playing baseball on the other side of the rise, on a ball diamond laid out on the flat, comparatively dry side of the hill. It had been a ragtag pickup game with nine boys from Milltown, ten miles away. Brodie and Ben and three of the Milltowners made one team. Five against six. But with Ben, the mastermind with the magic arm, who could throw the ball like it was a lightning bolt, and Brodie, the slugger who hit the ball with the same energetic fury with which Gorman pitched, on the same team, it was so one-sided that the losing team quit after five innings and they all headed home.

As usual, water was running down from the hills, splashing in from the ocean, falling from the sky, gravitating to the haphazard collection of buildings that called itself a town. A valley town that lay at the bottom of a high, forested ridge that surrounded a broad bay in the Pacific Ocean and that attracted water the way honey attracts a bear.

The two horses, Ben’s a sleek, brown, thoroughbred stallion, Brodie’s a pure white stallion, shied away from the muddy road but even the hillside was soggy and the two boys had to keep them in tight rein so the horses wouldn’t slip and fall in the slime. Brodie hated mud. Had hated it for all his seventeen years-at least as far back as his memory went. And now daily spring rainstorms had turned the mud into syrup. Even in the dry season, when the mush turned to dust and stung your eyes and got in your mouth and in the wrinkles of your clothes, it was still mud to Brodie. It conjured memories of his mother struggling over a boiling cauldron of murky water, dropping railroad workers’ clothes into it and watching it turn the color of chocolate as she stirred the muddy duds.

It was a tough town they were riding into, a mile down the hill. The main street, deeply rutted and sloppy from the rains, led past a rough-and-tumble collection of bars and eateries; basic essentials like a grocery store, a hardware store, a pharmacy, and a bank; an icehouse that served the town’s only industry, a fishery; and several docks to house the fishing boats. Several homes, wooden shacks really, huddled behind the main drag, shelter for the people who worked in the town and the tough rail-layers. And behind them, hidden among the trees, was a long barracks that housed the Chinese workers, who kept to themselves, had their own stores, bars, and, it was rumored, an opium parlor, although nobody knew for sure since only Asians entered its grim confines.

It was one tough town, where table-stakes poker games were played behind storefront plate-glass windows in view of God and all his children; where fancy ladies advertised their cheap allure from windows above the hardware store; where, in the middle of Prohibition, bars advertised bar-brand drinks for twenty cents and imported brands for two bits. It was a town founded by hard-boiled railroad gandy dancers at the end of the track, where the sheriff, who had once ridden with Pat Garrett, kept the peace riding down the middle of the unpaved main street with a. 44-caliber Peacemaker on his hip and a strawberry roan under him.

The railroad gandy dancers, who finally had a wide-open town where they could raise hell when the grueling job of laying track was over for the day, had named it Eureka.

Eli Gorman, Ben’s father, often warned the two boys to stay out of the town, to ride the ridge of the mountain on their way to and from the ball diamond, but they were thirsty and decided to get a soda pop at the pharmacy, one of the few legitimate businesses in town. To Ben, who lived in the biggest mansion on the Hill, it was an exciting adventure, a quick trip to Sodom. But to Brodie, who had been brought up in a frame house on the edge of the harsh and violent village, it merely bolstered his hatred of the entire environment.

As they approached the main street, the horses became nervous and jumpy.

The moment reminded Brodie of the day he and Ben had first met. It was at this same intersection, four years ago. Brodie was walking back from the baseball field, had his glove tucked in his back pocket. As he crossed Main Street, he saw Ben Gorman riding up the road from the beach.

Two blocks up Main, in a saloon called Cooley’s Ale House, two drunks were arguing at the bar. Nobody paid much attention; drunken words and brawls were common among the hardworking railroad men. Then suddenly, one of them pulled a pistol from his back pocket and took a shot at the other. The bullet clipped an ear. The injured man backed through the swinging doors of the saloon, drew his own gun from an inside pocket, and fired a shot at his assailant, who was hit in the side. The man with the bleeding ear backed all the way out the swinging doors, shooting away as the other one charged toward him. Bolting through the door, the one who had started the gunfight was hit again and, as his knees gave out, he emptied his gun at the man with the pierced ear. They were only a few feet apart. The one with the bleeding ear was riddled with bullets. He threw his hands into the air and fell backward off the wooden sidewalk into the muddy street. The other crumpled like a paper sack on the wooden sidewalk. Both men were dead in seconds.

Down the street, Ben’s horse bolted and reared up at the flat smack of gunshots. Ben leaned forward in the saddle, hauling in the reins, but the horse was totally spooked. It began to back down the hill. Brodie dashed into the muddy road, grabbed the bit on both sides of the horse’s mouth, and held tight.

“Easy, boy, easy,” he whispered in the stallion’s ear. “It’s okay, it’s all over.” Without taking his eyes off the spooked horse, he asked Ben, “What’s his name?”

“Jericho.”

Jericho started to bolt again, lifting Brodie’s feet out of the mud, but he pulled him back, still whispering, staring into the fiery, fear-filled eyes.

“Easy, Jericho, easy. It’s all over. Calm down, son. Calm down.”

The horse grumbled and started to back away but Brodie had him under control. He gently stroked the horse’s nose.

“Got him?” Brodie asked.

“Yeah, thanks. I don’t think he’s ever heard a gunshot before.”

“Must not spend a lot of time in Eureka.”

Ben held his hand out. “M’name’s Ben Gorman.”

The younger boy shook the hand. “Brodie. Brodie Culhane.”

They decided they deserved a soda. Ben rode his horse slowly up the street to the pharmacy while Brodie clomped beside him on the wooden decking that passed for a sidewalk, shaking the mud off his boots.

“Sorry about your shoes,” said Ben.

“They was brought up in mud,” Brodie answered.

They got to the pharmacy, and Ben jumped off Jericho and tied him to the hitch rail. They both looked up the next block on the other side of the street, where a crowd had gathered around the two bodies.

“I never saw a shooting before,” Ben said with awe.

“Happens once or twice a month. Sometimes I pick up a dime for helping Old Stalk stuff them in the box.”

“You touch them!” Ben’s eyes were as round as silver dollars.

Brodie laughed. “They’re dead; they don’t bite.”

“Two sarsaparilla sodas,” Ben said and reaching in his pocket took out a handful of change and smacked four pennies on the small round table as they sat down. “My treat,” he said.

As they sat down to drink their sarsaparillas, Brodie’s mitt fell from his pocket, and Ben snatched it up, admiring it for a moment before handing it back.

“You a baseballer?”

“I play a coupla times a week.”

“Where?”

“They got a diamond down toward Milltown. Kids from the school play sides-up there. One side or the other always picks me. I ain’t much at catching but I can knock the ball clean out of the field if I get a bite at it. How about you?”

“No,” Ben said, shaking his head and looking down at the floor for a moment. “I’m from up there,” he said, jerking his thumb toward the Hill as if embarrassed to admit it. “Aren’t enough kids in our little school to get one team together, let alone two. But I practice pitching. I throw at an archery target.”

“You any good?”

“I can pitch a curve. I’m not much at batting but I can sure pitch.” He paused a minute, and said, “Think they’d let me play?”

“Sure, ‘specially if you can pitch. Pitchers are hard to come by. I usually go on Thursday and Sunday. I get off those days. I gotta work Saturdays.”

“How old are you?” Ben asked.

“Fourteen comin’ up. How about you?”

“I turned fourteen in September.” They sipped their drinks for a minute or so and then Ben asked, “Where do you work?”

“I wrangle horses for the railroad. Up at end-o’-track. Get outta school at one, go to work from two ’til six. But it pays good-twenty-five cents a day.”

Ben almost swallowed his straw. His weekly allowance was more than Brodie made working five days a week.

“How do you get to the ball field? Must be three, four miles over there?”

“I walk.”

Ben thought for a moment, then said, “Tell you what, I’ll meet you up at the ridge road at two on Sunday. I’ll bring an extra horse.”

Brodie smiled a cautious smile.

“Yer on,” he answered.

Almost four years and they had been as close as brothers ever since.

“We’re gonna catch it if Mr. Eli finds out we come down here,” Brodie said, as the horses slogged through the mud.

“Then we won’t tell him,” Ben answered with a brazen smile.

“Yer old man knows everything.” He paused and rephrased the thought. “Mr. Eli’ll know we were in town before we get home. No way we can lie to him, Ben.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Ben reached over and slugged Brodie’s arm. “Gotta live dangerously once in a while.”

They reached the edge of town.

Eureka was the unfortunate legacy of a robber baron named Jesse Milstrum Crane. In 1875, Crane, a con man and gambler, escaped west to San Francisco with a trunk containing close to a million dollars, leaving in his wake a dozen irate investors in a defunct railroad line pillaged by him, one of many cons that had earned him his fortune. The heavyset, hard-drinking, womanizing swindler saw new opportunities in the wide-open western city. He bought an impressive house on Nob Hill, joined the best club, opened accounts in several of the city’s biggest banks, and planned his grandest scheme yet-a railroad down the coast to Los Angeles, which he called the JMC and Pacific Line-and he offered his rich new friends an opportunity to buy into the company. His two biggest investors were Shamus O’Dell and Eli Gorman. As the tracks were laid south down the rugged coast, Crane was busy behind the scenes, scheming to steal every dollar he could from the company.

He might have succeeded, except one night his past caught up with him. As he was walking up the steps of his opulent home, a figure stepped out of the fog, and Crane found himself face-to-face with an eastern businessman he had cleaned out five years earlier.

“You miserable bastard,” the man’s trembling voice said. “You ruined my life. You stole everything I had…”

Crane cut him off by laughing in his face. “You whining little.. ” he started-and never finished the sentence.

The man held his arm at full length a foot from Crane’s face and shot him in the forehead. The derringer made a flat sound, like hands clapping together. Crane’s head jerked backward. His derby flew off and bounced away in the fog. A dribble of blood ran down his face as he staggered backward against an iron fence and fell to his knees. He looked up at the face in the fog, tried to remember his assailant’s name, but there had been so many…

The second shot shattered his left eye. Crane’s shoulders slumped and he toppled sideways to the sidewalk. He was dead by the time his killer fired a third shot into his own brain.

Accountants quickly discovered Crane’s embezzlement, and Gorman and O’Dell took over the company, which included the sprawling San Pietro valley, ten miles west of the track and a hundred miles north of the growing town of Los Angeles. It was their decision to build a spur to the ocean and build estates on the surrounding heights. But the spur also brought with it “end-o’-track” and a raunchy honky-tonk, ten miles west on a Pacific bay, that serviced the roughnecks who did the harsh job of laying track and who settled arguments with fists, guns, or knives.

With them came the gamblers and pimps.

And with the gamblers and pimps came a hard-boiled young gangster who had learned his trade on the Barbary Coast of San Francisco. His name was Arnie Riker and he soon ruled the small town with a bunch of young toughs he had brought in from the big city.

As Ben and Brodie came down the road, their horses reined in, Arnie Riker was sitting on the porch of his Double Eagle Hotel, which commanded the southeast corner of the town. It was the largest building in town. Three stories, nearly a city block square, and badly in need of a paint job. It also housed a whorehouse, boasted the town’s largest bar and gambling emporium, and had a pool table in the lobby. Riker’s chair was leaning back against the wall of the hotel, his feet dangling a foot off the porch floor. Riker was a dandy. He was dressed in a light tan vest and pants, with a flowered shirt open at the collar, his feet encased in shiny black shoes and spats.

Four of Riker’s hooligans were in the lobby of the hotel shooting pool. Rodney Guilfoyle was leaning across the table, lining up a bank shot. The sleeves of the eighteen-year-old’s striped shirt were pulled back from the wrist by garters at his biceps. A cigarette dangled from the corner of his mouth. He slid the pool cue across the table and stood up. He was close to six feet tall, lean except for his thick neck and the beginning of a beer belly, which sagged over his pants. His red hair was an unruly mop. He looked through the big window in the front, and saw Ben and Brodie turn into the main street.

“Looka there,” he said, “the sheeny rich kid and his pal.”

He walked out on the porch, down the steps to the wood-slat sidewalk and, as the two boys rode past, he flicked his cigarette at them. It arced past Brodie’s face and bounced off Ben’s shoulder.

“Hey, kid,” Guilfoyle said to Brodie, “who’s your kike friend?”

Brodie did not hesitate. He handed his reins to Ben.

“Hold my horse,” he snapped as he swung out of the saddle and landed flat-footed on the wooden walk in front of the red-haired lout.

“What d’you want?” Guilfoyle sneered, his thumbs hooked though his suspenders.

Brodie didn’t say anything. He was sizing up Guilfoyle, remembering what his father had told him early on about street fighting: Size up your foe. Look for his soft spots. Distract him. Hit first. Go for his nose. It hurts like hell, knocks him off balance, draws blood. Draw first blood, you win.

Guilfoyle had three inches on him and probably twenty pounds. But he was a dimwit, which meant he was slow. And he had bad teeth, rotten teeth.

“Your breath is uglier than you are,” Brodie said. “I can smell you from here.”

On the porch, Arnie Riker frowned and leaned forward. His front chair legs smacked hard on the porch floor.

Guilfoyle’s smile evaporated. He looked puzzled.

Brodie took the instant. He kicked Guilfoyle in the shin. The big kid yowled like an injured dog, lost his balance, reached down and as he did, Brodie threw the hardest punch he could muster, a hard right straight into Guilfoyle’s nose. Brodie felt Guilfoyle’s bones crush, felt the cartilage flatten, felt the warm flood of blood on his fist.

Guilfoyle staggered back several steps, blood streaming from his nose, pain gurgling in his throat. Brodie quickly followed him, hit him with a left and a right in the stomach. Guilfoyle roared with rage, threw a wild left that clipped Brodie on the corner of his left eye. It was a glancing blow, but it snapped Brodie’s head and he saw sparks for a moment. But it didn’t slow him down. He stepped in and kneed Guilfoyle in the groin, and as the young thug dropped to his knees, Brodie put all he had into a roundhouse right. It smashed into Guilfoyle’s mouth and Brodie felt the big redhead’s teeth crumble, felt pain in his own knuckles.

Guilfoyle fell sideways off the walk into the mud. He lay on his back, one hand clutching his broken nose and busted teeth, the other grabbing his groin. Tears were flowing down his cheeks.

Riker stood up, his fists clenched in anger.

“Stand up,” he yelled. “Stand up, you damn crybaby.”

Guilfoyle groaned, rolled on his side, and tried to get up, but he was whipped. His hand slid in the mud and he fell again. He spit out a broken tooth and smeared blood over his face with the back of his hand.

Disgusted, Riker spat at Guilfoyle, and turned to the other three toughs who had joined him to watch the fight.

“Knock that little shit into the middle of next week,” he snarled.

One of them reached inside the door and grabbed a baseball bat. The three of them started down the steps.

Ben had eased the horses up to the hitch rail. He got off his horse, tied them both up, and hurried to join Brodie.

The three toughs walked toward Brodie, who didn’t move an inch. He was sizing them up as they sauntered toward him. He’d feint a left toward the one in the middle, smack the one holding the bat with a right to the mouth, and hopefully grab the bat and even things up.

It never happened.

A shadow as big as a cloud fell across them. Riker’s hooligans looked up and Brodie looked over his shoulder.

Buck Tallman was sitting on a strawberry roan, his back as straight as a wall, his blond hair curling down around his shoulders from under a flat western hat. His face was leathery tan with a bushy handlebar mustache, its ends pointing toward flinty gray eyes. He was wearing a light-colored leather jacket with fringe down the sleeves. His sheriff’s badge was pinned to the holster where his. 44 Peacemaker nestled on his hip. It looked as big as a cannon.

He smiled down at Riker’s young roughnecks and at the stricken Guilfoyle.

“One on one’s a fair fight,” he said, looking straight into Riker’s eyes. “Three on one don’t work with me. Understood?”

Riker didn’t say anything. The three ruffians nodded and went meekly back into the hotel. Riker stared down at the beaten Guilfoyle, who was still sprawled in the mud, and shook his head.

“You’re pitiful,” he growled. Then he turned and went into the brothel.

Buck Tallman was a product of the previous century, of lawless western towns where violence was a way of life. Tallman had brought to Eureka the harsh morality of that frontier, had ridden with Pat Garrett and Bat Masterson, and had dime novels written about him.

Nobody messed with Buck Tallman. Everybody knew he was hired by the men on the Hill, the Olympus of the gods who owned the railroad and the land, and had friends in high places in Sacramento. They called the shots. In Eureka, Buck Tallman’s job was to keep the peace within the limits they set.

Tallman leaned forward in the saddle and held his hand out to Brodie, who grabbed it and was swung up behind the saddle of the colorful rider.

“Thanks,” Brodie said.

“What are you two doin’ down here? Y’know how Mr. Eli feels about that.”

“Going to get a soda,” Ben answered. “We’ve been playing baseball up on the field.”

Tallman looked back at Brodie. “You got a little shiner there. Needs some ice.”

As they rode the block toward the pharmacy, Brodie put both hands under himself and swung over onto his own horse. They pulled up in front of a small shop with a large window announcing “Gullman’s Pharmaceutical Parlor,” with a rendering of a mortar and pestle under the lettering.

“Hey, Doc,” Tallman called out.

“Yes, sir,” came the answer from inside the store, and Gullman stepped out.

“How about bringin’ us three strawberry soda pops? Put ’em on my tab.”

“Good enough,” the owner answered. “They’re good and cold; Jesse just come back from the icehouse.”

“Good, throw some ice in a small bag while you’re about it,” Tallman said.

Gullman returned quickly with the three sodas and a paper bag of ice.

Tallman wheeled the roan around and headed toward the ocean, with Ben and Brodie following. They tethered their horses to a tree at the edge of the beach and hunched down Indian-style on the sand. For a change, the sun was out. The sky was cloudless. It was so clear you could see the waves breaking at the entrance to the bay, almost two miles away.

Brodie dug some ice out of the soggy bag and winced as he pressed it against the welt on the corner of his eye. Water dribbled down the side of his face.

“You’ll be goin’ back East soon, won’t you, Ben?” Tallman said.

Ben nodded. “Papa and I are going to Boston in a month to get me set up. Soon as school’s out.”

“You gonna marry Isabel?”

“Well, she’s going East to school, too,” Ben said, his face reddening. “But it’s too early to be thinking about getting married.”

“How about you, Brodie? What are you gonna do?”

Brodie picked up a handful of sand and watched it stream from his fist. “Haven’t thought much about it,” was all he said.

Tallman was mentor to the two boys, had taught them how to stand in the stirrups at a full gallop to take the load off the horse’s back; how to draw a gun in a single, fluid move, skimming the hammer back with the flat of the hand, pointing the piece-like you would point a finger-before making a fist and squeezing the trigger, all the while without changing expression. No hint of a move in the eyes or jaw muscles. No giveaways. And stay loose, don’t tighten up, concentrate on the eyes and face of your foe.

“Their eyes’ll tell you when to squeeze off,” he had told them. “It’s a look you never forget.”

“Like what?” Brodie asked.

“Plenty a things. Fear, hesitation, a little twitch of the eye, anxiousness. It’s a giveaway look for damn sure. You’ll know it, if ever you see it.”

The talk didn’t mean much to Ben, who loved a shotgun and the hunt, while Brodie loved pistol shooting.

“So who’s the best shot you ever knew?” asked Brodie.

“Phoebe Moses is the best shot alive,” he said without hesitation.

“A girl!” Ben said incredulously.

“C’mon,” Brodie said.

“Phoebe Anne Oakley Moses. You boys know her better as Annie Oakley. I met her a few years ago when Bill Cody’s Wild West Show was in Chicago. She shoots over her shoulder with a rifle better than me, Wyatt, Pat Garrett, or her husband, Frank Butler-who was damn good himself-can shoot with a pistol. You could toss a playin’ card in the air and she’d put a dozen shots in it ’fore it hit the ground. Her and Frank are still with the show, far as I know.”

“How about that abalone shell down there,” Brodie said suddenly.

“What shell?” Tallman asked, casually looking down the beach.

Brodie looked down the beach. A red abalone shell was lying at the edge of the surf about fifty feet away. He had to squint to see it clearly. “The red one. Down the beach there.”

Tallman didn’t need to ask what Brodie wanted him to do. He simply stood up, stood straight with his hands hanging loosely at his sides. His eyes were narrowed slightly. Nothing in his face

changed before his right arm moved fluidly up, his hand drawing the. 44 as it passed his hip, his left hand fanning back the hammer as his hand stretched out, and BOOM!

Both boys jumped as the gun roared.

The red shell exploded. Pieces flying left and right, the main piece jumping straight up. As it fell, Tallman fanned off a second shot and it disintegrated.

And just as quickly, the gun was back in its holster and Tallman reached up and tenderly stroked the curves in his mustache.

“You mean that one?” he said.

He took out the pistol, flipped the retainer on the cylinder open and emptied the spent casings into his hand and dropped them in his pocket, then inserted fresh bullets into the slots and flipped the retainer shut. He handed the gun butt-first to Brodie.

“Give it a try,” he said.

The Irish kid took the pistol, stuck the gun between his pants and shirt so the hammer would not catch on his belt. It was on his left side, the butt facing to the right so he could cross-draw. He looked for a target. Twenty feet away a bottle rolled on the beach at the edge of the surf.

He shook his hands and shoulders loose.

His right arm moved swiftly across his body, hauled the big Frontiersman from its resting place. His left hand snapped the hammer back as he raised the gun at arm’s length and squeezed his hand. The gun roared, kicked his arm almost straight up. Sand kicked up an inch from the bottle.

“Well, damn,” he muttered.

“That was a good shot,” Tallman said, nodding assurance. “Just a hair to the right.”

Brodie smiled, dropped the empty casing into his hand and gave the casing and the gun back to the sheriff.

“How about you, Ben?” Tallman asked.

“Nah,” Ben answered. “You know I never got the hang of it.”

Tallman looked over his shoulder. The sun was turning red, sinking toward the horizon. He slapped them both on the shoulder.

“You boys better get on up the Hill. Be dinnertime soon.”

They rode the length of the beach to the cliff trail, a wide walkway huddled against the face of the cliff, which rose six hundred feet up the sea side of the Hill and ended at the edge of Grand View, the O’Dell estate. The grand, white-columned mansion sat back from the main road at the end of a drive lined on both sides by small bushes. Behind it and six hundred feet down, the Pacific Ocean stretched to the horizon.

It and the Gorman estate were the two grandest houses on the Hill.

A one-horse surrey was coming up the road from the strip of stores that serviced the families on the Hill. The driver was a powerfully built black man in his twenties, who spoke with an almost musical lilt. His name was Noah. Rumor had it that Shamus O’Dell had bought Noah’s mother at a slave market on one of the Caribbean islands. He had bought her as a housekeeper, not knowing she was pregnant. Her son had been raised by O’Dell and educated by his wife, Kate. Noah was fiercely loyal to the family, sometimes acting as a bodyguard for Shamus; sometimes watching over Delilah, who was O’Dell’s daughter and one of the three girls in the carriage; sometimes driving the family automobile, a German Daimler, which looked like a formal horse carriage powered by a gas engine and was the only automobile in the valley.

O’Dell never took the car down the hill, fearing the brakes might not hold or it would get mired in mud. So he showed off in it sticking to the broad, forested, five-mile-wide northern mesa, the Hill, where the families of fourteen tycoons lived, five appearing only on weekends. Noah proudly squired O’Dell along the horse trails that served as roads, taking him to the club where the rich men and their male out-of-town guests drank at the bar or played cards. On occasion, Noah drove Delilah to the two-story schoolhouse, where tutors taught the dozen or so children of the barons who lived there year-round.

Two of the girls in the surrey were facing Ben and Brodie as they reached the top of the cliff. The third girl was sitting opposite the other two, with her back to the boys.

When Noah saw the boys, he reined in his horse.

Delilah O’Dell, seventeen and the oldest of the three, already flaunted a sensuous and independent nature that would define her through the years. She was well developed for her age. Blazing red hair cascaded down over her shoulders and curled over her breasts. She ignored Ben, fixing her green eyes on Brodie.

“Looks like you’ve been rolling those horses in the mud,” she said haughtily.

Ann Harte, the girl sitting next to her, had just turned fifteen and was extremely shy. She giggled nervously, looked down, toyed with her purse, and murmured, “Hello.”

Brodie was staring at the girl with her back to the two riders. “Oh, Del,” she chastised, “that’s rude.” Then she turned and stared back at Brodie.

Isabel Hoffman was as fragile as Delilah was lusty. She would turn seventeen in two weeks. Jet-black braided hair hung down her back. Deep brown eyes stared softly from a face that had the quality of fine china. Sharp features accented high cheekbones. She was dressed in a white pinafore. She was always dressed in white or pastel, unlike Delilah, who favored bright, sometimes garish colors. Sometimes black, when she was feeling moody.

Today, Delilah was dressed in black.

The valley was owned by the JMC and Pacific, which O’Dell and Gorman had inherited when Jesse Crane had been gunned down. Shrewdly, Gorman had opted for a smaller share of the property-but his share completely encircled O’Dell’s. The Irishman could not develop his property without entry and exit rights through Gorman’s property and Gorman, knowing O’Dell’s plans for the future, refused to give them up.

But O’Dell owned the six square blocks that included the town of Eureka.

“Something the matter, Del?” Ben asked.

“You know what’s the matter,” she chided, still looking at Brodie.

Ben thought for a moment and said, “Is this about the game?”

She finally glared at him but did not answer.

“That’s between my father and yours,” Ben said quietly. “We’ve all been friends since I can remember. What’s it got to do with us?”

“Yes.” Isabel nodded. “I agree.”

“My father says we’ll have to leave if he loses. But he won’t lose.” Delilah looked at Brodie and her full lips curled into a slight smile. “When he was young he played poker for a living. Over in Denver.”

“I don’t know whether my father can even play poker,” Ben said.

“So when he loses,” Del said with a snicker, “will you leave?”

“Mr. Eli hasn’t talked about it,” Brodie interrupted.

“He’s the only one in town who hasn’t,” said Isabel. She looked at Ben and said, “Aren’t you worried?”

“It’s not for our houses, just the land in the valley.”

Del looked down and picked at her skirt. Her tone became more plaintive. “Daddy has such a terrible temper. He said if that old.. if Mr. Eli wins… he’ll leave on the spot and go back to San Francisco and never set foot here again, and Mother and I will follow as soon as school ends.”

“I’m sorry it’s come to that, Del,” said Ben.

“Me, too,” Brodie said. “But we can’t do anything about it. Just wait and see what happens.”

Ben reached down and squeezed Isabel’s hand.

“We gotta go. It’s dinnertime.”

She nodded and looked at Brodie, who wheeled his horse around as he touched the bill of his cap.

“See you at school tomorrow,” he said over his shoulder.

Noah snapped his whip and the surrey moved up the road toward Grand View. Delilah looked back as they pulled away, her eyes fixed on Brodie’s back as the two boys headed toward home.

The only time Brodie ever saw Eli Gorman in less than business attire was on Sunday at lunch when he sometimes wore a silk smoking jacket. Even then, he wore a tie. Short and somewhat stubby, his heavy-lidded but steady brown eyes never wavered, alert and always interested. He spoke in a deep, level voice, which he rarely raised, even in anger. His face was thick-featured, topped by thinning black hair, and concealed behind a graying mustache and goatee. Most people found his appearance intimidating.

In business he was tough but fair, a shrewd, well-informed, quiet fox who had attended some of the finest schools in Europe and emigrated to the United States with his father, a banker. He mastered the English language, had not a whit of an accent. At twenty-one, he attached himself as an intern to Andrew Carnegie, the powerful steel magnate, who later moved him into the railroad business, where Gorman proved a wily match for the robber barons who controlled the network of trunk lines that criss-crossed the country. In his mid- thirties, Gorman found himself in San Francisco, comfortably rich thanks to a generous inheritance and artful investments in his burgeoning business.

It was there he finally began to enjoy life. He met and, after a year of ardent courtship, married Madeline Lowenstein, the tall, handsome, cultured daughter of a wealthy shipping magnate. Maddy gently sanded off his rough edges and they idolized their son, Ben, who had come late in both their lives. Then fate had led Eli to robber baron Jesse Milstrum Crane, to the Frisco-Los Angeles railroad fiasco, and, ultimately, to his unfortunate partnership with Shamus O’Dell.

Now, at fifty, the old fox was a man whose persona was dictated by tradition. In his religion, ethics, family, and friendships, his life was stable and comfortable, if somewhat ritualized. He tried to keep his business run the same way. But now, uncharacteristically, he was about to risk his ownership of half the valley in a poker game that would pit O’Dell’s greed against his vision.

Madeline knew about the game and supported his decision. And the boys knew about the game because it was a topic of gossip all over the valley. But it was not a subject Eli discussed openly with his family.

Eli stared across the elegant dining table at Ben and Brodie as the evening prayers began. Eli was inspired by their friendship, which transcended social standing, by Ben’s ability to see the value of this young boy, toughened by the streets of Eureka but with an innate sense of honesty and loyalty. And Brodie was smart, no longer brandishing the hard-boiled attitude he first had shown that day four years ago when Ben had brought him home-a tattered ragamuffin whose mother was a washerwoman. Eli was proud that Brodie saw and admired the same values of trust and friendship in Ben. When Brodie’s mother died of lung fever four months later, Eli had unofficially adopted the boy, given him a room over the stable, and paid him five dollars a week to groom the horses.

Brodie was grateful for his new life and showed it in many ways. Every Friday, starting at sundown, he voluntarily performed or directed the chores of the servants during the twenty-four hours devoted to prayer and atonement during which all other activities were forbidden to Jews. When Brodie had been invited to share meals with the family, it was his choice to wear a yarmulke-a voluntary act that deeply touched Eli.

When the prayers were over, Eli piled food upon Maddy’s fine china plates and passed them around. He sat at the head of the table wearing a prayer shawl, his pince-nez perched on the bridge of his nose.

“So what were you two up to after school?” Mr. Eli asked as he chewed a mouthful of meat loaf.

A little too casual, Brodie thought. The old fox knows.

“We had a little problem in Eureka,” he blurted, before Ben could avoid the truth.

Ben winced but was speechless. Eli looked up and stared at his son. His tone was quiet but firm. “What were you doing in Eureka?”

“We went to the pharmacy to get a soda.”

“There’s a soda shop up here on the Hill.”

“We were real thirsty, Papa,” Ben said. “We played baseball for two hours.”

“You don’t know enough to take a canteen? A bottle of water?”

“We shared it with the kids from Milltown, sir,” Brodie pitched in. “They didn’t have none.”

“ Any. Not none. The word is any.”

“Yes, sir, any,” Brodie said.

“Then what?”

“There was a… uh… mix-up,” Ben said.

“What kind of mix-up? Did you have words with somebody?”

“Yes, sir,” said Ben.

“Harsh words?”

Ben nodded.

“So harsh they gave Thomas a bruise over his eye? Words that fly through the air and make an eye black-and-blue?” Eli was the only one who called Brodie by his given first name.

“It was a fight, sir,” Brodie said. “With a guy named Guilfoyle.”

“He called me a kike,” Ben said.

Maddy looked down at her plate, embarrassed by the bigoted remark.

Eli took another bite of food.

“And you stood up for Benjamin?” Eli said to Brodie.

Brodie looked down at his lap. “He said it to me, not Ben. Besides, Ben, he does the thinkin’ and I… uh… I do the.. ”

“Fightin’?” Eli said, mimicking Brodie’s tough talk. “Brains and brawn, that it?”

“That’s about it, sir.”

“Look at me, Thomas. Don’t look away, that’s a sign of weakness. Always look a person straight in the eye.”

“Yes sir,” Brodie answered and fixed his gaze on Mr. Eli’s dark brown eyes.

“You’re a very bright young man, Thomas. A bit impetuous, but that’s the Irish in you. Don’t undersell yourself. Just because you’re handy with your fists doesn’t mean you’re stupid.”

“Yes, sir.”

Eli looked at Brodie. “This Guilfoyle, is he the young hoodlum who works for Riker?”

Brodie nodded.

“And he was looking for a fight, was he?”

Brodie nodded again.

Eli nodded toward the black-and-blue streak over Brodie’s eye.

“He’s quite a bit larger than you.”

“He whipped him good, Papa,” Ben chimed in. “The miserable skunk..”

“Benny, please!” Maddy said.

“Sorry, Mother. Anyway, he only got one punch in and Brodie-”

“Yes,” the father interrupted. “He whipped him good.” He thought for a moment and added, “Well, I’m glad you won, Thomas. Winning is always preferable to losing. But I have forbidden you both from going into Eureka for just this reason. Are we understood on that?”

They both nodded.

“Mother, have you anything to add?”

Madeline Gorman, who had been listening quietly to the conversation, looked up from her dinner.

“I don’t approve of brawling,” she said softly. “But sometimes it is a matter of honor, Eli.”

“Yes, my dear, I understand that. The point is, they weren’t supposed to be there in the first place.” He cleared his throat and added, “Well, enough said of that. Let’s enjoy our dinner.”

The full moon was brighter than the lanterns flittering at the corners of the wide paddock. Brodie had showered off both horses and stabled the brown. Now he stood brushing the white horse in slow, easy strokes, smoothing out his coat and sweeping the tangles from his mane, and talking to him in a voice barely above a whisper.

“Frisky tonight, huh, Cyclone?”

The horse snorted and casually stomped a hoof.

Brodie stroked his forelock, patted his neck, rubbed his soft muzzle.

“Liked that run on the beach, din’tcha? You like runnin’ on the sand.”

The horse growled and bobbed his head.

Behind Brodie, the end of a cigar glowed in the darkness.

“You really love that animal, don’t you, Thomas?”

It startled Brodie, although it was not uncommon for Mr. Eli to stroll down to the pasture for his evening cigar. He never smoked in the house; Mrs. Gorman hated the smell of cigars.

“He’s the first thing I ever owned, sir. Three dollars, imagine that. He’s one handsome fellow, he is.”

“Thanks to you.”

“And you, sir,” Brodie answered.

The white stallion, a horse bred to be ridden, had been hitched side by side with a muscular dray horse, hauling railroad ties in a wagon. The white strained but did not have the powerful legs of the dray. The driver, a big-chested, angry man, was lashing out at the white.

“You lazy son of a bitch,” he roared. “You worthless, good-for- nothing nag. I’ll show you who’s boss.”

He jumped down from the wagon and pulled a pistol from his back pocket. Brodie, who was working on the railroad that summer, jumped down from a railroad car and ran to the man.

“Don’t shoot him,” he begged.

The big man glared down at him. “Who the hell are you?” he growled. “Get outta my way.”

He cocked the pistol, held it toward the horse’s head.

“I’ll buy him,” Brodie cried out.

“With what?”

Brodie had five silver eagles in his pocket, his pay for the week.

“Two eagles,” he said. “I’ll give you two dollars.” He took out two coins and held them in the palm of his hand toward the man.

“I’d rather shoot the lazy bastard,” he sneered.

“I’ll make it three. Is it worth three dollars to shoot him?”

The driver stared at the three silver dollars.

“Christ, yer crazy,” he said. But he took the three bucks and unhitched the horse. “How you gonna get him home?”

“I’ll ride him,” Brodie said.

“You ain’t even got a saddle.”

“I’ll ride him bareback.”

“Shit,” the driver said, and spat a stream of tobacco onto the horse’s neck. “You get on him, he’ll throw you all the way to Albuquerque.”

Brodie rode the horse six miles bareback, using a rope for a bridle. He was thrown four times and he was skinned up, his one shirtsleeve almost torn off and a bruise on his cheek. When he got to end-o’-track he bummed a ride into Eureka on a wagon, with the horse he named Cyclone tied to the back. Then he led the horse the last four miles up the cliff walk and across the top of the hill to the Gorman estate.

Eli remembered the day Brodie came home with the animal. Skinny, its ribs standing out like a museum skeleton, its flanks festered with whip scars, its eyes crazy and fear filled.

“I’ll pay for his food and take care of him,” Brodie pleaded. “You can take it out of my salary.”

Old Gorman had smiled.

“I think we can handle the food bill,” he said. And as he turned away, he looked back and said, “I admire you, Thomas. You have a big heart, which is a gift. But it isn’t much of a horse for three dollars.”

Brodie had nursed Cyclone back to health and, in so doing, they had formed a bond. No one else could ride him, no one else could even climb into the saddle without being thrown head over heels. Horse and boy were devoted to each other.

“You have a natural love for animals,” Gorman said, tapping the ash from his cigar. “I’ve watched you with the other horses and the dogs. I admire that.”

He pointed to the end of the pasture, which was separated from the edge of the cliff by a high, white fence that surrounded the twenty-acre grazing land.

“Let’s take a walk,” Eli said, nodding down the pasture. They strode side by side, with Cyclone clopping slowly behind Brodie.

“Have you thought what you’re going to do when school ends?” Eli asked. “Ben will be going back East to Harvard in a couple of weeks. How about you? The state has a very good college down in Los Angeles. Then maybe take on law school.”

“I ain’t… I’m not smart enough.”

“You do yourself an injustice, Thomas.”

“I make C’s, sometimes a B or an A but mostly C’s.”

“There’s smart and there’s smart. Ben is smart about business. Someday he’ll run mine, he’ll be responsible for this valley. For what happens to it. But he needs somebody who is smart in other ways. Ben is naive about things. He trusts everybody. He needs someone-one person-he can trust without question, a partner who will take care of things Ben doesn’t see.”

“You mean like somebody who can take care of a guy like Guilfoyle when he smarts off?”

“I mean somebody who understands why people like Guilfoyle are the way they are. Someone who understands that and will handle that part of the business. The kind of smart Ben will never be.”

Brodie twisted his apple into two pieces, and held one half behind him. The horse gently took it from his hand and ate it.

“I…” Brodie started to say and then stopped.

“You what?”

“I don’t wanna be a roughneck all my life.”

“I don’t imply you should. What I am saying is that it takes a man of unique talents to handle the roughnecks. My son doesn’t have that kind of talent.”

“And I do because that’s where I came from. That it, sir?”

“You grew up in that life. Now you’ve seen the other side of the coin. I’ll be glad to stand for your schooling.”

“I don’t wanna go back to it, Mr. Eli. You spoilt me that way.”

“ Spoiled. I spoiled you that way.”

“Spoiled.”

“You’ve already risen above that, Thomas. But railroading is a harsh business. It not only requires shrewd business sense, it requires a man who can think ahead of trouble and handle it.”

“And that’s me?”

“I see that kind of strength in you, yes.”

They reached the end of the meadow and walked to the corner of the high fence that marked the edge of the cliff. To the south, past two neighboring houses and O’Dell’s mansion, they could see the glow of Eureka.

“I had a vision the first time I saw this valley,” Eli said softly, almost to himself. “And I still see it. I see a pretty village at the bottom of the valley. I see decent homes for workers. I see this valley, the way it is now, lasting forever. A place for good people to live and flourish. I see Ben and Isabel Hoffman marrying, they’ve been sweet on each other since they were children and she’s a nice Jewish girl. I see them raising a family here, surrounded by its beauty. And I see you watching his back, keeping the law. But it won’t happen as long as O’Dell owns half the valley, and Riker and his ilk run Eureka.”

“Buck Tallman keeps the law, sir.”

“Buck is an honorable man, but he’s in his fifties. He tolerates gambling and womanizing and hard drink and brawling. He keeps it controlled, but he was a town-tamer, Thomas. He is from another time. My vision of the valley will never become a reality as long as men like Buck let men like Riker have their way. And my vision won’t happen if O’Dell has his way. He will chop down the trees, turn all of this into power plants and paper mills and shanties for the workers. It will become a slum like Milltown.”

Brodie was uncomfortable talking about the subject. It was not something Eli had ever shared with either of the boys. But his curiosity was rampant.

“Couldn’t you just, uh, buy him out?”

“Been tried, Thomas. This has been going on for two years. O’Dell owns the part of the valley that includes Eureka. He’s a rowdy himself and a spoiler. Our problems could never be worked out. The game was O’Dell’s idea-although I must admit it is the only solution.”

Brodie hesitated for a moment and then said cautiously, “What if it doesn’t turn out the way, uh…”

“It?” When Brodie hesitated again, unsure if he had overstepped his bounds, Eli said, “Ah. You’re referring to the game.”

Brodie nodded. “Everybody knows about it, sir. The whole town’s talking.”

“And what are they saying?”

Brodie turned to Cyclone, held the other half of the apple in the flat of his hand, and the horse took it. “That O’Dell’s a gambler and you ain… aren’t.”

“So they think O’Dell will win?”

“Well, that’s what they’re saying. Riker’s giving five-to-one odds favoring Mr. O’Dell.”

“You familiar with poker?”

“When I lived down there, I used to play a little penny ante with the other kids.”

Eli looked at the youth for a moment, then reached in his pocket, took out some bills, and handed Brodie ten dollars.

“Bet this on me to win. You’ll win fifty dollars after you pay me back the ten.”

Brodie took the bill and stared at it for a moment or two. Ten dollars was a lot of money to Brodie.

“I never knew you to play poker,” he said, folding it carefully and putting it in his pocket.

Eli puffed on his cigar and said, “You know who Andrew Carnegie is?”

“I know he’s real rich.”

“He’s a steel man, Thomas. Made his fortune manufacturing steel. When I was a young man back in Pittsburgh, he took a liking to me and he moved me up in the business. He and some of his rich friends had a poker club. Played once a week. A tough game. Fairly large stakes. One day he invited me to play and I told him I couldn’t afford it.”

Brodie laughed. “What’d he say to that?” he asked.

“He said, ‘You can afford it if you win.’ He sat me down and in one afternoon taught me some of the secrets of poker. Then he gave me two hundred dollars and told me to come to the game that night. I won seven hundred dollars. And became a member of the poker club.”

“What were the secrets?” Brodie asked eagerly.

Eli looked out at the shimmering reflection of the moon on the ocean.

“The most important one,” he answered, “is the art of the bluff.”

Brodie watched Eli walk back to the house, saw the back door open and close. He leaned on the paddock fence for a long time, thinking about everything Eli had said.

Now, suddenly, he had to make some hard decisions.

And then there was the other problem.

He went in the barn and came back with another apple. He broke it in half, gave one to the horse and took a bite out of the other one to chase the dryness from his mouth. He got a bridle and a blanket, slid the blanket over Cyclone’s back, and put the bit in the horse’s mouth. Slinging the reins over the horse’s back, he jumped on and quietly rode out of the paddock and down through the woods to a pathway near the cliff’s edge. Brodie rode south, toward the lights of Eureka. The O’Dell mansion was lit up like a church, its lamps flickering through the trees.

He turned the horse back into the woods and stopped, slid quietly off his back, tethered him to a tree, and gave him the rest of the apple.

“Be quiet, now,” he whispered, then ran his hand down along Cyclone’s mane and slid the blanket off his back before sneaking into the woods. He walked a hundred or so feet to a greenhouse and slipped inside. It was dark. He walked down the aisle of flowers and plants to the rear of the glass shed and stopped, looking back at the big house a hundred yards or so away. A light glowed in the corner room. A signal.

“You’re late,” a soft voice said from the darkness.

It startled him.

“I… we, Mr. Eli and me… we had a talk,” he stammered, and before he could say anything else, she moved quietly from the darkness, gliding to him and putting her arms around his waist.

“I was afraid you weren’t coming,” Isabel Hoffman whispered.

She was so close he could feel her heart beating, a rapid tapping against his chest. He could smell her hair, feel her breath against his throat. In his young life he had never known such longing, never felt a connection with anyone that went so far beyond friendship.

“We have to talk about something,” he said, but she lifted her face to his and kissed him. Her lips were wet and trembling with desire, and he was overwhelmed by her ardor, as he always was and had been for the two months they had been meeting secretly, two or three times a week, in her mother’s greenhouse. It was a tryst that had begun with a note he found in his geography book one morning. It had started innocently enough. They had met at the bakery on the Hill to study for a test. Ben was at his father’s bank, where he worked after school for two hours every day. She had been a little flirtatious at first, then their mutual attraction escalated quickly. She was like a lure, shimmering on the end of a line, and he was hooked.

Now his emotions were in turmoil. He knew how Ben felt about Isabel, but his own longing for her had masked any sense of betrayal.

He was so dizzy with longing he took her in his arms with passionate desperation.

She took the blanket, pungent with the odor of the stallion, spread it on the soft earth in the darkness of the greenhouse, lay down and drew him gently to her, and, in a voice quivering with desire, she said, “I never knew it would be like this, Brodie. I never imagined it would be so wonderful…”

The Social House, as the men on the Hill called it, commanded the northern crest of the valley and had once been a large, sturdy barn and stable, owned by a horse breeder from San Luis Obispo, thirty or so miles away. When the horse breeder died, Eli Gorman bought the property from his estate.

The barn was refinished with teak and mahogany walls, Tiffany windows and lamps, and a slate bar imported from Paris. Fourteen bar chairs lined the bar, and fourteen tables and chairs occupied the sprawling, cathedral-ceilinged main room, each chair with a brass plaque identifying a member, nine of whom lived in sequestered mansions on the Hill. The other five had elaborate cottages and came from Los Angeles or San Francisco on weekends and holidays.

There were two other rooms, one the office of the manager of the club, a fluttery little perfectionist named Weldon Pettigrew who had been the concierge of a Chicago hotel, the other occupied by the telephone switchboard, run by a widow named Emma Shields, who had been trained in New York. The barkeeper, Gary Hennessey, had been imported from a hotel in New Orleans and spoke with an accent that was part Irish, part New York, and part Cajun.

Through the years, three apartments-for Pettigrew, Hennessey, and Mrs. Shields-had been built beside the clubhouse, and five small offices had been added to the clubhouse so its members could conduct business in private. Shields was the only woman allowed in the club except on rare occasions, when entertainers were brought in from San Francisco for the evening, and on New Year’s Eve, when all the family cooks prepared a feast and the new year was ushered in properly.

At all other times, it was a place where the tycoons gathered to smoke cigars, sip brandy, talk business, play cards, and keep in touch with their businesses by special long-distance phone lines. There was no restaurant. If a member wanted to eat, food was cooked at home and delivered by servants.

Tonight was a particularly special occasion at the Social House.

Tonight was the poker game between Eli Gorman and Shamus O’Dell.

The boys went to Brodie’s room on the pretense of studying, but quickly sneaked off through the woods to the Social House, Ben clutching his father’s opera glasses so they could see better. They cautiously entered through the back door and went up the stairs to the storage loft, crawling over cases of whiskey and sweeping away spiderwebs until they found a secluded place where they could watch the main floor without being seen.

They stared down at the arena.

All the tables but one had been moved to the side of the big room. A single table, with a felt cover and three chairs, held down the center of the room, spotlighted under the chandelier. Six bar chairs formed an arc five feet away from the empty spot at the table and six more were behind the chair opposite it. They were separated by an occasional brass spittoon. There were large Waterford ashtrays in front of each place at the table, with matching water glasses beside them and a Waterford pitcher to service them. The chandelier cast a sphere of light on the table. The twelve chairs were outside the orbit, in the dark. From the setup, Brodie figured there would be twelve spectators, six facing the empty seat at the table and six behind the dealer. Nobody would be seated behind the two players.

The game was set for 8:00 p.m.

Fifteen minutes before game time. The ritual began.

Buck Tallman arrived first, carrying a saddlebag. He draped his jacket over the middle chair. He was wearing a bright red vest, a white shirt with a blue string tie, and tan leather pants. The boys had never seen him that elegant. He carefully rolled up both his shirtsleeves halfway to the elbow. He sat down and growled across the room to Hennessey.

“A cup of black coffee if you please, Mr. Hennessey.”

He planted the saddlebag close to his right, opened it, took out ten virgin decks of cards, and placed them side by side in front of him. Hennessey, who was wearing a tuxedo for the occasion, brought the cup of coffee and placed it on the felt next to Tallman’s elbow. He nodded his thanks.

Spectators began to filter into the room and fill the gallery.

Eli Gorman arrived two minutes before the hour. He was dressed in a dark blue suit. A gold watch chain draped between the vest pockets on either side of his chest. He was carrying a black leather doctor’s satchel. He shook hands with Tallman and placed the satchel on the table.

His chair was below the boys. He sat with his back to them, but Brodie checked his position with the opera glasses. They would be able to see his hand over his right shoulder.

Gorman took out a thick packet of land deeds tied with twine and laid them next to the decks of cards. Then he took out a packet of ten-, twenty-, and hundred-dollar bills, stacked them in individual stacks, and counted out ten thousand dollars.

O’Dell was five minutes late, dressed in a garish light blue suit, an open-collared checked shirt, and a gray derby, which he hooked over the arm of his chair. His goods were in a small leather suitcase. He put his deeds on the opposite end of the line of cards from Gorman’s. He counted out ten thousand dollars in tens and hundreds.

Hennessey poured each of them a glass of water. O’Dell ordered a glass of Irish whiskey. Gorman shook his head when Hennessey looked at him. The bartender vanished into the darkened room.

Twenty thousand dollars lay on the table.

Tallman said, “Gentlemen, the game is poker. I will deal for each of you. Five- and seven-card stud and three-card draw, no wild cards. In straights and flushes, high card wins. If it’s a push, the pot will carry over to the next game. The ante is ten dollars. The limit is table stakes, the minimum bet will be ten dollars. The first player who can’t call a bet is out. Winner takes all, the deeds and twenty thousand dollars. Either player may ask for a new deck at any time. If so, the deal goes to the other player. I will flip a coin and the caller will select the first deck. Then you will draw a card for the first deal. We will take a fifteen-minute break whenever any of us requests it. Any questions?”

There were none.

Ben leaned close to Brodie’s ear. “What’s table stakes?” he whispered.

“Means you can bet whatever’s in the pot.”

Tallman said, “Then we’ll begin. Shake hands, gentlemen.”

“Forget it,” said O’Dell.

Gorman looked at Tallman and shrugged. He took his pince-nez from a vest pocket and set it near the end of his nose. Tallman took out a silver dollar and flipped it.

“Heads,” O’Dell snapped. The coin landed on the table, spun around, and came up tails. Gorman selected a deck and Tallman broke open the seal, took out the jokers, dropped them in the saddlebag. He swept the cards around the table, mixing them up, and splayed the deck out between the two players. Gorman pulled an eight, O’Dell turned a jack.

“Your game, Mr. O’Dell.”

“Five stud,” O’Dell said, in a high-pitched tenor voice that was a sharp contrast to the voices of Tallman and Gorman.

“Ante up,” said the dealer. O’Dell threw a ten-dollar bill in the center of the table and Gorman covered it.

“The game is five-card stud,” Tallman said. He shuffled and arched the cards together several times. He lay the deck in front of O’Dell, who cut them.

Tallman dealt the first card to Gorman. Both got one card down and one up. Eli lifted the corner of his hole card, let it snap back. A six of hearts.

Gorman drew a four of clubs. O’Dell, a seven of diamonds.

“Seven bets. The limit is twenty.”

O’Dell bet twenty dollars. Gorman called.

Sixty dollars in the pot.

Second up card: O’Dell, a queen of diamonds, Gorman, a nine of hearts.

Tallman: “Queen bets. The limit is sixty.”

O’Dell bet the limit again. Once again Gorman called.

A hundred and eighty dollars in the pot.

Third card: O’Dell, a seven of clubs. Gorman, a two of spades.

O’Dell had the lead with a pair of sevens. Gorman had a nine high. One card to go.

Gorman’s expression never changed as he stared over his glasses with his heavy-lidded eyes, glanced back at his card and stared back at O’Dell.

At this point, O’Dell’s open hand was a winner. The only way Gorman could win was if he paired his nine on the last card and O’Dell didn’t help his sevens. O’Dell sneaked a peek at his hole card. Gorman just stared at him, studying his expression, his eyes, any tics he might discern. O’Dell’s hole card could triple his sevens or pair either of his other three cards for two pair. The odds were strongly in O’Dell’s favor.

Tallman: “The limit is one-eighty.”

O’Dell shot the wad. Gorman folded and O’Dell pulled the bills and piled them loosely beside his left elbow. Gorman had lost ninety dollars on the first hand.

The game went on. Hennessey moved quietly, like a ghost, filling drinks.

The winning hands went back and forth. Brodie kept the opera glasses on Eli’s hand and watched with surprise when Eli folded a winning hand of five-card stud, folded again when his down card gave him a straight to O’Dell’s three of a kind. In one seven-card game, Eli had a well-hidden flush, O’Dell obviously had three of a kind. Eli called O’Dell with a large bet, then folded the winning hand.

Cigars and cigarettes glowed in the dark. Smoke curled upward, lured by the heat of the chandelier. The game went on. In a five-card draw hand, Eli drew one card to a four-card heart flush and caught the fifth heart. O’Dell drew two cards. He bet two hundred dollars and Eli called him. O’Dell had three kings.

“Beats,” Eli said, and threw away the winning flush.

Brodie was astounded. What kind of bluff was he playing?

When the pot was high, Eli was purposely losing every bluff he tried. Brodie was confused. What was the art of the bluff Mr. Eli had talked about-throwing away winning hands?

At 10:15, Eli called for a break.

“The old man must be gettin’ tired,” O’Dell whined in his high voice as he headed toward the bar with most of the gallery. Eli stood up and stretched and worked the kinks out of his shoulders and neck. Buck Tallman intertwined his fingers and snapped them, then shook them out.

“How do you feel?” Tallman asked.

“Just fine.”

“Maybe the cards’ll start falling a little better.”

“The cards are falling just fine,” Eli answered.

“The way I figure, you’re down about two thousand.”

“The night’s young.”

At 10:30, Tallman announced, “Let’s play cards.”

O’Dell strolled back to his seat. Eli was already seated.

“You got any objections to raising the ante to twenty bucks?” O’Dell said, looking at Tallman.

“Mr. Gorman?” he asked.

Eli shrugged and said, “Why not make it a hundred?”

There was an audible reaction from the gallery. Tallman tried to control his surprise. O’Dell snickered. “What’s the matter, Gorman, you so tired you wanna go home early?”

“Do I take that as a ‘yes’?” Tallman said.

“Hell, yeah,” O’Dell said and threw a hundred-dollar bill in the pot, which Gorman covered. Since Gorman had called for a new deck, it was O’Dell’s game.

“Mr. O’Dell, your call.”

“Draw poker.”

“The game is draw poker,” said Tallman, and dealt each man five cards down.

O’Dell picked up his hand, squeezed the five cards out. He had three eights, and a ten and six of mixed suits.

Eli watched his reaction while slowly shuffling his hand by slipping the top card under the bottom one. Then he looked. He had three kings, a five, and an ace of hearts.

“The limit is two hundred dollars,” said Tallman. “Cards?”

O’Dell bet the two hundred and Gorman called.

“The limit is six hundred. Cards, gentlemen?”

O’Dell took two cards.

So, thought Gorman, he, too, had triples or a pair and was holding an ace kicker. Gorman only took one. He held the kings and the ace, hoping O’Dell would figure him for two pair or four cards to a straight or flush.

“Goin’ for that inside straight again?” O’Dell bit. He chided, “Don’tcha ever learn?”

He looked at his two new cards. He had not helped. His best hand was triple eights.

Gorman watched him closely, looking for anything, a tic, a flinch, a hint of a smile. O’Dell licked his lips, took a sip of whiskey.

“Mr. O’Dell, the limit is six hundred,” said Tallman.

O’Dell thought: Got him. Didn’t help his two pair or fill his straight or flush.

“Bet a hundred,” said O’Dell.

“The limit is seven hundred.”

“Two hundred back at you,” said Eli.

It caught O’Dell flat-footed. He sat for a moment. Gorman figures me for the opening pair. He probably had two pair going in so he figures even if I paired my openers he’s got me beat.

“The pot is nine hundred dollars.”

Gorman had tried bluffing too many times before.

“Call,” O’Dell said.

Gorman laid his hand down and spread out three kings.

O’Dell’s eyes narrowed and his face reddened, but he said nothing. His three eights were beat. He threw in his hand.

“Three kings wins a thousand dollars,” said Tallman.

Now Eli had O’Dell’s holdings down to sixty-nine hundred; Gorman had sixty-seven hundred. A mere two hundred dollars separated them.

“I’d like a new deck,” Eli said again.

Tallman held the old deck between two hands and tore it in half, dropping the pieces in the saddlebags. He opened a new deck, mixed and shuffled them.

“The game returns to Mr. O’Dell,” he said.

With the right hand and the right timing, Eli could take O’Dell. O’Dell, playing arrogantly, had not counted his money. It lay in a loose pile by his elbow. But Eli knew. He had been counting both his money and O’Dell’s. Now Eli had to play cautiously. The stakes were getting so high, if either of them made a mistake it could cost them the game, the stakes, and the valley.

O’Dell called seven-card stud.

Tallman: “The game is seven-card stud.”

The players anted up a hundred apiece.

“The limit is two hundred. Cards to the players.”

He dealt two cards facedown to the players. O’Dell lifted the corners of his two cards. An ace of spades and a jack of hearts. Gorman peeked at his two cards, but Brodie could not see them well enough to read them.

Tallman dealt each a face card.

O’Dell: jack of spades.

Gorman: four of diamonds.

“Jack bets,” said Tallman.

O’Dell bet two hundred. Gorman called the bet.

Tallman: “The pot limit is now six hundred.”

He dealt the second cards up.

O’Dell: three of hearts. “Jack, three,” said Tallman.

Gorman: jack of clubs. Tallman: “Jack, four. Jack, four bets.”

Gorman studied the cards.

“Check,” he said.

O’Dell bet a hundred dollars. Gorman called the bet.

Tallman: “The limit is eight hundred.”

O’Dell: jack of hearts. “A pair of jacks and a club three,” Tallman said.

Gorman: three of hearts. “Heart jack, diamond four, a heart three. The pair bets.”

O’Dell’s tongue lashed at his lower lip. He started pulling hundreds from his pile.

“Eight hundred,” O’Dell snapped.

In the darkness, there was a sudden spate of whispered chatter.

“Quiet please, gentlemen,” Tallman admonished softly. “The bet is eight hundred. Pot limit is sixteen hundred dollars.”

Gorman studied his three face cards: jack, four of diamonds, three of hearts. He stared across the table at O’Dell, who was wearing what could pass for a smile.

“Call the sixteen hundred,” Gorman said.

Tallman sighed. “The limit is thirty-two hundred. Cards to the players.”

He dealt the last face card to O’Dell: an ace of spades. “A pair of jacks, three, and the ace of spades,” said Tallman.

Gorman caught a four of diamonds. “Two of diamonds, jack of hearts, three of hearts, four of diamonds. Three cards to a straight.” He looked at Gorman, who was expressionless.

“The pair still bets. The limit stands at twenty-four hundred,” Tallman said.

O’Dell said, “I’ll make it easy on you, old man.” He counted out twenty hundred-dollar bills and dropped them in the pot.

“The bet is two thousand,” Tallman said. He looked at Gorman, who was staring at O’Dell. “Two thousand buys you the last card. The pot stands at forty-four hundred. ”

Gorman hesitated. Was this a sucker bet to keep him in? Why would O’Dell make a soft bet? He studied O’Dell’s hand. A pair of jacks, an ace, and an eight. Possibilities? Three jacks or three aces. He had the cased jack of clubs and a cased ace. Either a pair of eights or a hidden pair in the hole. Unless all three of his hole cards were eights, he could not have four of a kind. Odds for a straight or flush were zero. A full house was the best hand he could have. With a pair of jacks showing, Gorman figured O’Dell had either two pair, jacks and possibly aces, or a jack high full house.

Eli would know after the last down card was dealt. If he had a full house he would check, gambling that O’Dell would bet, and O’Dell could raise him out of the game.

At this point, a full house, four of a kind, or a straight flush could beat Gorman.

Gorman called the two-thousand-dollar bet.

“The pot limit is sixty-four hundred dollars.”

An audible gasp from the darkened gallery. Hennessey brought Tallman a fresh cup of coffee, his sixth of the night, and he took a breath and a sip.

The last card.

Gorman watched O’Dell take a quick, cursory look at his down card, which told Gorman that O’Dell had his full house, probably jacks and a pair of aces or eights.

Gorman bent his hole card up, looked at it, and let it snap back on the felt.

Brodie got a quick look at it. A three of diamonds.

A pair of threes! Brodie thought. What are his other two hole cards? Even if Eli had another three and a pair of jacks, O’Dell’s full house would beat Gorman’s. This was a hand Eli couldn’t bluff.

O’Dell did exactly as Gorman anticipated. He checked.

Either he had two pair and was hedging, or it was a sucker bet. He’d figure Gorman, with a straight, would bet. O’Dell would raise him and drive him out of the game.

O’Dell swept up his stash and counted the hundreds. Gorman’s expressionless eyes watched him. He had sixty-nine hundred dollars left.

He looked across the table at Gorman’s neatly stacked cash. Easy to count. Sixty-seven hundred dollars.

Gorman looked at him for a minute or more. O’Dell finally looked away, lit a cigarette.

Gorman bet a hundred dollars.

The bet reduced O’Dell’s stash to sixty-eight hundred, Gorman’s to sixty-six hundred.

The pot was sixty-six hundred, the maximum bet.

“Looks like you’re gonna get your beauty sleep early tonight, old man,” O’Dell sneered. “You think you can bluff me out with a little straight?” He counted out a fistful of hundreds and dropped them in the pot. “The limit: six thousand six hundred dollars.”

He leaned back in his chair and smiled.

Eli sat quietly for a moment. Then he counted out his last dollar and dropped sixty-six hundred dollars on top of O’Dell’s bet.

“I’ll just call,” Eli said. “If you’ve got that filly, let’s see it.”

O’Dell’s left eye twitched. He looked at Gorman but saw only the dead stare he had seen all night.

He turned his first two hole cards over. An ace and a jack.

“Jacks full,” he snarled. “Let’s see that little straight of yours.”

“Oh, I have the little straight,” Gorman said, and smiled for the first time during the evening.

Gorman turned his first two hole cards over.

An ace of diamonds, a five of diamonds.

O’Dell started to reach for the pot.

Gorman turned over his last card. A three of diamonds.

“But they’re all diamonds,” Gorman said. And he laughed. “A straight flush.”

O’Dell stopped and looked at the trey of diamonds with disbelief. He wiped his mouth with his hand. Beads of sweat gleamed from his forehead. He looked at Gorman with hate.

The gallery began to babble. Hennessey poured himself a double bourbon.

“You kike bastard,” he bellowed, grabbing his full house and throwing the cards at Eli. A couple hit Eli’s chest, the others fluttered to the floor.

Tallman slammed his hand on the table.

“This was a gentleman’s game. Act like one!” he ordered. “Ace-five straight flush is the winner.” He took O’Dell’s stack of deeds and placed them on top of Eli Gorman’s land titles. “Winner takes all.”

Eli stood up and raked nineteen thousand eight hundred dollars into his satchel.

O’Dell was left with two hundred dollars, only enough for an ante. He would be beat on the first up card. He was trembling with rage. The gallery was crowding around Gorman, slapping him on the back, congratulating him, thanking him for saving the valley.

O’Dell threw his suit jacket over his shoulder and propped his derby on the back of his head. He started toward the door and over his shoulder he yelled, “Hey, Gorman.”

Eli stared at him through the friends gathered around him.

“I just want you to know that I sold the six square blocks of Eureka to Arnie Riker this afternoon for a dollar. You got rid of me, I’m leaving tonight. But you’re gonna have Riker up your ass until the day you die.”

The celebrating was over, and Ben and Brodie had gone off to bed. Eli decided to have a final cigar and told Maddy he would be upstairs in a few minutes. He went out the back door, snipped the end off his stogie, and lit it. He heard Brodie’s voice down near the stable and followed it out to the paddock.

Brodie was feeding Cyclone an apple, telling the horse about the game.

“It was really somethin’ to see,” he said softly to the white horse.

The remark surprised Eli.

“Do you have something to tell me, Thomas?” he asked.

When Brodie didn’t answer, the old man went in. “I can read you like I can read a hand of cards. I can see it in your face.”

“See what?”

“A kind of admiration toward me I’ve never seen before.”

“Well, sure. You won the game.”

“Not just that.”

Brodie could not lie to Eli Gorman. He stuck his hands in his pockets and thought for a moment and said, “We was… were… there, Mr. Eli. Ben and me were hiding up in the loft.”

“What!” he snapped, his face clouding up.

“Ah, c’mon, sir, you think we could pass it up? We were behind you and we had the opera glasses. I saw every hand you played.” Brodie flashed his crooked smile. “You were really something, Mr. Eli.”

Eli glowered for a moment more, then the glower slowly turned to a smile. He nodded.

“I should have guessed,” he said. “Too good a show to miss, eh?”

“But I got one question,” Brodie said.

“What question is that?”

“On that last hand? Why did you only bet a hundred dollars?”

“Did you watch him? He’s a sloppy player. He never counted his money, he just piled it up. I’m a numbers man, Thomas. I knew after every hand where we both stood.

“The pot was sixty-four hundred dollars. I knew O’Dell had his full house already, he barely looked at his last card. And I had my straight flush. O’Dell had sixty-nine hundred, I had sixty-seven hundred. By betting a hundred dollars, it limited the pot to sixty-six hundred, which is what I had, so there was no way he could bet me out of the game. When I beat him, he had two hundred dollars left, just enough for an ante and one bet, so he was beat. Had I bet the limit, he could have raised me four hundred, and with only two hundred left, I couldn’t call the bet and he would have won.”

“I saw you throw in four winning hands during the night.”

“Actually five. So he pegged me for a poor bluffer. On that last hand, he figured me for a small straight and thought I was trying to bluff him out with a small bet when he checked. There’s no way he wasn’t going to bump my hundred-dollar bet and run me out of the game.”

Brodie shook his head. “You didn’t have your winning hand until the last card.”

“That’s right. If I hadn’t drawn that three of diamonds when he checked I would have checked, too. He would have won the hand, but I still would have had sixty-seven hundred dollars.

Eli ground out his cigar, started for the house, then stopped and turned back around. “Did you learn anything tonight, Thomas?”

“Oh yes, sir. I learned two things.”

“And what were they?”

“The art of the bluff,” Brodie answered. “And the luck of the draw.”

Writing the letters was the hardest part. He had already packed all his belongings in two saddlebags, which were under his bed. His entire fortune-four hundred dollars, most of it paper money-was in a cigar box tied with twine in the bottom of one of them. He had twenty gold eagles in the pocket of his only suit, blue serge, a bit shiny at the elbows. He put the pocket watch Eli had given him once, as a Hanukkah present, in his jacket pocket.

He sat down on the edge of his bed and reread the letters he had written to Mr. and Mrs. Gorman and to Ben. He had struggled over the words for two days, writing and rewriting. He was no poet and he knew it. In the end, the letter to the Gormans was simple and to the point. A thank-you note for all they had done for him. It was time for him to leave the sanctuary they had provided, leave their care and affection. Time to find his own way in the world. They would understand.

“You have been the family I lost,” he finished. “I thank you for the offer of college, but I think we all know I am no student. It is time for me to find my true place in this world. I will miss you two and Ben and this house. I love you in my heart. Thomas Brodie Culhane.”

The letter to Ben was harder.

“You are the brother I never had and the best friend I will always have,” he wrote. “You and Isabel have your future planned out. Right now, I have no future. There is nothing here for me in Eureka. I will leave Cyclone at the sheriff’s office. I’m sure Buck will bring him home. Take care of him for me. He’s the first thing I ever bought with my own money that was worth a damn. I leave this place to take on the world, Ben. I know you will understand. If you ever need anything- anything — I’m sure you will find me and I’ll come running. Have a good life, and thanks for taking care of me all these years. Brodie.”

The letter to Isabel was impossible. He wrote and rewrote it a dozen times, crumpling each one and throwing it on the floor.

“Dear Isabel,” he finally wrote. “You and Ben will be going back East to start a new life in a few weeks. He is the man for you. He loves you dearly and will bring magic to your life. It is time for me to leave here and look for my future. I will remember you forever. Brodie.”

He rode down the pathway and tied Cyclone to a tree, gave him an apple to munch on, and looked up at the Hoffman house.

The light was on in the corner room.

She had sneaked out and was waiting for him.

He decided to wait until she went back to her house and leave the note for her in the greenhouse.

Then he thought better of it. Her mother or father might find the letter.

Even worse, it was a cowardly way to bow out.

But he approached the secret hideaway fearfully. Thirteen years of poverty and the loss of two parents he adored had left him emotionally barren. He had learned affection and self-respect from the Gormans, had found in Ben a brother figure in whom he had confided his fears and his joy.

But Isabel.

Isabel was different. Isabel had been his first love. She had awakened emotions he had never felt before. Each eagerly had surrendered their virginity to the other. She had revealed in Brodie a gentleness of spirit that both awed and terrified him.

How can I say good-bye, he wondered, when my heart aches at the thought?

He knew what he had to do, knew he had to dig deep down inside himself, to reach back four years, to search for and rekindle the cynicism, the toughness, the solitude of the kid who had grown up in Eureka and who, when his mother died, had cowered alone in his bed in the corner of the laundry until Ben had come and found him and taken him to the Gorman mansion and a new life that was far beyond his wildest dreams.

Payback time.

He entered the greenhouse resolutely.

She rushed from the darkness before he was halfway to the back. She was wearing a nightgown and a silk robe covered with tiny embroidered roses.

His throat closed. He couldn’t swallow.

“Daddy told me about Mr. Eli. Isn’t it wonderful! It turned out so perfectly,” she said joyously.

She threw her arms around him, hugging him, and her hair swept his face. He kept his hands at his sides.

She stepped back and looked up at him, and saw something she had never seen before. There were tears in his eyes.

“Brodie…” The first hint of apprehension.

His lips moved but no words came.

“Brodie,” she said, lowering her head a trifle, staring at him, her head cocked slightly to one side.

He touched her cheek and realized his hand was shaking.

“Something’s bad,” she said, and tears flooded her eyes. She put two fingers against his lips. “I don’t want to hear anything bad. Please.”

“Isabel… I’ve got to… I have to go away.”

“What do you mean, ‘go away’? Where? Where are you going?”

He looked at the ground. He could not stand to look at her face, at the tears edging down to her chin.

He shook his head. “I don’t know. But it’s not fair for me to stay here.”

“Fair! Fair! ”

“Look at me, Isabel. Please. I got nothing. All the clothes I own wouldn’t fill the corner of a closet. I got four hundred dollars in a cigar box and that’s all I got in the world…”

“Stop it!” she said.

“Ben loves you. He can give you everything you want.”

“I don’t care!” she cried, tears streaming down her cheeks. “I love you, and I know you love me.”

“I left a note for Mr. Eli and Miss Madeline, and one for Ben. I’m leaving, Isabel. I’m leaving San Pietro valley for good. It’s best for everybody. Especially you.”

“It is not best for me,” she said, anguish accenting every syllable. “You care about Ben, you care about the Gormans. Don’t you care about me?”

“We’re just kids,” he said harshly. “It’s puppy love.”

“That’s what you think? Puppy love? ” She was crying hard now. “Is that all I mean to you?”

He couldn’t stand the hurt. He reached out to her but she backed away, into the shadows at the back of the greenhouse. She sat down on the hard earth.

“You’re just throwing me away.” Her voice was like a whispered wail, a cry in the night, her grief so deep that Brodie did not know how to respond.

“I gotta go,” he said in a voice he didn’t even recognize. “It’s best for everybody.”

“How do you know what’s best for me?” she moaned. “I thought you loved me. I thought you would protect me and…” Her voice dissolved into more tears.

Jesus, he thought, why won’t she understand?

“My heart hurts,” she sobbed. “It will never stop hurting. You’ve turned my dreams into nightmares.”

“Isabel…”

“If you’re going, then go. Get away from me.”

He stood his ground for a few moments and then backed down the aisle to the door. He couldn’t tell her there was a crushing hurt in his heart, too.

As he turned the doorknob, her voice came to him from the darkness.

“I read a poem once,” she said in a voice tortured with misery. “It said ‘First love is forever.’ And I believed it.”

He ran from the greenhouse, ran to Cyclone, jumped on his back, and rode down the path, away from the Hoffman house and around Grand View and down the precipitous cliff road from the Hill to Eureka.

The town had gone crazy. It was like New Year’s Eve. The bars were full, men were staggering in the street, shooting their guns into the air. Some of the girls were dancing on the wooden sidewalk. The news was out about Riker.

Light from town spilled out on the beach, and Brodie leaned back and smacked Cyclone on the rump. He dashed off down the beach.

“Go, boy, go!” Brodie yelled, as the stallion galloped in and out of the surf as he loved to do. They raced past the town, and then Brodie wheeled him around, and they trotted back to the swimming beach. Brodie slid off his back and for the next two hours he talked to the horse, emptying his heart out, explaining to him why he was leaving.

He understands. I can see it in his eyes. He knows I gotta do this.

The wagon to end-o’-track left at 5:00 a.m. And the weekly supply train to San Francisco left at seven. The sun was a scarlet promise on the horizon when he led Cyclone up to the sheriff’s office and tied him to the hitching post. He threw a saddlebag over each shoulder and went into the office. The deputy was half-asleep at his desk.

“What you doin’ down here this time a day?”

“I gotta go out of town,” Brodie answered.

He laid an envelope on the desk.

“My horse is tied up outside and I got a note here for Buck. I’m asking him to take the horse back up to the Gormans for me.”

“Hope the hell nobody steals him,” the deputy said, looking out the window at Cyclone. “I’ll keep an eye on him.”

“Thanks.”

The wagon was loaded with hungover iron workers when Brodie climbed aboard. A few minutes later, the driver cracked his whip and they started up the hill. As the wagon reached the crest, Brodie looked back at the town where he was born and where his life had changed forever in the years since the death of his mother. A great sadness flowed over him. Then he turned his back on Eureka and dismissed it.

Good-bye forever and good riddance, he said to himself, and he knew he would never return.

Fate had other plans for Brodie Culhane.