Gangway!

    "Maybe a touch too much sun," the girl said, mostly to herself. "I'd stay under cover for a while if I were you. Do you hear things very often? Smell things?"

    "I… uh…"

    "I'm a nurse, you see. I've seen cases before."

    "Cases? Cases of what?"

    She had the wide guy worried now. But she only smiled sweetly. "It's nothing to worry about, I promise you. A little too much sun can do it, you know. Take my advice, Captain, stay out of the…"

    "I ain't the Captain. I'm the Mate."

    "All right, Mate. Stay out of the sun for a day or two. That's my advice." The girl turned smartly, hooked her arm in the bend of Gabe's elbow, and promenaded off with him along the deck.

    Near the stern Gabe stopped and shook her arm off. Up forward the Mate was still scratching his head, but presently he put his cap back on and his wide shape rolled into the corridor doorway and disappeared.

    "Nurse," Gabe snorted.

    "Thanks for not turning me in." She was doing her demure-little-girl act again. So sweet, so pretty. Sweet as laudanum poison, he thought.

    But she was pretty all right.

    Frowning, which didn't spoil her prettiness at all, she said, "What was that horrible thing anyway?"

    "What thing? Oh you mean my knuckle-duster." He looked around-they had no witnesses. So he took it out of his pocket and slipped the brass rings over his fingers and showed her. "Like that. See, you can hit him with it. Or you can cut him with it. Or if you're really mad you can shoot him."

    Wide-eyed, she looked at him in wonder mixed with doubt. "What sort of a person," she said, "would carry a thing like that?"

    Feeling pretty expansive, Gabe stowed the knuckle-duster away in its pocket again and said, "Well, I'm from New York, see. Back there, you know, men are men, and you got to be prepared to defend yourself. Not like these joskins out here."

    She glared. "Out where?"

    "Out here in the hicks."

    She took a deep breath and her lips pinched into a thin line. "I guess," she said coldly, "you mustn't ever have been to San Francisco."

    "Sweetheart, I haven't seen anything you could call a city since I stepped on the train in Manhattan, and I don't have very high hopes for San Francisco."

    "San Francisco," she said, standing up very straight, "is the Paris of the West."

    "Well, that's real nice," Gabe said. "New York isn't the Paris of anyplace. It's the New York of the world, the only one, and all I want from my life is to get back to it."

    The angrier she got, the taller she wanted to be. She was now up on the balls of her feet, teetering there like a beer bottle when you thump your fist on the table. "If New York is so wonderful," she demanded, "why'd you leave it?"

    It's not as if I had a choice, he thought. But what he said was, "Well… a man's got to see the world. How'd I have known New York was the only place in the world worth being in if I never went anywhere else?"

    "That's not true."

    "What do you mean it's not true? I haven't seen a single-"

    "That's not what I mean. You're not telling me the whole story."

    "What whole story?"

    "Hah," she said in disgust. "Here you are three thousand miles from home with that-knuckle-duster thing in your pocket, and no money, and a tough line of…"

    "What do you mean no money?"

    "Brother, I went through your pockets like a squirrel through a bag of peanuts. I can tell you what color lint you're carrying around. And you haven't got a cent in your kick. Well, to be exact, you haven't got a cent in your kick now."

    He jammed his hand into his trouser pocket where he'd put the change after he'd bought the boat ticket.

    Nothing.

    "You used to have fifty-five cents," she told him sweetly.

    Gabe peeled his lips back from his teeth. "Give… it… back."

    "Fifty-five cents." She made a face, produced the six coins from the enormous bag she had slung over her shoulder, and dropped the money coin by coin into his open palm. "There you are my good man."

    "Of all the…"

    "Now you've got fifty-five cents. But I'd still call that no money."

    "Maybe my money's waiting for me in San Francisco."

    She gri

    "A pickpocket calling me a crook. I've heard a lot of…"

    "Oh come on. You didn't turn me in."

    "I should have. I still should." But he felt he was losing control of the conversation, and it irritated him.

    "But you didn't and you won't. Because you don't want to talk to the police any more than I do."

    He said truculently, "I'm not wanted anywhere."

    "I can well believe that."

    "The only reason I didn't turn you in was because " He stopped abruptly. It wasn't true anyway. There were two reasons. One, he'd never turned anybody in to the law; it was against his philosophy. And two, she was too pretty to turn in. But he was damned if he was going to tell her that out loud.

    Besides, his stomach suddenly reminded him he was on a boat.

    "Because what?" she challenged.

    "Never mind."

    "You're turning a little green. Don't tell me you're going to be sick again."

    "Shut up."

    "You've already thrown up everything you've had to eat for the past six months. How can you have anything left to throw up?"

    "Urp…"

    He knew the riverboat was slowing again because he could feel the alteration of its motion in the pit of his stomach. He swallowed painfully and lifted his head to look toward shore. "What the hell is that?"

    "Port Chicago."

    Four buildings and a pier. "Chicago."

    "Port Chicago. There's a difference."

    "I can see there is." Gabe's eyes rolled upward, seeking inspiration from the sky. "Pittsburg was bigger than this!"

    "Wait till you see Richmond."

    "What's San Francisco? Two stovepipes and a tent?"

CHAPTER FOUR

    She found herself liking this self-proclaimed city slicker. It was hard to tell why. He didn't have any money. He didn't like California. He thought everybody who didn't have an accent like his was a hick. She had met plenty of snob dudes with their Boston drawls and their noses in the air, but this one wasn't like that-he was even worse.

    She looked at him fondly. He was drooping over the rail in terminal agony and somehow he made her feel protective. Maybe it was because he talked so tough and blustered so much. Her father had been just like that. Underneath he'd been a lamb.

    This one was more likely goat than lamb, but there was something appealing in the brave helplessness with which he regarded the world from behind his soulful eyes. He looked underfed and rumpled. His face was an uneven triangle, he tended to talk out of the side of his mouth, he had a voice like lumps of coal rattling down a sheet-metal chute, he wasn't what anybody in the world could possibly call handsome, he was feisty and opinionated-you might even say he was disagreeable; but then you could say all that about a Siamese cat and she loved Siamese cats.