Liller rubbed the side of his cheek reflectively. "Some ways good, some ways bad. There's not much money, and I'm not sure there ever will be. And there's a sort of feud in town, or maybe you know, between people like Hombone who grew up in the country, and the come-latelys."
Kern grinned. "I know. And you're beginning to sound Hke Hornbone."
Doc grunted. "Well, the feud wasn't my reason for getting you out here. You remember my sick partner?"
Kern nodded.
"He's better. Dr. Schultz thinks maybe he can get up next month, but the damnedest thing's happened. Judy brought home some books on the old mining camps and so help me Chance has gone queer for the stuff. I think he actually figmes he v/as born a hundred years too late, that he should have been around when things were raw and rough and rugged."
Kern said, "I can understand how he feels."
"Sure you can," said Doc. "You Hved through it yourself, but Chance is different. He never heard of any of this until he came out here. Now he's nuts. I was telling him one night that you grew up in Goldfield and he's been wanting to talk to you ever since. That's why I asked you to come out, to talk to him a httle while."
"A pleasure," said Kern. "I've been wanting to meet him."
They turned into the lane. The house showed white imder the green shade of the cottonwoods. Judy's cow was grazing across the yard and the three pigs rolled in a dust hollow they had forged beyond the steps.
Kern said, "Quite a change."
Doc was embarrassed. "I hope you don't mind."
"I don't mind." Kern was amused. "I'm just a little surprised. When I first met you, I thought you might stay in Vegas a couple of weeks. From the looks you're putting down permanent roots."
"I don't know," said Doc. "If things don't get better downtown, we'll have to pull out. Dutch and I have hardly made grocery money this last month." He stopped the car and led Kern to the porch steps.
"Chance, this is John Kern."
Chance and Kern took to each other from the first. Maybe it was the common interest in the old mining camps. Maybe it was because Kern represented something Chance had dreamed of being. Doc didn't know. He was so relieved that they got on well that he didn't worry about it.
He went to find Joe, to tell him that Kern would stay for lunch. They aU ate together. It was the first time Chance had eaten with them in months.
Judy sat quiet, fistening to the talk, listening to Kem's stories, listening to him tell how they had entertained themselves in Goldfield.
Doc took him back to town in the late afternoon, thanking him for talking so long with Chance.
"Don't thank me, I Hke him."
"Sure," said Doc, "everyone likes him. He's the best, but I'm glad you didn't talk to him three or four months ago. You wouldn't reaHze it was the same guy. That historical stuff sure awakened his interest. Sometimes I think he's getting ready to write a book."
"He should. He knows more about the state than I do. How is he?"
Doc shrugged. "I can't get much out of Schultz. He's going to give him another test in September. But we're not going to be able to keep him in bed much longer. He's getting restless."
Kern was thoughtful, rolling the cigar around and around between his thin fingers. "How tough is he?"
Doc was surprised. "Tough?"
"Yes. You told me about the Cleveland club, how he
started it almost singlehanded, against everyone's advice. If he sets his head on something, he does it. Right?"
"You can say that again. Why?"
"I just wondered," Kern said and was silent imtil Doc dropped him before the hotel.
Back at the ranch Doc sat down beside Chance's bed. "You made quite an impression on Kern."
"I'm glad. He impressed me. He doesn't pretend to be one thing he isn't. No wonder the old towns were great, with men hke Kern."
Doc grinned. "Put it to music."
Chance laughed, a full, wholehearted sound. "Do I soimd that bad?"
"Hell," said Doc, "it's all you talk about. You'd think your family had been kings in Nevada for a hundred years."
"That reminds me," said Chance. He swimg his bare feet from the bed and stood up.
"Christ I'm weak. I've got to get some strength back. Not going to lie here the rest of my life." He moved around the porch, holding onto the railing. Three days later he walked to the barn. In a week he said to Doc, "Suppose that old car would go as far as Tonopah?"
The thermometer on the porch read one hundred and fifteen. Doc said, "You crazy? This is summer. You've got a hmidred and fifty miles of desert and the road nans along the edge of Death Valley. The jalopy boils just going into town."
Chance didn't mention Tonopah again for a month, but in the second week of September his tests showed negative. Chance and Judy drove up to Tonopah as a kind of celebration. They drove at night, in a rented car, because Doc said he wasn't crazy enough to let them take the Ford.
They reached Tonopah at three in the morning and went to the old hotel. The room Chance had was hot and smelly, but he did not mind. He had the curious feeling that he had been here before, that he had come home.
They saw the town. They went through one of the mines that were still working. They visited the ball mill and the long banks of cells where the values were recovered from
the fine-ground ore. They ate lunch at the Tonopah Restaurant and visited the old Tonopah Club, still occupying the same building after fifty years.
At five they started back. It was very hot but neither of them minded. Chance had his coat off and the warm wind from the sweep of desert was soft yet strengthening, wiping the tiredness from his body.
By the time they reached Beatty, it was full night and the moon was high, very near them. They stopped and had a bottle of Coke and went back to the car.
"Tired?" It was Judy.
Chance shook his head. Strangely he had not felt tired during the whole trip. His strength had come back more rapidly than he had expected. "I'm afraid I'm well."
She looked at him. "Afraid?"
He grinned. "I'll have to go to work. I've been lying on my can so long that the idea isn't very appealing."
She started the motor. "What vdll you do?"
He said in surprise, "Why, get a job in one of the gambhng houses I suppose. What else? I don't know anything else."
"You could learn."
"Don't you approve of gambling?"
She was thinking it over aloud. "It's not that I don't approve. It's just, well, there doesn't seem to be any future in it."
He said, "Honey, you don't get it. A guy hke me if he wants to get ahead hasn't got much choice. I'm not a lawyer. I'm not a doctor. I'm not an engineer. So I start a business. Maybe I open a grocery store or a garage, or a restaurant. Believe me, you've got to know what you're doing in those businesses just like you need special training to be a lawyer. Well, I don't have it. The one thing I'm better at than most people is gambhng. A man has to stick to his own racket."
"You're going to stay here?"
Again he was surprised. "Guess so. I hadn't thought about it. What do you think?"
Judy considered gravely, secretly flattered that Chance was treating her like an adult. Doc didn't, and neither did Dutch. They never discussed business and things with her. They
treated her like a child, and she wasn't a child. In Judy's mind she was very grown-up.
"I don't know. I hear the kids at school talk, how a lot more tourists come over from L.A. than used to come. They say that mostly they come to look at the dam, but that some of the movie stars are beginning to show up once in a while. I think the town will grow."
Chance had already made up his mind. He said, "The doctor says I should stay in a dry climate, and I like it and you seem to like it. I guess we stay."
She drove on. After a couple of miles she began to sing. Chance hstened for a while. "I never heard you sing like that, kid. You've got a real good voice."
"Have I?" She sounded pleased. "Sing wi
th me."
He grunted. "I never could carry a tune in a basket. I don't want to waste it. I'd rather Usten to you."
One week later he said to Doc, "You suppose Hombone would give me a job?"
Doc looked surprised. "Hell, there's not enough business to keep me and Dutch working full time. Besides, you shouldn't go back to work yet."
"Why not?"
Doc didn't know exactly. He just knew that it was good to have Chance on his feet again, to see him out in the yard, or helping Judy remodel the bam. "Well, I don't want you to have a relapse."
"I'm not going to, and I am going in and talk to Hombone. Come on, Dutch, drive me in. I'm afraid of that Ford."
The Club Grandee was not changed from what it had been when Doc first saw it, and Doc had described it minutely to Chance, but Chance saw it through different eyes.
To him it was not merely a dirty hole run by an untidy old man. It represented the past, the way this country had been at the turn of the century. He was too good a businessman not to reahze that if Hornbone meant to compete with the Nugget, the Pioneer and the other modern clubs he would have to clean up and refurnish the place, but Chance thought that this could be done without destroying the Grandee's charai.
He sat in Hombone's office, talking to the old gambler about Goldfield and Tonopah, and finally he pointed to the partly open safe.
"Must be a story behind that?"
Hombone turned to squint at the iron box. "There sure is. You been to Rhyolite?"
Chance shook his head.
"Ain't much left. The railroad station and the bank building and the bottle house, but Rhyohte was a nice town while it lasted, and for six weeks I was a millionaire. That's all I got left of it." He jerked his thumb toward the safe.
"Me and two other boys grubstaked a party and they found good ore down below the Montgomery mine. So, we incorporated and a smart fellow from Chicago bought us out. He give us one hundred thousand in cash and five himdred thousand in promotion stock. My share of the cash come to twenty-eight five. I went over to Goldfield and lost it in Tex Rickard's place in two hours."
"And the promotion stock?"
Hombone grinned. He got up, went over and pushed the safe's door wide. He reached down and gathered up the loose papers in the bottom, carrying them back to toss on the desk before Chance.
Chance picked them up almost reverently. They were beautiful, printed in red and green and gold ink. Juno Mining Company. Each certificate was for one hundred thousand shares.
"Anyhow, I got the safe." Hombone patted it affectionately. "None of the other stockholders wanted to be bothered. It weighed too much to move easy."
He came back and sat down. "Glad to see you up and around. Doc's talked about you so much I feel I know you. What's on your mind?"
"Job."
Hombone shook his head. "I'd like to have you. From what Doc tells me you're heU on wheels when you get rolling, but it just ain't in the cards. I haven't got as much business as I had five years ago."
"Look, if this place was cleaned up, and had a different front and sign . . ."
"And what would I use for money?*' Chance didn't answer. He was very conscious that at the moment he had a single five-dollar bill in his pocket and that Doc had handed him that just before he left the ranch.
Hombone was watching him, his small eyes peering out from under the brush of gray eyebrows. "Maybe you'd like to buy me out? Doc says you had your own spot. A man who has once had his own place is never really happy working for another fellow."
Chance laughed. He pulled out the five-dollar bill and spread it carefully on the desk. "Will you seU for that?*' "You could get backing/' "Where?" "John Kern/'
They looked at each other for a long moment. Then Chance laughed again. "I met Kern once. He's been nice to us, let us have his place, but there's no reason for him to take us to raise."
Hombone drew out an old knife. He opened the blade, tested its razor edge on the hard callus of his thumb and then began to pare his nails, seeming entirely occupied by the operation.
"I've known John near fifty years. Knew him first as a pink-cheeked kid who rode a forty-doUar horse in from Montana. It was all he had and he's probably worth ten million today. I never knew him to do a favor for anyone without a reason, and I never knew him to say something without a reason. He come in here after he had been out talking to you. He said, 'That's a kid I like. When he gets up and aroimd, teU him to see me.'"
Chance thought about this in silence. He wondered just what was on Hombone's mind and guessed that he wouldn't find out by asking.
"Kern said you like the country." "That's right." "Want to stay?" "I do."
"Then you'd better buy me out."
Chance rose. He grinned faintly. "Would you take five hundred thousand shares of promotion stock?"
Hombone chuckled. He closed his knife and rose. "At least I'll buy a drink."
When he got home, Chance told Doc everything Hombone had said. Doc Ustened with no change of expression. Chance finished, "I don't get it. There's no reason for Kern to back me in a club and you know it."
"Unless he wants to."
"Why should he want to?"
"Maybe you should ask him."
"All right. You and I vidll drive up to Carson City and do just that."
Doc closed his eyes. "You don't need me along."
''What's that mean? Of course I need you. I'm not going into anything without you."
Doc sighed. Yes, Chance needed him, at least until he got on his feet. After that, Doc promised himself, he would pull out. He had had enough of Vegas, enough of Nevada.
Chance got up and went inside to the wall telephone. He put in a call for John Kern at Carson City. It took almost an hour to complete the call. Then he said, "This is Chance Elson. I was talking to Hombone this morning."
Over the phone Kern's voice sounded dry and impersonal. "Yes, Elson."
Chance thought, "I'm making a damn fool of myself. He hardly remembers who I am. Why the hell should he do this for me?"
Aloud he said, "Hombone suggested that maybe I should talk to you. I hate to bother you, but . . ."
"Ready to go to work?"
"That's right."
"Then why don't you come up and see me? I'm going over to the Fallon ranch for the week end. I'd be glad to have you come up and see the place."
"All right if I bring Doer
"Of course."
"How do I get there?"
Kern hesitated for a moment. "I'll tell you what. A friend of mine is in Vegas with his private plane. I'll call him and see if he can fly you up. Otherwise about the best way is to drive. I'll have him caU you." There was a cHck at the far end of the phone. Chance himg up slowly and went back to the porch.
Doc asked without opening his eyes, "What did he say?^ "A friend of his is going to fly us up from Vegas, and we're going to Fallon, not Carson City." "Where's FaUonr "Judy."
She answered him from the bam. "What'd you do with that map of Nevada?" She appeared. Her levis were splattered with white paint and she was wiping it from her hands on a dirty cloth. "Under the breadbox, in the Idtchen."
He found the map and unfolded it, went back to the porch and sat beside Doc. He fo^md that Fallon was about a hundred miles east of Reno. "At least we'll get to see some more of this country."
Doc was indifferent. "Who wants to? I've seen too much already."
Chance paid no attention. At nine the man with the plane called. His name was Ives, and he was very casual on the phone, as if it was nothing uncommon for him to fly strangers half across a state.
"Be at the airport tomorrow between nine and ten. We'll take off when we can."
Chance thoroughly enjoyed the ride. He had never before been up in a plane and he savored the experience. Ives did not talk. From time to time he consulted his maps, but mostly he flew contact, seeming to know every variation of the rugged ground beneath them. To Chance it had an awesome monotony of color, the wrinlding hide of a shr
iveling world.
Paradise Valley unrolled before them finally, sinrounded by sand, a green carpet of alfalfa checkerboarded into enormous fields by its irrigation ditches.
They came in over one of these ditches running down
from the big reservoirs, so low that Chance thought the wheels would catch on the concrete footing, and then rolled safely along the narrow runway toward the highway with its power hues.
The brakes checked the plane when it was less than a hundred feet from this highway. Ives turned it, taxiing back toward the small hangar. A mechanic appeared as they climbed out, and Ives asked him to phone the ranch for a car.
They waited beside the road, coats over their arms, the afternoon sun beating down upon them with an intenseness that was stupefying.
Doc grunted. "If hell is any worse than this I do feel sorry for the Devil."
Ives winked solemnly at Chance. "I should get a horse and ride him around the mountain. It's a hundred and twenty-five miles to the first line camp, no water in between."
The car came, a jeep driven by one of the hands. They went down the main street of the town and Chance was surprised that it looked nearly as large as Vegas.
He had no idea what Kern's ranch would look like. In his mind, he had a half-formed picture based on a movie he had once seen about the breeding farms of Kentucky.
But here were no white fences or rolling meadows. This was a hay ranch, eleven hundred acres of alfalfa, with huge shedlike barns to store the baled hay.
Kern insisted on showing them over the place. He had met them as they pulled up before the main house. The house wasn't very large, not much larger than the one in which they hved, with a wide screened porch and small, fairly dark rooms.
Kern drove the jeep. Doc would have loved to beg oflF, but could think of no excuse. Chance was thoroughly interested. "Before I came West, I thought Nevada was nothing but desert with a few Indians running around between the bushes. The place sure grows on you. How many acres are there in the ranch?"
Kern said, "Eleven himdred here in town; then there are
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