He got up and walked outside. I could hear his steps as he walked out about twenty feet from the door. Then he stood perfectly still. After that, his steps moved again. It was moonlight outside. Through the windows which weren’t covered with tin, I could see the moon casting black shadows beneath the digger pines and oaks. In the background the white piles of tailings caught and reflected the moonlight in a cold glitter that reminded me of the desert.
After a while Pete came back in and sat down. I looked at him for a minute, then took out my wallet, and took out three one-dollar bills.
He handed me back one of the dollar bills. “I only brought a pint,” he explained.
He took a bottle from his hip pocket and put it on the table while he got glasses. He poured some into each glass, then put the bottle back in his pocket.
It had a deep amber colour. I tasted it. It wasn’t at all bad.
“Good stuff,” I said.
“Thanks,” Pete said, modestly.
We sat there and drank and smoked. Pete told me stories of old mining camps, of lost mines in the desert, of claim-jumping, of feuds, and interspersed his conversation with comments about the old gold-dredging days.
Over the second glass, with my head feeling a little woozy, I said, “There’s some talk about a new dredging company coming in.”
Pete chuckled.