And Thegna: “Don’t touch them. Loan her, for awhile.”
The cards were blank, warped as if they had been shuffled under water. The women held them at arm’s length and to one side — to catch the light from a barn lantern shadowed by the faces of those with whom they boarded, shade lifted crankily to the lighting of a pipe.
“Don’t you know Pa’s game?” asked one.
“They play it even out to Clare.”
“Let the lady study it,” said the cook. “She don’t know brag as well as you.”
“I told him,” pressing the cards face down against the table, “this place hasn’t even a road to reach it. And, my God,” leaning over them, “it’s not Nevada!”
But the sternwheeler rocked upstream. Camper’s wife heard the signal of the bells. The crystal glass palace, wide of beam, candles bursting in the darkness, plowed over snag and bar in the shadow of the dam. Smoke, and the music of an instrument strummed on the lower deck, filled the salon. From carboned chandeliers light fell on dirty cards and amidst the singing and dancing forward, the gentlemen, ordered not to wear boots to bed, with lace undone around their throats and black eyes flashing to the count of chips, created, among amateur and blackleg, a cold solemnity and harsh silence that would last the night. Wheels paddled sternward, only a few inches of night water separated the golden purse from the changing, uneven spine of the river bed.
“Sit down,” said the cook, “he played!”
Again Lou Camper heard the ringing on the river, smelled tobacco and glass tumblers of brandy. They moved slowly at the speed of the lagging current, showering sparks on the black water, peopling with shadow and linen revelers an enormous liquid dead land far from shore. Feet splashed, shoulders scraped warm peeling wood and suddenly, from the deck below, against the constant lull of gamblers, a voice called up clearly between cupped hands, laughing through low fog and unaware of danger.
“Oh, Lou, Lou, where’s he at now?”