They put that into Pete's head: told him it was easy to skip out. They knew better. But one man, named Cumberland, who had been done in a deal by George and done pretty badly, cheated, in fact, and outfaced, egged the boy on daily. Cumberland had all the desire to be "a bad man" without the pluck, or grit, or sand to be an imitation of one. But he never forgot.
In all the fume and roar of this short-lived Town it was easier to get money than to save it. Everything cost money, cost dollars; "two bits" was the least coin that went, and that's a quarter of a dollar. Pete had an Indian's thirst, and drank more than was good for him. If it hadn't been that the rush of work handling hay-bales, sacks of oats, maize, flour, mats of sugar, cases of dynamite, and tools and all the rest, sweated the alcohol out of him he would have got the sack promptly, the Grand Bounce. As it was he stayed, being really a worker, and as nice a boy to work alongside as one could wish.
"Pete's a clever boy for a Sitcum Siwash," said the Boss. For clever in the vernacular of the West means nice. They quite liked him, even though the real white men looked down on him, of course, as real Whites will on everyone who isn't White. But he had his tilikums even there, an Irish Mike who hadn't learned to look down on anyone and would have actually consorted with a nigger, and another half-breed, originally from Washington Territory and by his mother a D'wamish, or Tulalip, of the Salishan, but educated, so to speak. They both looked down on the Indians of the Lakes, who caught salmon and smelt wild and fishy, like a bear in the salmon-spawning season. Oh, yes, Pete had his friends. But no friend that was any good. For D'wamish Jack was a thick-headed fellow and the Micky always red-headed for revenge on everyone.
"I'll stick 'um," he used to say. He was going to stick everyone who disagreed with him. He had an upper lip almost as long as an American-Irish caricature. When he was drunk he moaned about Ireland and Pete's woes and his own.
With such partners in the hum of the Town it wasn't a wonder that Pete didn't accumulate the shekels, or pile in the dibs or the dollars, or the t'kope chikamin. He had as many cents to his name by the time it was high summer as when he came to the Landing. And then he struck a streak of luck, as he said, and as D'wamish Jack said and as the Mike said. He went one Sunday into a Faro lay-out, run by an exceedingly pleasant scoundrel from Arizona, who was known as Tucson Thompson. You will kindly pronounce Tucson as Tewson, and oblige.
There wasn't another such a man as Tucson in the Town, or the Wet Belt, or the Dry Belt, or all B.C. He was born to be a gambler and was really polite, so polite that it was impossible to believe he had ever killed anyone when you were with him and quite as impossible to doubt it when you went away and thought of him. He was nearly fifty, but as thin as a lath, he could talk like a phonograph, tell stories like an entertainer, and the few women in the town held the belief that he was exceedingly handsome. He wasn't, but he had a very handsome tongue. When he lost, if he did lose, he didn't seem to mind. When he won, he appeared to take the money with some regret. At the worst he did it as a pure matter of business: he gave you so many cards, and you gave him so many dollars. He said he ran a straight game. There wasn't a man in the Town equal to saying he didn't, and when one understands that no one is allowed to kill anyone else in British Columbia for saying he is a liar, it will be understood that there was more to Tucson Thompson that lay on the surface. He inspired respect, and required it with a politeness which was never urgent but never unsuccessful.
He had his lay-out in the back-room of the Shushwap House, where they sold "Good Pie," and said so outside in big letters.
It was there that Pete acquired what he looked on as a competency. It was two hundred and fifty dollars, a very magnificent sum. Whether Tucson really ran a straight game, or thought it was about time to give himself a great advertisement, cannot be said, but this time Tucson or the straight cards let Pete in for a mighty good thing, which turned out a bad thing, of course. The only point about it was that Tucson didn't get the cash back again, as he might very reasonably have expected, seeing that gamblers are gamblers, and that a Sitcum Siwash doesn't usually hang on to dollars till the eagles on them squeal in anguish.
And the reason of this was that someone from Kamloops, a storekeeper on the look out for business at the Landing, was in the gambling shanty when Pete raked in his pile. He slapped Pete on the back first of anyone and took him on one side.
"Say, Pete, old son, hev you heard about your sister?" he asked.