LITMIR.BIZ

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Whitey ran amok in the Washoe Bar, threatening to kick the devil out of the big butter-and-sheep man who accused him of stacking the blackjack deck, which, as a matter of fact, he had done. Or—above all—the night at the Town House in First Street when the woman at the next table pointed to her drunk and enormously owlish companion completely absorbed in a Lobster Thermidor, and said proudly to her friends, “Do you know what he’s done?—He’s re-read Anthony Adverse!”

      That first night, however, was not so amusing as it was just simply difficult. It began when Judy refused to wear a jacket, and then had to send Dex Cromwell back up to her room to get it, while she introduced me as her sister out for a divorce to an old dragon in a cowboy hat who wrote gossip for some Eastern paper.

      “You can sue them for libel, dear, and buy yourself a new mink coat,” she explained airily.

      That mood didn’t last. The three of us—Dex Cromwell having returned—were sitting at a round table in a corner, eating luscious strips of Persian melon sprinkled with lime juice and white Bacardi, when I saw the muscles of Judy’s throat contract sharply.

      She put down her spoon and turned to Dex. “If your friend Kaye is dining with us,” she said, very quietly, “I’m going home.”

      Dex looked over his shoulder, a curious little flicker livening in his dark eyes. I followed his glance. Kaye Gorman, in a black chiffon evening gown that was positively French eighteenth century from the waist up, clinging around her elegant figure and swirling like a ballet skirt from the knees to the floor, a fox cape over her arm, stood at the arched door of the dining room, in sharp relief against the brilliantly lighted gaming tables and curving mahogany bar outside. Her bleached blonde hair and scarlet lips, the diamond bracelets on her white arm, the diamond clip at her dress against her milky white bosom, the scene behind her, made her seem quite suddenly symbolic of the whole picture . . . in the past when it was part of the richest mining spot in the world, in the present when the values were the same but the pattern so different.

      The man at her side, in cowboy clothes, might have been a miner in the old days . . . only then their positions would have been reversed; he would have had the money, she would have been the one on the make. I glanced at Judy. In her riding shirt open at the neck, with her sun-tanned skin and scarlet lips and high proud little head, she was the present only. The past had no part in her.

      “I tell you, if she comes here, I’m going,” she repeated calmly. Only a person who knew the depths behind those moss-gray eyes could have heard the passion under her voice.

      Dex Cromwell lifted her hand and gave it a quick playful kiss. She winced almost as if he had struck her.

      “Oh, don’t be stupid, darling!” he said lightly. “Don’t let everybody see you’re jealous! What do you care if she’s marrying your husband! You’re getting a divorce—be a sport!—Hi, Kaye. Hello, cowboy!”

      “Hello!” Kaye Gorman said. “Hello, Judy. Is there room for a rival and friend?”

      She laughed shortly.

      “You know Joe, don’t you, Dex—and Judy? And this is Mrs. Latham. This is Joe Lucas. He’s a real cowboy. Never’s been east of Denver.”

      “Or is it west of Chicago?” Dex said.

      Joe Lucas, who looked well-polished and shy and rather nice, grinned boyishly.

      “Ah never bin no’th of Salt Lake, anyhow,” he said, in as Georgia a drawl as I ever hope to hear. “How’re you, Mis’ Judy? Howdy, Miz’ Latham.”

      Judy sat there, her slim body rigid, her face perfectly expressionless, except for her eyes, black as coal.

      Just then, behind us, in a blue lace evening dress, appeared the dark-haired lush-looking girl I’d seen in white riding breeches and black boots at the twenty-one table in the Washoe Bar that afternoon.

      “Take your hat, cowboy?” she said. A smile dimpled in the corners of her red mouth.

      Joe Lucas reddened painfully as he gave up his hat. The girl reached for Kaye Gorman’s fox cape.

      “I’ll just keep that, Vicki,” Kaye said. “It looks cold around here.”

      The hat check girl winked at Dex Cromwell.

      “Not having trouble being too popular, are you, Mr. Cromwell?”

      I didn’t quite see how she managed to lean so close to him as she did. I hoped Judy didn’t see the neat little pinch he gave her leg, or the slow sidelong smile she returned for it. Or maybe I hoped she did.

      Kaye Gorman did.

      “Up to your old tricks, darling?” she inquired coolly. “Keep your head, Vicki. It takes money to keep Dex. You couldn’t do it on what you make.”

      Dex Cromwell grinned engagingly at her. His strong white teeth in his sun-bronzed face made him look like a toothpaste ad. As far as that went, I thought suddenly, his light wavy hair made him look like a shampoo ad, and his cigarette and white wool jacket and colored scarf (Bond Street, not Rodeo) made him look like a tobacco ad. In fact he looked like the complete answer to nearly any manufacturer’s prayer . . . as well as any lady’s.

      “She’s trying to get Judy into a scene,” I thought . . . with some apprehension. But Judy smiled serenely. “What’ll you have, Joe?”

      “Rye an’ coke for me, Mis’ Judy,” Joe said soberly. “Doin’ any ridin’ lately?” he added, with lovely tact. He turned to me. “She’s sure got a sweet seat on a horse, Miz’ Latham. You goin’ to ride while you’re here?”

      “Probably,” I said.

      Dex Cromwell had pushed back his chair.

      “Shall we dance, Judy?”

      “No thanks,” Judy said sweetly. “I must have sprained my ankle today.”

      Kaye Gorman flashed out of her chair. “Oh, this is more than I deserve!”

      She laughed her short laugh as she took Dex’s arm. I looked at Judy. She watched them float off with a queer twisted little smile. Then she put her napkin beside her plate.

      “How about a dance, Joe?” she said. “My ankle seems to be a lot better.”

      Joe grinned. “Ah could give him a horse that’ll break his neck, easy, Mis’ Judy,” he said. He got up clumsily. “Excuse us, Miz’ Latham?”

      I nodded. His big red hand looked strange on Judy’s white-shirted little back. I watched them a moment. They were amazingly good, she in her jodhpur boots and he in high-heeled Westerns. I turned back to my cocktail of small sweet Olympia oysters and ate a couple, glad of a moment’s peace, until suddenly I received a slap on the back that surprised me so much I was very glad it wasn’t a Lynnhaven I had in my mouth.

      It was my friend Whitey. He pulled a chair up to the table and flopped into it.

      “Gee, did I get a big boot out of that!” he exclaimed. His white eyelashes batted with enthusiasm.

      “Out of what?” I asked.

      He put his head in his hands and rocked crazily back and forth, in silent mirth, until I thought he’d lost his mind.

      “Out of Kaye dragging Joe over here with you folks,” he said at last. “She’s been out of it so long she don’t know Joe’s the guy which would like nothing better’n to slit Dexter’s gullet for him.”

      “Oh,” I said. “Why?”

      He winked at the hat check girl, Vicki, dancing with a loud, rather intoxicated and definitely apoplectic man in his early seventies, I’d say, and who’d already, so Whitey whispered to me a little later, lost four hundred dollars at the twenty-one table.

      “Vicki was Joe’s girl, till Dexter chiseled in.”

      “Who is Vicki,” I asked. “I mean, does she live here?”

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