EMALINE WOKE TO A BITTER ACCOUNTING. WHILE Jake slept, she counted the few greasy bills she had and counted them again, as though counting would make them multiply. Before they left the farm, she had handed over to Jake almost all of her own butter and egg money as well as the money he had from the sale of the homestead. All she had left was thirteen dollars rolled in a stocking. Jake had the seventeen dollars the crooks had left him. They had nine hundred miles to go to Portland, gasoline cost twelve cents a gallon. With the heavy load it was towing, the Dodge was getting less than ten miles to a gallon. That left almost nothing for food, for the twenty-five cents a night campgrounds were charging for a little fresh water and a place to stretch their tarp, and for the inevitable emergencies and breakdowns.

Red sat beside her as she counted the money. He had heard them quarreling in the night, and he was quiet and anxious. She hugged the boy, but she had little to offer in the way of comfort. It seemed that with Jake McCloskey, there was always another disaster waiting around the bend. She was stunned almost beyond anger. She had not objected when Jake tucked the cash from the sale of the farm into his billfold, because she assumed he could protect their money with his fists. She forgot that he had always been gullible. He had been cleaned out once by Thelma Pearl because he was far too trusting. Now it had happened again, at the worst possible time. Grifters like this fellow counted on stupidity and greed. Jake had been foolish, but he had also been greedy, all too willing to believe that they would get back ten times or a hundred times their money if they invested in a preposterous lead mine in Nevada.

She thought of a hundred questions she would have asked had she been there. Why were these two potential mining millionaires stuck in a burg like Dubois, far from Carson City? Why did they have to seek out investors if the mine was such a sure thing? Why were they making cash deals in a drinking establishment? It seemed so obvious. But Jake had been a little drunk and this Maisie woman was a looker, she had to be. Emaline had seen the smear of lipstick on Jake’s mouth. Lookers were born knowing how to manipulate men like Jake. Thelma Pearl and Maisie were the same woman in different incarnations, both of them knowing exactly how to get what they wanted. Damn, damn, damn that man! What a blessed idiot!