Collis glanced over at Charles, but Charles was wearing a distinctly vacant face. From that, Collis surmised that Teach and Wintle were probably quite typical of San Francisco financiers, and that they were not entranced, as a rule, by daydreams. Too many innovators and too many eccentrics came to San Francisco with too many grandiose schemes, and too many thousands of dollars had already been lost in the financing of gas mantles that would never burn out, and automatic buttonhooks, and cargoes of unusual cheese. Until someone could show with surveys and graphs that a railroad could be laid through the Sierras, at least as far as Nevada, and that, once built, it would return some kind of sensible profit to its shareholders, finding support among San Francisco’s business community was going to be more than sticky. Collis understood their reticence. He was a gambling man himself. And despite his idyllic mental picture of a shiny railroad locomotive puffing and whistling its way through seas of waving wheat, bringing the cheers and huzzahs and tossed-up hats of settlers and farmers and factory builders, despite his vision of American plains that would soon be ploughed and harrowed and bustling with broccoli, and American hills that would be crowded as poppy fields with red-roofed farmhouses and Dutch barns, he wasn’t at all sure himself that a train could really make its way up and over the Sierras, up gradients as steep as slated church roofs, through snowdrifts that could bury a pioneers’ parade, trumpets, hats, bunting, pioneers, and all, without a trace, and he wasn’t at all sure that such a railroad could really make money, not instinctively sure. He didn’t yet have the experience or the skill to judge profitability by eye.

‘Do either of you gentlemen play cards?’ he asked, in a tone of voice that made it sound as if he hadn’t changed the subject at all.

‘I’m afraid not,’ said Wintle. ‘My family’s never held with gambling. We’re plain church people, if you can picture it.’

‘I’m not averse to a little gambling,’ said Teach. He tapped the counter for another drink.

Collis smiled. ‘That’s good. Maybe I can make you a bet.’

Charles grinned uncomfortably. ‘Collis has kind of a penchant for making wagers, don’t you, Collis? He bet Andy Hunt last night that the first fellow to walk into the Eagle would be wearing a chequered vest, and by heck the fellow was.’

Teach watched Collis suspiciously. His eyes were bulbous and hooded, like a frog’s. ‘Name your wager,’ he said in a quiet voice.