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on the hill a boardinghouse. It offered a bird’s-eye view of what was coming down below. Her daddy had built the house in 1851, and in the summers it was made a meeting grounds for the preachers of God’s good word. In ’75 he was named pastor at the new church in Welch. The rest of the family followed him there. Sallie did not.
    Her mother and father and sisters and brothers knew better than to try and persuade Sallie of anything, and so she had watched them go and then she had painted a sign that read:
    HOOD HOUSE
    SALLIE HOOD, PROPRIETOR
    50 CENTS PER DAY OR $3 PER WEEK
    She regarded the man across the dining table that morning and found him delightfully unordinary. She knew, in fact, on that very first Sunday morning, that if he could kiss decent, she would marry Al Baach. And so, after a second cup of coffee, she said, “I am going to come around the table and kiss you now.”
    He smiled.
    She got up and came around and kissed him on the mouth, and it was to her liking.
    He said, “The people here in southern West Virginia are the finest I have seen.”
    “Just wait till I cook you supper.”
    When Sallie made up her mind on something, it could not be unmade.
    The twice-a-year preacher came through at Thanksgiving. He wed them at the Marrying Rock at two in the morning. A candlelight service, no witness in earshot but the crickets.
    There were those who chattered about the couple, and Sallie’s family was among them, but from the start she was unenthralled with such talk. Those who would fault her love for a German Jew could go on and fault themselves silly. She had a boardinghouse to run.
    Inside a year, she had a baby boy to rear, and inside another two she had a second. Her third boy came in ’83. There were easy years and hard, and when Hood House had no vacancy, the boys lived over the saloon. Each boywas free and lively and sweet, and each was trouble. The first was Jake and the last was Sam. The middle one they named Abraham.

QUEENS FULL OF FOURS
    February 17, 1897
    It was Wednesday. Snow had stuck to the mountaintop but not the road. It was the day on which a game of stud poker commenced in Keystone that would last thirteen years. It wasn’t intended to last that long. It was intended instead to carry in the kind of money most couldn’t tote, and it would do so in a quiet fashion, for the game itself was the only of that day’s events not publicized by handbill in the growing town. You must see the lobby to believe it , the papers said. Grand Opening. Alhambra Hotel . It was Henry Trent’s most ambitious project to date, a three-story brick building with four columns in front. He’d built it on the southwest bank of Elkhorn Creek, where the monied folk had moved.
    Five men had been invited by courier to sit at the big stakes table. One of the five was Abe Baach, then seventeenyears of age. Having already cleaned the pockets of the men at his daddy’s saloon, he had a reputation. Most had quit calling him Pretty Boy Baach in favor of the Keystone Kid.
    The Kid whistled that stale February morning as he walked west on Bridge Street with his arm around his girl. Goldie Toothman whistled too, pressed against him tight for heat. She’d bought him a six-dollar gray overcoat for his birthday to match the stiff hat he wore. The coat was long, well-suited for Abe, who’d stretched to six foot two.
    They stopped halfway across the bridge, and though his pocketwatch told him he was nearing late, Abe said he needed to spit in the creek. It was superstitious ritual, but neither of them was taking chances. They regarded the water below, rolling black over broken stones. Along the banks, it was frozen. Brittle-edged and thin and the color of rust.
    “I’ll play quick and clean,” Abe said.
    “I know you will.” She put her hands inside his coat button spaces for warmth. She kissed him at the collarbone and told him, “Don’t cross Mr. Trent.” She whispered, “Keep your temper.”
    He locked his hands