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I’ll go in and get us some supplies.”
    “You don’t have any money, do you?”
    Wyatt shook his head.
    “Then how?”
    Wyatt unfolded his lean body, stretched his arms over his head, and gave Mack that now familiar broad, warm smile. “Why, I’ll turn on some charm. I’ll just ask them for what we need. They’ll take pity on a couple of new Californians. I’m sure of it.”
    It was a few minutes before 8 A.M. as the old German with white side-whiskers trudged along the alley. He was tired, as played out as the dead and dusty hamlet half a mile from the American River. It had once been a boomtown, but first the placer mining had gone, and then in ’84 that damn judge had ruled that the hydraulic mining had to stop because blasting away hillsides with huge hoses poured debris and filth into the rivers and streams, killed fish, and spread poisoned silt on the farms of the Valley. What a damn crime. What good was settling on land if you couldn’t strip it of all the wealth Gott put there? Since when were trees and fish and water more important than property rights? Some of these Californians, they were crazy. That damn judge, especially. He was the final ruination of Good Luck, whose population had dwindled to 119. The German hung on, operating the only store, too exhausted to start over.
    A cat hissed at him from a refuse heap. The German yawned, then suddenly noticed a young, dark-haired man standing by the rear entrance of the store. He was one of the foulest, dirtiest specimens the storekeeper had ever seen.
    “ Ja , what it is you want?”
    “Need some supplies, sir. Soap, coffee, a tin pot, maybe some hardtack,” the stranger said. “You’ve got those, don’t you?” he added with a sunny smile that allayed the old man’s suspicions.
    “I got them if you got cash.”
    He’d scarcely uttered it when he found his pudgy neck clamped in the stranger’s left hand, and his head flung back against the plank wall. A knife with a five-inch blade hovered a quarter-inch from his Adam’s apple.
    “I don’t think I need a fucking penny. Not if you want to stay alive. Now turn around and unlock this fucking door or you’ll be washing that step with your blood.”
    Wyatt poured steaming coffee from the enamel pot he’d brought back. The American River rushed by with a purling sound, bright in the sunshine.
    “I tell you, you’re making a mistake heading to Frisco,” Wyatt said as he held out one of the tin cups.
    Mack tore the small crusty loaf of bread in half and exchanged a piece for the hot cup. “But there isn’t any other place in California that can touch it,” he said. “That’s why they call it the City, capital C. ”
    “Just the point,” Wyatt nodded. “Too many people there already. Got all the money they need, and they won’t want to share it with the likes of us. They’ll shut the damn door in your face, Mr. Macklin Chance. When they do, you come on down to Los Angeles and I’ll give you a job in the town I’m going to develop.”
    “But you don’t have any money to buy land,” Mack said, half teasing.
    Wyatt’s eyes caught the sun as his head snapped up, the blue changing to that disconcerting opal for a moment. “I’ll find it, the same way I found this food. There’s always a way if a man has his wits and a good story.”
    “What story did you tell the storekeeper?”
    Wyatt relaxed again. “A smart man doesn’t give away all his secrets.”
    Mack gnawed on the bread. “All right, suppose I travel down south someday. How will I find you?”
    “Just ask anyone around Los Angeles for the town with the big arch at the gate. I’ve already planned that in my head.” His slim hands, scrubbed white at last, described a graceful curve in the air. “You’ll see the name of the town—I haven’t figured that out yet—and then ‘The City of Health.’ That’s what I’m going to call it, The City of Health. Why do you think people are coming out here by the trainload?