now—by God!—feels them reaching for him. They mean to tear him limb from limb with their curved fingers of thorn. They mean to drive him mad with their anguish.
That high rending sound? It’s only the train whistle.
Daniel shuts his eyes, and the black satin curtain falls again. But the blackness is so dizzying, his lids pop open at once. Now the landscape changes as he speeds toward his destination. The hills grow greener, studded with shrubs and sturdy trees. Abundant palms that are the rage in fashionable houses back East grow wild by the track bed. Flowering bushes shamelessly offer up pink and purple thunderheads, and huge, twisted succulents are so vibrant and filled with a peculiar presence that they seem like living creatures in some cunning disguise, waiting in ambush for the unwary. Waiting to pounce like pumas do.
Daniel feels the hand of destiny spinning him round like a Zoetrope. Does he only go through the motions of his life like a pathetic painted little figure? The tracks clack below him. The lunatic again, he’s rattling his cage. A great fate awaits him—he feels this in his heart—unlike anything he’s confronted before. Not in Saint Louis, not in London or Paris. Perhaps he will live, perhaps he will die in San Francisco. What does it matter, what does anything matter? We’re all just painted figures spun round by the hand of God.
Now grief wells up inside him, squeezing the frantic beat of his heart. Well, Mama died. People die. He saw three grandparents meet their Maker before he was ten. It was not as though family had never passed on before. Mama died in the late spring, in the fecund heart of incipient summer. A time he always thought of as a sick time--disease in the air, poison in the water, rotting food.
He should not have been surprised. His mother had been dying for a long time. But why did she wait for him? Why did she have to wait? He did not want to see her face, pale and beautiful as always. Her eyes—what she called her deep sea eyes—beseeching him. Her question, always her question, even on her deathbed, “Danny, haven’t I been good to you? Haven’t I always been good?” And his answer, always the same answer, “Yes, Mama. Of course, Mama. Of course you’ve always been good.”
He takes one more swallow of puma piss, swallowing his grief and rage. “Ish a shinch,” he says, handing the bottle back with as steady a hand as he can muster. A gentleman must observe the niceties of sharing a drink.
“Haw.” The old cowboy grins, showing broken brown teeth through his neglected whiskers. His invisible companion apparently adds a trenchant comment. Daniel himself can just about see the companion. Yes, there he is--a hand from the good old days, long dead and still lively in the old cowboy’s eyes.
“Thank you, shir. Mush oblished.” Daniel stands, the vertigo fading, his pulse slowing. A fine feeling of arousal courses through his veins. When his stomach settles down, his feelings turn to another part of his anatomy he has too often abused. By God, his heart.
There are ladies on the train. He vaguely recalls two fine ladies who boarded the Overland at dawn in Sacramento. How could he have ignored them for so long? What a cad! He should go pay his respects, find out if they’re bound for San Francisco, too, and, if so, what in heaven’s name is their address? The pilgrim seeks the comfort of fellow travelers, that is the natural way of the world, is it not? He staggers to the dining car, newly filled with the spirit of amorous adventure, tapping out a ciggie. Where are the ladies? Who are they?
Ah, there. They sit at a table set for tea. The small girl with a narrow mousy face, protruding eyes, and an overbite interests him not at all. She’s dressed in charcoal-gray leg-o’-mutton sleeves and a plain gored dress. She chatters and chirps in broad, ugly vowels. She is much too American for his taste and much too plain. No, her companion, an elegant lady—now she interests him. A high-cheeked face, rose-kissed skin, a lovely mouth with a full lower lip, huge soft eyes. Oh yes, she interests him. A startling streak of white accentuates her brown pompadour, but that doesn’t dissuade him. A lady getting on in her years? In her late twenties, perhaps? Yet still with the spark of her youthful passion, he can see