But the big fellow yanked him around yet again by the elbow and this time instead of the boot he had a gun in his hand. He wave the big old mean-looking .45-caliber revolver in Ittzy's face. "Well, gee whiz," Ittzy said, in mild complaint.

    The big fellow was breathing pretty hard, but he did try to keep his voice at a reasonable level. "I want to know what you're going to do about that boot," he said.

    "Well," Ittzy said helplessly, "just nothing, I guess."

    "You're asking for it."

    "I'd admire to finish this beer."

    The big fellow's big thumb curled over the hammer of the .45 and drew it back to full cock. "You're gonna get it!" he yelled, no longer trying to control his voice.

    Ittzy shrugged, and turned away to address himself once more to his beer. Everybody in the saloon was bolt still and silent. He wished the big fellow would go somewhere else. There was nothing Ittzy could do to help him out, which he'd already explained, so why didn't he just take his boot and his gun and hop off to pester somebody else for a while?

    But he didn't. Instead, he yelled at the top of his voice, "All right!" and yanked Ittzy around by his elbow for about the twentieth time. Then he fired that big .45 revolver point blank at Ittzy from two feet away.

    It was a terrible noise, up so close like that. Ittzy blinked, and the gent at the bar next to him said, "Uhh," and folded slowly forward, fading down onto the floor.

    Everybody looked at the gent on the floor. The fellow with the gun in his hand cocked his head to one side, as though listening to something he didn't understand, and said, "George? Not you, George, him. George?"

    There was a lot of ruckus in the bar. Ittzy frowned and picked up his beer to finish it, since he doubted he'd have much more time to sit here in quiet and contentment. That poor sport with the talking boot sure could louse up a man's afternoon off.

    The bar had gotten completely silent just before the shooting, but just after it everybody had started talking at once. Now all of a sudden everything was quiet again. Ittzy turned around to see what had happened, and another actor had entered the scene. It was a very tall skinny cop with bright red hair sticking out from under his bobby helmet; he had bustled into the Golden Rule and stopped just inside to appraise the situation.

    Ittzy was at the bar and the big fellow with the moustache was down on one knee saying, "George? George?" The smoking gun in his right fist was forgotten. Everybody else had crowded back away, leaving a little open space around them.

    The cop pushed his way through to the open circle. He was talking, wanting to know what was going on, who fired that shot, what happened.

    A dozen people started explaining things, all at the same time. And from the edges of the circle, other customers began to drift Ittzy-ward. In a city full of transients possessed by gold fever, a guaranteed good-luck charm could draw a bigger crowd than a shooting.

    They started to touch him. A hand would reach out of the crowd and pluck at his sleeve. Somebody's finger touched his cheek. Someone whispered, "You be my good luck charm too, huh Ittzy? Huh?"

    Ittzy concentrated, as best he could, on his beer.

    Somebody said, "Well at least George ain't dead. I guess he'll pull through. Get him right over to the nearest doctor, will you?" It sounded like the cop talking, but the crowd had jammed in around Ittzy and he couldn't see. Then the cop was saying, presumably to the big fellow, "You, there, you're under arrest for assault and disturbing the peace and attempted murder."

    "ITTZY!"

    Oh, no. He closed his eyes in misery. It was Mama's voice, you couldn't mistake that claxon.

    The two of them approached him at the same time from different directions, the tall red-haired cop and Mama. They reached him simultaneously, and the cop opened his mouth to speak. But Mama quick grabbed Itzzy's ear and pulled him off his stool. "Now," she yelled, "you come right home with me!"

    The cop said, "Hey. Wait a minute. I want to question this here witness."

    Mama turned and leveled her ferocious stare on the cop. "You want to see my boy Ittzy up close, Officer McCorkle, you come around my shop and pay twenty-five cents, the fourth part of a dollar, just like everbody else."

    "Oh, Mama," Ittzy said.

    Mama took a firmer grip on his ear and headed for the door.

CHAPTER SEVEN

    Gabe watched Ittzy's mother lead Ittzy toward the door. "Maybe I ought to go touch him too."

    Vangie said, "Why?"

    "If a fellow wants to be in New York and finds himself stuck in San Francisco, what kind of luck would you call that?"

    "Better than the fellow deserved," she said. "You finished eating?"

    Gabe looked at all his empty plates. Four of them. "I believe I am."

    The red-haired cop, McCorkle, was dragging the kicking and howling moustachioed guy out. Ittzy and his mother were gone. The crowd was separating into smaller excited knots of people, everybody talking at once. Vangie said, "I hope there's enough in that wallet to pay the bill for all this."

    It was something he hadn't thought to investigate. He fumbled the wallet open anxiously.

    It was all right. There were two five-dollar greenjackets in the wallet. He paid the supper tab and still had five dollars and fifty-five cents, of which minus-$4.45 belonged to him.

    This wouldn't do. He was going to have to get himself in motion; he couldn't spend the rest of his life living off this girl's ingenuity. "Let's get out of here."

    "Where to?"

    He was trying to think but it was no good. The heaps of food with which he'd filled himself had replenished most of what he'd lost on the river, but it didn't make him any more alert and wide-eyed. Seasickness took a lot out of you.

    "I need sleep before I can start making plans. Let's check out those hotel rooms of yours."

    "Right," Vangie said. Leaving the table, they threaded a path through the crowd and emerged onto the street.

    It was dark. A cold breeze swept past them, stirring tendrils of fog. Gaslights were encircled by vague misty halos and the people who went by were sinister moving shadows. Gabe shivered. "Which way?"

    "We'll try up here first."

    The climb made New York's Washington Heights seem like a molehill by comparison. What idiot had decided to put a would-be city on the side of a cliff? Out here in the West they just didn't know how to do anything right.

    "Where are you from anyway?"

    "You mean where was I born?" Vangie asked. "On Mission Street in a second-story flat across the street from the church."

    "Mission Street where?"

    She looked at him as they crossed an intersection. "What do you mean where? Right down there." She pointed down the hill behind them.

    "You mean you were born in San Francisco?"

    "Of course."

    He did some rapid arithmetic. Well, it was possible after all. The gold had been discovered in 1848; they must have started building this excuse for a city right after that. That was twenty-six years ago.

    "It isn't there any more," she said.

    He was beginning to puff from the climb. "What isn't?"