I STUDIED THE BEAUTIFUL Celestial lady who had abducted me. I was trying to figure out why any man would Play her False.

I said, “Did your fiancé call off the wedding because you have no feet?”

For the first time she showed an expression. She smiled. “Thank you for the compliment,” she said. “In fact I do have feet. I have the prettiest feet of any lady west of the Rockies. That is because they are the smallest.”

She extended one of her legs and now I could see that she did indeed have a tiny little foot at the bottom of that leg.

It still made me feel peculiar to look at them, so I took out my Detective Notebook and a stub of pencil that I always keep in the right-hand pocket of my buckskin trowsers.

“If your fiancé did not leave because of your feet, then what was his reason?”

She put her foot back down and said, “That is what I want you to find out.” She spat delicately into her dark-blue spittoon and said, “You might know that some of the men of this territory are having a big meeting down in Carson City. I believe that is where my fiancé has gone.”

I nodded. I had heard some of my newspaper friends talking about going down there. A body of men called the “Legislature” were trying to make Nevada Territory civilized.

I said, “A body of men called the Legislature are trying to make this Territory civilized.”

She pinched another pea-sized chaw of tobacco from a cotton pouch and nodded. “That is correct. I think my fiancé has gone down there to attend those meetings and I believe he is cheating on me. I want you to go to Carson City and shadow him and tell me if he is True or False.”

I said, “You want to know if he is sparking another woman?”

She said, “I want to know everything he does. Are you willing to go to Carson if I pay for your hotel room and give you two dollars a day?”

I was tempted. I thought, “I am not known in Carson City. If I take this job I might finally have some time to be on my own. I might have some time to sleep & start a new collection & read my Bible & breathe.”

She said, “I will pay for your transportation, too.”

A picture appeared in my mind’s eye. The picture showed me riding a horse through the empty sage-dotted desert with a big blue dome of sky above me. In my head-picture, the horse was the Buckskin mustang stabled up at the Flora Temple Livery Stable. I had been thinking a lot about that mustang. His name was Butternut & he had once been an Indian pony.

I said, “For two dollars a day plus a dollar a day expenses to cover the hire of a pony and a room at a nice hotel I will go to Carson and shadow your fiancé. What is his name?”

“He is a Mississippi gambler named Jason Francis Montgomery,” she said. “Only everybody calls him Poker Face Jace.”

My stomach did a cold flip, like a clammy frog jumping into a pond.

I said, “Your fiancé is Poker Face Jace?”

She said, “Have you heard of him?”

I kept my gaze fixed on my notebook. “Yes,” I said. “I have heard of him.”

Poker Face Jace was one of the reasons I was living in Virginia City. He was teaching me how to be a good Detective. He had told me how a person’s body can reveal what they are thinking. So far he had taught me about feet, legs, trunk and arms. I knew he had been going to Carson City but I thought it was because he was considering buying some property down there. He had never mentioned that he was engaged to a beautiful Celestial lady. Would he abandon me before he had finished my education?

Opal Blossom picked up a framed Carte de Visite from the table beside her & handed it to me. “He is a rich and handsome gentleman of about thirty-eight. This is what he looks like.”

Carte de Visite is French for “visiting card.” Some people call them CDVs. My next-door neighbor Isaiah Coffin makes such things. He has a special camera that takes eight pictures of you all exactly the same. Then he prints them on thin egg-white-coated paper & pastes them onto cards & cuts them up. They are about as tall as a playing card but not quite as wide. You are supposed to give them to friends & family. You can sometimes even buy CDVs of famous people you do not know. Ma Evangeline used to have one of Mr. Charles Dickens even though she had never met him.

This one showed Jace when his hair was thicker on top and not gray over the ears. He looked younger. Happier, too, even though he was not smiling.

I handed it back with trembling fingers. I observed that her hands were steady as she took it.

She said, “The more I know about who he is seeing and what he is doing, the better my chances of winning him back and keeping him here.”

I thought, “I would like to go to Carson so I can breathe a little & have some time on my own. But Jace is my friend. What he is teaching me is worth all the gold and silver in the Comstock. How can I shadow him?”

She said, “There is one more thing.”

I said, “Yes?”

She said, “I heard a rumor that he might be in danger down there.”

That decided me.

“When do you want me to leave?” I said.

“Tomorrow,” she said. “I want you to go first thing tomorrow.”