Los Angeles was a big town and getting bigger. Outside the hotel room, the sound of cars, clang of streetcar bells, and clatter of horse-drawn vehicles produced an impressive amount of noise. Inside, across the card table he’d had set up, Fargo looked at Sandy Steele while he counted money.
“Dorsey didn’t get to spend any at all,” he said. “Chad threw away a lot. Roy only a few bucks. Clint paid Otero two thousand to sweeten the deal. There’s still roughly fifty-five thousand left.” He indicated the gleaming pile of gold pieces before them. “And a hell of a lot more at the French Lady.”
Sandy shuddered. “I don’t ever want to see the French Lady again. I don’t ever want to see desert or wilderness, or anything that will remind me of this nightmare. I want to spend the rest of my life in a city, any city, the bigger the better, somewhere where it’s safe ...”
Fargo looked at her. It had been four days since the fight at Mexicali. One of those had been spent in the custody of the Army. There had been talk about detaining Fargo and Sandy, of an investigation, of impounding the gold. Fargo had sent a telegram.
The answer had come almost immediately from Oyster Bay, New York. The major in command had read the signature incredulously. He had hardly laid the telegram aside when another arrived, this one from the War Department. The major had shrugged, shaken his head. Fargo had grinned. Even though he was out of office now, his old commander still drew a lot of water. When an ex-President of the United States intervened, the War Department listened.
And so they had been free to go; in fact had been driven to Los Angeles in an Army car. There, for the first time, Fargo saw Alexandra Steele in a dress. It brought out the beauty which not even the rough desert clothes she had always worn had hidden and which the ordeal she had endured had not erased.
Still, what had happened to her had left its scars. For two days, she would not let Fargo touch her. Last night, her mood had changed—but after it was over, she had cried in his arms for a long time. He could not fault her for that. What she had been through was more than most women could have survived: that she had come out of it with no more damage than this was a testament to her strength and courage.
He liked women with guts; he liked Sandy Steele. He had already made up his mind to stick around with her until she was all right again, until there was no more crying in the night. Now, though, he felt a touch of apprehension.
“You really mean that? About the cities?”
“I mean it,” she said forcefully.
“Then we’ll have to sell the French Lady claim. Shouldn’t be any trouble doing that. I figure we’ll ask a hundred and twenty-five thousand, probably settle for a hundred.”
She stared at him in awe? “That much? Plus all this? Fargo, we’ll be rich. We can live anywhere we want to—New York, Chicago ... somewhere in the East, where people lead decent lives.
Fargo laughed softly. “We?”
Her face changed. “Surely, after all this … You’ve had enough. You don’t want to go on fighting, killing, baking in the heat, freezing in the cold—” She put out a hand, took his. “Neal... I don’t have anybody left. I need you.”
“I’ll be around for a while.”
Something in his voice made her take her hand away. “A while?”
Fargo got up, went to the window, looked out. “Long enough to take care of the business, see you settled.” There were lights everywhere, so many people, so damned many people … “I’ll take my grubstake back plus thirty thousand dollars. You can have the rest...”
“But you’re entitled to—”
He turned. “No. No, I want money, but not too much of it. Not so much that I can’t spend it all, that it’ll tie me down.”
She was silent for a moment. Then she said, a little thickly: “You won’t be tied down for anything, will you? Or anyone?”
“No,” Fargo said. “You talk about going East, living in a city. Doing what? Getting up every morning, going down to an office, doing the same thing over and over in the same place, always safe, always living easy, like a pig in a pen? Hell’s fire, Sandy. That’s not living. That’s a way of dying.”
“This way,” she said, voice trembling, “you’ll die anyhow. Sooner or later. And—”
“Everybody does. Sooner or later. The dying’s not where the trick comes in, it’s the living.” He broke off, because he did not know how else to put it. “I just can’t live in towns,” he finished lamely. She just looked at him. He went to her.
“We’ll have a couple of weeks, anyhow,” he said. “Long enough for a spree.”
Then realizing what he’d said, he added: “A different kind of spree. This one without guns.”
She kept on looking at him. Then he saw the knowledge on her face that he was offering her all a man like him was able to; and as she arose and managed to smile, he saw her acceptance of that, her knowledge that not even she could change him; indeed, as she came into his arms, he was thinking that since he was already near the ocean, he might as well keep on heading West and see what Australia was really like.