14
IT WAS ONE HELL of a day and one hell of a night, because when we made camp around sundown we didn’t have the Folsom posse headed, like I thought we would. They had us headed, because I could hear them talking to each other, off there in the hills, and there was no way we could pass them and get to the high country. That meant we had to double back by moonlight, cross the railroad and the river, and sneak away on the other side. But at last, just before dawn, we hit a clump of woods where we could lay up for the day, and at least it seemed like we might be safe. That was when she lay close to me, and said nothing for a while, like she was thinking, and then popped at me: “Roger.”
“Yes, Morina.”
“Why did you kill him?”
“I killed three of them.”
“Yes, but that last one. The one you didn’t have to kill. The one that kept saying he didn’t have any gun. The mail clerk.”
“He had seen us. He’d know us.”
“Is that the only reason?”
“When we come right down to it, we don’t know how much they know. The baggage man saw you, and probably the other mail clerk that stole our engine. But whether they know that you had anything to do with what was done, that we don’t know.”
“Yes we do.”
“Why take chances?”
“The baggage man knows all there is to know, and he wasn’t even on the car we stole. He was left behind. You didn’t have to kill that man.”
“At least, I thought I did.”
“Roger, you’re a liar.”
“If so, why?”
“You killed him for me.”
“If I did I wouldn’t admit it.”
“So we can have one more night, like that night in the mine, when we first found out what living could be like.”
“It’s morning.”
“Then one more morning.”
“Take your mouth away.”
“Kiss me. ... Kiss me again.”
A week later we had worked around Folsom, past Sonora, and up a river I figure to be the Stanislaus. The night of the first snow, day before yesterday, we bedded down in this charcoal-burner’s shack where I’m sitting here writing. She spent the night by the fire, sorting out all those jewels, then putting rings on every finger and every toe, pinning broaches in her hair and every place she could find to put one, then wrapping herself in the blankets with me. Every place I touched her something stuck me, but she just laughed and I had to laugh too it was so comical. Then in the morning she thought she heard dogs, and I went out to look. I got out my gun and crept to a rock where I could see the whole valley, and sure enough some men were circling around down there, on horses, with dogs baying.
But then a deer shot out of a thicket, and they were after him. I had been trembling, because I’d had the feeling we had a good head start and could make it, and I hated it, that they’d get us now, when we had practically won out. I relaxed, and started to climb down.
A twig cracked behind me. I wheeled and fired. And before I even saw her, my wife, my love, my life, was sinking down in the snow, a red velvet wrapper around her, diamonds and jewels all over her fingers and hair, and a little smile on her face before her head fell over.
I’ve been sitting here, all day and all night and all day again, writing it down. Writing down how it came about that a boy that went to St. Anne’s in Annapolis, and believed what he heard there, should turn into a traitor, a killer, and a thief. I don’t know why. Falling in love with Morina, that had something to do with it. But Virginia City had something to do with it too. Maybe they were wrong about the devil. Maybe he didn’t move out like they said he did. Maybe they just thought he did. Maybe he found a new way to conjure. Maybe he found if you give people everything they want, and nothing they ought to have, that’ll wind them up in hell, too. Anyhow, for me it’s all over. I could make Nevada, and the river, and Mexico, if I tried. But I can’t try. I’m at the end of the plank. Other dogs will be along soon, and they won’t be chasing deer. They’ll be after me. But when they get here, I’ll be out there with her, where she’s covered up from the birds and wolves, in the snow, with the gold piled up at my feet, and this story at my head.
Here they come.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1946 by James M. Cain. Renewed © 1973 by James M. Cain
Introduction copyright © 1984 by Thomas Chastain
cover design by Mimi Bark
978-1-4532-9166-5
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James M. Cain, Past All Dishonor
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