(Thanks for all the views and feedback on Chapter 1 everybody!)

Chapter 2

I could begin my story with a story about the beginning of my life-but I won't. All of that sort of writing has been done plenty of times before The War, and ever since Appomattox it seems that anyone who fought on either side feels obligated to tell long, drawn out tales about their origins, their parents, and their hometowns. I was born in Charleston as the world knows-but Charleston is not the world. And Charleston certainly doesn't explain my life or my relationship to Wade or his mother or anything else that might be important to understanding my side in all of this.

In truth, my behavior and my experiences cannot be truly defined by one place, one time period, or one particular group of people. I suppose I could take the easy route and offer up my time in Charleston, New Orleans, West Point, Nassau, Atlanta or San Francisco as justification for my efforts and misdeeds, but none of those places has anything to do with who I am or what I've done. I could start my story in any of those places and nothing would change: a shift in locale would not alter the conclusion. So instead of wallowing in my South Carolina boyhood or my well-documented years in Atlanta or my alleged wild times in New Orleans, I will simply begin my story in Panama City, Panama in 1849, on the hot, humid, rainy July afternoon when the world ended and my life as you know it truly, finally began.

"Three queens," I placed my cards face-up on the table and glared into the eyes of the big Texan sitting on the other side of the table. I don't remember much about that man now, but I do remember that he was older than my father, fat as a bear, and richer than Nahab thanks to a winning streak that had carried him through most of the morning. He was wearing a big hat and a big frown, and he hated the way I played cards. But that didn't rattle me because after twenty-one years on this earth I was quite used to being hated. "Looks like I've got you beat."

"I haven't even laid my cards down yet, stranger," he drawled, returning the violence in my stare with a hatred that burned straight through the heavy, thick tropical air surrounding us. We were playing stud poker in the backroom of a back alley sporting house, far from the smart streets and the beaches and the government buildings that made up that part of Panama in those days. I had come to Panama after I left Charleston because I was headed for California, and transiting the narrow, Central American isthmus was the quickest and cheapest way to venture to the Pacific Ocean in those days.

I'd had just enough savings for transportation from Charleston to California when I'd left South Carolina, but the Gold Rush had gathered speed and popularity every day during the spring and summer of 1849. And by the time I arrived in Panama, the old economic rules of supply and demand had astronomically raised the rates for the second half of my journey. I'd only planned on stopping in Panama for a week at most, but now circumstances had essentially turned me into a pauper, and I was waylaid there in that jungle purgatory until I could scrape together the money to buy a ticket for the bunk in the musty cargo hold of one of the barely-seaworthy ships that were headed toward the northern coast of California.

Other lads in my position would probably have either given up or gotten a job down at the docks, loading and unloading bananas and illegal goods and breaking their backs for their efforts. But I had a talent for card games and finding trouble, so instead of heading back home or becoming a Central American day-laborer, I decided to earn my way to California by playing poker.

It had seemed like a good idea at the time.

But now, as I sat at that tiny table in the gloomy room in the sticky weather and stared into the eyes of that bitter Texan, I wondered if I'd made a terrible mistake. I had won quite a bit in that game since I'd sat down, but winning didn't mean anything at all when you were dead.

And at that moment, at the end of that game of stud, I suddenly realized that I was only a few moments from a very ugly death.

"I've got two jacks," the big man on the other side of the table told me, his blue eyes gleaming with fury and violence even as sweat dripped down his brow. "I win."

"Two jacks don't beat three of a kind," I spoke up, defending myself even though I knew there was absolutely no point in reasoning with him. "Mathematically, poker is supposed to reward the player with the rarest statistical collection of cards, and-"

"I ain't playing by no mathematic rules," he said. "I'm using Texas rules."

"Texas rules?"

"Texas rules," he nodded and growled at me. "Texas rules are the best rules in the world."

"I've never heard of—"

"Don't argue with me, boy."

In one moment we'd been sitting at the table, the last two players left in a room that had once been filled with hopeful men from all over the world who'd had nothing in common but deep pockets, high hopes, and a total misunderstanding of statistics and the realities of stud poker. I'd quietly cleaned out every man who'd come into the room over the past 15 hours, and the Texan was the last man standing. We'd both gone all-in on that bet and I knew I'd won from the moment I'd received the queen of spades that would match the diamond-and-heart twin ladies that were already in my hand. In one moment I'd been calculating just how quickly I could collect my winnings and race down to the wharves and hop on the next boat out of that godforsaken former pirate town, but in the next—

He'd called me boy.

And then we were both on our feet with our pistols drawn and our eyes narrowing, the hatred between us hot enough to make the entire, humid room sizzle into a rolling boil. I'd sworn off gun-play when I'd left Charleston, not because I was particularly sickened by having killed that man in the duel on Lodge Alley, but because I had liked it a little bit too much. But now I aimed directly at the Texan's heart without hesitating, even as he foolishly pointed the barrel of his gun toward my forehead. Texan's were a rough blend of bravado and stupidity, and this man was no different, focusing the trajectory of his bullet on my head when any gunfighter worth his salt knew that a torso shot was as close to a sure thing as one could get in that particularly line of work.

He cocked his pistol and I cocked mine too, and after all these years I don't remember a goddamn thing about the man's face or the room surrounding us or even very much about the cards spread face-up on the table between us. But I do remember the ironically simultaneous click-roll-click our respective pistols made as we raised our wrists to a ready position, as we grinned at each other and prepared to blow each other to kingdom come. It's a sound I've heard more than I've cared to over the course of my life, but I didn't dread the noise in those days. It wasn't so much that I wanted to die, but I certainly wasn't afraid of death. And after everything I'd been through, death in a Panama brothel seemed as appropriate and likely as any other possible alternative. Particularly since—

"Hey Tom Ficklin, the Carlsbad's leaving in less than two hours," a low, sultry, southern female voice piped up at that moment, from the dark shadows surrounding the table. I didn't so much as breathe while I kept my weapon trained on his oversized, sweaty belly, but the other man blinked hard and gazed off to his right, toward the owner of the voice. Some of the tension went out of the room almost instantly, I suppose, but I was still angry and so alert that my scalp felt like it was pulled tight over my skull. "You've got enough in that pot to pay for a stateroom and a little extra for a nice hotel room when you get out to California. If you leave now you just might make it down to the docks in time to register."

"But this doggone kid—"

"He's just a kid, Ficklin," the woman said, her accent too sweet and too gooey, like honey that had been left in the sun too long. She came into the light and I recognized her as the same woman who'd been serving us drinks and meals for the run of the game. She looked a little younger than I was, but as she came toward the two of us I saw that she had the eyes of an old woman who'd seen it all. "He's a kid and he don't know about Texas rules. He don't know you won the game fair and square on account of your jacks, but I bet he knows now, don't you boy?"

"I don't—"

"I said you know better now, don't ya?"

Rage bubbled deep inside of me, mingling with confusion and hurt pride and frustration and a bunch of other emotions I couldn't quite classify. I'd won this card game fair and square, and I'd beat that big ugly Texan with nothing but my own smarts and wits, and it was outrageous for anyone to assume that I would agree to anything besides perhaps congratulations on a job well done. Yes, the Texan—Ficklin was his name, apparently—would probably kill me if I so much as touched the money, but as a Southerner I'd long ago realized that death was better than dishonor.

Wasn't it?

"I know better," I nodded and lowered my gun ever-so-slightly. I didn't know her any better than I knew him, but she apparently knew the Texan quite well. And if I'd had any money left, I would have bet it all on the notion that this wasn't the first time she'd seen the big, ugly man on the other side of the table pointing a gun at a scared, clueless kid. She was trying to save my life.

I didn't know why she thought I was worth saving, considering I hadn't even tipped her once when she'd delivered our drinks, but she did. And even in the midst of my rage I was still not dumb enough to gaze suspiciously at the back molars of a gift horse. I lowered my gun even though I wanted blood to show for my pains, lowered it because I knew it was the civilized option-and the only way for me to live and see another day.

"See, Ficklin?" She didn't look at me as she moved closer to the table and helped the Texan gather up the pile of crumpled banknotes and shillings and tarnished coins. She was on the short side and she had a tiny waist, a gap-toothed smile, and red hair that was a shade brighter than the ripest tomatoes I had ever seen. "He knows better now. He knows you've won."

They swept the money—my money—into the man's shoulder bag, the woman kissed him briefly on the cheek, and then he was gone. Their efforts couldn't have taken longer than thirty seconds, but as I stood there and watched the last, best hope for my fare to San Francisco exit the room, it felt as though time had slowed to a crawl.

"You've got to learn how to take a strategic loss, kid," the woman told me when the two of us were left alone in the otherwise empty, dark, hot room. "What would have happened to us if Ficklin had kilt you just now?"

"Us?"

"Me and Anderson."

"I thought his name was Ficklin?"

"I ain't talking about him."

"Then—"

"By us I meant me and Anderson," she paused and turned to me, and I realized in that moment that she was beautiful. She wasn't a lady—her English was too bad and she was wearing too much rouge and her skin was dusted a ridiculous shade of pale white—but she was beautiful anyway. Astonishingly beautiful as a matter of fact, in a way I didn't automatically understand at that young age—although, truth be told, it had been many years since I'd been able to claim innocence with a straight face. "Anderson Menteur, I meant, him and me. We run this place. The poker game. All of it. And if Ficklin had shot you the local police would have swooped down on this place so fast demanding bribes and pressing charges, we would have been bankrupt before dinner time."

"I see," I shifted uneasily on my feet then sat down in my seat, unsure of what else to do, unsure of anything at all. I squinted up at her, and she sat down in the chair to my left with her back to the door.

She smelled like fried chicken and whiskey and sweat, but she was glaringly attractive and bewitching nonetheless, all big blue eyes and bright red lips and smooth white skin. She looked like something out of a young boy's dream with her huge bosoms and tiny waist and dimpled smile and soft, friendly eyes; and I immediately glanced away because I wasn't a boy anymore.

Looking back I realize that I should have left the room right then. She was clearly a woman on the make-not a lady at all- and she was somehow explicitly offering favors even though she hadn't said a false word to me as yet. In the ensuing years I've wondered if my life would have turned out differently if I'd had the fortitude and energy to have picked myself up and left that room and trundled down to the docks like the other luckless losers who'd accidentally found themselves delayed in Panama City.

But I was tired. And she was attractive. And I was drunk and my body responded to her nearness and her appearance even before my mind warned me to keep my distance. I had spent the past three weeks racing south, racing away from everyone and everything I'd known back home in Charleston. I hadn't unburdened my soul to anyone since I'd left the United States, but now—

"My name's Belle," she told me, her voice soft and twangy and much warmer than the air around us. She had a southern accent, but I couldn't quite place it even though my mother's tutoring had given me quite an ear for dialects. I knew her speech pattern wasn't coastal, but other than that I was stumped. "Belle Watling. I'm from Memphis. Me and Anderson both, actually. We've been down here for about a year, running this poker game a few times a season."

I considered her statements for a moment; then I considered my possible range of responses for an even longer period of time. Something about Belle Watling seemed honest, but at the same time everything about our situation and our location made me want to conjure up an alias and supply a false story. I was torn between my truth and inventing an entirely new truth, and I hesitated as I tried to make up my mind.

"My name is—"

"Rhett Butler from Charleston," she grinned at me and I flushed with a variety of feelings I didn't like but couldn't quite dismiss. "I know your name and I know where you're from. And I know you've just blown your fare to California by losing that game to Ficklin just now. And I just might have a way for you to get some of that money back."

"How?"

"It won't be easy," she told me, her eyes sparkling as she jerked her head back toward the kitchen. "But if you're as smart and capable as they say you are-and willing to work with me and Anderson on something we've been cooking up-I think you'll be on your way to San Francisco in no time flat."