I was drunk and barely twenty-one and Hart was playing cards with two other men in the Little Fanny Saloon. I'd seen him in there nearly every night but we'd never spoken a word to one another.Were it not for the gold at Sutter's Mill that January neither the Little Fanny nor the town for that matter would have had reason to exist. It certainly wasn't Mexico that drew the bulk of those pilgrims. But there was a narrows in the river there that made it a natural place for a ferry so an old roughneck named Gable had built one and manned it with his shotgun and a pair of well-trained dogs. Just a primitive barge-and-cable affair that you knew the river would swallow whole come flood time but for now it did what it was supposed to do and word had got around.I'd been there pretty nearly from its inception. I'd seen barrels of whiskey and billiard tables come in and fancy wear and ready-made clothing, card sharks and whores and trappers and tradesmen and miners pouring through each day. Within a month or so we had a makeshift saloon and whorehouse, a dry goods store and another saloon, a stable and a grocery.
