I sighed. ‘It doesn’t matter what we do. Money comes and goes.’ I shook my head. ‘It doesn’t matter and you know it doesn’t.

Where is your mother, Charlie asked. Dead. I’m sorry to hear that Thank you. But she was always dead.

You put a wage behind something, it gives the act a sort of respectability.

He only wished to fight and cultivate an anger toward me, thus alleviating his guilt, but I would not abet him in this.

This perhaps was what lay at the root of the hysteria surrounding what came to be known as the Gold Rush: Men desiring a feeling of fortune; the unlucky masses hoping to skin or borrow the luck of others, or the luck of a destination. A seductive notion, and one I thought to be wary of. To me, luck was something you either earned or invented through strength of character. You had to come by it honestly; you could not trick or bluff your way into it.

I lay in the dark thinking about the difficulties of family, how crazy and crooked the stories of a bloodline can be.

I sighed. ‘It doesn’t matter what we do. Money comes and goes.’ I shook my head. ‘It doesn’t matter and you know it doesn’t.