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Show 98 "What's your plan?" Tip put her hands on her skinny hips and looked me s t r a i g h t in the eye. "No plan y e t , " I said. "But," I lowered my voice, "there's gold here. In the streams, i n the h i l l s , in sawdust floors, in kitchen sinks. And I will find i t . And then I will l e a v e - laughing." I looked at my reflection in the plate-glass window of the Pioneer. "After I get a h a i r c u t , " I added, trying to get a closer look. I pressed my face up to the glass and looked right into a round red face puffing a cigar. Tip laughed. "So"-I turned around-"are you going to make a million with me, or do you want to go find your dance-hall friends2" "With you," Tip said. Tip and I stayed in Dawson City several days watching the carnival enacted out on Front Street: the spielers outside each doorway barking through megaphones the names of the dance-hall queens-Diamond Tooth Gertie, French Fanny; the prospectors shuffling in and out of those swinging doors as if hypnotized. Once we found ourselves on Paradise Alley, where ladies of the evening, sitting at their windows, winked and waved at us. But mostly, we stood around the gold recorder's office listening for information. |