Half resentful, half frightened, Nucky obeyed. For a while, with nerves and over-tired muscles twitching, he lay watching the fire. Then he fell asleep.
It was about midnight when he awoke. He had kicked the blankets off and was cold. The fire was out but the full moon sailed high over the gorge. Frank, rolled in his blankets, his feet to the dead fire, slept noisily. Nucky sat up and pulled his blankets over him, but he did not lie down again. He sat staring at the wonder of the Canyon. For a long half hour he was motionless save for the occasional moistening of his lips and turning of his head as he followed the unbelievable contour of the distant silvered peaks. Then of a sudden he jumped from his bed and, stooping over Frank, shook him violently.
"Wake up!" he cried. "Wake up! I gotta tell somebody or the Canyon'll drive me crazy. I'll tell you why I'm bad. It's because my mother was bad before me. She was Luigi's mistress. She was a bad lot. It was born in me."
Frank sat up, instantly on the alert. "How old were you when she died?" he demanded.
"Shucks! you don't know anything about it, then! Who told you she was bad?"
"Maybe he did and maybe he didn't. At any rate, I wouldn't take the oath on his deathbed of a fellow who ran a joint like Luigi's and taught a kid what he's taught you. He told you that, of course, to keep a hold on you."
"But she lived with him. I remember that myself."
"I can't help that. I'll bet you my next year's pay, she wasn't your mother!"
"Not my mother?" Nucky drew himself up with a long breath. "Certainly she was my mother."
Frank uncovered some embers from the ashes and threw on wood. "I'll bet she wasn't your mother," he repeated firmly. "Seaton told me that that policeman friend of yours said she might and might not be your mother. Seaton and the policeman both think she wasn't, and I'm with 'em."
"But why? Why?" cried Nucky in an agony of impatience.
"For the simple reason that a fellow with a face like your's doesn't have a bad mother."
In the light of the leaping flames Nucky's face fell. "Aw, what you giving us! Sob stuff?"
"I'm telling you something that's as true as God. You can't see Him or talk to Him, but you know He made this Canyon, don't you?"