As the book begins, Tom has two fateful meetings, both involving love at first sight. The first is with a palomino horse, "a nervous animal, of golden aura", which he stumbles upon while coming down from opium at 4am. He's no horseman, and yet the animal calls to him as if from some foredoomed future: "The horse stilled herself utterly and fixed the lashes of the long stare on his and he was bound."
The second encounter is with Polly Gillespie, a newly arrived mail-order bride who walks into his photography studio with her God-obsessed stick of a husband, Long Anthony Harrington. As her picture is taken, the tip of her nose twitches, her eyes meet Tom's, and "his heart turned". From Polly's point of view: "That boy was looking at her so hard it was like he just discover eyes... and suddenly everything was chilly and there was a real weight to it." Before long, Tom and Polly have taken the palomino and are lighting out for San Francisco with a saddlepack full of stolen money. "And there she was with Tom Rourke hand in hand in terrible love in the dead of night and the forest deep looking up to the sky and all at once yessir absolutely they could see fires on the moon."
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