Chapter XXII (2)

I returned to Mr. Filmore’s office to leave a note with him for Parsons, and he told me all about K. The fellow is a thorough scamp and all his faults are aggravated by his smooth and oily hypocrisy. It is true he has a family here, as I mentioned yesterday, and that he maintains them in a show of comfort and respectability; but his wife is a broken-hearted, dispirited creature, whom he married at the muzzle of a frantic father’s gun. He drags her to church to keep up appearances; but that is all the respect or civility he shows her. When he was rich here, he kept a blonde angel of the demi-monde in swell style, with her carriage and all that, while his wife was left to stump around on foot, with an occasional excursion in company with the hired girl and the baby on the street-cars of a Sunday afternoon. Filmore says the wretch has ruined four or five poor girls in succession, who came to work in his office, and started them out on a sea of sin.

I hope Parsons has gone to Colorado, so that he may know just where his daughter is. I intended to give him my opinion of the matter very plainly, if I had found him.

You must keep a kindly eye on the poor child, Cy, and help her if you can. Roast that scoundrel and show up his rotten record and his swindling scheme, if he gives you half a chance to open on him. Jump him anyway, and don’t wait for a special provocation.

Filmore’s address--Stanley R. Filmore--is room 199 Marine Building, Chicago, and he will willingly supply you with facts enough from the man’s nefarious record to drive him out of Colorado with his swindling mining schemes. It ought to be done--of course only if the mine is a fake--for that sort of scamps and swindlers are the ones who are bringing mining propositions into disrepute in the East and making it almost impossible to raise money for legitimate enterprises. But I must close. Can you read this wild scrawl?

Yours,
FITZ-MAC.

VII.

CREEDE, COLO., April 13, ’93.

DEAR FITZ:--Your letter of the 9th, in which you hasten to undo what you did for Ketchum in the preceding letter, if it had no other purpose, was unnecessary. You can never make me believe that a man who eats mashed potatoes with a knife, dips his soup toward him and lets his trousers trail in the mud, has been brought up in respectable society. If anything more was needed to convince me that Ketchum was a shark, it was supplied by him when he told Wygant that he regarded “advertising as unprofessional and unnecessary.” The newspapers, he said, did more harm than good. Now, when you hear a man talk that way, you can gamble that he is working the shells and that his game won’t stand airing.

In speaking of the embarrassment of becoming very poor after having been very rich, you amuse me, by praying to be delivered from that awful condition. Rest easy, my good fellow. If you follow your chosen path, that of mixing literature with mining, you will doubtless be independently poor the balance of your days.

Well, Miss Parsons is here. She is boarding at the Albany. The Albany is all right. It is the best place in the gulch; but, of course, you never know who is going to occupy the next seat. Last night, at dinner, the Rev. Tom Uzzell, the city editor and Soapy sat at one table; a murderer, a gambler, a hand-painted skirt-dancer and a Catholic priest held another, while Miss Parsons, Billy Woods, the prize-fighter, English Harry and I, ate wild duck at a large table near the stove. I introduced Harry, who is an estimable young man, belonging to one of the best families in Denver, with the hope that Miss Parsons might have an opportunity to see the difference between a real gentleman and that social leper, Ketchum. After dinner I told Harry that I wanted him to make love to Miss Parsons.

“But, I don’t love her,” says he.

“No matter,” says I.

“It’s wicked,” says he.

“It’s right,” says I. “It will save her from a life of misery.”

“What’s the matter with you?” says he. “If it’s the proper thing to make love to a sweet young woman whom you don’t love, why don’t you do it?”

I told him that I was too busy--that I hadn’t any love that I was not using--that I had done my share in that line. Still he was serious; but finally promised to be a near relative, if he could not love her.

I think I shall open an agency for the protection of unprotected girls. I had luncheon at Upper Creede yesterday, and was shocked when Inez Boyd came in with fresh drug-store hair. Fitz, she is not so beautiful as Miss Parsons; but she is in greater danger, because she is not so strong, and has not had the advantage of early training as Miss Parsons has.

“Jimmie,” said I to the little devil this morning, “I want you to take a bundle of papers; go up the gulch until you come to the office of the Sure Thing Mining Company; go in and try to sell a paper. You may take an hour each day for this and loaf as long as you care to in the office, unless they kick you out.”

“Sure thing they’ll do that,” said Jimmie.

“Stop! Keep an eye on Mr. Ketchum, and tell me how many people are working in the office.”

Two hours later Jimmie came in with his pockets filled with silver. “Sold all my papers,” said he, as he fell over the coal scuttle. “Ketchum bought ’em all to get rid of me. Guess he wanted to talk to that girl he had in the office. Say, she’s a bute. Must got ’er in Denver; they don’t grow like that in dis gulch. They was a scrappin’ like married people when I went in, and he wanted to throw me out. Not on your life, I told him; I’m the devil on the _Chronicle_ and dat gang’ll burn you up if ye monkey wid me.”

“What were they quarreling about, Jimmie?”

“O, ’bout where she was to room, an’ he told her she could sleep in de private office; an’ you ort to see her then! Mama! but she did lock up his forms for him in short order. Then she said she’d go home; but she’d like to see the mine ’fore she worked fur stock. She’s no chump. Say, he aint got no mine.”

“You think not, Jimmie?” I said to encourage him.

“Naw. I went over to the Candle office and Lute Johnson’s goin’ to cremate ’em nex’ issue.”

I learned to-day that Ketchum had been accepting money from tenderfeet, promising to issue stock, as soon as the stock-books can be printed. I learn also that the Sure Thing Mining Company has no legal existence; that the Sure Thing claim belongs to Ketchum personally.

The camp continues to produce sorrow and silver at the regular ratio of sixteen to one. Old Hank Phelan, of St. Joe, died on the sidewalk in front of the Orleans Club last night. I showed my ignorance by asking a gang who stood round the dead man, at the coroner’s inquest, who the distinguished dead might be.

“Say, pardner,” said one of the sporty boys, “I reckon you don’t ever look in a paper. Don’t know Hank Phelan, as licked big Ed. Brown, terror of Oklahoma?” And they all went inside and left me to grope my way out of the dense ignorance that had settled about me.

Bob Ford and Joe Palmer, with a pair of forty-five’s, closed all the business houses and put the camp to bed at 9:30, one night last week. In an excited effort to escape, the New York _Sun_ man and the city editor broke into the dormitory of the Hotel Beebee, where the help slept, and two of the table girls who had been protecting against them, jumped out of a window into the river.

A man was killed by a woman in Upper Creede the other night.

The City Marshal, Captain Light, concluded that Red McCann was a menace to good government and so removed him. His funeral, which occurred last Sunday, was well attended. There was some talk next day by McCann’s friends. They even went so far as to hold an inquest; but Cap was well connected, being a brother-in-law to Sapolio, and he was spirited away.

The _Chronicle_ is not on a paying basis yet. The twelve hundred dollars has disappeared; and I have transferred my personal savings here to pay the printers. The schedule is the same and I am working for nothing. We have had a strike. Yesterday was a pay day and Freckled Jimmie, the devil, went out at 6 P. M. Jimmie had been with us through all these days of doubt and danger, and when he failed to show up this morning, I confess to a feeling of loneliness. Another boy dropped in to take Jimmie’s place; but he was not freckled and I doubted him. About 10 the new boy went to the post-office. He never came back. I remarked that it was not becoming in the editor of a great daily to sit and pine for a boy; and yet, I could not shake off that feeling of neglect that came to me in the early morning and stayed all day. We expected the devil to call upon us, looking to a compromise; but he failed to call. Along in the P. M.-ness, we sent a committee to wait upon Jimmie and ask him to visit the office. He came in, chewing a willow bough.

“Well, Jimmie,” I began, “How would it suit you to come back to work at a raise of a dollar a week?”

“Well,” said the striker, “I don’t kere ef I do or not; but ef you’ll let it lap back, over last week, I’ll go you. But mind, you don’t call me ‘Freck’ no more. My name’s Jimmie from now on, see?” Jimmie is working.

Hope I may be able to give you some good news in my next.

So-long,
CY WARMAN.

VIII.

TELEGRAM.

NEW YORK, April 13, 1892.

The young person’s paternal is here and in great luck again. He will wire funds to-day in your care, to make sure of not falling into wrong hands. Deliver message to person yourself, to avoid mistake. Look sharp. Letter by first mail explains all. Address Hoffman House.

FITZ-MAC.

IX.

HOFFMAN HOUSE,
NEW YORK, April 13.

DEAR WARMAN:--The most surprising thing in life is the number of surprises one encounters. Whom should I meet at breakfast here this morning, but Tom Parsons--no longer the broken and rejected man I have pictured to you, but flushed with success and swimming on top of Hope’s effulgent tide.

Some New York brokers who had known him in better days and who had confidence in his sagacity and nerve desiring to inaugurate a big grain deal in Chicago, sent for him to come and steer the game. He was as cool to their propositions as if he had had a million to put in, and demanded a good percentage of the profits. They agreed to his terms. He has stood behind the curtain here for three weeks, and in the name of a dealer here not supposed to be strong, has engineered the corner and led the Chicago fellows into the net. There was a great deal of money up, and the weak firm which the Chicago operators expected to cinch proved to be only a stool-pigeon, for a very strong syndicate.

They settled yesterday, and Tom’s share of the profits is a little over a hundred thousand. What a freak of fortune! Though outwardly perfectly cool, I could see that Parsons is deeply affected by this turn of the tide, which puts him on his feet again. It is nothing but gambling after all, and his mind is flushed and warped by the sudden success. He is full of great projects to capture millions again. No doubt the success of this deal gives him a big pull here, and he is such a bold and experienced operator that no one can say what may not happen. But this insatiate passion for high and reckless play has injured him, mentally and morally. He confessed to me after we went to his room, that he had not once thought of his family during the three weeks he has been here,--that is, not of their condition and their needs. Think of that, in the most tender of husbands, the most careful of fathers! I put his daughter’s position at him flat-footed; but it didn’t alarm him a bit. “I’ll trust that girl,” he said, “to take care of herself anywhere on top of earth or in the mines under the earth.”

“Would you trust her to work, live and lodge in the slums of Chicago or down here about Five Points in New York? Would you want to expose her to such an existence? Especially if she was likely to encounter in these places a few refined men of reckless habits, who would be sure to misunderstand her position and whose very sympathy would be her greatest danger? Well, that’s what Creede is, Tom,” said I, “if you just add the physical exposure of a mountain climate in a camp where the best house is no better than a shanty built of wet, unseasoned lumber.”

He promised me he would telegraph money to her to-day and advise her to go to her mother. He laughed at my fears about Ketchum’s designs, and said he would trust his girl against a dozen Ketchums; but he was not insensible to the danger that the scamp might bring scandal on her, and I worked him on that line till he promised to go right away and telegraph money to her. I gave him your address and he will send in your care, to prevent the possibility of his message falling into K’s hands. That is why I have just wired you. I can realize that, even in Creede, it will compromise the girl to have any connection with that Sure Thing outfit, and expose her character to suspicion. Before this reaches you, no doubt, she will have gone home, and I shall have no further occasion to write you about her; but still, if you have an idle hour, you may write me here and tell me how Ketchum is working his game. While I have no further anxiety about Miss P., I confess to a curiosity to know if the anxiety I did have was well grounded.

How are you getting on with the paper? Every one wants to hear about Creede here, and I believe you could get up a big subscription list in Wall street if you had a canvasser in the field. Everybody has the most exaggerated notions of the extent and richness of the camp, and the newspaper people are as wild as the rest. They have the most childish notions--I mean the common run of men only, of course--as to the condition of silver mining. Their idea of a bonanza is a place where pure silver is quarried out like building stone. You couldn’t possibly tell them any fake story of the richness of mines they wouldn’t believe. In fact, you can make them believe anything else easier than the truth. This fact hurts our business dreadfully, too, in the East and creates a prejudice against the use of silver as money. It also helps the mining sharps who are working frauds. I shall have a curiosity to see how you roast that snide scheme of Ketchum & Co. Don’t fail to send me the paper.

You may address me here for two weeks.

Affectionately yours,
FITZ-MAC.

X.

CREEDE, COLO., April 20, ’92.

DEAR FITZ:--Yes, the surprises in this life are surprising. We opened a couple of surprise packages here last night.

I was surprised the other day when Miss P. came into the office and asked my advice. Until lately she has endeavored to avoid me.

I think Harry has been watering my stock with the lady, and I am pleased to note that these young people occupy a table at the Albany that seats two. Last Sunday, I drifted into the tent where they hold sacred services; it is called the Tabernacle. Miss Parsons was performing on a little cottage organ, while Harry stood near her and sang, “There’s a Land that is Fairer than Day.”

Ah, yes, in the sweet by-and-by! Is there anything that holds so much for the trusting soul? In the sun-kissed over-yonder, there is rest for the weary. Always full and running over, there is no false bottom in the sweet by-and-by.

Hope springs eternal
In the human breast,
Faith to push the button--
God will do the rest.

I have begun to hope that Harry will love Miss Parsons. What he has done for her already has had a good effect. His society is better for her, just as the sunshine is better for the flowers than the atmosphere of a damp, dark cellar, where lizards creep o’er the sweating stones.

Plenty of fellows here would love her, but for their own amusement. Not so with Harry. He is as serious as though he were in reality an Englishman. Yesterday the young lady was very much worried over a note she had received, and she showed it to me. It ended thus:

Go, leave me in my misery,
And when thou art alone,
God grant that thou may’st pine for me,
As I for thee have pone.

It was signed “Harry,” and that’s what hurt her heart. I told her it was Tabor’s writing; that his first name was Harry, and she was glad.

As I write this, I look across the street to the barber-shop where Inez Boyd is having her hair cut short. Ye Gods! faded and then amputated! So will be her pure young life. Already the frost of sin has settled around her soul. Youth’s bloom has been blighted; her cheeks are hollow; her eyes have a vacant, far-away look. Her mind, mayhap, goes back to her happy home in Denver, where she used to kneel at night and say, “Now I lay me.”

She has left her place at the restaurant, and with her partner, that “break away” creature with the yellow hair, is living in a cottage, taking their meals at the Albany.

I must tell you now what Miss Parsons wanted advice about. She had very little to do in the office, and if she would act as cashier in the restaurant at meal time, two hours morning, noon and night, Mr. Sears would allow her ten dollars a week, and her board, or twenty dollars a week, in all. From 9 to 11, and 2 to 4, she could attend to Mr. Ketchum’s correspondence. There was still another job open. They wanted an operator across the street at the Western Union from 8 P. M. until 12, when the regular night man came on to take the _Chronicle_ press report. If she could take that, it would make her cash income twenty dollars above her board.

I asked her what she intended to do from midnight till morning. She smiled, good-naturedly, and said she thought she would have to sleep some, otherwise she would have asked for a job, folding papers.

I told her that it was all very proper if she could stand the long hours. She said she could always get an hour’s sleep after her midday meal, and in that way she would be able to hold it down for a while. I ventured to ask why she failed to reckon her “Sure Thing” salary when counting her cash income. “Oh,” she had forgotten. “Mr. Ketchum told her she would have to take her pay in stock.” I did not tell her how worthless that stock was, but I determined to have Mr. Ketchum attended to.

Yesterday a quiet caucus was held in the rear of Banigan’s saloon, at which a committee of seven was appointed to wait upon Mr. Ketchum and inquire into the affairs of the Sure Thing Mining and Milling Company, the statement having been made in the morning _Chronicle_ that the company had no legal existence.

Here come the surprises. In accordance with the arrangements made by the caucus at Banigan’s, the committee called last night at the office of the Sure Thing Mining Company and asked for Mr. Ketchum. That gentleman showed how little he knew of camp life, by ordering them from the room. The spokesman told him to sit down and be quiet. He would not be commanded to sit down in his own house, he said, as he jumped upon a table and began to orate on the freedom of America. At that moment one of the party, who is called “Mex” because he came from New Mexico, shied a rope across the room. It hovered around near the canvas ceiling for a second, then settled around the neck of the orator. “Come off the perch,” said Mex, as he gave the rope a pull and yanked the speculator from the table.

That did the business. After that the operator only begged that his life be spared.

“Now sir,” said the leader, “you will oblige us by answering every question put to you. If you tell the truth you may come out all right, if you lie you will be taking chances.”

“We are the executive committee of the Gamblers’ Protective Association and we are here to investigate your game. We recognize the right of the dealer to a liberal percentage, but we are opposed to sure thing men and sandbaggers.”

“Is the Sure Thing Mining Company incorporated under the laws of Colorado?”

“Well--it’s--un--”

“Stop sir,” said the leader. “These questions will be put to you so that you can answer yes or no. I will say further that the committee will know when you tell the truth, so there’s a hunch for you an’ you better play it, see?”

“Is the Sure Thing Mining Company incorporated?”

“No.”

“Is it true that you have taken money on account of stock to be issued?”

“Well,--I have.”

“Stop!”

“Yes sir, it is true.”

“Have you paid your stenographer?”

“Yes sir.”

“What in?”

“Stock.”

“How many claims do you own and what are they called, where located?”

“One--Sure Thing. Bachelor Mountain.”

“Shipped any ore?”

“No.”

“Any in sight?”

“No.”

“Ever have any assay?”

“No.”

“That’ll do.”

“Gentlemen,” said the leader, “You have heard the questions and answers, all in favor of hangin’ this fellow say ‘aye.’”

“Contrary ‘no.’”

Three to three; the vote is a tie. I will vote with the ‘noes’ we will not hang him.

“All in favor of turning him loose at the lower end of the Bad Lands say ‘aye.’”

“Carried, unanimously.”

“Mr. Ketchum, I congratulate you.”

All this took place in Upper Creede, and about the time the committee were escorting Ketchum down through the gulch, Kadish Bula, the superintendent of the Bachelor, rushed into the Western Union office and handed a dispatch to Miss Parsons, asking her to rush it.

After sending the message, Miss Parsons came to my office where Harry and I were enjoying a quiet chat, in which the two young women in whom I have become so interested, played an important part.

“I beg your pardon,” she said with a pretty blush when she opened the door. “I thought you were alone.”

Harry was about to leave when she asked him to remain.

With a graceful little jump she landed on the desk in front of me, and looking me straight in the face she said:

“I want to ask you a few questions and I want you to answer me truthfully.”

“Is the Sure Thing Mining Company any good?”

“No,” said I, and she never flinched.

“Is Ketchum’s location of the Sure Thing claim a valid one?”

“That I cannot answer, for I don’t know,” said I.

“Do you think Mr. Bula of the Bachelor would know?” was her next question.

We both agreed that he ought to be excellent authority on locations in general, and especially good in this case, as theirs was an adjoining property.

“How, and when, can a claim be relocated?” she asked with a steady look in my face.

I asked her to wait a moment, and I called Mr. Vaughan. I go to him for everything that I fail to find in the dictionary.

In a very few moments the expert explained to the young lady that a claim located in ’90 upon which no assessment work was done in ’91, was open for relocation in ’92.

That was exactly what she wanted to know, she said, as she shot out of the door and across the street to the telegraph office.

Before we had time to ask each other what she meant, a half dozen citizens walked through the open door.

“We have just returned from Wason, where we went with Ketchum,” said the leader.

“His game is dead crooked, and we told him to duck, and we want to ask about his typewriter, an’ see ’f she’s got any dough.”

I explained that Miss Parsons was across the street, working in the telegraph office.

“Miss Parsons,” said the leader as he entered the office, “we have just escorted your employer out of camp, and I reckon we put you out of a job; we want to square ourselves with you.”

“Oh, I’m all right,” she said, glad to know that they hadn’t hanged the poor devil. “I am working half time at the restaurant and until midnight here.”

Without saying a word, the leader held out his hand to one of the men who dropped a yellow coin into it, another did the same, and before she knew what it meant, the spokesman stacked seven tens upon her table, said good-night, and they left the room.

“Will you work for me for an hour or so,” said the girl as the night man entered the office. Of course he would, but he was disappointed. His life in the camp had been a lonely one till this beautiful woman came to work in the office. He had dropped in two hours ahead of time just to live in the sunshine of her presence.

“There’s a tip for you,” she said as she flipped the top ten from the stack of yellows in front of the operator, dropped the other six into her hand-bag and jumped out into the night.

“Here I am again,” she laughed as she opened my door. “I want you to put that in your safe till morning;” and she planked sixty dollars in gold, down on my desk.

“Bless you, Miss Parsons,” said I, “we don’t keep such a thing. We always owe the other fellow, but I’ll give it to Vaughan, he doesn’t drink.”

“I want you and Harry to go with me,” she said, “and ask no questions. Put on your overcoats, there are three good horses waiting at the door.”

In thirty minutes from that time, our horses were toiling up the Last Chance trail, and in an hour, we stood on the summit of Bachelor, eleven thousand feet above the sea.

The scene was wondrously beautiful. Below, adown the steep mountain-side, lay the long, dark trail leading to the gulch where the arc lights gleamed on the trachyte cliffs. Around a bend, in the valley, came a silvery stream--the broad and beautiful Rio Grande, its crystal ripples gleaming in the soft light of a midnight moon. Away to the east, above, beyond the smaller mountains, the marble crest of the Sangre de Christo stood up above the world.

Turning from this wondrous picture I saw the horses with their riders just entering a narrow trail that lay through an aspen grove in the direction of the Bachelor mine. Harry had secured a board from the Bachelor shaft-house and was driving a stake on the Sure Thing claim when I arrived.

“So this is what you are up to Miss Parsons,” said I, taking in the situation at a glance.

“Yes, sir,” she said, “I have written my name on that stake and I propose to put men to work to-morrow.”

It was just midnight when we reached the telegraph office, and Miss Parsons showed us the telegram which Mr. Bula had sent: it read:

“_John Herrick,
Denver Club, Denver_:

Got Amethyst vein. Sure Thing can be bought for one thousand, or can
relocate and fight them; belongs to Ketchum. Answer.”

“Well,” said Harry, “you’re all right.”

“Now,” said Miss Parsons, “I want to find Mr. Ketchum and give him a check for one thousand and get a bill of sale or something to show.”

We explained that Ketchum was at that time walking in the direction of Wagon Wheel Gap. Further, that unless she had that amount of money in the bank, she would be doing a serious thing to give a check.

“Ah, but I have,” she said with a smile, as she pulled a bank-book from her desk. “My father wired a thousand dollars to the Miners’ and Merchants’ Bank for me a few days ago; the telegram notifying me it was there, came in your care, and I must apologize for not having told you sooner, but I was afraid you might ask me to give up my place, if you learned how rich I was.”

“You are all right, Miss Parsons,” said I, “and I congratulate you--but there is no excuse for you wanting to give that scamp a thousand dollars.”

“Then I must ask another favor of you,” she said. “I want ten men to go to work on the Sure Thing to-morrow.”

At my request, Harry promised to have the men at work by nine o’clock, and as I write this I can hear the blasts and see the white smoke puffing from the Sure Thing claim. Just now I see Harry and the “Silver Queen” coming down the trail. They are riding this way; Harry is holding a piece of rock in his left hand; they are talking about it, and they both look very happy. Aye, verily, the surprises are surprising; hope springs eternal.

Good-by,
CY WARMAN.

XI.

HOFFMAN HOUSE,
NEW YORK, April 27, ’92.

MY DEAR CY:--Your last letter is a daisy. I read it with all the interest of a novel.

What a magic camp Creede must be, after all! It was manly in those vigilantes who hustled Ketchum out of camp so unceremoniously to treat our little friend, Polly, to so generously and so delicately--but it is characteristic of the West.

She is a courageous and capable girl isn’t she?--her quickness of wit in jumping that Sure Thing claim shows it.

I’m glad you like her, and I knew you would, if you got to know the quick and courageous spirit that is in her. She didn’t waste a day crying over spilt milk when her pap busted and all the ease and luxuries and adulations that surround a rich man’s daughter vanished from about her like dew before the sun, but just jumped in and went to learning how to earn her own living and help take care of the family.

Wouldn’t it be romantic, though, if that mine should really prove a bonanza!--I declare I get excited thinking about it. I suppose there is actually a chance that it may, since it is on the same vein--or is supposed to be--as the Amethyst mine. Wouldn’t that be too good! How lucky that she happened to be in the telegraph office when that dispatch was sent! And oh, say, you and Harry, ain’t you the dandy span to have such a pretty girl as Polly in your care--and put there by yours confidingly, don’t forget. No, don’t you _dare_ forget, for you would never have known Polly but for me, and Harry wouldn’t have got acquainted with her probably, but for you. It is lucky I happened to know your heart was already anchored, or I should never have introduced you.

So Harry refused to fall in love with her, did he, when you issued your orders? Well, I’ll bet you a horse and buggy he will fall in love with her before he is a month older, unless he is in love with some other girl, for Polly is one of the most interesting girls I have ever seen.

I don’t know Harry very well, but my impressions are, he is an unusually nice fellow. If he is only half as manly and smart as he looks, I shall put in the good word for him with Polly.

I can see from what you write, she likes him already--and likes you also, or she would never treat you both with such confidence. But she will lead Harry a dance before ever he captures her--you bet she will--for she has a touch of the coquette in her nature in spite, also, of the warmest and most loyal of hearts.

I hope he _will_ fall in love with her; it will do him good, even if nothing comes of it. A fellow whose nature is not morbid, is never any the worse off for loving a good little girl like Polly, even if she do not reciprocate. It may cost him some pain, but he will live it through, and no man’s nature ever expands to its full capacity till the fever of an honest passion gets into his blood--but you know how that is yourself, Cy.

I knew about her jumping the mine before your letter came--the bare fact only--for I have met Parsons here every day and he showed me a cipher dispatch from her telling him. It seems she knew his old cipher and used it. He translated it to me in the greatest admiration of her pluck and quickness. Probably she never would have done it if she hadn’t had you two fellows to stand by her. Bully boys! I know you are behaving all right, or she wouldn’t trust you.

You may tell Harry all I have told you about the dreadful straits in which her family have been, so that he will perfectly understand how she came to go down to Creede. I wouldn’t have him think cheaply of her for anything, for I have got it all fixed in my mind that he is to fall head over heels in love with her. I do not believe she has had a serious thought of any other fellow, for, though as a young Miss she was quite a favorite in Chicago, it is not likely she formed any serious attachments--any attachment that would stand the strain of poverty such as the Parsons have gone through in the last three years. Since she and her mother have been in Denver, I know they have refused to make acquaintances and have kept proudly to themselves. So I venture to guess the field is clear for Harry if he is lucky enough to interest her, and you are fairly safe in speaking the encouraging word to him. As I have said, it will do him good to get the fever in his blood, even if he should fail.

Like her father, Polly is very swift and decisive in her judgments of people, and very self-reliant. The girl has always been in love with her father, and Tom has always treated her more like a lover than a father. He is awfully proud of her, and he brags about her to me every time we meet. But he is anxious, nevertheless, about her being in that camp, and he is leaving to-night to join her, and I fancy he will bring her away. You may know how anxious he feels in spite of all his brag about her pluck and smartness and her ability to take care of herself, when he abandons the irons he has in the fire here, to go out and look after her. He admires the business spirit in her and upholds it, but still he is afraid that fighting her own way in such a rough place will make her coarse and unlovely.

Tell Harry to put his best foot forward and make his best impression on the old man, if you find him caring seriously for Polly, for she is likely to go a good deal according to her father’s fancy in the matter of a sweetheart. If he gets the old man’s heart, the battle for Polly is more than half won--that is, if she already likes him a little bit, which I am pretty sure from what you write she does. Of course, you will manage to let the old man know what a respectful admiration both you and Harry have had for Polly, and how, being very busy, _you_ have rather left it to your friend, Mr. English, a young gentleman of good judgment and responsible character and all that, to keep an eye on her interests and make himself serviceable in case she needed counsel, etc., etc.

But above all, make him think--both you and Harry--that his girl hasn’t really needed the protection of either of you, but has paddled her own canoe like a veteran. That will please him more than anything else, and it would irritate his pride a little to think you had been necessary to her.

You will get this probably before he arrives, for he will stop half a day in Denver to see his wife and boy; so be on your good behavior, both of you, and don’t shock him.

What you tell me about that poor girl from Denver--Inez, is that her name?--is distressing. Her first bleaching her hair and then cutting it off, shows plainly enough the course her young footsteps are taking. That sharp-faced, wiry little blonde she chums with has no doubt led her into evil ways. There is no company so dangerous for a girl as a bad woman. Couldn’t you take her aside and give her a talking to, and advise her to go home to her family? Take her up to one of the dance-halls some night, and show her the beer-soaked, painted hags that haunt these places to pick up the means of a wretched and precarious existence, and let her know that is where she will bring up, if she keeps on. But I suppose she is past talking to--past turning back.

Write me the latest news about Polly’s mine and how it is turning out, and how Harry and Polly are making it. I am deeply interested.

Yours,
FITZ-MAC.

XII.

CREEDE, Colo., May 9, 1892.

DEAR FITZ:--I have to tell you a sad story now.

Last Saturday I went to Denver, and as I entered the train at this place, I noticed some men bringing an invalid into the car. One of the men asked the porter to look after the sick girl in “lower two,” and I gathered from that that she was alone. I had section three, and as soon as the train pulled out I noticed that the sick person grew restless. We had been out less than thirty minutes when she began to roll and toss about, and talk as people do when sick with mountain fever.

When the Durango car, which was a buffet, was switched to our train at Alamosa, I went to the sick berth and asked the sufferer if she would like a cup of tea and some toast. She was very ill, but she seemed glad to have some one talk to her, and as she answered “yes,” almost in a whisper, she turned her poor, tired, tearful eyes to me, and with a little show of excitement that started her coughing, spoke my name. It was Inez Boyd. I should not have known her, but I had seen her after she had bleached her beautiful hair, and later when she was in the barber-shop. As the gold of sunset, that marked the end of a beautiful spring day, shone in through the car window, it fell upon her pale face, where a faint flush on her thin cheeks spoke of the fever within, and showed that the end of a life was near.

She took a swallow or two of the tea, looked at the toast and pushed it away. She had been ill for a week, she said, and had eaten nothing for two days. I did what little I could for her comfort, and when I went to say good-night, she held my hand; the tears, one after another, came from the deep, dark eyes, fell across the pale cheeks, and were lost in the ghastly yellow hair.

“Don’t think I weep because I am afraid of death,” she said. “I am so glad now, that I know that it’s all over, but I am sorry for mamma; it will kill her.”

I asked, and she gave me her address in Denver, and I promised to call.

When the train stopped at the gate of the beautiful city, she had called her home, some men came with an invalid chair, and when I saw them take her to a carriage I hurried on to my hotel.

That afternoon I called to ask after the girl. The windows were open, and I could see a few people standing about the room with bowed heads. Dr. O’Connor came down the little walk that lay from the door of a neat cottage to the street, and without recognizing me, closed the gate softly, turned his back to me and hurried away.

Inez Boyd was dead. God in His mercy, had called her away to save her from a life of sorrow, sin and shame, and He called her just in time.

In the “Two Voices,” Tennyson says:

“Whatever crazy sorrow saith,
No life that breathes with human breath
Has ever truly longed for death.”

I don’t believe it. There are times in life--in some lives, at least--when nothing is more desirable than death.

XIII.

CREEDE, COLO., May 13, 1892.

MY DEAR FITZ:--You ask me how the _Chronicle_ is doing. It is doing better than the editor. I have been reducing expenses on every hand, but since the state land sale, the boom has collapsed, so that from one hundred dollars a week, we have got up to where we lose three hundred a week, with a good prospect for an increase. The responsibility has grown so great, that I begin to feel like a Kansas farm, struggling to bear up under a second mortgage.

I have been elected assistant superintendent of the Sunday-school, umpired a prize-fight, been time-keeper at a ball game, have been elected to the common council from the Bad Lands by an overwhelming vote, but I have received no salary as editor of the _Chronicle_.

Tabor has written another note, and perpetrated some more poetry:

“Among these rose-bejeweled hills
Where bloom the fairest flowers
Where the echo from the mines and mills
This little vale with music fills,
We spent life’s gladdest hours.

“And still within this limpid stream
Where sports the speckled trout,
Her mirrored face doth glow and gleam;
’Twas here I grappled love’s young dream--
And here my light went out.”

Isn’t that enough to drive a young woman to cigarettes? Some girls it might, but it will never disturb Polly Parsons.

If I did not know Harry as I do, I should say he was learning to love Miss Parsons very rapidly, now that she is rich, but I will not do him that injustice. He has loved her all along, but the prospect of losing her is what makes him restless now. Men who have lived as long as you and I have, know how hard it is to ride by the side of a beautiful woman over these grand mountains on a May morning, without making love to her;

When the restless hand of Nature
Reaches out to shift the scene,
And the brooks begin to warble in the dell;
When the waking fields are fluffy
And the meadow-lands are green,
And the tassels on the trees begin to swell.

Ah, these are times that try men’s hearts; but poor Harry, he is so timid; why I should have called her down a month ago, if I had his hand.

She is too honest to encourage him if she doesn’t really care for him, but she must, she can’t help it, he is almost an ideal young man. Maybe that is where he falls down; I’ve heard it said that a man who is _too_ nice, is never popular with the ladies. Perhaps that is why you and I are pouring our own coffee to-day. Swinburne says--

“There is a bitterness in things too sweet.”

Polly’s father is here. He brought a Chicago capitalist with him, and the Sure Thing has been sold for sixty-one thousand dollars. I was sorry to learn of the sale, for it will take away from the camp one of the richest and rarest flowers that has ever adorned these hills.

Since the great fire, we have all moved to the Tortoni, on the border of the Bad Lands. The parlor is very small, and last night when Harry and the “Silver Queen,” as we call her now, were talking while I pretended to be reading a newspaper, I could not help hearing some of the things they said. Harry wanted her photograph, but she would not give it. She said she never gave her pictures to young men, under any circumstances. When she found a young man with whom she could trust her photo, she said she would give him the original. Harry said something very softly then; I did not hear what it was, but she said very plainly, very seriously, that she would let him know before she left.

“And you go to-morrow?” he asked, and it seemed to me that there were tears in his voice.

“Yes,” she said, with a sigh that hinted that she was not altogether glad to go. “Papa has bought the old place back again; we shall stop in Denver for mamma and my little brother, and then return to the dear old home where I have spent so many happy days--where I learned to lisp the prayers that I have never forgotten to say in this wicked camp; and I feel now that God has heard and answered me. It may seem almost wicked, but I am half sorry to leave this place; you have all been so kind to me; but it is best. Father will give you our address, and now, how soon may we expect you in Chicago?”

“How soon may I come?--next week--next year?”

“Not next year,” she said quickly; and although I was looking at my paper, I saw him raise her hand to his lips.

“And will you give me your photo then?” he asked.

“Yes,” she whispered, and I wanted to jump and yell, but I was afraid she might change her mind.

“I wish you would sing one song for me before you go,” said Harry, after they had been silent for some moments.

“What shall it be?”

“When other lips,” he answered.

“But there should be no other lips,” said the bright and charming woman.

“I know there should not, and I hope there may not, but sing it anyway and I will try to be strong and unafraid.”

As Miss Parsons went to the piano, I left the room, left them alone, and as I went out into the twilight, I heard the gentle notes as the light fingers wandered over the keys.

“When other lips and other hearts--”
Came drifting through the trees.
“In language whose excess imparts,”
Was borne upon the breeze.
Ah, hope is sweet and love is strong
And life’s a summer sea;
A woman’s soul is in her song;
“And you’ll remember me.”

Still rippling from her throbbing throat
With joy akin to pain,
There seemed a tear in every note,
A sob in every strain.
Soft as the twilight shadows creep
Across the listless lea,
The singer sang her love to sleep
With, “You’ll remember me.”

Truly yours,
CY WARMAN.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

The two chapters labelled IV. in The Silver Queen were published
in the original publication that way.

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.