"Sometimes men would walk out and shoot themselves on the sidewalk in

front of the windows, and not a soul inside would so much as look up.

Well, Delano the first had a short life but a merry one. He couldn't keep

away from the tables himself, and first thing he knew he was broke, sold

up. He went back to the mines, but his luck had gone, and his wife--she

had followed him out here--persuaded him to go back home and live in the

old house, on a little income she had; and he bored all the neighbors to

death for a few years about 'early days in California' until he dropped

off. Her name was Mary Garnett.

"That's what put me on--the G. in the middle of the name of the man

Madame Delano married. I telegraphed to Holbrook Centre to find out what

his middle name was, and after that it was easy. I also found out that he

was born in California, and I guess that old wild life was in his blood.

He stood Holbrook Centre until he was sixteen, and then homed back and

took up the trade he just naturally had inherited.

"I figger out that he didn't tell his wife the truth when he married her

back there, not until he was on the train pretty close to S.F., and then

he told her because he couldn't help himself. She couldn't help herself,

either, and besides she was in love with him. He was a handsome,

distinguished lookin' chap, and he kept right on bein' a fascinator as

long as he lived.

"I guess that's the reason she left him in the end. She stood for the

gambling joint, and, although she had a cool sarcastic way with her that

kept the men who fell for her at a distance, she was a good decoy, and

she looked a regular queen at the head of the green table. She was chummy

with Jim's intimates, two of whom were D.V. Bimmer and 'Gene Bisbee, but

even 'Gene didn't dare take any liberties with her.

"It was natural that a woman brought up as she had been should have kept

her child out of it, and I figger that she got disgusted with Jim and

came to the full sense of her duty to the poor kid about the same time.

But she didn't go until Jim settled so much a month on her through old

Lawton--who used to amuse himself at Garnett's a good deal in those days,

and who was one of her best friends.




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