, and made to give hostages to the
enemy. That is, as his letter disclosed, he was on the point of pegging
out with a complication of disorders that even whiskey had failed to
check. All that his thirty years of prospecting had netted him was one
daughter, nineteen years old, as per invoice, whom he was shipping East,
charges prepaid, for Jerome to clothe, feed, educate, comfort, and
cherish for the rest of her natural life or until matrimony should them
part.

Old Jerome was a board-walk. Everybody knows that the world is supported
by the shoulders of Atlas; and that Atlas stands on a rail-fence; and
that the rail-fence is built on a turtle's back. Now, the turtle has
to stand on something; and that is a board-walk made of men like old
Jerome.

I do not know whether immortality shall accrue to man; but if not so,
I would like to know when men like old Jerome get what is due them?

They met Nevada Warren at the station. She was a little girl, deeply
sunburned and wholesomely good-looking, with a manner that was frankly
unsophisticated, yet one that not even a cigar-drummer would intrude
upon without thinking twice. Looking at her, somehow you would expect
to see her in a short skirt and leather leggings, shooting glass balls
or taming mustangs. But in her plain white waist and black skirt she
sent you guessing again. With an easy exhibition of strength she swung
along a heavy valise, which the uniformed porters tried in vain to wrest
from her.

"I am sure we shall be the best of friends," said Barbara, pecking at
the firm, sunburned cheek.

"I hope so," said Nevada.

"Dear little niece," said old Jerome, "you are as welcome to my home as
if it were your father's own."

"Thanks," said Nevada.

"And I am going to call you 'cousin,'" said Gilbert, with his charming
smile.

"Take the valise, please," said Nevada. "It weighs a million pounds.
It's got samples from six of dad's old mines in it," she explained to
Barbara. "I calculate they'd assay about nine cents to the thousand
tons, but I promised him to bring them along."

II

It is a common custom to refer to the usual complication between one
man and two ladies, or one lady and two men, or a lady and a man and
a nobleman, or--well, any of those problems--as the triangle. But
they are never unqualified triangles. They are always isosceles--never
equilateral. So, upon the coming of Nevada Warren, she and Gilbert and
Barbara Ross lined up into such a fig