to the man that's bin a pal to my women folks
and the kids--and acted white all through! I said to Mame, 'I reckon HE
knows who I am, and that I kin be high-toned to them that's high-toned;
kin return shake for shake and shot for shot!' Aye! that's me! So I was
bound to come in like a gen'leman, sir, and here I am!"

He threw himself in an unproffered chair and stared at Breeze.

"I'm afraid," said Breeze dryly, "that, nevertheless, I never knew who
you were, and that even now I am ignorant whom I am addressing."

"That's just it," said the second man, with a querulous protest, which
did not, however, conceal his admiring vassalage to his friend; "that's
what I'm allus telling Jim. 'Jim,' I says, 'how is folks to know you're
the man that shot Kernel Baxter, and dropped three o' them Mariposa
Vigilants? They didn't see you do it! They just look at your fancy style
and them mustaches of yours, and allow ye might be death on the girls,
but they don't know ye! An' this man yere--he's a scribe in them
papers--writes what the boss editor tells him, and lives up yere on the
roof, 'longside yer wife and the children--what's he knowin' about YOU?'
Jim's all right enough," he continued, in easy confidence to Breeze,
"but he's too fresh 'bout himself."

Mr. James Bodine accepted this tribute and criticism of his henchman
with a complacent laugh, which was not, however, without a certain
contempt for the speaker and the man spoken to. His bold, selfish eyes
wandered round the room as if in search of some other amusement than his
companions offered.

"I reckon this is the room which that hound of a landlord, Rakes,
allowed he'd fix up for our poker club--the club that Dan Simmons and
me got up, with a few other sports. It was to be a slap-up affair, right
under the roof, where there was no chance of the police raiding us. But
the cur weakened when the Vigilants started out to make war on any game
a gen'leman might hev that wasn't in their gummy-bag, salt pork trade.
Well, it's gettin' a long time between drinks, gen'lemen, ain't it?" He
looked round him significantly.

Only the thought of the woman and her children in the next room, and
the shame that he believed she was enduring, enabled Breeze to keep his
temper or even a show of civility.

"I'm afraid," he said quietly, "that you'll find very little here to
remind you of the club--not even the whiskey; for I use the room only as
a bedroom, and as I am a workingman, and com