WHEN Jeffard left the theatre he went to his room; but not directly. He
made a detour of a few squares which took him down Sixteenth Street to
Larimer, and so on around to his lodging, which was in the neighborhood
of the St. James hotel.
After the manner of those whose goings and comings have reached the
accusative point, he took the trouble to assure himself that the
burning of a cigar in the open air was the excuse for the roundabout
walk; but the real reason showed its head for a moment or two when he
slackened his pace at one point in the circuit and glanced furtively up
at a row of carefully shaded windows in the second story of a building
on the opposite side of the street.
The lower part of the building was dark and deserted; but in the alley
there was a small hallway screened by a pair of swing doors with glass
eyes in them, and at the end of the hallway a carpeted stair leading up
to the lighted room above. It was to keep from climbing this stair that
Jeffard had gone to the theatre earlier in the evening.
Opposite the alley he stopped and made as if he would cross the street,
but the impulse seemed to expend itself in the moment of hesitation,
and he went on again, slowly, as one to whom dubiety has lent its
leaden-soled shoes. Reaching his room he lighted the gas and dropped
into a chair, his hands deep-buried in his pockets, and a look of
something like desperation in his eyes.
The suggestive outline of his Western experience sketched between the
acts of the opera for the young woman with the reassuring smile was
made up of half-truths, as such confidences are wont to be. It was true
that he had come to Colorado to seek his fortune, and that thus far
the quest had been bootless. But it was also true that he had begun by
persuading himself that he must first study his environment; and that
the curriculum which he had chosen was comprehensive, exhaustive, and
costly enough to speedily absorb the few thousand dollars which were to
have been his lure for success.
His walk in life hitherto had been decently irreproachable, hedged in
on either hand by such good habits as may be formed by the attrition
of a moral community; but since these were more the attributes of time
and place than of the man, and were unconsciously left behind in the
leave-takings, a species of insanity, known only to those who have
habitually worn the harness of self-restraint, had come upon him in the
new environment. At first it had been but a vagrant impulse, and as
such he had suffered it to put a bandage on the eyes of reason. Later,
when he would fain have removed the bandage, he found it tied in a hard
knot.
For the hundredth time within a month he was once more tugging at the
knot. To give himself the benefit of an object-lesson, he turned his
pockets inside out, throwing together a small heap of loose silver and
crumpled bank-notes on the table. After which he made a deliberate
accounting, smoothing the creases out of the bills, and building an
accurate little pillar with the coins. The exact sum ascertained, he
sat back and regarded the money reflectively.
"Ninety-five dollars and forty-five cents. That's what there is left
out of the nest-egg; and I've been here rather less than four months.
At that rate I've averaged, let me see"--he knitted his brows and made
an approximate calculation--"say, fifty dollars a day. Consequently,
the mill will run out of grist in less than two days, or it would if
the law of averages held good--which it doesn't, in this case. Taking
the last fortnight as a basis, I'm capitalized for just about one hour
longer."
He looked at his watch and got up wearily. "It's Kismet," he mused.
"I might as well take my hour now, and be done with it." Whereupon he
rolled the money into a compact little bundle, turned off the gas, and
felt his way down the dark stair to the street.
At the corner he ran against a stalwart young fellow, gloved and
overcoated, and carrying a valise.
"Why, hello, Jeffard, old man," said the traveler heartily, stopping to
shake hands. "Doing time on the street at midnight, as usual, aren't
you? When do you ever catch up on your sleep?"
Jeffard's laugh was perfunctory. "I don't have much to do but eat and
sleep," he replied. "Have you been somewhere?"
"Yes; just got down from the mine--train was late. Same old story with
you, I suppose? Haven't found the barrel of money rolling up hill yet?"
Jeffard shook his head.
"Jeff, you're an ass--that's what you are; a humpbacked burro of the
Saguache, at that! You come out here in the morning of a bad year with
a piece of sheepskin in your grip, and the Lord knows what little
pickings of civil engineering in your head, and camp down in Denver
expecting your lucky day to come along and slap you in the face. Why
don't you come up on the range and take hold with your hands?"
"Perhaps I'll have to before I get through," Jeffard admitted; and
then: "Don't abuse me to-night, Bartrow. I've about all I can carry."
The stalwart one put his free arm about his friend and swung him around
to the light.
"And that isn't the worst of it," he went on, ignoring Jeffard's
protest. "You've been monkeying with the fire and getting your fingers
burned; and, as a matter of course, making ducks and drakes of your
little stake. Drop it all, Jeffard, and come across to the St. James
and smoke a cigar with me."
"I can't to-night, Bartrow. I'm in a blue funk, and I've got to walk it
off."
"Blue nothing! You'll walk about two blocks, more or less, and then
you'll pull up a chair and proceed to burn your fingers some more. Oh,
I know the symptoms like a book."
Jeffard summoned his dignity, and found some few shreds and patches of
it left. "Bartrow, there is such a thing as overdrawing one's account
with a friend," he returned stiffly. "I don't want to quarrel with you.
Good-night."
Three minutes later the goggle-eyed swing doors opened and engulfed
him. At the top of the carpeted stair he met a hard-faced man who was
doubling a thick sheaf of bank-notes into portable shape. The outgoer
nodded, and tapped the roll significantly. "Go in and break 'em," he
rasped. "The bank's out o' luck to-night, and it's our rake-off. I win
all I can stand."
Jeffard pushed through another swing door and went to the faro-table.
Counting his money he dropped the odd change back into his pocket and
handed the bills to the banker.
"Ninety-five?" queried the man; and when Jeffard nodded, he pushed the
requisite number of blue, red, and white counters across the table.
Jeffard arranged them in a symmetrical row in front of him, and began
to play with the singleness of purpose which is the characteristic of
that particular form of dementia.
It was the old story with the usual variations. He lost, won, and then
lost again until he could reckon his counters by units. After which the
tide turned once more, and the roar of its flood dinned in his ears
like the drumming of a tornado in a forest. His capital grew by leaps
and bounds, doubling, trebling, and finally quadrupling the sum he had
handed the banker. Then his hands began to shake, and the man on his
right paused in his own play long enough to say, "Now's yer time to
cash in, pardner. Yer nerve's a-flickerin'."
The prudent advice fell upon deaf ears. Jeffard's soul was Berserk
in the fierce battle with chance, and he began placing the counters
upon certain of the inlaid cards before him, stopping only when he had
staked his last dollar. Five minutes afterward he was standing on the
sidewalk again, drawing in deep breaths of the keen morning air, and
wondering if it were only the possession of the thing called money that
kept one's head from buzzing ordinarily. In the midst of the unspoken
query the shuffling figure of a night tramp sidled up to him, and he
heard imperfectly the stereotyped appeal.
"Hungry, you say? Perhaps I'll be that, myself, before long. Here you
are."
The odd change jingled into the outstretched palm of the vagrant, and
for the first time in a fairly industrious life Jeffard knew what it
felt like to be quite without money.
"That is, I think I do, but I don't," he mused, walking slowly in the
direction of his room. "It isn't breakfast-time yet; and by the same
token, it isn't going to be for a good while. I believe I can sleep the
clock around, now that I've reached the bottom."