week ago from Laramie an' set up a new faro-bank?"

"No. What about him?"

"Wa'al, yer see he's a feller thet's got a lot of sand an' ain't afeared
of nobody, an' he's allowed to hev the deal to his place on the square
every time. Accordin' to my idee, gamblin's about the wust racket a
feller kin work, but it takes all sorts of men to make a world, an' ef
the boys is bound to hev a game, I calkilate they'd like to patronize
his bank. Thet's made the old crowd mighty mad, an' they're a-talkin'
about puttin' up a job of cheatin' on him an' then stringin' him up. Be
sides, I kind o' think there's some cussed jealousy on another lay as
comes in. Yer see the young feller--Cyrus Foster's his name--is sweet on
thet gal of Jeff Johnson's. Jeff wuz to Laramie before he come here, an'
Foster knowed Sally up thar. I allow he moved here to see her. Hello! Ef
thar they ain't a-comin' now."

Down a path leading from the town, past the railroad buildings, and well
on the prairie, Sinclair saw the girl walking with the "young feller."
He was talking earnestly to her, and her eyes were cast down. She looked
pretty and, in a way, graceful; and there was in her attire a noticeable
attempt at neatness, and a faint reminiscence of by-gone fashions. A
smile came to Sinclair's lips as he thought of a couple walking up Fifth
Avenue during his leave of absence not many months before, and of a
letter, many times read, lying at that moment in his breast-pocket.

"Papa's bark is worse than his bite," ran one of its sentences. "Of
course he does not like the idea of my leaving him and going away to
such dreadful and remote places as Denver and Omaha, and I don't know
what else; but he will not oppose me in the end, and when you come on