steps at Denver, and they've bet forty thousand dollars they could start
out without a cent and come back in twenty-two months with money in
their pocket--and ain't it a good joke?--with everybody along the way
entering into the spirit of it and passing them quarters and such, and
thank you very much for your two bits for the picture post card--and
they got another showing 'em in front of the Mormon Tabernacle at Salt
Lake City, if you'd like that, too--and thank you again--and now they'll
be off once more to the open road and the wild, free life. Not! Yes, two
or three good firm Nots. Having milked the town they'll be right down to
the dee-po with their silver changed to bills, waiting for No. 6 to come
along, and ho! for the open railroad and another town that will skin
pretty. I guess I've seen eight or ten of them boys in the last five
years, with their letters from mayors.

"But this here Wilfred Lennox had a new graft. He was the first I'd give
up to for mere poetry. He didn't have a single letter from a mayor, nor
even a picture card of himself standing with his hat off in front of
Pike's Peak--nothing but poetry. But, as I said, he was there with a
talk about pining for the open road and despising the cramped haunts of
men, and he had appealing eyes and all this flowing hair and necktie. So
I says to myself: 'All right, Wilfred, you win!' and put my purse back
in my bag and thought no more of it.

"Yet not so was it to be. Wilfred, working the best he could to make a
living doing nothing, pretty soon got to the office of Alonzo Price,
Choice Improved Real Estate and Price's Addition. Lon was out for the
moment, but who should be there waiting for him but his wife, Mrs.
Henrietta Templeton Price, recognized leader of our literary and
artistic set. Or I think they call it a 'group' or a 'coterie' or
something. Setting at Lon's desk she was, toying petulantly with horrid