Page:Caroline Lockhart--The Fighting Shepherdess.djvu/233

 a couple of travelin' photygraphers got snowed up here several year ago and I bought ten dollars' worth of old pictures off 'em for company. I got 'em all named, and it's real entertainin' settin' here evenin's makin' up yarns about 'em that's more'n half true, maybe — Mis' Taylor over to Happy Wigwam says I'm kind of a medium."

Glancing at his guest he observed that his eyes were fixed intently upon a photograph in the center and his expression was so peculiar that Bowers asked, curiously: "Ary friend o' yours in my gallery? "

" Not to say friend, exactly," was the dry answer, " but what-fer-a-yarn have you made up about that feller? "

" Well, sir," Bowers said whimsically, " I'm sorry to tell you but that feller had a bad endin'. He had every- thing done fur him, too — good raisin' and an education, but it was all wasted. That horse there was, as you might say, his undoin'. It was just fast enough to be beat every- whur he run him. But he kept on backin' him till it broke him — no, sir, he hadn't a dollar! Lost everything his Old Man left him and then took to drinkin'. His wife quit him and his only child died callin' for its father. After that he drunk harder than ever, and finally died in the asylum thinkin' he was Marcus Daly." He de- manded eagerly, " How clost have I come to it? "

"Knowin' what I know, it makes me creepy settirf here listenin'."

" Shoo 1 I ain't that good, am I ? " Bowers looked his pleasure at the tribute.

" Good? " ironically. " You oughta sew spangles on your shirt and wear ear-rings and git you a fortune-tellin' wagon. You're right about everything except that that horse never was beat while he owned him and he win about twenty thousand dollars on him, and that the last time I saw that feller he could buy sixteen outfits like this