Page:Once a Clown, Always a Clown.djvu/60

ONCE A CLOWN, ALWAYS A CLOWN hands and the bartenders folded theirs. We were given the most decorous silence and as I got well into the song, red-shirted miners began to wipe their eyes furtively and white-shirted gamblers to blink mistily. The vigorous applause at the close was heightened by the apologetic blowing of noses in red bandannas here and there. Such a response left me dumfounded and vaguely ill at ease.

The next morning Charles Wheatly, who took his morning's hike as Leadville did its eye opener, took me on a long walk out among the mines, which, in that rarefied air, had my tongue hanging out. We stopped at an outlying saloon and ordered two bottles of beer at fifty cents a bottle.

The bartender looked me over closely and asked, "Are you the fellow that sang that rocked-in-the-cradle song up at the Exchange last night?"

I defiantly declared that I was, wherewith he pushed the dollar back across the bar.

"Your money's counterfeit here, partner," he told me. "You treated us last night, now we treat."

Nor were Davenport and I permitted to spend a cent in Leadville while we stayed.