Page:The Female-Impersonators 1922 book scan.djvu/143

Rh disclose it. It was the alias he used in the Rialto and the only name I knew him by.

Buddie told me that he was born and brought up on a farm near Lake Ontario. His people were Methodists. He had always gone to Sunday school and Epworth league, because his parents required it. For he was a black sheep by birth—the only one in his little rural community. When nineteen, the seventeen-year daughter of a neighbor appeared with her parents before a justice of the peace. Buddie lived with his child-wife only three days and then stole away for parts unknown. What pangs the poor girl must have suffered thus to lose a genuine Adonis—in beauty one man out of a thousand—to the arms of the demimonde! She had doubtless been comforting herself and congratulating herself that she had won for life as her helpmeet the most bewitching young blood of the community. And after just three days to be forever left in the lurch!

"Buddie McDonald" immediately bobbed up in the Rialto under that alias. In the Rialto! At that time one of the two chief amusement and gambling centers of the Western Continent, the magnet for the black sheep of pious families all over the United States. He immediately adopted the profession of card sharper, being endowed with the peculiar mentality necessary.

While we were pals, he was twenty-two—just a year older than myself. From ten to midnight one evening each week, I dogged him in one of the half-dozen gambling joints among which he divided his "working" hours.