There we did not use the barn to sleep
in; each man had a bunk to himself in the bunk-house. The interior of
the bunk-house was decorated with several choice works of art, one
representing three young ladies, in abbreviated costumes, enjoying wine
and cigarettes; another showed several men lifting from the water the
nude form of a beautiful young woman who had committed suicide; while a
third was an exciting picture of a jealous woman, in a much torn
garment, holding a pistol to the head of her faithless lover. Some
pictures of Fitzsimmons, Jeffries, and Sharkey also adorned the walls.
Much time was spent in the evenings discussing the various merits and
demerits of the pugilists. I was often surprised at the able and
exhaustive manner in which they would handle the subject, and showed
some remarkable ability in treating of the qualities of the prize
fighting gentlemen. If the same amount of brain power had been turned in
other directions, how useful to their country those men might have
become. I do not wish to convey the idea that they were always handling
such great and momentous topics as the fighting qualities of those noted
gentlemen. Very often, by way of variation, they would talk of those
feminine types of beauty which appeared so conspicuously in the _Police
Gazette_ and the _Sporting Times_.

"It was astonishing the amount of information they displayed concerning
women, what retentive memories they had, and how very familiar they were
with the subject of woman, her ways, and her sex nature. Their mental
horizon was bounded on the north by the affairs of the ranch, on the
east by the boss and his domestic concerns, on the south by woman as
manifested by the various phases of her sexual nature, and on the west
by the gentry of the prize ring. Within these boundaries was their
mental world, their minds never reaching out and beyond these subjects.

"The reading matter on the table was the sensational weekly papers.

"I remember one Sunday to my surprise I saw one of the men reading a
book. On looking at the title, it read: 'The Life of Rattlesnake Pete,'
and another man had a book lying on his blankets, entitled 'The
Adventures of Coyote Bill.' Gambling was their favorite pastime. It was
one round of card playing nights and Sundays. When I first went to work
on the Lonsdale ranch, the boss put me to cutting oak wood. After I had
been at work awhile, he came along and told me that I did not hold the
handle of m