at happy
union being known, I believe, as "cattalo." Duncan calls him a
"promoter," but my earlier impression of him as a born gambler has
been confirmed by the report that he's interested in a lignite
briquetting company, that he's fathering a scheme, not only to raise
stock-yard reindeer in the sub-Arctics but also to grow karakule sheep
in the valleylands of the Coast, that he once sold mummy wheat at
forty dollars a bushel, and that in the old boom days he promoted no
less than three oil companies. And the time will come, Duncan avers,
when that man will be a millionaire.

As for "Slinkie," his wife, I can't be quite sure whether I like her
or not. I at least admire her audacity and her steel-trap quickness of
mind. She has a dead white skin, green eyes, and most wonderful hair,
hair the color of a well-polished copper samovar. She is an extremely
thin woman who affects sheathe skirts and rather reminds me of a
boa-constrictor. She always reeks of _Apres londre_ and uses a
lip-stick as freely before the world as an orchestra conductor uses a
baton or a street-sweeper a broom. She is nervous and sharp-tongued
and fearless and I thought, at first, that she was making a dead set
at my Duncan. But I can now see how she confronts all men with that
same dangerous note of intimacy. Her real name is Lois. She talks
about her convent days in Belgium, sings _risque_ songs in very bad
French, and smokes and drinks a great deal more than is good for her.
In Vancouver, when informed that she was waiting for a street-car on a
non-stop corner, she sat down between the tracks, with her back to the
approaching car. The motorman, of course, had to come to a
stop--whereupon she arose with dignity and stepped aboard. Duncan has
told me this story twice, and tends to consider Lois a really
wonderful character. I am a little afraid of her. She asked me the
other day how I liked Calgary. I responded, according to Hoyle, that
I liked the clear air and the clean streets and the Rockies looking so
companionably down over one's shoulder. Lois hooted as she tapped a
cigarette end against her hennaed thumb-nail.

"Just wait until the sand-storms, my dear!" she said as she struck a
match on her slipper-heel.

_Saturday the Second_

My old friend Gershom has very slyly written a _rondeau_ to me. I have
just found it enclosed in my _Golden Treasury_, which he handed back
to me that last night at Casa Grande. It's the first actual _ron