ou have, Colonel, to
find a game where I could lose money. I suppose maybe you made seegar
money out of that too?"

"A little, maybe. I only put in a little in the first place--two, three
hundred thousand dollars; not much. I was so in hopes I could lose some
money so as to sort of encourage me like, you know. But it's no use,
Curly!" And he sighs right heavy.

"You have my symperthy, Colonel," says I. "If ever you want any help,
so as to make the game more interesting, just let me set in and take
your hand for you--I'll guarantee on my record that I'll open your eyes
in ways how to lose money."

"All right, Curly," says he. "I'll ast you sometime and maybe copper
your bets. I always do that when my lawyer or my stockbroker gives me
any tips. It's the surest way in the world to make a killing in this
here, now, stock market.

"For instance, just the other day they told me down there to be shore
and buy a lot of Blue Mountain Steel, which certainly was backed by the
J. P. Morgan interests and was going to get a lot of war orders. So I
didn't--I bought Steel Boat Electric Common instead of that. I didn't
know anything about it, but somebody must of give them some war orders,
submarines of something. I notice our stock has rose around two hundred
per cent the last few weeks. I don't know why it is that things of been
going on this way," says he. "It bothers me a lot, Curly. Yet I only put
a few hundred thousand in that too.

"I'm setting aside two-thirds of all I make in this here city in the
kid's name, Curly," says he. "It's a five per cent trust for keeps. It's
getting to be something awful how much that fund of hers is! And, the
best I can do, I can't help its increasing right along. There don't
seem to be no way in which we can get broke and go back to honest work
again, such as raising cows--though making four calves grow where there
wasn't none in the sage brush before, that's really being useful in the
world, war or no war."

He set there for some time looking in the fire, serious, and he come
around again to the same old place.

"Curly," says he, "if there is any created critter on this human
footstool that I hate and despise, and that every he-man in the world
hates and despises, it's the man that'll marry a girl for her money.
Look at them dukes and things that come over here and marry our American
girls. I never shot a duke, but I will if one of 'em blows in here and
starts anything like that with our