e kind letters, though she never said
anything about my coming to see her."

By this time, they had reached the main road, and as Morgan seated
himself on a rock to finish his story, Houston followed his example.

"I made up my mind I wanted to see her, so I took what little money I
had saved up, about eighty dollars, and started for Denver. The last
letter I had from mother, she said she was running a house on a
certain street, and I supposed of course it was a boarding house. I
won't tell you her real name; Morgan wasn't her name, nor mine
neither, I took it afterwards, but I'll call her name Johnson. I got
to Denver, and happened to meet an old acquaintance of mine named Tim,
who took me to a fifth-class boarding and lodging house where he was
staying. Tim had only been in Denver a few days, and knew very little
of the city, but we found a crowd of old-timers at the house, and
after a while I asked for Mrs. Johnson who kept a boarding house on
such a street. The men all laughed and began to guy me; I got hot and
was going to sail into them, but Tim persuaded me to go out with him,
and we started in to paint the town.

"Well, we'd been out about two or three hours, when we came to a
dancing hall, the toughest we'd seen,--a regular dive,--and we went
in, bound to have some fun. The place was full of tough-looking subs,
and a lot of frouzy, dowdy girls, and what they lacked in good looks
they made up in paint and brass,--such brazen faces I never saw. Half
way down the hall was a big, fat woman, with her hair blondined, who
seemed to have charge of the place, and was giving orders to the man
behind the bar. They had some loud talk, and something in her voice
took my attention, and I looked at her; just then she turned 'round
facing me, and great God! it was my mother! I knew her in spite of the
blond hair and the paint, and she knew me. She gave one awful shriek,
and then fell in a dead faint, and when she came to half an hour
after, she went into hysterics, and screamed and raved and cried
nearly all night.

"I was so dazed, everything was going round and round, and I thought
the world was coming to an end; and it would have been better for me
if it had. The next day, she was able to see me, and I went to her
room, and I guess I must have staid three or four hours. She told me
then, that her husband was living, but that he quit her back in Iowa,
and that he claimed I was not his child. She cried and begged me to
s