ever mind about the reward. I'm goin' to handle this affair
just as if the' wasn't such a thing on earth as the Clarenden family."

"You make me tired," sez Bill; it allus was spurs to him to cut him out
of a secret. "You try to pertend 'at you're nothin' short of a world
power; but I bet you're just flim-flammin'."

"Nothin' 'at Happy Hawkins'd do would surprise me," sez Jessamie. "Now
that I've seen him in a dress suit, hob-nobbin' with the bun-tong, I'm
prepared for anything." She was a good feller all right.

Well, we chatted along a while, an' they told me that they wanted to
see Frisco an' the Yosemite Valley, an' then would head for Colonel
Scott's, where it'd be handy to drop over to the Diamond Dot at any
time.

"Well," sez I, "I'll write you some letters of introduction to a few o'
my friends here, an' mebbe after you've seen Frisco, all you'll want
will be rest--just plain, simple rest; less'n your ruggeder built than
me."

So sure enough I wrote 'em a parcel o' letters, pickin' out about the
most persistent spenders the town could show, an' it made me laugh when
I pictured Bill tryin' to lug home the list o' stuff they'd load him up
with. I packed up for the early, train, an' then as it wasn't worth
while to waste the handful o' minutes left o' that night, I got back
into my workin' togs an' went out for one last Turkish bath. I'm mighty
partial to Turkish baths, an' I wanted to let 'em know that I was
perfectly sober at least one night o' my visit.

It was gray dawn when I came out o' the buildin', an' even in Frisco
that's a shivery period. In spite of me holdin' all the good cards in
the deck, an' knowin' just about how I was goin' to play 'em, I was
lonely an' down-hearted there in the dawning. All I wanted was Barbie's
happiness, an' I was goin' to give it to her full measure an' nairy a
whimper: but if it could just have been my home-comin' instead of what
I was goin' to do, that would light up her world for her, I reckon I
could have FLOWN all the way back to the Diamond Dot.

I turned a corner an' came face to face on Piker. He was lookin'
downcast an' harried, an' I bought him a drink. He had told me where
Jim was, an' I didn't try to forget it. I sat down an' talked to him an
tried to soften his crust an' get him to agree to make a new try-out o'
life.

He finally got purty mellow an' told me some o' the steps down which he
had stumbled, an' how slippery the'd been when he'd tried to climb