on found myself all
bunged up with the worst dose of rheumatiz' you ever see. I had to get
down to a lower altitude, and made for Sacramento in the spring. I paid
the Mission a year in advance, and with less than a hundred dollars of
my own, struck out, hoping to dodge the twists that were in my bones.

"A hundred blind gaskets don't go far when you're sick, and the first
thing I knew I was dead broke; couldn't pay my board, couldn't buy
medicine, couldn't walk--nothing but think and suffer. I finally had to
go to a hospital. Not one of the old gang ever came to see me. Old Gun
was a dandy, when he was making--and spending--a couple hundred a month;
the rest of the time he was supposed to be dead.

"I might have died in the hospital, if fate hadn't decreed to send me
relief. It suddenly dawned upon me that I was getting far better
treatment than usual, had a special nurse, the best of food, flowers,
etc., all labeled 'From the Boys.'"

"I found out, after I was well enough to take a sun bath on the porch,
that a woman had sent all my luxuries, and that her purse had been
opened for my relief. I knew who it was at once, and was anxious to get
well and at work, so as not to live on one who was only too glad to do
everything for me.

"A six months' wrastle with the twisters leaves a fellow stiff-jointed
and oldish, and lying in bed takes the strength out of him. I took the
notion to get out and go to work, one day, and walked down to the
shops--I was carried back, chuck full of 'em again.

"The doctor said I must go to Ojo Caliente, away down south, if I was to
get well. John, if the Santa Fe road had 'a been for sale for a cent
then, I couldn't 'a bought a spike.

"At about the height of my ill-luck, I got a letter from Mabel
Verne--she had another name, but that don't matter--and she asked me
again to come to her; to have a home, and care and devotion. It wasn't a
love-sick letter, but it was one of them strong, tender, _fetching_
letters. It was unselfish, it asked very little of me, and offered a
good deal.

"I thought over it all night, and decided at last to go. What better was
I than this woman? Surely she was better educated, better bred. She had
made one mistake, I had made many. She had no friends on earth; I didn't
seem to have any, either. I hadn't had a letter from either of my
married sisters for six or eight years, then. We could trust one
another, and have an object in life in the education of the c