Reaching that city at about the time when the Palmer House was first opened, the two friends spent a week in a thoroughly lively manner. They found plenty of ways in which to spend their money, and they spent it with a freedom which was refreshing.
It was during this week that Ben one night went into a well-known sporting house, and there falling into conversation with one of the women, learned that Kitty had been to Cleveland. His own identity was unknown to the woman in question, and so she talked without reserve. In response to Ben’s inquiry as to whether she knew Kitty, she replied that she did to her sorrow. That this same Kitty had won from her the love of the only man whom she ever cared anything for, and that it would afford her infinite pleasure to scratch out this same Kitty’s eyes.
“Why,” she said, “the vixen has been in Cleveland living with my fellow there. She had three thousand dollars’ worth of diamonds with her, and she promised to give them all to him.”
“Oh, she did, did she?” rejoined Ben, a good deal interested in the narrative.
BEN MAKING THE DUCATS FLY IN CHICAGO.
“Yes,” continued the woman; “you see, she has a fellow in the oil regions, Ben Hogan—perhaps you’ve heard of him—who gives her all the money she can spend. And every little while she comes on to Cleveland, and has a time with my fellow, and of course this Ben Hogan doesn’t know anything about it!”
“Well, he must be a good deal of a fool,” observed Ben, with a quiet satire, which the woman could not understand.
The information thus obtained induced Ben to cut short his visit in Chicago and return to Pittsburg. There, it will be remembered, Kitty was still living in the house which Ben had provided for her, and upon the latter’s arrival he found so many lovers hovering about that it was really difficult to tell who was the master of the house. Hogan finally vindicated his right to this title by selling off the furniture, and afterward disposing of the house itself.
Meantime, Sweeney and Hogan gave an exhibition at Ames’s Varieties, and during the week of the performance, Tom Allen arrived in Pittsburg. With a number of his backers, he went into Wood’s saloon, and there began to talk about the Omaha fight. He did a good deal of tall bragging, and wound up by offering to fight Hogan the next week, for a purse of three thousand to two thousand dollars.