“Jack Douglas, I mean. He has let his prospecting job down the river slide, and he is back in the camp again, and he has been back for a week, and been on the spree all the time.”
“How that chap has gone to the bad! I remember him when he was quite a decent fellow, and to-day I saw him with some of the biggest thieves in the camp—Jim Paliter, Ike Sloeman, and all that gang.”
“Mark my words, we shall see Jack Douglas run in for I.D.B. some of these fine days; he is going that way pretty quick,” another man said; and there was something in his tone and expression as he spoke which irritated Kitty into showing a good deal of feeling.
“Why do you talk about my friend Jack? I don’t have friends, only customers, and when they have spent their money and gone to grief there is an end of them so far as I am concerned. But he used to be your friend Jack once upon a time; why don’t some of you fellows try and give him a help instead of pointing at him, and saying he has gone to the bad?” she said.
“Oh, he is no good; he has gone too far to be helped,”—“It’s all his own fault,”—“He will never do any good here, he ought to clear out,” were the answers to Kitty’s suggestion. The men, though they talked slightingly enough of Jack, looked, one or two of them, half ashamed, for Jack had been a popular man on the Fields in the old days when he owned claims and was not badly off, and the men who discussed his fate so coolly had once been glad enough to be his friends.
“Clear out indeed! Where to? To the devil for all you care. That is so like you men; that is how you stick to a friend.”
“Listen to Kitty; why, she seems to be quite sweet on Jack Douglas. Look out, Kitty, he would not be a good partner in the business; why, he’d precious soon drink up the profits,” said a little Jew who had been listening to the conversation though no one had been speaking to him.
An angry flush came across Kitty’s face. For once, she could not think of a neat retort, and she answered, showing that she was hurt. “Look here, Mr Moses or Abrams, or whatever your name is, suppose you keep your advice till it’s asked for. I never spoke to you when I talked about people helping Jack; no one expects one of your sort to help a man, and Jack would not care to take any help from you.”
“Don’t know about not wanting my help; he is glad enough to be helped by some very queer people,” said the little Jew as he walked out of the place, grumbling out something about never coming in again.
“Douglas may be a fool, and he may have gone to the bad, but I hate to hear a little cad like that sneering at him,” said Kitty; and then feeling that she had perhaps made rather a fool of herself she changed the conversation, and in a minute was laughing at some rather pointless story, chaffing another man about some joke there was against him, and seeming to be in the wildest spirits.