The tenderfoots

by Francis Lynde

“As I say, it’s up to us—or one of us; the room isn’t big enough for two.”

“Go over there and live with them, you mean?”

“That’s it. And since they were your friends before they were mine, you shall have the first chance at it. But if you don’t go, I shall. They need the money. Think it over, and we’ll thresh it out after I come back.”

For some time after Bromley had gone, Philip sat in his reading chair thrilling to his finger-tips. To live under the same roof with Jean; to be with her daily in the close intimacies of the home life; to be able to help her legitimately in the carrying of her heavy burden until the time should come when, his own filial duty discharged and the Trask name cleared, he might persuade her to shift the burden to his shoulders—to his and not to Harry Bromley’s.... There was only one fly in this precious pot of ointment: that saying of Jean’s scarcely an hour old: “I suppose I am like other women. When the time comes—if it ever does come—that I think enough of a man to marry him, I shan’t ask what he has been; only what he is and means to be.” Was she trying to tell him that Bromley was the man?

It was in that hour that the virtuous ego rose to its most self-satisfied height. Jean, wise in the hard school of adversity but innocent as a child in matters touching her soul’s welfare, should be made to see that she must not risk her future happiness by marrying any man who, however lovable, had once shown the weak thread in the fabric of his character and might show it again. It should be his task to make her see it; to convince her that her duty to herself and to her unborn children lay in quite a different direction.

In the levitating exhilaration of this thought the room suddenly became too close and confining to contain him, and he put on his coat and hat and descended to the street. Conscious only of an urge to keep moving, he began to walk aimlessly, through Curtis to Sixteenth Street, past the new opera house now nearing completion, and so on down toward Larimer.

It was in the final block that he saw something that jerked him down out of the clouds and set his feet upon the pavement of the baser realities. In the center of the block was one of the evidences of Denver’s “wide-openness”: a luxurious gambling palace running, like many others in the city of the moment, without let or hindrance from the police. Through the green baize swinging doors, as he was passing, Philip saw an entering figure and recognized it.

“Jim Garth!” he muttered, and hung upon his heel. He knew that Bromley had been “staking” the big miner from time to time, and had himself refused point blank to join in the contributions, arguing that it was not only good money thrown away, but that it was merely giving a man of ungoverned appetites the means of further degrading himself. But now, in an upsurge of righteous responsibility—the legitimate child of the thoughts he had been entertaining—he was moved to lay a restraining hand upon this weak-willed giant who had toiled with him and Bromley through the bitter winter in the Saguache. Before he realized exactly what he meant to do, or how he should go about it, he had pushed the swinging doors apart and was ascending the softly carpeted stair.

At the top of the stair he found a doorkeeper guard, but with a single appraising glance the man let him pass into the room beyond. For a moment he stood just inside the door, blinking and bewildered. The transition from the cool outdoor air and semi-darkness of the street to the brilliant light and smoke-drenched atmosphere of the crowded upper room dazed him. It was the first time he had ever set foot within a gambling “hell,” and it was some little time before he could force himself to begin a slow circuit of the room in search of Garth.

To the soul inspired by predetermined righteousness the scene was a blasting commentary on the depravity of human nature. The haggard, eager, lusting faces of some of the players contrasting with the blank immobility of others—the seasoned gamblers; the monotonous click of the chips as some nervous amateur ran them through his fingers; the skirling spin of the roulette balls followed by the rat-tat-tat as they came to rest in the red or black.... Philip saw and heard and hastened, with a feeling that if he should linger too long the fell madness of the place might somehow obtain a lodgment in his own brain. He must find Garth quickly and drag him out.