"Have you got much to do with him?" asked one of the cowboys.
"I never saw him," Tom hastened to say. "I got his name from a Mr. Bolton, who gave me a very valuable pin to return to him. He got into a fight once and had some diamonds torn out of it."
"Yes, Dan has been in a good many fights," said the sick man. "He aint the fellow he used to be."
"I—I hope he didn't get the worst of any of them."
"Well—yes. He rather got the worst of the last fight he was in. He got into a row with three fellows,—cowboys, I knew them well,—and although he managed to get away with all of them, one shot him through the arm above the elbow, and it had to be taken off."
"Amputated?" said Tom.
"Yes, I suppose that's what you call it. Then Dan took to drink and lost everything he had."
"Why should the loss of his arm send him to drink?"
"He couldn't shuffle the cards any more. He doesn't do anything now but get drunk in the morning and then crawl into some hole and sleep it off; and he has seen the time when he was worth a million."
Tom Mason was sorry to hear all this. He did not know what he was going to do now that Black Dan was in no condition to help him. Who was he going to get to grub-stake him and send him into the mountains to find a gold mine? He knew that things were pretty high in Fort Hamilton, and his two hundred dollars would not last him a great while.