But it was when she danced that she was at her best. That half-wild Spanish Cachuca made those rough men rise to their feet and cheer her as if she was the most wonderful girl in the world, and when the boys were flush many a hundred dollars in gold went over the flickering footlights to her feet, so that she really and truly danced on gold. It was the Westerners’ way of paying homage to anyone they liked, and it is done to-day, but not to so great an extent.
You see, there was no limit on those fellows in the blue shirts and bearded faces, and what was a handful of gold more or less to them then or at any other time?
They were an open-handed lot, living only for the day, and to the devil with to-morrow, lavishing all they had upon anyone whom they liked.
As the money rolled in to her so it rolled out, easily and without apparent effort, and at the end of a year she had just what she started with—a couple of dresses, the most part of which was tinsel.
And that brings me right back into the heart of this story, the preliminary having been sufficiently long to give you a thorough introduction to this little lady—queen of the mining camps.
It isn’t likely you ever heard of a fellow who for some romantic reason or other called himself Palo Alto Bill. He was a tin horn gambler, good at short cards, willing to take a chance at any proposition that ever came over the hills, so long as he could figure in it financially, but he had no heart. It was all Bill from first to last, and he didn’t have enough generosity in his entire system to drop a bone to a hungry dog. You know the breed—they think they are all right, but they are so eaten up with selfishness, and egotism, and vanity, that they stride along with their elbows pushed out, as if they were going to shove everybody else off the earth.
He was handsome all right, with black hair—black as an Indian’s—a curling mustache, and a wonderfully taking way with a woman.
This was the combination that stacked itself up against the little singer with the suggestion that they travel in double harness for mutual benefit.
That was all there was to it.
