A wonderful but untrue picture of love behind the scenes
He saw her, he liked her; why shouldn’t he have her? And if she had been married it would have been the same to him. He would in all probability have suggested an elopement on a pair of fast horses.
“How long have you been in the business, Sis?” was the way he started it.
He was smoking a cigarette at the time and he didn’t even take the trouble to look at her, but holding his head back, blew the rings of smoke, one after the other, toward the low ceiling.
“Oh, about a year, and I’ve been making good ever since I started.”
“That’s what you have. I suppose you’ve got a big bunch of coin by this time, eh?”
“If I have I wish someone would find it for me. There may be a lot of fun in the game, but there’s no money, that is, not yet.”
“Well, let me give you just one straight tip. What you want is a manager—someone to boom you. Suppose you and I double up, and then I’ll show you how to get the money, and hold it, too. Nothing cheap about me. You’re a good fellow and I’m a good fellow, and we can do well together. I’ll put you where you belong, for you ain’t getting half of what’s coming to you. How about it?”
Just remember that this was in the West, where a girl has a mighty hard time of it without a protector of some sort, and that there were a hundred tie-ups by mutual consent for one real swell matrimonial clinch, with a sky-pilot to sing his little song of “I now pronounce you man and wife.” Also bear in mind that she had known Bill about six months and that his style rather appealed to her, because he was artistic in a crude sort of a way, and besides, he wore his clothes with a certain amount of grace that was good for the female eye to look on.
So they tied up together and Bill began his life of ease and prosperity. The next week was announced as her grand farewell appearance, and she was the recipient every night of a testimonial of so substantial a character that, as she herself put it, her salary seemed like pennies for candy. In these many testimonials might have been recognized the fine Italian touch of Bill, who had a Hermann-like knack of waving his hands in the empty air and producing real money. And while she was busy picking up the nuggets and gold bucks which the enthusiastic miners flung at her, he was attending to his end of the contract by arranging a tour. He had a few schemes under his hat that would have brought him in all kinds of money if he had had a fair swing, but he was born with the soul of a grafter, and that is very much like a taint in the blood, in that it can never be effaced. It may disappear for a while, but it is always liable to turn up at the most unexpected time.