[CHAPTER III.]
SWIFTWATER has often told me that he never could quite understand why it was that the way to a woman’s heart, even his own way—Swiftwater’s—was so hard to travel and so devious and tortuous in its windings and interwindings.
“Why, Mrs. Beebe,” Swiftwater used to say, “I should think a man could do anything with gold! And for my own part, I used to always figure that money would buy anything,” said Swiftwater, “even the most beautiful woman in the world for your wife.”
Swiftwater’s mental processes were simple, as the foregoing will illustrate. It was hardly to be expected otherwise. Swiftwater decamped from the drudgery and slavish toil of a kitchen in the little road-house at Circle City to gain in less than three months more money than he had ever dreamed it possible for him to have.
Two hundred thousand dollars was the minimum of Swiftwater’s first big clean-up. If Gussie Lamore had lovers, Swiftwater figured, his money would win her heart away from all the rest.
All this relates very intimately to the really interesting story of Swiftwater’s courtship of Gussie Lamore. The girl kept him at arm’s length, yet if ever Swiftwater became restive Gussie would cleverly draw the line taut and Swiftwater was at her feet.
“I am tired of this, Gussie,” said Swiftwater one day, and finally the “Knight of the Golden Omelette,” as he was often termed, was serious for once in his life.
“I am going back to Eldorado and I’ll bring down here a bunch of gold. It will weigh as much as you do on the scales, pound for pound. Gussie, that gold will be yours if you give me your word you will marry me.”
“All right, Bill, we’ll see. Go get your gold and show me that you really have it.”