"Bill Bradley," he answered with a queer smile. "Now don't you ask any more questions to-night," and with that he was gone.
I went to bed almost sick from my exposure and lack of food, and just as the old sand man of childhood's happy days began to sprinkle his grains in my eyes, I heard, way off in the distance, a peculiar click and a drawling voice calling off some numbers. "Four." "Sixteen." "Thirty-three." "Seventy-eight." "Ten." "Twenty-six," and then, a great shout arose and some one called out "KENO." Ah! I was near a gambling house, but I was too tired to care, nature asserted herself, and I gently crossed the river into the land of Nod.
The next morning I was really sick with a high fever, and when Bill came in I was well nigh loony.
"Hello," he said, "this won't do. Tom, I say, you Tom, go and tell Doctor Bailey I want him here quick. D—n quick. Do you hear?" and black Tom answered, "Yas, suh."
To be brief, I was three weeks on my back, and bluff old Bill Bradley nursed me like a loving mother would a sick child. Day and night he hung over me, never a thing did I need but what he procured for me, and one day after the fever had left me and I was sitting up by an open window, I said,
"Mr. Bradley, what do you do for a living?"
"Boy," he replied with a flushed face, "I am sorry you asked that question, but sooner or later you would have heard it and I'd a great deal rather tell you about it myself. I'm a gambler and these three rooms adjoin my place which is called the "Three Nines," and then he told me the story of his life. He was a son of a fine Connecticut family, a graduate of Harvard, and in his day had been a very able young lawyer with brilliant prospects, but one night, he went out with a crowd of roystering chaps, the lie was passed, and—it was the old story,—he came to Texas for a refuge. The great civil war was just over, the country in a chaotic state, and there he had remained ever since. Thrown with wild, uncouth men, and being reckless in the extreme, he opened a gambling house.
"Why did you take this great interest in me?" I asked.
"Look here, young chap, you are altogether too inquisitive. I've got an old father and mother way up in Ball Brooke, Connecticut, whose hearts have been broken by my actions, and when I saw you in that hellish den of vice you looked so out of place that I determined to save you. It was impulse, my boy, and then again, it may have been the remembrance of the one, at whose knee I used to lisp, 'Now I lay me down to sleep.'"
My recovery was very rapid from that time on, and when I was able to work I secured a position in the commercial office in Hallville. One evening after being paid I strolled into the "Three Nines;" Bill was dealing faro, and I thought I might in a measure, show my gratitude towards him by risking a coin. There was a big crowd standing around the table, but I edged my way in and placed a dollar on the queen to win. Luck was with me and I won. Once, twice, thrice, did the cards come my way, and my stack of whites and reds was growing. This didn't seem to me much like gratitude to win a man's money, and I wished I hadn't started. Presently Bill looked up, and spying me, pointed to my stack of chips, and said, "Whose stack is that?" "Mine," I replied, and with one fell swoop he dashed the chips into the rack, and taking a ten-dollar bill from the drawer, he turned to his side partner and said, "Jim, take the deal," and then he got up, took me by the arm, saying, "You come with me."