He was bound to be a gentleman or nothing. Before the week was half over he was arrayed, not exactly like Solomon, but much more conspicuously, in the whitest of “b’iled” shirts, in the bosom of which glistened the most brilliant diamond cluster pin that money could procure from Sacramento. On the warty red fingers of his right hand sparkled its mate, and pendent from his waist a liberal handful of the old-fashioned seals and keys of the time attracted attention to the ponderous gold chain encircling his neck, and securing the biggest specimen of a watch known to fact or fiction since the days of Captain Cuttle.
Carelessly strolling up to the bar of the “Quartz Rock,” the “Hanging Wall,” or the “Golden West,” he would say, in the cheeriest way:
“Gents, what’ll yer all hev? It’s mine this time, barkeep.” And, spurning the change obsequiously tendered by the officiating genius of the gilded slaughter-house of morality, Jack would push back the twenty-dollar gold piece with which he usually began his evenings with “the boys,” and ask, in a tone of injured pride: “Is there any use in insultin’ a man when he wants to treat his friends?” And barkeeper and all in the den would voice the sentiment that a “gent” who was as liberal with his double eagles as Colonel Long was a gent indeed, and a man anybody could afford to tie to.
It was the local paper which gave Jack his military title, and alluded to the growing demand that the colonel should accept the nomination for Congress. And to Congress he would have gone, too, had not fickle Fortune turned her back upon her whilom favorite.
Jack had the bad luck to fall in love and to be married—not for the first time, as he had had previous experience in the same direction, his first wife being the youngest daughter of the great Indian chief “Cut-Mouth John,” of the Rogue River tribe, who ran away from Jack and took to the mountains when her people went on the war-path. The then wife was a white woman from Missouri, and, from all I can learn, a very good mate for Jack, excepting that prosperity turned her head and made her very extravagant. So long as Jack’s mine was panning out freely Jack didn’t mind much what she spent, but when it petered, and economy became necessary, dissensions soon arose between them, and it was agreed that they were not compatible.
“If you don’t like me,” said Mrs. Long one day, “give me a divorce and one-half of what you have, and I’ll leave you.”
“’Nuff sed,” was Jack’s reply, “’n’ here goes.”
The sum total in the Long exchequer was not quite $200. Of this, Jack laid to one side a double eagle, for a purpose soon to be explained. The remainder was divided into two even piles, one of which was handed over to his spouse. The doors of the wardrobe stood open, disclosing all of Jack’s regal raiment. He seized a pair of trousers, tore them leg from leg, and then served in much the same way every coat, waistcoat, or undergarment he owned. One pile of remnants was assigned to the stupefied woman, who ten minutes previously had been demanding a separation.
Before another ten had passed her own choicest treasures had shared the same fate, and her ex-liege lord was devoting his attention to breaking the cooking stove, with its superstructure of pots and pans and kettles, into two little hillocks of battered fragments; and no sooner through with that than at work sawing the tables and chairs in half and knocking the solitary mirror into smithereens.
“Thar yer are,” said Jack. “Ye ’v’ got half th’ money, ’n’ yer kin now tek yer pick o’ what’s left.”