"I've something for your ear alone, Bill Ralston...."
"Meet Benito Windham," Ralston introduced. "Speak out. I have no secrets from my friends."
The other hemmed and hawed. He seemed averse to putting into words some thought which troubled him beyond repression. "Do you know," he burst out finally, "that your partner, Sharon, has become the most incurable and dissolute gambler in Nevada?"
"You don't say." Ralston did not seem as shocked as one might have expected. "Well, my friend, that sounds quite serious.... What's poor Bill's particular kind of--vice?"
"Poker," said the visitor. "By the Eternal, that man Sharon would stake his immortal soul on a four-card flush and never bat an eye. Time and time again I've seen it."
Ralston leaned back comfortably, his folded hands across his middle. His speculative stare was on a marble statue. At length he spoke. "Does Sharon win or lose?"
"Well," the other man admitted, "I must say he wins...."
"Then he's just the man I want," Ralston spoke with emphasis. He rose, held out his hand toward the flustered visitor. "Thanks for telling me.... And now we'll all go for a drink together."
"That's Bill Ralston!" said Benito to his wife. They laughed about the anecdote which Windham had related at the dinner table. Robert, in his new letter-carrier's uniform, spoke up. "I saw him at the bank this afternoon.... There was a letter from Virginia City and he kept me waiting till he opened it. Then he slapped me on the shoulder. 'If the contents of that letter had been known to certain people, son,' he told me, 'they'd have cleaned up a fortune on the information.' Then he handed me a gold-piece. But I wouldn't take it. 'Don't be proud,' he said and poked me in the ribs. 'And don't forget that Bill Ralston's your friend.'"