"I dunno how you feel, mum, about life. I've been disappointed, starting in with ideals, and they're gone. I'm as straight as the world will let me, without my going hungry."
Let me here quote one of Jesse's letters to his mother. "This Brooke and I grew our beef and matured our horns on the same strong pasture, but where a homely face kept me out of temptation, he had what you call beauty, and I'd call vanity. Instead of trying to be, he aimed to act. He'd play cow-boy, or robber, or gambler, things he could never be, because he's not a man. He could wear the clothes, the manners, the talk, and pass himself off for real. The women who petted him sank and were left in the lurch. The men who trusted him were shot and hanged. That made him lonesome, gave him the melancholy past, the romantic air, the charm—all stock in trade. Long hair costs nothing, he pays no dog tax, but life is too rich for his blood, and in the end he'll die of it like Judas. Say, mother, wasn't there a Mrs. Judas Iscariot? She must have been a busy woman to judge by the size of the Iscariot family."
"Yes," Brooke sighed, "I'm a disillusioned, disappointed man."
I had a curious sense that this actor of life was trying to be real, and in the attempt he posed.
"Not that I claim," he went on, "that Spite House is anyways holy. It's not. Of course, a sporting and gambling joint meets a demand, a regrettable demand, a thing we both abhor and would like to be shut of. But since demand creates the supply, let's have it in high-toned style, not run by thugs. That's what I say."
His spacious benevolence seemed to confer partnership, yet to be shocked at my immoral tendencies.
"However," he sighed, "it's over. It's done with, shoved aside. There was money in it, but small money, and we pass on. Old Taylor may have told you that as far back as November we decided, Mrs. Smith and me, to run the house as a first-class resort for tourists. We bought the Star Pack-train from Taylor, and the old cargador is making our new riggings."
This was news indeed!
"Of course pack-trains as such are out of date as Noah's ark, and we've got to march with the procession. You'll see in this prospectus," he held out a paper, "well, I'll read it. Let's see—yes—'Forest Lodge, long under the able management of Mrs. Jesse Smith, with great experience in' * * * no, it's further on—'Forest Lodge is the natural center for parties viewing the wondrous wilds.' That should grip them, eh? 'Experienced guides with pack and saddle animals from the famous Star atajo,' we can't call them mules, of course, 'will escort parties visiting the sceneries and hunting grounds of the Coast Range, the Cariboo, the Omenica, the Babine, and the Cassiar.' That ought to splash!"
Billy had warned me of bad characters settled on the lands toward Jesse's ranch. Were these Brooke's "experienced guides"?