“Yes. Colorado is my roost at present. I was born on the border and brought up among the wildest scenes a man ever looked on. In Mexico I’ve been with the revolutionists. I’ve mined in Idaho and Montana, and been peace officer in a dozen Territories and States. At present I’m a sheriff in Colorado.”
“Indeed! You know my friend here. Where did you ever run across this rolling stone?”
The sheriff’s face suddenly grows soft, as he turns his head upon Wycherley, and there is unassumed tenderness in his voice as he says:
“I’ll tell you, sir. It was several years back, that terrible winter we had in Colorado. I had hard luck and came near passing in my checks on account of a gunshot wound received while arresting a desperado—but I got him, and he stretched hemp, I’m telling you.
“Things went wrong at home, and my mother and little sister were nigh starved. As soon as I could travel I went to Denver and found that only for the kindness of a man who had a room in the same tenement, and who was constitutionally dead broke, they would have given up the ghost. He had spent every cent he could lay hold of on them, strangers as they were. That man was Claude Wycherley, the actor. Do you wonder I love him like a brother?”
“Come, come, you make me blush. What I did pleased me. God knows I couldn’t have followed any other course. Say no more about it,” cries the vagabond.
“You are doing the Fair, I presume?” remarks Craig, glad to hear such a good report of one who hides his light under a bushel.
The sheriff and Claude exchange glances.
“Yes; I may say I have taken it in, but only as a secondary consideration.”
“Come, I like that. Better not let a Chicagoan hear such a remark. They are very sensitive. I have no doubt Colorado could have done better, but——”