Marian shrank and cowered at this, with a pitiful look of pain on her beautiful face.
"Hed money left him?" asked Mrs. Sharpe.
Marian nodded.
"'Twon't do him no good. Soon as he hearns of it, he'll drink himself into snakes. Allers did when they struck a good lead on the Banderita. Circus Jack, he loses all hisn's at poker; so thar they go."
In the course of an hour Circus Jack, scrubbed and "fixed up" to a degree which made him almost unrecognizable by his comrades, appeared, escorted by Scotty, also prepared by a choice toilet to enter the presence of "the ladies."
"'Scuse my not comin' afore," said Scotty. "Hosses must be 'tended to, and them of mine wus about dead beat."
Marian smiled graciously, if absently, and turned her clear, hazel eyes to Circus Jack, who, with many excuses, circumlocutions, and profane epithets, most of which he apologized for instantly, and some of which he was evidently unconscious of, gave her all the information in his power in regard to the man she had come to find.
No one in Mariposa knew him better. As "Jim" he was almost an integral part of the city of "Butterflies." The butterflies, by the by, for which the town is named, are not those which soar in the air, but "Mariposas," fastened by long, tough filaments to the ground.
Many a night had Jim Wilmer crushed his swollen face into them, and slept a drunken sleep with their soft wings folded sorrowfully above him.
There was something of a mystery hung about him, which the "boys" had never been able to fathom. Some said that he belonged to a wealthy and aristocratic family, and had left home and become a wanderer and an outcast, because some beautiful woman had jilted him; others said that he had had a wife and children, that he had broken his wedded faith and his wife's heart at the same time, and that a grim phantom followed him wherever he went, and gave him no peace. Others told yet another story: that he had been engaged to a beautiful girl, and had loved her and trusted her above all telling; that his wedding day was near, when he had stumbled upon some miserable secret, which was dead and buried, but could not rest in its grave; that there was no room left for doubt, which is sometimes blessed, and he had fled without a word; disappeared, and left to her own wretched heart the task of telling her the reason why.