“Next day, when I come out of it, Justus had heard from Denver.  His wife had been gone a year, destination unknown.  Somebody thought she went to California, so, two days later, we registered at the Palace, and the ’Frisco police begin dreaming of five thousand dollar rewards.

“It was no use, though.  One day I met Struthers on Market Street, and he was scared stiff to hear that Morrow was in town.  It seems he was night editor of one of the big dailies.

“‘Do you know where the girl is?’ says I.

“‘Yes, she’s in New York,’ he answers, looking queer, so I hurried back to the hotel.

“As I was explaining to Morrow, a woman passed us in the hall with a little boy.  In the dimness, the lad mistook Justus.

“’Oh, papa, papa!” he yells, and grabs him by the knees, laughing and kicking.

“‘Ah-h!’ my pardner sighs, hoarse as a raven, and quicker’n light he snatched the little shaver to him, then seeing his mistake, dropped him rough.  His face went grey again, and he got wabbly at the hinges, so I helped him into the parlour.  He had that hungry, Yukon look, and breathed like he was wounded.

“‘You come with me,’ says I, ’and get your mind off of things.  The eastern limited don’t leave till midnight.  Us to the theatre!’

“It was a swell tepee, all right.  Variety house, with moving pictures, and actorbats, and two-ton soubrettes, with Barrios diamonds and hand-painted socks.

“First good show I’d seen in three years, and naturally humour broke out all over me.  When joy spreads its wings in my vitals, I sound like a boy with a stick running past a picket-fence.  Not so Morrow.  He slopped over the sides of his seat, like he’d been spilled into the house.

“Right after the sea-lions, the orchestra spieled some teetery music, and out floats a woman, slim and graceful as an antelope.  She had a big pay-dump of brown hair, piled up on her hurricane deck, with eyes that snapped and crinkled at the corners.  She single-footed in like a derby colt, and the somnambulists in the front row begin to show cause.  Something about her startled me, so I nudged the kid, but he was chin-deep in the plush, with his eyes closed.  I marked how drawed and haggard he looked; and then, of a sudden he raised half on to his feet.  The girl had begun to sing.  Her voice was rich and low, and full of deep, still places, like a mountain stream.  But Morrow!  He sunk his fingers into me, and leaned for’rad, starin’ as though Paradise had opened for him, while the sweat on his face shone like diamond chips.

“It was the girl of the locket, all right, on the stage again—­in vaudeville.

“Her song bubbled along, rippling over sandy, sunlit gravel bars, and slidin’ out through shadowy trout pools beneath the cool, alder thickets, and all the time my pardner sat burning his soul in his eyes, his breath achin’ out through his throat.  Incidental, his digits was knuckle-deep into the muscular tissue of William P., the gent to the right.