“Where’d that mattress come from?” exclaimed Nucky.

“Partly off old Funny Face’s back and part out of a bicycle pump.  Didn’t want to risk your sickly bones on the ground until you harden up a bit.  Pretty good pile of timber for an amateur, New York.”  Frank looked up from the fire he was kindling into Nucky’s thin, tired face.  “Now, son, you sit down on the end of your bed and take it easy.  I’m an old hand at this game and before we’ve had our week together I’m banking on you being glad to help me.  But to-day you’ve had enough.”

“Thanks,” mumbled Nucky, as he eagerly followed the guide’s suggestions.

The early supper tasted delicious to the boy although every muscle in his body ached.  Bacon and flap jacks, coffee and canned peaches he devoured with more appetite than he ever had brought to ministrone and red wine.  A queer and inexplicable sense of comfort and a desire to talk came over him after the meal was finished, the camp in order, and the fire replenished.

“This ain’t so bad,” he said.  “I wish some of the guys that used to come to Luigi’s could see me now.”

“And who was Luigi?” asked Frank, lighting his pipe and stretching himself on a blanket before the fire.

“He was the guy I lived with after my mother died.  He ran a gambling joint, and we was fixing the place up for women, too, when we all got pinched.”  This very boastfully.

“Who were your folks, Enoch?”

“Never heard of none of ’em.  Luigi’s a Dago.  He wouldn’t have been so bad if he didn’t pinch the pennies so.  Were you ever in New York, Frank?” This in a patronizing voice.

“Born there,” replied the guide.

Nucky gasped with surprise.  “How’d you ever happen to come out here?”

“I can’t live anywhere else because of chronic asthma.  I don’t know now that I’d want to live anywhere else.  I used to kick against the pricks, but you get more sense as you grow older—­after it’s too late.”

“I should think you’d rather be dead,” said Nucky sincerely.  “If I thought I couldn’t get back to MacDougal Street I’d want to die.”

“MacDougal Street and the dice, I suppose, eh?  Enoch, you’re on the wrong track and I know, because that’s the track I tried myself.  And I got stung.”

“But—­” began Nucky.

“No but about it.  It’s the wrong track and you can’t get to decency or happiness or contentment on it.  There’s two things a man can never make anything real out of; cards or women.”

“I didn’t want to make anything out of women.  I want to get even with ’em, blank blank ’em all,” cried Nucky with sudden fury.  And he burst into an obscene tirade against the sex that utterly astonished the guide.  He lay with his chin supported on his elbow, staring at the boy, at his thin, strongly marked features, and at the convulsive working of his throat as he talked.

“Here!  Dry up!” Frank cried at last.  “I’ll bet these canyon walls never looked down on such a rotten little cur as you are in all their history.  You gambling, indecent little gutter snipe, isn’t there a clean spot in you?”