Copyrighted 1894, by Cy Warman,Denver, Colorado.
Copyrighted 1894, by Cy Warman,Denver, Colorado.
THE SILVER QUEEN.I.
THE SILVER QUEEN.
Denver, March 15, 1892.My Dear Mr. Warman:—I notice by the papers that you are getting ready to start a daily in Creede. Your courage is worthy of all astonishment. Don’t you know the gamblers there will shoot you full of holes, and perhaps spoil the only suit you’ve got fit to be buried in, before your paper reaches the tenth number? Whatever you do, wear your old clothes and keep your Sunday suit nice for emergencies. The boys will all chip in and give you a big funeral, but we haven’t any of us got a spare coat fit to bury you in; so take care of your Prince Albert and wear your corduroys till the question is settled one way or the other, for ifanything should happen, it would mortify the boys to have to bury in his shirt-sleeves the only poet Colorado has produced.Man at a deskCreed Daily ChronicleWell, you are in for it, I suppose, and nothing will stop you, and being in, there is nothing for it now but to “bear thyself so thine enemy may beware thee,” or in other words, heelyourself and face the music like a man. Whatever else you do, don’t show the white feather, for the honor of the press is in your keeping, and if you will immolate yourself, we expect you to die game and not with a bullet in your back. Don’t worry one minute about the obituary notices. That will be all right. The boys will all see you through in good shape and the papers here will all turn rules and celebrate your virtues in such halting meter as can be mustered.But, seriously, what evil genius tempted you into the project of a daily in Creede, and whose money are you blowing in?If your ambition is to establish a reputation for courage—going into such a lair of hobos, gamblers and all-round toughs—most people will think it absurdly superfluous in a man—a western man at least—who makes no concealment of the fact, in thisfin de siecleera, that he perpetrates poetry and is willing to make his living by it—if he can.I have no wish to discourage you, Cy, in your present heroic enterprise; but I think, myself, it is wholly unnecessary as an evidence of pluck, after all the poetry you have perpetrated. Everybody knows that a poet—a western poet, especially—takes his life in his hands whenever he approaches a publisher, as recklessly as the man who runs sheep onto a cow range. Of course, no western man would feel any compunction in killing apoet, considering that whatever attention they command in the East makes against our reputation out here for practical horse-sense and energy, and tends to make the underwriters and money-lenders suspicious and raise the rates of interest and insurance.Man fishingI wouldn’t hurt your feelings for the world, for I confess I like your poetry myself, but I think you owe the singular immunity you have enjoyed in Denver above other poets who have bit the dust or emigrated eastward, to the openly-expressed admiration and affection of Myron Reed and Jim Belford and a few other reckless cranks who have intrenched themselves against “the practical horse-sense” which is the pride of our people. As, instance: I happened into that gun-store in the Tabor Block yesterday to provide myself with a jointed fishing-rod againstwhat time I should come down to your funeral—for they tell me the Upper Rio Grande swarms with trout, and I thought I might like to cast a fly, even so early, after seeing you planted, and being shown the spot where you fell. For I fancy some of those toughs whose hearts your inspired verses had touched, commiserating my tears, would come to me and take me gently by the hand and lead me down to the coroner’s office to show me the hole in the breast of your coat—for I never have done you the wrong to imagine the hole anywherebutin the breast where the remorseless bullet tore its way to your brave heart. And then the tender-hearted tough, wiping his eyes with his sleeve, should draw me away and leadme up the street “to see where it happened,” and that he should halt at a certain spot in front of a great flourishing saloon and gambling hall, where I should catch a glimpse through the windows, of battered and frowzy girls in dirty, trailing calico “tea-gowns” and thin slippers, drinking at the bar with the cheaper class of the gamblers or with befuddled miners they were preparing to rob, and he should say: “’Twas right here—right where I’m standin’—and poor Cy, he wuz goin’ along and he wuzn’t sayin’ nothin’ to nobody, ’n’ I was standin’ right across the street there, in the door of Minnie Monroe’s place, an’ Min she wuz leanin’ over my shoulder and we wuz both lookin’ right across at the saloon where Soapy Smith wuz standin’ in the door, readin’ a newspaper out loud to Bob Ford an’ a lot o’ them low-down girlsthat hangs around there after breakfast till they strike a treat; an’ at every word Soapy he was rippin’ out oaths an’ shakin’ his fist, an’ Min, she says to me: ‘Bill, there’s a row on, les’ go over and see what’s up.’ ’N’ jest at that minute along comes poor Cy—mindin’ his own business ’n’ sayin’ nothin’ to nobody—an’ that’s what I’ll swear to ’fore the grand jury, mister, if I’m called, an’ Min, she’ll swear to the same thing. Nothin’ wouldn’t a’ happened, fur everybody’s back wuz turned, only fur one o’ them low-down trollops stuck her head out o’ the door and s’ys, ‘There’s the —— —— ——, now,’ and Bob Ford he looked over his shoulder ’n’ s’ys, ‘Sure ’nough Soapy, there goes your man.’Man smoking a pipe“Min an’ me heard every word jestas plain as a pin. Cy heard it, too, and he knowed what it meant. He wuz game—I’ll say that fur him—’n’ faced about ’n’ reached fur his gun quicker ’n the jerk of a lamb’s tail in fly time, but Soapy got there first, ’cause he’d rushed out with his gun cocked, and it wuz all day with poor Cy ’fore you could say Jack Robinson.”“Reached for his gun?” (in imagination I inquire doubtingly)—“then he was—”Min's place“Oh, yes, he was heeled. Cy wuzn’t no chump. He knowed he was takin’ his life in his hands when he jumped that gang an’ began to roast them in his paper. He knowed they’d lay fur him an’ do him up if they ever got the drop on him ’fore he could draw. But oh, say, if poor Cy had just had a show—or evenhalfa show—wouldn’t he shot the everlastin’ stuffin’ out o’that crowd quicker ’n a cat could lick her ear! That’s what he would, mister, fur he was game an’ he could handle a gun beautiful. But” (in my fancy your worthy tough always draws his sleeve across his face at this juncture) “I suppose ithadto be—prob’ly it was God’l Mighty’s will. There’s the pole over yander front o’ Min’s place we strung Soapy and Bob to, an’ there wuzn’t no inquest onthem—not much there wuzn’t, for the coroner himself helped at the lynchin’—everybodyhelped ’ceptin’ that pigeon-livered cad of a preacher. He wanted to deliver a lecture to the crowd on the majesty of the law an’ that kind o’ thing, but he got left on his littlegame that time. Oh, he’s too slow forthiscamp, mister. The preacher that can’t keep up with the band wagon, ain’t got no business monkeyin’ around a live mining camp like Creede.”Man reading a newspaperBut bless my stars, how my anxiety for you has drawn me into digression? I started to tell you what happened at the gun-store. You know it’s a place where some clever men drop in and lounge a bit and swap sporting stories and smoke a friendly cigar. I heard some one call me to the rear, and going back, I found Belford and their reverences, Tom Uzzell and Myron Reed—God bless their manly souls—and one or two others I did not know. And your friend, the Reverend Myron, was reading aloud to the crowd that fanciful little jingle you had in yesterday’sTimesabout the beautiful butwillful maid who wandered down to the shore of sin and got snatched back by some compunctious Joseph before the undertow caught her, or language to that general effect;—forgive me, I haven’t been able to read it myself and cannot recall a line of it although I recognized it as a gem.Well, you could see the little crowd was being affected, for Mr. Reed was delivering it with exquisite feeling, and when he had finished, there was a general glance of admiration all round; and Mr. Uzzell remarked that there was a fine sermon—I think, on reflection, that he said a fine,strongsermon—in the verses; and your friend Reed smiled. Then Belford, in a characteristic burst of rhetoric, declared that “The Muses must have kissed in his cradle, the fellow who wrote those lines.” And yourfriend, the Reverend Myron, smiled out loud, and Belford glanced around the crowd for approval.I shouldn’t consider that fraternal magnanimity required me to repeat these flattering expressions to you, Cy, only that I feel your doom draws nigh. It is borne in upon me with all the psychic force of a prophecy that you are fated to perish by the ignominious hand of our own and only Soapy, if you persist in starting that daily. You can’t run a daily without saying something, and you can’t say anything that ought to be said without giving mortal offense to the toughs who are running that camp, and you can’t give offense to them without getting shot. It is an ancient saying that “a word to the wise is sufficient”; but it were better to say, as experience proves, that a word tothe wise is generally superfluous. Be wise, Cyrus, in your day and generation. Seek fame in other fields. Open a boarding-house or an undertaker’s shop, or both. This will give you a chance to study human nature in all its phases. It is the school for a poet and philosopher. Don’t miss the opportunity. Don’t waste your promising young life writing poetry or running a daily paper to reform the morals of a mining camp. Either is sure to bring you to an ignominious grave. But if, in spite of my prayers and tears, you will persist, send me your paper. I shall have a curiosity to see what sort of a stagger you make at moulding the protoplasm of public opinion into a cellular structure of moral impulse. Send me the paper,sure. So-long. God protect you.Always,Fitz-Mac.P. S.—Now, may confusion take my muddled brains, but I have overlooked the very thing I started to write you about.The inclosed letter of introduction will make you acquainted with Miss Polly Parsons, a young girl whom I have known from childhood, and in whose welfare I take a serious interest. She is a bright and beautiful girl—and a thoroughly good girl, let me remark—and I want her to know you and feel that she has a friend in you on whom she can call for counsel and protection if need be.She is under the necessity, not only of making her own living, but of contributing to the support of her father’s family. Her mother and little brother are here, living in two rooms, but her father is in Chicago. I knew the family there years ago when they were very rich, and surrounded by every luxury—fine home on Michigan avenue, carriages and footman and all that. But Parsons went broke a few years ago on grain speculations, and the worst of it is, he lost his courage with his money and is now a broken-spirited man, doing the leg work for brokers and leaving his family to shift for themselves, or pretty nearly so. I suppose it is really impossible for the poor fellow to help them very much or he would, for he loved his wife and children. Polly had every advantagethat money could purchase till the old man failed, and she is finely educated. She is a girl of great courage and has an ambition to make a business woman of herself and help her father onto his feet again. She has some of his genius for bold, speculative action, and has taken up stenography and typewriting—not as an end but only as a means.I am very much afraid she has made a serious misstep in going to Creede and that she will get herself hopelessly compromised before she is done with it.She has gone down with that Sure Thing Mining Company outfit and I suspect they are a bad lot; but some of them knew her father in the past, and thus gained her confidence. She is too pretty a girl and too inexperienced to be exposed to the associations of a mining camp like Creede, where there are so few decent women, without great danger. She has got courage and an earnest purpose, and those qualities are a woman’s best safeguard; but still, she is only a girl of nineteen or twenty and she doesn’t realize what a delicate thing a woman’s reputation is. It was sheer recklessness for her to go down there; but I didn’t know it till after she was off. Her mother got anxious after she had let her go and came to see me about it. I believe—without positively knowing—that theoutfit she has gone to are right-down scamps. They seem to have plenty of money and they have opened a grand office here, but they strike me as bad eggs. A very suspicious circumstance in regard to their motives toward her—to my mind at least—is that they have promised her a salary of two hundred and fifty dollars a month. That is simply preposterous. (You know that they can get an army of competent stenographers and typewriters at one hundred dollars a month, or even less.) I don’t like the looks of it a bit. I suspect they—or one of them—have designs against the girl.Man speaking to a womanShe is honest to the core, and they will never accomplish her ruin—if that is what they mean. But of course, you must understand, I am only voicing a suspicion, and a very uncharitable one at that; but the odor of the outfit is bad, and they may compromise her hopelessly before she gets her eyes open, and spoil her life.I want you to hunt her up and keep an eye onher, and put yourself on a square footing with her, so that she will have confidence in you. Above all things, see that she has a boarding place where there is some respectable married woman, and give her a talking to about the camp that will open her eyes. She will take care of herself all right if she is once put on her guard.I want you to understand she is no pick-up for any rake to trifle with; but a woman is a woman—you know that, Cy, as well as I do—and youth is youth.She is a good telegrapher—unusually good, I imagine. I mention this so that you may get her employment if that job she has gone to looks at all scaly, and likely to compromise her.She has great force of character—her father’s temperament before he broke down—and she has taken up all these things to fit herself for that business career to which she aspires. Don’t be deceived by her suave and amiable manner into thinking her a weakling, for she has gotimmenseforce of character, and she perfectly believes she is going to have a business career.I have told her in the letter that you are engaged to the nicest girl in Denver, so as to put you on a confidential footing, and head off your falling in love with her yourself. Be a brother to her, Cy, and keep her out of trouble.God knows you are wicked enough yourself to scent wickedness from afar and see any danger in the path of an attractive girl without experience. Look her up at once—at once, mind you—and let me have a good account of yourself as soon as possible.Affectionately,Fitz-Mac.
Denver, March 15, 1892.
My Dear Mr. Warman:—I notice by the papers that you are getting ready to start a daily in Creede. Your courage is worthy of all astonishment. Don’t you know the gamblers there will shoot you full of holes, and perhaps spoil the only suit you’ve got fit to be buried in, before your paper reaches the tenth number? Whatever you do, wear your old clothes and keep your Sunday suit nice for emergencies. The boys will all chip in and give you a big funeral, but we haven’t any of us got a spare coat fit to bury you in; so take care of your Prince Albert and wear your corduroys till the question is settled one way or the other, for ifanything should happen, it would mortify the boys to have to bury in his shirt-sleeves the only poet Colorado has produced.
Man at a desk
Creed Daily Chronicle
Well, you are in for it, I suppose, and nothing will stop you, and being in, there is nothing for it now but to “bear thyself so thine enemy may beware thee,” or in other words, heelyourself and face the music like a man. Whatever else you do, don’t show the white feather, for the honor of the press is in your keeping, and if you will immolate yourself, we expect you to die game and not with a bullet in your back. Don’t worry one minute about the obituary notices. That will be all right. The boys will all see you through in good shape and the papers here will all turn rules and celebrate your virtues in such halting meter as can be mustered.
But, seriously, what evil genius tempted you into the project of a daily in Creede, and whose money are you blowing in?
If your ambition is to establish a reputation for courage—going into such a lair of hobos, gamblers and all-round toughs—most people will think it absurdly superfluous in a man—a western man at least—who makes no concealment of the fact, in thisfin de siecleera, that he perpetrates poetry and is willing to make his living by it—if he can.
I have no wish to discourage you, Cy, in your present heroic enterprise; but I think, myself, it is wholly unnecessary as an evidence of pluck, after all the poetry you have perpetrated. Everybody knows that a poet—a western poet, especially—takes his life in his hands whenever he approaches a publisher, as recklessly as the man who runs sheep onto a cow range. Of course, no western man would feel any compunction in killing apoet, considering that whatever attention they command in the East makes against our reputation out here for practical horse-sense and energy, and tends to make the underwriters and money-lenders suspicious and raise the rates of interest and insurance.
Man fishing
I wouldn’t hurt your feelings for the world, for I confess I like your poetry myself, but I think you owe the singular immunity you have enjoyed in Denver above other poets who have bit the dust or emigrated eastward, to the openly-expressed admiration and affection of Myron Reed and Jim Belford and a few other reckless cranks who have intrenched themselves against “the practical horse-sense” which is the pride of our people. As, instance: I happened into that gun-store in the Tabor Block yesterday to provide myself with a jointed fishing-rod againstwhat time I should come down to your funeral—for they tell me the Upper Rio Grande swarms with trout, and I thought I might like to cast a fly, even so early, after seeing you planted, and being shown the spot where you fell. For I fancy some of those toughs whose hearts your inspired verses had touched, commiserating my tears, would come to me and take me gently by the hand and lead me down to the coroner’s office to show me the hole in the breast of your coat—for I never have done you the wrong to imagine the hole anywherebutin the breast where the remorseless bullet tore its way to your brave heart. And then the tender-hearted tough, wiping his eyes with his sleeve, should draw me away and leadme up the street “to see where it happened,” and that he should halt at a certain spot in front of a great flourishing saloon and gambling hall, where I should catch a glimpse through the windows, of battered and frowzy girls in dirty, trailing calico “tea-gowns” and thin slippers, drinking at the bar with the cheaper class of the gamblers or with befuddled miners they were preparing to rob, and he should say: “’Twas right here—right where I’m standin’—and poor Cy, he wuz goin’ along and he wuzn’t sayin’ nothin’ to nobody, ’n’ I was standin’ right across the street there, in the door of Minnie Monroe’s place, an’ Min she wuz leanin’ over my shoulder and we wuz both lookin’ right across at the saloon where Soapy Smith wuz standin’ in the door, readin’ a newspaper out loud to Bob Ford an’ a lot o’ them low-down girlsthat hangs around there after breakfast till they strike a treat; an’ at every word Soapy he was rippin’ out oaths an’ shakin’ his fist, an’ Min, she says to me: ‘Bill, there’s a row on, les’ go over and see what’s up.’ ’N’ jest at that minute along comes poor Cy—mindin’ his own business ’n’ sayin’ nothin’ to nobody—an’ that’s what I’ll swear to ’fore the grand jury, mister, if I’m called, an’ Min, she’ll swear to the same thing. Nothin’ wouldn’t a’ happened, fur everybody’s back wuz turned, only fur one o’ them low-down trollops stuck her head out o’ the door and s’ys, ‘There’s the —— —— ——, now,’ and Bob Ford he looked over his shoulder ’n’ s’ys, ‘Sure ’nough Soapy, there goes your man.’
Man smoking a pipe
“Min an’ me heard every word jestas plain as a pin. Cy heard it, too, and he knowed what it meant. He wuz game—I’ll say that fur him—’n’ faced about ’n’ reached fur his gun quicker ’n the jerk of a lamb’s tail in fly time, but Soapy got there first, ’cause he’d rushed out with his gun cocked, and it wuz all day with poor Cy ’fore you could say Jack Robinson.”
“Reached for his gun?” (in imagination I inquire doubtingly)—“then he was—”
Min's place
“Oh, yes, he was heeled. Cy wuzn’t no chump. He knowed he was takin’ his life in his hands when he jumped that gang an’ began to roast them in his paper. He knowed they’d lay fur him an’ do him up if they ever got the drop on him ’fore he could draw. But oh, say, if poor Cy had just had a show—or evenhalfa show—wouldn’t he shot the everlastin’ stuffin’ out o’that crowd quicker ’n a cat could lick her ear! That’s what he would, mister, fur he was game an’ he could handle a gun beautiful. But” (in my fancy your worthy tough always draws his sleeve across his face at this juncture) “I suppose ithadto be—prob’ly it was God’l Mighty’s will. There’s the pole over yander front o’ Min’s place we strung Soapy and Bob to, an’ there wuzn’t no inquest onthem—not much there wuzn’t, for the coroner himself helped at the lynchin’—everybodyhelped ’ceptin’ that pigeon-livered cad of a preacher. He wanted to deliver a lecture to the crowd on the majesty of the law an’ that kind o’ thing, but he got left on his littlegame that time. Oh, he’s too slow forthiscamp, mister. The preacher that can’t keep up with the band wagon, ain’t got no business monkeyin’ around a live mining camp like Creede.”
Man reading a newspaper
But bless my stars, how my anxiety for you has drawn me into digression? I started to tell you what happened at the gun-store. You know it’s a place where some clever men drop in and lounge a bit and swap sporting stories and smoke a friendly cigar. I heard some one call me to the rear, and going back, I found Belford and their reverences, Tom Uzzell and Myron Reed—God bless their manly souls—and one or two others I did not know. And your friend, the Reverend Myron, was reading aloud to the crowd that fanciful little jingle you had in yesterday’sTimesabout the beautiful butwillful maid who wandered down to the shore of sin and got snatched back by some compunctious Joseph before the undertow caught her, or language to that general effect;—forgive me, I haven’t been able to read it myself and cannot recall a line of it although I recognized it as a gem.
Well, you could see the little crowd was being affected, for Mr. Reed was delivering it with exquisite feeling, and when he had finished, there was a general glance of admiration all round; and Mr. Uzzell remarked that there was a fine sermon—I think, on reflection, that he said a fine,strongsermon—in the verses; and your friend Reed smiled. Then Belford, in a characteristic burst of rhetoric, declared that “The Muses must have kissed in his cradle, the fellow who wrote those lines.” And yourfriend, the Reverend Myron, smiled out loud, and Belford glanced around the crowd for approval.
I shouldn’t consider that fraternal magnanimity required me to repeat these flattering expressions to you, Cy, only that I feel your doom draws nigh. It is borne in upon me with all the psychic force of a prophecy that you are fated to perish by the ignominious hand of our own and only Soapy, if you persist in starting that daily. You can’t run a daily without saying something, and you can’t say anything that ought to be said without giving mortal offense to the toughs who are running that camp, and you can’t give offense to them without getting shot. It is an ancient saying that “a word to the wise is sufficient”; but it were better to say, as experience proves, that a word tothe wise is generally superfluous. Be wise, Cyrus, in your day and generation. Seek fame in other fields. Open a boarding-house or an undertaker’s shop, or both. This will give you a chance to study human nature in all its phases. It is the school for a poet and philosopher. Don’t miss the opportunity. Don’t waste your promising young life writing poetry or running a daily paper to reform the morals of a mining camp. Either is sure to bring you to an ignominious grave. But if, in spite of my prayers and tears, you will persist, send me your paper. I shall have a curiosity to see what sort of a stagger you make at moulding the protoplasm of public opinion into a cellular structure of moral impulse. Send me the paper,sure. So-long. God protect you.
Always,Fitz-Mac.
P. S.—Now, may confusion take my muddled brains, but I have overlooked the very thing I started to write you about.
The inclosed letter of introduction will make you acquainted with Miss Polly Parsons, a young girl whom I have known from childhood, and in whose welfare I take a serious interest. She is a bright and beautiful girl—and a thoroughly good girl, let me remark—and I want her to know you and feel that she has a friend in you on whom she can call for counsel and protection if need be.
She is under the necessity, not only of making her own living, but of contributing to the support of her father’s family. Her mother and little brother are here, living in two rooms, but her father is in Chicago. I knew the family there years ago when they were very rich, and surrounded by every luxury—fine home on Michigan avenue, carriages and footman and all that. But Parsons went broke a few years ago on grain speculations, and the worst of it is, he lost his courage with his money and is now a broken-spirited man, doing the leg work for brokers and leaving his family to shift for themselves, or pretty nearly so. I suppose it is really impossible for the poor fellow to help them very much or he would, for he loved his wife and children. Polly had every advantagethat money could purchase till the old man failed, and she is finely educated. She is a girl of great courage and has an ambition to make a business woman of herself and help her father onto his feet again. She has some of his genius for bold, speculative action, and has taken up stenography and typewriting—not as an end but only as a means.
I am very much afraid she has made a serious misstep in going to Creede and that she will get herself hopelessly compromised before she is done with it.
She has gone down with that Sure Thing Mining Company outfit and I suspect they are a bad lot; but some of them knew her father in the past, and thus gained her confidence. She is too pretty a girl and too inexperienced to be exposed to the associations of a mining camp like Creede, where there are so few decent women, without great danger. She has got courage and an earnest purpose, and those qualities are a woman’s best safeguard; but still, she is only a girl of nineteen or twenty and she doesn’t realize what a delicate thing a woman’s reputation is. It was sheer recklessness for her to go down there; but I didn’t know it till after she was off. Her mother got anxious after she had let her go and came to see me about it. I believe—without positively knowing—that theoutfit she has gone to are right-down scamps. They seem to have plenty of money and they have opened a grand office here, but they strike me as bad eggs. A very suspicious circumstance in regard to their motives toward her—to my mind at least—is that they have promised her a salary of two hundred and fifty dollars a month. That is simply preposterous. (You know that they can get an army of competent stenographers and typewriters at one hundred dollars a month, or even less.) I don’t like the looks of it a bit. I suspect they—or one of them—have designs against the girl.
Man speaking to a woman
She is honest to the core, and they will never accomplish her ruin—if that is what they mean. But of course, you must understand, I am only voicing a suspicion, and a very uncharitable one at that; but the odor of the outfit is bad, and they may compromise her hopelessly before she gets her eyes open, and spoil her life.
I want you to hunt her up and keep an eye onher, and put yourself on a square footing with her, so that she will have confidence in you. Above all things, see that she has a boarding place where there is some respectable married woman, and give her a talking to about the camp that will open her eyes. She will take care of herself all right if she is once put on her guard.
I want you to understand she is no pick-up for any rake to trifle with; but a woman is a woman—you know that, Cy, as well as I do—and youth is youth.
She is a good telegrapher—unusually good, I imagine. I mention this so that you may get her employment if that job she has gone to looks at all scaly, and likely to compromise her.
She has great force of character—her father’s temperament before he broke down—and she has taken up all these things to fit herself for that business career to which she aspires. Don’t be deceived by her suave and amiable manner into thinking her a weakling, for she has gotimmenseforce of character, and she perfectly believes she is going to have a business career.
I have told her in the letter that you are engaged to the nicest girl in Denver, so as to put you on a confidential footing, and head off your falling in love with her yourself. Be a brother to her, Cy, and keep her out of trouble.God knows you are wicked enough yourself to scent wickedness from afar and see any danger in the path of an attractive girl without experience. Look her up at once—at once, mind you—and let me have a good account of yourself as soon as possible.
Affectionately,Fitz-Mac.