She tied a knot at the end of that quirt and swung it against her palm. Then says: “Why should I do that? This is Liberty Hall, hoss.” And chuckles hoarsely and in her grand swagger leaves the room and passes through the dancehall crowd towards the rear, them drunks falling away on either side of her as when a big ship comes into the harbor at San Francisco and the smaller craft make way.

I took Amelia to the hotel where I was staying, and the desk clerk started to grin with his bad teeth but I cut him off short by renting her a room next to mine on the second floor, and we went upstairs and I turned down her bed for her, sniffed at the pitcher on the dresser to see if the water was fresh, give her a flannel nightshirt of my own, for she didn’t have no decent sleeping garment, and kissed her goodnight on the forehead.

She had gone through all this right docile, without a word; not, I expect, having yet recovered from the surprise of finding her kin.

I was too excited to sleep much that night. “Amelia Crabb” is what I had wrote down on that hotel register. I didn’t know her Mormon name and did not want to. Nor was I really curious to hear more about her earlier life-not even about her Ma, my sister Sue Ann. I had been too long away from them people of my regular family. It kind of depressed me to think of their life in Salt Lake among the Latter-day Saints, being so foreign to all I knowed. I had asked Amelia, on the way to the hotel, about my own Ma, her granny, and she said she didn’t recall her, so I reckoned she died somehow. I don’t mean I was without feeling, but all I had was now centered in this young girl, and more as to what she would become than what she was at present. Somebody to take care of. And I was going to do a better job than I had in the past. I hadn’t no Indians to worry about here, nor no U.S. Army. I could handle anybody else, even Wild Bill Hickok if it come to that.

Next day, pretty late, for Amelia had got into the habit in that whorehouse of sleeping through most of the light, we went out and got some clothes and in a dress what buttoned up to the throat and with her face washed clean you’d never have taken that girl for anything but the gentlest-born. She was right pale, but then that made her look all the more respectable, for a lady in them days never let the sun touch her skin.

Then I realized we hadn’t ought to stay at that hotel, which was not buggy or anything, but it was in the rougher part of town, flanked by a couple of saloons, and there was uncouth fellows sitting around the front, spitting tobacco juice all over the floor, and some of them might have knowed Amelia from Dolly’s. So by God if I didn’t go to the swellest place in K.C., with fancy gaslights and plush furniture in the lobby and flunkies in gold-braided outfits, and hire us a combination of connecting bedrooms with a nice parlor between. Must have cost seven-eight dollars a day or more. I don’t recall. I do remember the management was right snooty, but I threw money around like seed and their attitude changed directly.

Amelia herself didn’t do me no harm there, for it is amazing how she took to the new life. I suppose that Mormon upbringing hadn’t been so bad, as a foundation, and then her natural spirit added the rest, along with what she got from ladies’-fashion papers I bought her and the studying she did of the high class of women who resided in the hostelry: Senators’ wives and daughters, and those of Army generals and leaders of commerce. She developed a walk that looked like she was on tiny wheels beneath her long skirts, and when she took a cup of tea her dainty hand was raised like a bird in flight.

And pretty, right pretty she proved to be, with that turned-up nose and little mouth, and her hair was bright as a fall leaf when it had been washed a couple times and set by a professional hairdresser. The men around the hotel was fascinated by her, but discreet and respectable, not gawking nor licking their lips and such, like the kind of louts I always hung out with heretofore.

Well, this was costing me a plenty and within a few days I had peeled so many bills off my roll that it was down to the size of my little finger, with the hotel account still unpaid and growing by the hour, for Amelia was continually ordering things to be sent up to our rooms. And that was as it should be, for I wanted to keep her in seclusion until the genteel way of life become a habit that replaced whoring in the way she thought of herself.

I had been to several schools so far without finding the right one, for various reasons: at some, the withered spinsters in charge looked at me over their pointy noses and says they was full for the next five years; and I’ll tell you this, there was others who reminded me of Dolly.

But I had to get more dinero somewhere. Now the only thing I could figure doing to raise it was to go back over in the Market Square area again and play poker. Them buffalo hunters had real big games every night, generally starting after twelve o’clock, when they returned from the theaters and dance halls, and running into the morning. When I say big, I mean with luck you might walk away from the table at about four-thirty A.M. with two-three hundred dollars. This time was good from my point of view: I could see Amelia safely to bed and then slip out, play all night, get back in before she arose, and nobody the wiser. For I didn’t want her to know her uncle was gambling: that was the sort of life from which I had sworn to protect her.

The first night I was over to Market Square, I run into Wild Bill Hickok. He was sitting in his favorite corner of that saloon where he shot Strawhan’s brother, and when I entered, he waved me over. He was with some others in a poker game and had just won a big pot.

“Hoss,” he says to me, “I have missed you. I never took you for the type of man who would run off with a crib-girl.”

I did not like this reference to Amelia, but to protest against it effectively I would have had to admit she was my kin, and I didn’t want to do that.

“Yes sir,” he goes on, “if you are as mighty a poker player as you are a lover, I’d take it kindly if you would sit in. You,” he points at the man directly across the table, “give him your chair.”

This man looks miserable, but ain’t slow about complying. Now of all people I did not want to play against Wild Bill. For I neglected to say earlier that I intended to cheat. I know there are people who take dishonesty at cards as one of the nastiest sins in the world. I don’t admire it greatly myself, but figured my cause was sufficient to justify it in this circumstance. I guess that’s what everybody says about every type of unscrupulosity employed by himself, but I ain’t preaching morality here, I’m merely recording history, and what happened at that time was I proposed to cheat my opponents to the hilt. Except I never expected to be in a game with Wild Bill Hickok.

So I played honest for a couple hours and by two o’clock in the morning I was down to my last five dollars. Now I took hold of myself and reflected that little Amelia was all I had in the world. Either I got the money to make a proper woman of her, or we was back where we started, in which case it didn’t matter if I was shot by Wild Bill. I saw I never had a choice in the matter.

Now, Frank Delight who had a crush on Caroline and was a master of games of chance, had showed me several devices that put the odds on the side of the man what employed them. I really had not practiced enough to manage the ace-up-the-sleeve, which the expert can make to appear more swiftly than the eye can follow; and the same weakness applied to the fake shuffle, in my hands. So what I done was to use the mirror-ring. This is an ordinary finger ring that has a good flat surface on it somewhere, highly polished, which will reflect the markings on the cards as you deal them facedown. So that you know what your opponents are holding and can play accordingly.