I may relate, therefore, that for some years I was known as the largest liquor dealer in the Territory, as well as one of the shrewdest hands at cards. Although I employed men to do the work, often players would insist on my dealing the monte deck or laying down the faro lay-out for them. I played for big stakes, too--bigger stakes than people play for nowadays in the West. Many times I have sat down with the equivalent of thousands of dollars in chips and played them all away, only to regain them again without thinking it anything particularly unusual. As games go, I was considered "lucky" for a gambler. Though not superstitious, I believed in this luck of mine, and this is probably the reason that it held good for so long. If of late various things, chiefly the mining depression, have made my fortunes all to the bad, I am no man to whine at the inevitable. I can take my ipecac along with the next man! There were few men in the old days in Phoenix, or, indeed, the entire Territory, who did not drink liquor, and lots of it. In fact, it may be said that the entire fabric of the Territory was constructed on liquor. The pioneers were most of them whiskey fiends, as were the gamblers. By this I am not defending the liquor traffic. I have sold more liquor than any man in Arizona over the bar in my life-time, but I voted dry at the last election and I adhere to the belief that a whiskey-less Arizona will be the best for our children and our children's children. [Illustration: THE OLD WARD HOMESTEAD, WHERE CADY KEPT STORE DURING THE BUILDING OF THE SANTA FE RAILROAD] During my residence in Phoenix Darrel Dupper, the man who had christened the town, became one of my best friends. He kept the post and trading store at Desert Station, at which place was the only water to be found between Phoenix and Wickenburg, if I remember correctly. The station made him wealthy. Dupper was originally Count Du Perre, and came of a noted aristocratic French family. His forefathers were, I believe, prominent in the court of Louis XIV. When a young man he committed some foolhardy act in France and was banished by his people, who sent him a monthly remittance on condition that he get as far away from his home as he could, and stay there. To fulfill the terms of this agreement Du Perre came to Arizona among the early pioneers and soon proved that he had the stuff of a real man in him. He learned English and Americanized his name to Dupper. He engaged in various enterprises and finally started Desert Station, where he made his fortune.