So sure enough I wrote 'em a parcel o' letters, pickin' out about the most persistent spenders the town could show, an' it made me laugh when I pictured Bill tryin' to lug home the list o' stuff they'd load him up with. I packed up for the early, train, an' then as it wasn't worth while to waste the handful o' minutes left o' that night, I got back into my workin' togs an' went out for one last Turkish bath. I'm mighty partial to Turkish baths, an' I wanted to let 'em know that I was perfectly sober at least one night o' my visit. It was gray dawn when I came out o' the buildin', an' even in Frisco that's a shivery period. In spite of me holdin' all the good cards in the deck, an' knowin' just about how I was goin' to play 'em, I was lonely an' down-hearted there in the dawning. All I wanted was Barbie's happiness, an' I was goin' to give it to her full measure an' nairy a whimper: but if it could just have been my home-comin' instead of what I was goin' to do, that would light up her world for her, I reckon I could have FLOWN all the way back to the Diamond Dot. I turned a corner an' came face to face on Piker. He was lookin' downcast an' harried, an' I bought him a drink. He had told me where Jim was, an' I didn't try to forget it. I sat down an' talked to him an tried to soften his crust an' get him to agree to make a new try-out o' life. He finally got purty mellow an' told me some o' the steps down which he had stumbled, an' how slippery the'd been when he'd tried to climb back. I confided to him a lot o' my own mishaps, an' he got purty near up to the mourner's bench, when all of a sudden he gets bitter. "You're just like all the rest," sez he, "you make all kinds of allowance for a good lookin', proud sort, like Silver Dick; but a feller like me--you allus give the verdict again a feller like me, an' you know it." "Dick ain't been no saint, I know," sez I; "but at least he was out in the open, while I can't quite get over that knee-gun you wore." "Out in the open, was he?" sez Piker, with a leer. "Didn't he get to your ranch an' try to land the daughter o' the boss--an' him a married man all the time!" I reached across the table an' got him by the collar, jerked him to me, an' flopped him face up across the table. "You lie," sez I. He shook his head, an' I felt a cold streak hit my heart. I loosened up on him an' let him set up, an' he said 'at Silver Dick was married to the woman at Laramie, an' he knew it. I tried to bluff him out of it, but he stuck to it, finally sayin' that I had him, an' could finish him if I wanted to; but that it was the God's truth, an' he'd stick to it.