He went over to see how the crowd was doin' in the storeroom, sayin' that he thought he'd get some eatin'-things under way to sort of ease the strain--he knew a human all right, the Friar did. Jim an' I walked out together under the stars, an' I told him my side of it; an' he told me that he had met Jack Whitman when he was runnin' a gamblin' place close to the New Mexico line. Whitman ran it on the square an' he had saved Jim a lot o' money one night, an' then afterwards Jim had helped to stand off a hold-up gang, an' a strong feelin' had grew up between 'em. Whitman had told part of the story, but made out that Barbie's mother was his own sister. When she had left Jabez an' the child--I don't know, myself, just why she left him. It started when she found out how he had lied to Whitman an' mighty near killed him; but just all that happened, before she burned out her brand and skipped, I don't know to this day, but they was both purty high-headed an' nervy in their youth, an' I've often suspected that Jabez' conscience didn't get to workin' smooth until after he was left alone with the child on his hands. It sometimes happens that way. Well, anyhow, when she had left him she had gone to the southern part of California, where she'd got a job teachin' school. Whitman had located her, an' when her health gave out he had sent her money without lettin' her know where it came from. Whitman had follered minin' till his wife died, an' then he got to speculatin' in stocks, finally gettin' cleaned out full an' proper, an' then he started to gamblin' in earnest. It was from him that Jim had picked up most of his idees about business an' gamblin'. When Whitman himself had died he had turned Barbie's mother over to Jim. She was livin' on a ranch in northern Colorado at this time, on account of her health. When Jim got cleaned out by the cattle crowd, an' opened his joint in Laramie, he brought her over to keep house an' be company for him. He pertended to be the son of a wild uncle she'd had, an' he fixed up a believable tale to go with it. All the while he'd been at the Diamond Dot he had supposed that she was Whitman's sister--she went by her maiden name of Miss Garrison, an' she had never told him her full story, simply hintin' enough at times to let him know that she had gone through the mill. He had never pieced things together until I had sent him my letter, an' then he guessed how it was, an' puttin' what I told him onto what she an' Whitman had told him, he saw it all. He didn't know what had made her leave Judson, or rather Jordan; but he said he was positive it was his fault, as she was some the finest woman he had ever met, exceptin' of course her own daughter.