We chatted for two hours--agreeably! After a bit he told me all about his life with Jesse James--how he had been befriended by the bandit. Casually he described the killing and laughed as if it were a great joke that he had had to wait eighteen months for James to turn his back toward him! "That is," he added, "long enough for me to get out my gun and kill him." He admitted readily that had it not been for the fact that James grew to have a positive affection for and belief in him he never would have succeeded in his murderous scheme. "But finally," he concluded laughingly, "he fell for me--whole--and I got my chance." I asked him how he could bring himself to do such a foul murder. "Well," he replied thoughtfully, as if wishing to be literally truthful, "the Governor offered a reward for him dead or alive--and I needed the money." Not excepting even Benedict Arnold this boy was the most universally despised individual this country ever produced. He drifted further West after the murder and became one of the most desperate characters those lawless days ever knew. He met his end in a bar room in Cripple Creek. That time he tried to shoot a man whose back was not turned! Yet what physiognomist could read in this boyish face such dastardy as Robert Ford delighted in? _Chapter LXVII_ MORE PLAYS If George Broadhurst had not promised me the first call on his play "Bought and Paid For" I should have been saved another failure. It was on the strength of his promise that I should be the first to read the manuscript of what was destined to become his biggest money-making success that I agreed to produce "The Captain." I kept my agreement and scored up against myself a costly fizzle. Broadhurst broke his word--and I never saw "Bought and Paid For" until I bought and paid for a seat! And this in face of the fact that Broadhurst spent most of his time with me at my house on the beach in California while he was working out the plot of the play! (And I later discovered he had not refused to take advantage of at least one of my freely offered suggestions--to make the biggest climactic moment of the action!) Failures were becoming not only frequent, they were getting to be a habit! "A Native Son" was my next venture. It was written by James Montgomery, author of "Ready Money," and it was as perfect a failure as "Ready Money" was a success! It was an awful thing. I wonder that I ever produced it. At last I had had my fill of trying to discover the great American play--and headed for my California home to rest--and think! That period didn't last long. It never has. Presently George C. Tyler (who is Liebler & Company) got in touch with me, the outcome of it being that I signed a three-years' contract with him on the understanding that I should get as my first vehicle under his management an original play by Booth Tarkington.