“She was a born flirt, but though she carried her flirtations with anybody who would flirt with her, much nearer to the danger line than would be tolerated in a more strait-laced community, it was the general opinion among the boarders that there was no real evil in her, and, moreover, that she was fully capable of taking care of herself in almost any emergency. So, though she would not have been recognized as respectable by any other married woman in town, a fact that troubled her not, she was considered all right by our set, and we looked upon her as a good fellow rather than as a woman bound by the ordinary rules of propriety. She was a German by descent, and Stein was German by birth, but Lena was perhaps too thoroughly Americanized in a poor school. “Naturally trouble came of it. We were accustomed, as the people in most small Western towns were accustomed some years ago, to receiving occasionally a visit from what we used to call a ‘cross-roads gambler.’ These worthies are perhaps the least useful and most ‘ornery’ specimens of humanity to be found in North America. They are professionals without the skill or nerve they need to enable them to hold their own among other professionals. Knowing just enough to cheat, but not enough to cheat deftly, they travel about the country, usually alone, but sometimes in pairs, stopping in the smallest settlements for a day or a week at a time, looking for victims. No game is too small for them, though they will play heavily at times, but they manage to live on their little skill by worming their way into friendly games of poker, such as are played all over the country, but perhaps more openly in the West than in the East. “When Dick Bradley happened along our way and stopped over at our town, we had, though we did not realize it immediately, all the elements of a drama right at hand. It was not long before the drama was enacted, and perhaps it was just as well that we were not a little farther West, for there might have been considerable shooting in the last act. As it was we had a duel, but that was fought with the pasteboards instead of revolvers, and the difference was supposed to be settled by a freeze-out in the great American game. “Bradley was an ordinary cross-roads gambler, and nothing more. He was a little handsomer than the usual run of men, and he dressed rather better than custom demanded in that part of the country. Moreover, he had a free-and-easy way with him--it was a part of his stock in trade--that was attractive to anybody, and I suppose especially so to a woman like Lena. At all events he hadn’t been with us twenty-four hours before there was a violent flirtation going on between the two. We all considered that natural enough, and supposing we knew the woman thoroughly well, we thought no harm of it at first. Stein took no notice of it apparently, and as it was a matter that concerned no one else so closely as it did him, none of us felt called on to say anything.