I was not in love with Jake, nor did I think I ever should be. But he had been the grandest friend a girl could hope for. I pressed his hand and said with an affectionate smile: “Perhaps. We’ll see.” By the time I reached Leadville, Jake was well established in his clothing business at 312 Harrison Avenue, which was the left-hand front store in the Tabor Opera House. They called this store Sands, Pelton & Co. Jake arranged for me to stay at a boarding house while he lived at 303 Harrison Avenue across the street from his business. But I suppose once a gambler, always a gambler. Jake never indulged in excessive gambling but the spirit of it was in his blood. He loved to spend an evening, after a hard day’s work in the store, satisfying this taste. Instead of the lone Shoo-Fly, there were plenty of places he could go—by now—between forty and sixty alight every night, if you counted the side houses as well as the licensed places. Pap Wyman’s was the most notorious. It stood at State and Harrison. I had been told that every man in camp went there to see the sights, if not to enter into all the activities which under one roof combined liquor-selling, gambling, dancing and woman’s oldest profession. The girls wore short skirts with bare arms and shoulders and besides being eager to dance, would encourage men to join them in the “green rooms,” a custom taken over from the variety theatres. These were small wine rooms where for every bottle of champagne that a man ordered, the girl’s card was punched for a dollar commission. Frequently, late at night or early in the morning, a “madam” and her retinue of girls from one of the “parlor” houses would swoop into Wyman’s to join in the festivities. The dance hall girls were said to envy these “ladies” very much. Their expensive dresses and opulent jewelry, especially as displayed on the madam who was usually a jolly coarse peroxide blonde of forty or fifty, were far beyond their attainments. To be truthful, these sporting women were the aristocracy of the camp since nice married women whose husbands had not found bonanzas, spent the day in backbreaking work at washtubs or over hot stoves and were too tired in the evening to do anything but sleep. One night Jake had gone over to Wyman’s to gamble and I was left to entertain myself. Feeling hungry toward the middle of the evening and being fond of oysters, I crossed Harrison Avenue to the old Saddle Rock Cafe which stood a block down from the Clarendon hotel and Tabor Opera house. When I entered and was shown to a table, the place was rather quiet. “Intermission yet at the Opera House?” the waiter asked. “Oh, I don’t know,” I replied. “I’m not attending tonight. I’ve already seen this bill ... ‘The Marble Heart’.” “Guess not,” he said. “We always get a lively bunch in here then.”