That was, and still is, Kate's Four Bit Crib. The girls there wear candy-striped stockings and skirts halfway to the knee, and their shirtwaists are open at the neck. Dirty Jake didn't speak to me for three years. He wasn't Dirty Jake then, though, just Jacob Niedelmeier, fresh from selling ribbons and yard goods in Perth Amboy, New Jersey and hot to find a fortune in the hills. He'd been a failure all his natural life. This was a new beginning, for a man 34 who was already at the bitter end and looking for the path back. Gold was the way, he figured. He was going to get it. But he didn't. He was back flat broke and starving in four months. He spent the next seventeen years behind the notions counter at Martin's Mercantile, selling ribbon and yard goods and growing old two years at a time. I think it tainted his mind. Leastways, from the time I got to know him, some fourteen years gone, he's been what you might say, a queer actor. At first, when the store closed at sundown he'd take off for the near hills with a pick and a sack, still seeking for color somebody might have missed. After a while he didn't bother with the gear. He just moseyed around all that rock mostly, I suppose, to be away from people. Truth to tell, people were beginning to avoid him anyway. He was getting kind of gamy over the years, and cantankerous generally. * * * * * Maybe it's kind of funny we got more or less friendly but doctors and ribbon clerks aren't so all-fired far apart. They both have to do with people and their ways, and like to get shut of both now and then. Every couple of months I'd go along with him up in the hills, to get the sick smell out of my nose. Night air and a night sky can be pretty fine if you've been looking at tongues and such long enough. Going out like that, we didn't say much. I preferred it that way since Jake Niedelmeier was a boob. A smart man can get on tolerably well with an idiot if both just have sense enough to keep their mouths shut. One time he didn't was when he brought along a bottle of rye. He got started and was going on to beat the band, yapping about how life was a cheat and someday everybody'd respect Jacob Niedelmeier, until finally I lost patience and told him that while I treasured our association beyond pearls I'd chuck him off a cliff if he didn't shut the hell up. I was nice about it, and after that it was like I said, tolerable. Well, sir, about two years ago he came into my office while I was darning up some fool borax miner that'd got himself kicked square in the bottle on his hip. Jake stood in the corner picking his teeth while I finished. After the borax miner limped out he spoke up. "Comin'?" That was all the invitation he ever gave. "I guess," I said. I sloshed the suture needle in a basin, gave it a couple of swipes on the hone stone and threw it in my satchel. That miner had a tough rind.