A week later Swiftwater, as I afterwards found out, joined Kitty Gates in Portland and the two went to San Francisco. Thus can be turned into the basest uses the legal processes of our courts and, strange as it may seem, Swiftwater, after Bera’s divorce, legally married Kitty, then divorced her, and not later than two years afterwards he told the newspapers in San Francisco, that having divorced all his other wives, he was looking for a new one. I want to ask now, is there no law to reach a monster of this kind? Are the laws so framed that men of Swiftwater’s type can go at large throughout the country ruining the lives of young girls, and, followed by a halo of gold and the fame that quick fortune making brings, claiming and receiving the friendship of their fellow men? CHAPTER XVII. I AM getting to the end of my story, and as the finish draws near, it seems to me, that I have not quite done justice by Swiftwater Bill, in at least one respect--and that is the activity and agility the man displays when events over which he might have had control, had he been on the square, crowded him so closely, that like the proverbial flea, he had to hike. And in telling of Swiftwater’s talent in this direction, I wish to be regarded as speaking as one without malice, but rather as admiring Swiftwater for trying, in so far as lay in his power, to make good his nickname of Swiftwater. In San Francisco, after Swiftwater had obtained a divorce from Kitty, he immediately announced his intention of getting another wife. For Swiftwater knew that the prison gates which once had yawned in his face were now closed, and, better even than that, was the thought that I--his loving mother-in-law--would no longer be interested in his future. It is undoubtedly true that in Swiftwater’s mental processes he regarded first, the hundreds of thousands of dollars in gold that lay in the pay streak on No. 6 Cleary, in the Tanana, and I can see Bill now in my mind’s eye, facing an array of cut glass decanters, embroidered table cloths, potted plants, orchestra and all that goes with the swell cafes of San Francisco, eating his dinner and rubbing his hands with glee as he remembered how easily he had obtained a fortune from me, which he sunk on Quartz Creek in the Klondike, and then slid out of paying his debt to me. The very next season found Swiftwater in the Tanana and this time, according to the best official records I could obtain, his clean-up was not less than $200,000. But I had not forgotten that Swiftwater had told me, first that Number 6 Cleary was a bigger proposition even than Quartz Creek, and that Gold Stream was one of the richest of all the undeveloped creeks in the whole Tanana.