While still a young man, Bill Cassity went to Colorado, worked in the mines and smelters, at high wages, and ordered the Spectator sent to him there — and later to Los Angeles. Bill came home once, told me he liked his work in Colorado, or rather the big wages—but he did not like the characters he had to associate with. In California, still on the right side of the laws of God and man, Bill pushed his penchant for righteousness a little too far for his own good. As a detective, self-appointed or otherwise, he learned much of the ways of the Los Angeles underworld—and, it was said, the boys took him for a ride and failed to bring him back. And again, some twenty-odd years ago, Than Gustafson, a former Wetmore man, older brother of our Fred Gustafson — and in a legal way Fred’s brother was also his brother-in-law, the two Gustafson boys having married sisters, Adelia and Ophelia, daughters of S. M. Hawkins—is supposed to have been taken for a one-way ride by the Rocky Mountain crooks. He left his home in Denver, a wife and two children, one evening in line of his duties — and was never heard of again. Than Gustafson evidently knew too much for his own good. When in gangdom, it is wise to be dumb. Under the old system, in revivals, the first converts either appointed themselves or were delegated to work among the congregation as boosters for the minister—something like Uncle Tom’s “exhorters.” They would go out in the audience, usually in pairs, and plead with you, cry, and sniffle over you—an actual fact—in a manner that would - make you feel mighty cheap. The boy who respected them, loved them through long associations, was struck dumb. One particularly sanctified woman—no one could ever doubt her sincerity; I had known her for years, and she was always so—with redoubled sniffling tendencies as of the moment, accompanied by the prettiest girl that ever walked down a church aisle or any other avenue in Wetmore, a girl whom I had just about given up as lost to a certain rich man’s son, on account of her papa’s preference for the other boy, and because “papa” said I played poker, made a firm stand in front of me one night. I knew before the old girl began to sniffle that, on account of the young girl, I would, sooner or later, find myself in a front row. More than one boy went forward in that meeting because he did not have the heart to disappoint them—and maybe there was also the attraction of a girl. Girls were more susceptible to the worker’s pleas. The older woman talked rapidly, between sniffles, in terms only partly understood by me—but the girl’s radiant smile told me much. I would not permit them to march me up to the front, as other workers were doing with prospects, but I promised to sit with the young girl in the reserved corner on the following night—and see what would happen.