SWIFTWATER has often told me that he never could quite understand why it was that the way to a woman’s heart, even his own way—Swiftwater’s—was so hard to travel and so devious and tortuous in its windings and interwindings.

“Why, Mrs. Beebe,” Swiftwater used to say, “I should think a man could do anything with gold! And for my own part, I used to always figure that money would buy anything,” said Swiftwater, “even the most beautiful woman in the world for your wife.”

Swiftwater’s mental processes were simple, as the foregoing will illustrate. It was hardly to be expected otherwise. Swiftwater decamped from the drudgery and slavish toil of a kitchen in the little road-house at Circle City to gain in less than three months more money than he had ever dreamed it possible for him to have.

Two hundred thousand dollars was the minimum of Swiftwater’s first big clean-up. If Gussie Lamore had lovers, Swiftwater figured, his money would win her heart away from all the rest.

All this relates very intimately to the really interesting story of Swiftwater’s courtship of Gussie Lamore. The girl kept him at arm’s length, yet if ever Swiftwater became restive Gussie would cleverly draw the line taut and Swiftwater was at her feet.

“I am tired of this, Gussie,” said Swiftwater one day, and finally the “Knight of the Golden Omelette,” as he was often termed, was serious for once in his life.

“I am going back to Eldorado and I’ll bring down here a bunch of gold. It will weigh as much as you do on the scales, pound for pound. Gussie, that gold will be yours if you give me your word you will marry me.”

“All right, Bill, we’ll see. Go get your gold and show me that you really have it.”

Swiftwater was gone from Dawson about two days before he returned to the dance hall where Gussie was working. This time he kept away from the bar and merely waited until the morning dawned and the habitues of the dance hall had disappeared one by one. By that time the word had been sent out to Seattle of the rich findings of gold on Eldorado, and the early crop of newcomers was arriving over the ice from Dyea, in the days before the Skagway trail was known.

Swiftwater, in the early morning, carried to Gussie’s apartments two tin coffee cans filled with the yellow gold.

“Here’s all you weigh, anyhow,” said Swiftwater. “Now, take this gold to the Trading Company’s office and bank it. Then I want you to buy a ticket to San Francisco and I will meet you there this summer and we will be married.”

Thus ended the curious story of Swiftwater’s wooing of Gussie Lamore. All the world knows how, when Gussie reached San Francisco, where her folks lived, she banked Swiftwater’s gold and turned him down cold.

Swiftwater reached the Golden Gate a month after Gussie had arrived at her home. All his entreaties for her to carry out her bargain came to nothing.

Bitter as he was towards Gussie, Swiftwater still seemed to love the girl. His first creed, “I can buy any woman with gold,” seemed to stick with him.

There was, for one thing, little Grace Lamore. It came to Swiftwater that he could marry Grace and punish Gussie for her inconstancy.

Now, this may seem to you, my reader, like an ill-founded story. Yet the truth is, Grace and Swiftwater were married within a month of his arrival in San Francisco, and the San Francisco papers were filled with the story of how Swiftwater bought his bride a $15,000 home in Oakland and furnished it most beautifully with all that money could buy.

Swiftwater and Grace, after a two days’ wedding trip down the San Joaquin Valley leased the bridal chamber of the Baldwin Hotel, while their new home in Oakland was being fitted up. Old-time Alaskans will smile when I recall the impression that Swiftwater made on San Franciscans.

It was his invariable custom to stand in front of the lobby of the Baldwin every evening, smoothly shaved, his moustaches nicely brushed and curled, and wearing his favorite black Prince Albert and silk hat.

Probably few in the throng that came and went through the lobby of the Baldwin—in those days one of the most popular hostelries in San Francisco—would have paid any attention to Swiftwater. But Bill knew a trick or two and his old-time friends have told me that Swiftwater made it an unfailing custom to tip the bell-boys a dollar each a day to point to the dapper little man and have them tell both guests of the Baldwin and strangers:

“There is Swiftwater Bill Gates, the King of the Klondike.”

And Swiftwater would stand every evening, silk hat on his head, spick and span, and clean, and bow politely to everybody as they came in through the lobby to the dining hall.

Isn’t it curious, that with all his money, and his confidence in the purchasing power of gold, Swiftwater’s dream of love with Grace Lamore should have lasted scarcely more than a short three weeks? It was not that Swiftwater was parsimonious with is money—the very finest of silks and satins, millinery, diamonds at Shreve’s, cut glass and silverware, were Grace’s for the asking. They will tell you in San Francisco to this day that Swiftwater and his bride worked overtime in a carriage shopping in the most expensive houses in the city of the Golden Gate.

Then came the break with Grace. I do not know the cause, but the girl threw Swiftwater overboard and left the bridal chamber of the Baldwin to return to her family, even before they had occupied the palatial home in Oakland.

Swiftwater’s rage knew no bounds. In his heart he cursed the whole Lamore family and quickly took means to vent his spite.

This is how it came about that scarcely a month after Swiftwater’s wedding bells had rung, the “Knight of the Golden Omelette” was seen to enter his Oakland home one evening and emerge therefrom a half hour later bearing on his back a heavy bundle wrapped in a bed sheet.

The burden was all that Swiftwater’s-strength could manage. Laboriously he toiled his way to the house of a friend in Oakland and wearily deposited his bundle on the front porch, where he sat and waited the coming of his friend.

When Swiftwater was finally admitted to the house, he untied the sheet and opened up the contents of the pack. There lay glittering on the floor $7,000 worth of solid silver plate and cut glass.

“That’s what I gave my bride,” he said, “and now she’s quit me and I’m d——d if she’ll have that.”