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He had read much romantic literature, and he served as well if not as picturesquely as a page in doublet and hose. So O-liver saw them. He had been riding all the afternoon on Mary Pick. He had gone up into the Cañon of the Honey Pots. No one knew it by that name but O-liver, but at all the houses one could buy honey.
Atwood's dream had to do with a mansion high on Frisco's hills. But Henry saw her beside him in his long and lovely car. He saw her, too, in a fur coat. "I feel," said Jane, "like a murderer." Tommy and O-liver had stopped at her front gate to leave her some books. "Why?" It was O-liver who asked it. "Come and see." She led them round the house. Death and destruction reigned.
Entering, O-liver was transported at once to the dance hall on the Barbary Coast a great room with a bar at one end, the musicians on a platform at the other, a stairway leading upward. Groups of people waited for a signal to dance, to drink, to act whatever part had been assigned them people with unearthly pink complexions. The heat was intense.
If I know you are there somewhere in the dark I shall pour out my soul to you." Was it any wonder that Jane, talking to Tommy the next morning about O-liver, felt her pulses pounding, her cheeks burning? She had lain awake all night thinking of the things he had said to her. It seemed a very big and wonderful thing that a man could love her like that.
Tinkersfield had assumed a sudden importance as an oil town. All of the men had business connected in some way with Tinkersfield. And all of them earned more than fifteen dollars a week. Therefore they disputed O-liver's statement. "If you had a wife " said one. "Ah," said O-liver, "if I had " "Ain't you got any ambition?" Henry Bittinger demanded.
But that night as she lay in bed looking out toward the mountain, silver-tipped in the moonlight, she had a shivering sense of the eyes of some of the men of Tillotson, who kept the hotel, and of others of his kind. O-liver had stayed at home that Saturday night to write a certain weekly letter. He had stayed at home also because he didn't approve of Jane.
"They don't do it, Tommy," O-liver was thoughtful. "After all a woman's a woman. It's easier to let her go." An astute observer might have found O-liver cynical about women. If he said nothing against them he certainly never said anything for them.
And you will work better because I am gone. I mustn't be here O-liver." Jane had indeed seen straight. O-liver laid the note down on his desk and looked up at the mountain. He needed to look up. If he had looked down for a moment he would have followed Jane. And now there was no sandwich stand in Tinkersfield. But there was a good hotel. O-liver saw to that.
Because he wore no hat his skin was tanned. He had blue eyes that twinkled and, as I have said, a blond mane. "Fifteen dollars a week," he reaffirmed, "is enough." Fifteen dollars was all that O-liver earned. He was secretary to an incipient oil king. As the oil king's monarchy was largely on paper he found it hard at times to compass even the fifteen dollars that went to his secretary.
He would have said anything to please her. "Well, you might try." The next day he found himself talking it over with O-liver. "She wants to sell them on Saturday nights." "Tell her," said O-liver, "to stay at home." "But she's got to have some money." "Money," said O-liver, "is the root of evil. You say she has a garden. Let her live on leeks and lettuce."
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