To be strapped in a mining camp, for instance, was no more than a mild embarrassment.

But to find oneself thirty-eight years old, friendless and without funds in a city the size of Dallas--well, that was more than an adventure, and it afforded a sort of excitement that he believed he could very well do without.

Dallas was no open-handed frontier town; it was a small New York, where life is settled, where men are suspicious, and where fortunes are slow in the making.

He wondered now if hard, fast living had robbed him of the punch to make a new beginning; he wondered, too, if the vague plans at the back of his mind had anything to them or if they were entirely impracticable.

Here was opportunity, definite, concrete, and spelled with a capital O, here was a deliberate invitation to avail himself of a short cut out of his embarrassment.