CHAPTER VIII
THE TOLTEC IDOL
"I was twenty-five when your mother died," this page began. "I had a little ranch in the Pecos valley near Twin Pine crossing, and I had just begun to taste prosperity. After your mother died things began to go wrong. It didn't take me long to conclude that she had been responsible for what success I had had, and that without her I couldn't hope to keep things together. I didn't try very hard; I'll admit that. I just gradually let go all holds and began to slip—began to drift back into the sort of company I'd kept before I met your mother. They were not bad fellows, you understand—just the rakehelly, reckless sort that keep hanging on to the edge of things and making a living by their wits. I'd come West without any definite idea of what I wanted to do, an
