JOHN MADISON is a peculiar type of the Western man.  Up to the time of his meeting LAURA, he had always been employed either in the mines or on a newspaper west of the Mississippi River.  He is one of those itinerant reporters; to-day you might find him in Seattle, to-morrow in Butte, the next week in Denver, and then possibly he would make the circuit from Los Angeles to ’Frisco, and then all around again.  He drinks his whiskey straight, plays his faro fairly, and is not particular about the women with whom he goes.  He started life in the Western country at an early age.  His natural talents, both in literature and in general adaptability to all conditions of life, were early exhibited, but his alma mater was the bar-room, and the faculty of that college its bartenders and gamblers and general habitues.

He seldom has social engagements outside of certain disreputable establishments, where a genial personality or an over-burdened pocketbook gives entree, and the rules of conventionality have never even been whispered.  His love affairs, confined to this class of women, have seldom lasted more than a week or ten days.  His editors know him as a brilliant genius, irresponsible, unreliable, but at times inestimably valuable.  He cares little for personal appearance beyond a certain degree of neatness.  He is quick on the trigger, and in a time of over-heated argument can go some distance with his fists; in fact, his whole career is best described as “happy-go-lucky.”

He realizes fully his ability to do almost anything fairly well, and some things especially well, but he has never tried to accomplish anything beyond the earning of a comfortable living.  Twenty-five or thirty dollars a week was all he needed.  With that he could buy his liquor, treat his women, sometimes play a little faro, sit up all night and sleep all day, and in general lead the life of good-natured vagabondage which has always pleased him and which he had chosen as a career.

The objection of safer and saner friends to this form of livelihood was always met by him with a slap on the back and a laugh.  “Don’t you worry about me, partner; if I’m going to hell I’m going there with bells on,” was always his rejoinder; and yet, when called upon to cover some great big news story, or report some vital event, he settled down to his work with a steely determination and a grim joy that resulted in work which classified him as a genius.  Any great mental effort of this character, any unusual achievement along these lines, would be immediately followed by a protracted debauch that would upset him physically and mentally for weeks at a time, but he always recovered and landed on his feet, and with the same laugh and smile again went at his work.