He did the hundreds of other things to which men in a new country can always turn their hands, and in each he made his profit; but in each he found something lacking to the elaborate scheme of power he had builded one evening before a prairie camp fire. Finally he hit upon whisky and dance halls and there he stayed. Abandoning all other enterprises, he gave his individual attention to these two, for he found in them not only the surest and largest monetary returns, but the certain popularity which men accord to those who minister to their pleasures. From Deadwood to Edgemont there gradually grew up a string of saloons bearing the name of Lafond. Some of them were paying, some on the point of paying, some merely lying latent for the boom which Lafond thought to see in the near future. For, as of old, he delighted in discounting the future. He liked long shots in his investments.
Over each of these various establishments their owner was in the habit of placing a man chosen according to the needs of the place, and this man fell more or less under Lafond's personal supervision according as the exigencies of the case seemed to demand it. The half-breed's policy was to keep in actual touch with the most prosperous, and to give personal effort to the most promising. The others could take care of themselves until their time came. So at Mulberry Gulch, where the camp consisted only of a number of grub stakers, he owned a little log cabin which he had never seen. At Deadwood, an old and prosperous camp, he was proprietor of a begilded and bemirrored splendor so well established that it needed only a periodical supervising visit to keep it running smoothly. At Copper Creek was also nothing but a log-cabin saloon; but Copper Creek bade fair to amount to something. Perhaps the spirit of the three kinds was best indicated by the signs over their counters. Mulberry Gulch exhibited a rudely lettered device informing the public, "Pies, Whisky and Pistols for Sail Here." Deadwood thirsty ones learned that they should "Ask for Our 1860 Old Crow; the Finest on Earth." Copper Creek sententiously remarked: "To Trust is Bust."
All this symbolized nothing more or less than the commercial history of a successful man in the West. It meant nothing except that Lafond had the instinct and the cleverness, and so was getting rich. More interesting than the change of his fortune was the change of the man himself.