Panders

(4 of 7)

He was—and his voice shook with pride when he said it— a Corsican. His grandfather, his own father's father, had been a cousin of Napoleon Bonaparte! His surname, once Buonfiglio— "good son" in feud-loving Corsica —had become gallicized into Bonfils. He had attended West Point but left hurriedly. Corsicans, cousins of Napoleon, resent discipline. He had come West, flash and dapper, intent on a killing; and now he was already a legend. He was the Fred G. Bonfils who had lately cleaned out of Kansas City with $800,000 and no holes in his skin. That was who he was, Fred G. Bonfils; $800,000; Napoleon's cousin. Money! Power! Ambition! He could and would show the money to Bartender Tammen in the bank vault. Soon Tammen was back in Denver with some of the Corsican's boodle to see what he could do. His first few projects collapsed. Then the old Denver Post, a fly-by-night sheet, offered itself for sale at $12,500. Bartender Tammen talked $25,000 more out of his Corsican friend and became a publisher.

The Post of the Yellow '90s was little flimsier than its Denver contemporaries, excepting the historic Rocky Mountain News. The latter's name alone was sufficient to carry it through the jamboree that followed Mr. Tammen's advent, and until 1913 it was in the able hands of Sen. Thomas M. Patterson. But all other Denver papers soon wilted. As soon as the Post began to pay, which was very soon, Gambler Bonfils appeared upon the scene to collaborate with Bartender Tammen in one of the most prodigious campaigns for circulation in the history of journalism. They imported from Publisher Hearst, then at his yellowest, some of the country's leading scarehead artists. They told them that their serv- ices for Publisher Hearst had been the height of probity compared to what they must do now. They must hell-rake kitchens and what passed in Denver then for boudoirs, for scandal and gossip of the most personal sort. Their gleanings they must then dress with language and emphases known only to habitues of a raucous young country's fleshpots. The stories were either published— blasting reputations—or brandished with a menace that brought forth, if not actual blackmail, the most servile acquiescence in the publishers' larger schemes.

Bonfils had cunning, romantic descent, lust for power; he is strikingly handsome, though haggard after an illness, even today; his temper and resourcefulness in quarrel were speedily renowned. Yet it was never Bonfils, except as an exotic danger, who utterly captured the imagination of lonely sheep herders, grim miners, lusty ranchers and eager townsmen. It was Tammen. Bonfils had brains and intensity. H. H. Tammen had brains and charm. It was his creed that, if a man was going to be a faker, he must be a magnificent one. He kept his desk drawer full of paper money in small denominations. Any panhandler, honest "broke" or sleasy rumdum who got in— to see him—and any- one could—was sure of a handout. "Take it," Tammen would chuckle. "It's good money, all right. I made it." And no one is sure yet how H. H. Tammen, facile vender of scenic art views at the World's Fair, did make those particular pieces of money.