by B. TRAVEN
“I couldn’t stand the dirt and living among that crowd of tramps, beachcombers, and damn bums.”
“All right, president, just as you like,” Dobbs said. “Some beautiful day when all the pretty money is gone you’ll land in that dirt, too. Bet you. Right now I could afford to stop in any swell joint for a while. But I learned my lesson. I keep my little buckies together. Who knows in which of the next four centuries another job’ll come along. It’s getting worse every day here. Say, four, five, or six years back you were begged to accept a job and make your price. It’s different now. To me it doesn’t look a bit as if it would change for the better during the next few years. Believe it or not, I’m still going to the Chink for my eats, fifty centavos each meal. I don’t mind. Nobody gives me anything when I haven’t got a dime.”
They had reached the corner of the plaza where the great jewelry house, La Perla, had its store. In the four huge windows was a display of diamonds and gold which could hardly be equaled on Broadway. There was a diadem on display priced at twenty–four thousand pesos. Never could there be any occasion in this port for a lady to wear such a costly diadem. It was not meant for wear in this town, as whoever bought it would know. A few hundred men in this town made such heaps of money and made it so quickly and with so little sweat that they simply did not know what to do with it. Luxurious cars were out, because there were no roads for them. And the streets were mostly still in such a condition that only the flivver could go everywhere. These men could invest their money, and they did. But the more they invested, the more money they made, and then they were faced with the same question again, only this time more urgently. What to do with that dough? The proprietors of La Perla knew what they were doing when they displayed such high-priced jewelry. Any piece that looked pretty to a newly rich oilman and that carried a fantastically high price was rarely in the window for more than three days. Then it was sold to a man who stepped in looking like a bum, without a coat on, soiled all over with oil. “Wrap this up for me and be quick about it; I’m in a hurry.” And throwing the money on the counter, he would put the elegant little case in his pants pockets as though it were a cake of soap and leave without saying “Thank you!” or “So long!”
Dobbs and Curtin looked at these treasures worth all together near a hundred thousand dollars, and a crowd of thoughts sprang up in their minds. Of stealing any of these jewels they did not think for a minute. During all the years the boom was on, there was practically no bank hold-up, no wholesale robbery in the port. The only bank hold-up that occurred left not one of the bandits reaching the curbstone alive, and the man waiting outside in a car had to be taken to the hospital, where everything possible was done not to let him survive. These jewels displayed behind windowpanes were as safe as inside a vault. It was not that people were any better here than anywhere else. There were pickpockets everywhere in town, American pickpockets of course taking the lead. But banks and jewelry were safe from bandits. Bandits could not make a get-away, as there were no roads on which cars could run. Only two trains left the port daily, and these could be watched successfully even by third-rate detectives. All ships, passengers and freighters alike, had their guards on the gangways. The port was protected on one side by the sea, on the other side by river, swamps, and jungle. The three or four dirt roads leading out of the port were watched by mounted police. Mexicans might have kept in hiding, but they were not smart enough to do a big job of this sort. American bandits had no chance to hide anywhere. Since all bandits knew from experience that no bandit if caught would ever arrive at a police-station alive, people—yes, even mere boys—could walk the streets with bags filled to the brim with gold coins on their shoulders without being accompanied, and they would bring home the money surer than in an armored car in the United States.
So it was not the thought of robbing the store that occupied the minds of Dobbs and Curtin.
All those living and working in the port at that time were concerned with oil and nothing else. Whatever you did had in some way or other to do with oil. Even when eating your dinner or drinking your coffee the smell of oil was about you. You might see a lady well dressed, perfumed and all; you would be sure to find somewhere about her a stain or a spot of oil—on the elegant dress, the white shoes, the umbrella, or the handbag—somewhere you would find traces of oil, you bet.
Now, looking at all the gold in the window, for the first time in months if not in years Dobbs and Curtin thought of gold and for a minute forgot to think of oil.
Then they stood with their backs against the post-office building, looked across the plaza, and saw the masts of the ships that were in dock. Only the upper parts of the masts were visible from where they stood, and the bow of a freighter. Seeing the masts reminded them of travels in faraway countries. So they came to think of other countries in the world and other possibilities of making money. Why should it be oil all the time? Wasn’t there anything else on earth? Take gold for instance, to name only one thing.
2
“Say, Curts, what’s your idea?” Dobbs asked. “I mean your idea about all this here. Hanging around all the time, waiting and waiting until you land a job again for a few weeks or a few months. Then you are on the bum again, waiting and waiting for another break. Forever dependent on the good humor of a contractor who may or may not take you in, and your money getting thinner every day. After a while you are broke and you begin once more pushing gents for a dime, sleeping in freight cars or under trees or what have you. I’m sick of it. Sick of oil. That’s it. Sick of oil. I want to see something different, want to hear somebody talking of something else.”
“Same here, pal. Exactly the same. In fact, I’m thinking now for the third time of pulling out of here. I know perfectly well how it goes. Into a job, out of a job. Polishing the corner of the Banking Company in the Southern and waiting for some guy to step up and take you on for another few months. Why not try gold-digging for a change?”
“You said it, buddy.” Dobbs nodded. “That’s what I was thinking as I stood before that lay-out of gold and diamonds. Prospecting—that’s the word! Come to think of it, it isn’t any more risky than waiting here for another break. Did it ever occur to you, old man, that this is the country where the heaps of gold and silver are just calling for you to help them out of their misery, help them out of the ground; make them shine in coins; on the fingers and necks of swell dames? Well, my man, we’re right on the spot.”
“Let’s sit on that bench over there,” Curtin suggested. “We have to figure this out. It’s a swell idea. We have to make plans. Just wait a minute. Let me think this over.”
After they were seated, Curtin continued: “Tell you a secret. I didn’t come to this here country for oil. Never dreamed of it. I’d had my nose full of it already in San Antonio, ol’ Texas. No, I came here just for gold, and nothing but. My idea was to work for a year or two here in the camps to stow away enough dough to buy a decent outfit and then go off to the Sierra, west and more west, and there look for the real thing that counts. But, damn it all, I never got the money. When I had five hundred bucks and was all set to make another five, then there was no job for months and the money went rolling away from me just like that.”
“In fact,” Dobbs said, “the risk isn’t so big. To wait here until you land another job is just as tough. If you’re lucky you may make three hundred a month. If you’re unlucky you may wait for twelve months and not get even a job carrying lumber. And what is the risk anyway? If we don’t touch gold, it may be silver. If it isn’t silver, it may be copper or lead or precious stones. There’s always something to be found that has value. Life is cheaper in the open than it is here. Our money lasts longer, and the longer it lasts, the greater is our chance of digging up something.”
When it came to making more definite plans, they found that the money they had was far from sufficient to make even a try. So their enthusiasm died down.
Once more, men who had a good idea appeared to give it up as soon as they met
the first obstacle. This happened to most of the men here. There was not a single man in port who had not thought several times of looking for a lost gold mine—or for a new one. All the mines in the country which produced any kind of mineral had been found and opened by men who originally went out to look for gold. Then, not finding any gold, even in small quantities, they were well satisfied with copper, lead, zinc, or even talcum.
Dobbs and Curtin would, most likely, never have thought again of looking seriously for gold after they had talked it over. It was so much easier to sit and watch two men at work in a rather dangerous position on a roof fixing telephone wires, it was so much less trouble than thinking for yourself, or standing all day long opposite the bank waiting for something to turn up all by itself. It is always more convenient to dream of what might be.
3
Curtin decided to stay one night more at the Roosevelt and the next day change over to the Oso Negro.
When Dobbs returned home he found in the same shack with him three other Americans. The rest of the cots were not yet occupied. One of the three Americans was an elderly fellow whose hair was beginning to show white.
On entering, Dobbs noted that the three fellow-guests ceased their talk. After a while they took it up again.
The old man was lying on his cot, the other two were sitting half-undressed on theirs. Dobbs started to turn in.
At first he did not catch what they were talking about. It did not take him long to understand that the old fellow was telling the two younger men his experiences as a prospector. The two young men had come to the republic to look for gold because back home the most fantastic tales about the riches of lost gold mines here in this country had stirred their ambition to make their millions down here.
“Anyway,” Howard, the old fellow, said, “anyway, gold is a very devilish sort of a thing, believe me, boys. In the first place, it changes your character entirely. When you have it your soul is no longer the same as it was before. No getting away from that. You may have so much piled up that you can’t carry it away; but, bet your blessed paradise, the more you have, the more you want to add, to make it just that much more. Like sitting at roulette. Just one more turn. So it goes on and on and on. You cease to distinguish between right and wrong. You can no longer see clearly what is good and what is bad. You lose your judgment. That’s what it is.”
“I don’t see why,” one of the youngsters broke in.
“Oh yes, you’ll see it. When you go out, you tell yourself: I shall be satisfied with fifty thousand handsome smackers, or the worth of it, so help me, Lord, and cross my heart. Elegant resolution. After sweating the hell out of you, going short of provisions, and seeing nothing and finding nothing, you come down to forty thousand, then to thirty, and you reach five thousand, and you say to yourself: If I only could make five grand, Lord, I sure would be grateful and never want anything, anything more in all my life.”
“Five thousand wouldn’t be so bad, after all,” the same young fellow butted in.
“Oh, be quiet,” said his partner; “can’t you shut up a minute when you see somebody is telling you something worth listening to, you mug?”
“It’s not at all so easy as you fellers think it might be,” Howard went on. “You’d be satisfied with five grand. But I tell you, if you find something then, you couldn’t be dragged away; not even the threat of miserable death could stop you getting just ten thousand more. And if you reach fifty, you want to make it a hundred, to be safe for the rest of your life. When you finally have a hundred and fifty, you want two hundred, to make sure, absolutely sure, that you’ll be really on the safe side, come what may.”
Dobbs had become excited. To show that he had a right to be there and to listen to the wise man he said: “That wouldn’t happen to me. I swear it. I’d take twenty thousand, pack up, and go. I’d do that even if there were still half a million bucks’ worth lying around howling to be picked up. I wouldn’t take it. It’s just twenty grand that I’m after to make me perfectly happy and healthy.”
Howard looked at him, scrutinizing, it seemed, every wrinkle of his face. He did so for quite a while. But he answered indirectly. As though he hadn’t been interrupted he continued: “Whoever has never been out for gold doesn’t know what’s really going on at the spot. I know for a fact it’s easier to leave a gambling-table when you’re winning than to leave a rich claim after you’ve made your good cut. It’s all spread out before you like the treasures of that Arabian mug Aladdin. It’s all yours for the taking. No, sir, you can’t leave it, not even with a wire in your fist that your old mother back home is dying and all alone. See, I’ve dug in Alaska and made a bit; I’ve been in the crowd in British Columbia and made there at least my fair wages. I was down in Australia, where I made the fare back home, with a few hundred left over to cure me of a stomach trouble I caught down there. I’ve dug in Montana and in Colorado and I don’t know where else.”
One of the youngsters asked: “As you say, mister, you’ve dug practically all over the world, then how come you’re sitting here now in this dirty joint and all broke?”
“Gold, my young man, that’s the gold, that’s what it makes out of us. There was a time when I had a bank account of over a hundred thousand spot cash, and another hundred grand invested. One of the banks went singing the old song: that there wasn’t one cent to the dollar left. Two of the investments failed and left me with the first claim on a melting company. After all was paid out, I had on hand a debt of some sixteen grand. I’ve made here in this port some seventy grand on a gusher. The last fifty, which I kept with the idea that I’d never touch the principal, went into a dry hole. So you see me here now in the Oso Negro, pushing old friends in the streets to get fifty centavos for a cot to sleep on. Sure, I’m an old bone by now. No doubt as to that. But don’t you kids think that the spirit is gone. Not on your life. I’m all set to shoulder pick-ax and shovel again any time you say—any time somebody is willing to share the expenses. I’d like best to go all alone, all by myself. But I haven’t got the funds to do that. Tell you, the best thing is going alone. Of course you must have the guts to stand loneliness. Lots of guys go nutty being alone for a long time. On the other hand, going with a partner or two is dangerous. All the time murder’s lurking about. The cuts are not so good as when you’re all by yourself. Worst of all, hardly a day passes without quarrels, everybody accusing everybody else of all sorts of crimes, and suspecting whatever you do or say or even look at. As long as there’s no find, the noble brotherhood will last. Woe when the piles begin to grow! Then you know your men and what they are worth.”
None of the three fellows interrupted the old prospector. Lying on their cots, they listened to his talk with more eagerness than they would have shown in reading a hot story. Here one of the true regulars was speaking, and such a chance might never come again. The stories told in the pulps seemed to them right now just so much rot. Who writes these stories, anyhow? Men sitting in an office in a big city. Men who have never been on the spot themselves. What do they know? The real life is quite different. Here it was, the real life, and the man who had lived the real life and had seen the world, who had been rich, very rich, and who was now so broke that he had to ask a fellow in the street for fifty centavos for a meal with the Chink.
Once started, and seeing around him three fellows who forgot their breathing while he spun his yarns, Howard gave them a story such as they never could have read in a magazine sold at street corners.
3
“Ever heard the story—I mean the real true story—of La Mina Agua Verde, the Green Water Mine? I don’t think so. Well, here it is for your benefit. I got it at first hand from Harry Tilton. He was one of those who made their pile in that mine.
“It seems a company of fifteen fellows set out to trace that old mine. You couldn’t say that they went absolutely unprepared. Far from it.
“In that section, right at the international line of Arizona and the Mexican state of Sonora, a rumor about a lost
gold mine would never die. The tale had come down for the last four centuries if not more. The old Mexicans, the Aztecs, had worked that mine long before any European knew a thing about America. The gold was carried to old Tenochtitlan, that is today Mexico City, to be worked there into ornaments and dishes for their emperor and for their kings and nobles, and of course for their great temples.
“The Spaniards in their greed for gold tried to locate all the gold and silver mines on seeing the rich treasures of the Aztec and the Tarascan kings. By the most terrible tortures, which only Spaniards grown up under the régime of the Inquisitors could conceive, the old Mexicans and the other Indians were forced to reveal the mines where the gold had come from for the royal treasures. All the gruesome tortures were committed for the love of Christ and the Holy Virgin, because there was never a torture without a monk holding out a crucifix before the victim, and the greater part of the gold was to go partly to the Spanish king and partly to the Holy Father in Rome. As the Indians were not Christians, but wretched heathen, it was no sin to get hold of their gold by robbing them.
“This mine was betrayed to monks who had come to the Indians with oiled speeches of saving their souls and shipping them off to heaven. The church took possession of the mine. Before long, however, the viceroy of New Spain—that was what Mexico was called in those times—in consideration of huge land concessions, bought the mine in the name of the king.
“It was an unbelievably rich mine. The gold lay practically open, and in thick lodes. The mine was located in a mountainous region, and near by was a little lake of crystal-clear emerald water bedded in the rocks. From this beautiful little lake the mine received its name.
“Something was certainly queer about the mine. The Spaniards who were working there as officials seldom survived for any length of time. Hardly one of them ever saw his country again, and few even returned to the capital. They were attacked by all sorts of misfortune. Some were bitten by snakes; others by venomous scorpions or tarantulas; others contracted rare skin diseases that never healed, or they caught a sickness the cause and nature of which nobody, including all their doctors, could explain. As if this was not sufficient, whoever was spared attacks from reptiles and mysterious diseases died from the different kinds of fevers that abounded.
