Gold

by White, Stewart Edward

He dragged us out a back door into a very muddy back alley, whence we floundered to dry land with some difficulty.

  “That was a narrow escape!” he cried, wiping his brow. “Let’s go get a drink. I know the best place.”

  He led us to a very ornate saloon whose chief attraction was the fact that its ceiling was supported on glass pillars! We duly admired this marvel; and then wandered over to the polished mahogany bar, where we were joined by the half dozen loafers who had been lounging around the place. These men did not exactly join us, but they stood expectantly near. Nor were they disappointed.

  “Come, let’s all take a drink, boys!” cried the captain heartily.

  They named and tossed off their liquor, and then without a word of farewell or thanks shambled back to their roosting places.

  “What’s the matter, Billy?” demanded the captain, looking about curiously. “Where’s your usual crowd?”

  “They’re all down at the Verandah,” replied the barkeeper, passing a cloth over the satiny wood of the bar. “Dorgan’s got a girl tending bar. Pays her some ungodly wages; and he’s getting all the crowd. He’d better make the most of it while it lasts. She won’t stay a week.”

  “Why not?” I asked curiously.

  “Married; sure,” replied the barkeeper briefly.

  “And the glass pillars will always be here; eh, Billy?” suggested the captain. “Nevertheless I believe we’ll just wander down and look her over.”

  “Sure,” said Billy indifferently; “that’s where all the rest are.”

  The Verandah, situated on the Plaza, was crowded to the doors. Behind the bar slaved a half dozen busy drink-mixers. The girl, and a very pretty girl she was, passed the drinks over the counter, and took in the dust.

  “She’s straight,” observed the captain sagaciously, after inspection; “if she wasn’t there wouldn’t be such a gang. The other sort is plenty enough.”

  We did not try to get near the bar, but after a few moments regained the street. The captain said farewell; and we hunted up, by his direction, the New York Tonsorial Emporium. There we had five dollars’ worth of various things done to us; after which we bought new clothes. The old ones we threw out into the street along with a vast collection of others contributed by our predecessors.

  “Now,” said Johnny, “I feel like a new man. And before we go any farther I have a little duty to perform.”

  “Which is?”

  “Another drink at the sign of the Glass Pillars, or whatever they call the place.”

  “We don’t want anything more to drink just now,” I protested.

  “Oblige me in this one treat,” said Johnny in his best manner.

  We entered the Arcade, as the bar was called. At once the loafers moved forward. Johnny turned to them with an engaging air of friendliness.

  “Come on, boys, let’s all take a drink!” he cried.

  The glasses were poured. Johnny raised his. The others followed suit. Then all drained them simultaneously and set down the empty glasses.

  “And now,” went on Johnny in the same cheerful, friendly tone, “let’s all pay for them!”

  The loafers stared at him a moment. One growled menacingly, but fell silent under his clear glance. One or two others forced a laugh. Under Johnny’s compelling eye they all paid. Billy, behind the bar, watched with sardonic amusement. When Johnny proffered his dust, the barkeeper thrust it back.

  “My treat here,” said he briefly.

  “But─?” objected Johnny.

  “It’s a privilege.”

  “If you put it that way, I thank you, sir,” said Johnny in his grandest manner; and we walked out. “Those bums made me tired,” was his only comment to us. “Now let’s go hunt up Talbot. I’ll bet my extinct toothbrush that he’s a well-known citizen around here.”

  Johnny’s extinct toothbrush was perfectly safe. The first man of whom we inquired told us where our friend lived, and added the gratuitous information that the Ward Block was nearing completion. We looked up the hotel, a new one on Montgomery Street. The clerk spoke with respect of Talbot, and told us we would probably find him at one of the several places of business he mentioned, or at the Ward Block. We thanked him, and went direct to the Ward Block first. All of us confessed to a great desire to see that building.

  It was to be a three-story brick structure, and was situated at one corner of the Plaza. We gazed upon it with appropriate awe, for we were accustomed to logs and canvas; and to some extent we were able to realize what imported bricks and the laying of them meant. The foreman told us that Talbot had gone out “Mission way” with Sam Brannan and some others to look at some property, and would not be back until late.

  Johnny and I spent the rest of the afternoon wandering about. Yank retired to the soft chairs of one of the numerous gambling places. His broken leg would not stand so much tramping.

  We had lots of fun, and many interesting minor adventures and encounters, none of which has any particular bearing here. The town had spread. Most of the houses were of the flimsied description. Many people were still living in tents. The latter flopped and tugged in the strong wind. Some men had merely little cot tents, just big enough to cover the bed. An owner of one of these claimed stoutly that they were better than big tents.

  “They don’t get blowed away by the wind, and they’re fine to sleep under,” he asserted, “and a man cooks outside, anyway.”

  “How about when it rains?” I asked him.

  “Then I go down to the Verandah or the Arcade or Dennison’s Exchange and stay there till she quits,” said he.

  In the evening, as Talbot had not yet returned, we wandered from one place of amusement to another. The gambling places were more numerous, more elaborate, more important than ever. Beside the usual rough-looking miners and labourers, who were in the great majority, there were small groups of substantial, grave, important looking men conferring. I noticed again the contrast with the mining-camp gambling halls in the matter of noise; here nothing was heard but the clink of coin or the dull thud of gold dust, a low murmur of conversation, or an occasional full-voiced exclamation.

  Johnny, who could never resist the tables, was soon laying very small stakes on monte. After a time I tired of the close air and heavy smoke, and slipped away. The lower part of the town was impossible on account of the mud, so I made my way out along the edge of the hills. The moon was sailing overhead. The shadows of the hills hung deep in the hollows; and, abroad, a wide landscape slept in the unearthly radiance. A thousand thousand cheerful frogs piped up a chorus against the brooding moon-stillness they could not quite break. After the glare of the Arcade and the feverish hum and bustle of the busy new city, this still peace was almost overpowering. I felt, somehow, that I dared not give way to it all at once, but must admit its influence trickle by trickle until my spirit had become a little accustomed. Thus gradually I dropped into a reverie. The toil, excitement, strain, striving of the past eight or nine months fell swiftly into the background. I relaxed; and in the calm of the relaxation for the first time old memories found room.

  How long I had tramped, lost in this dreaming, I did not know; but at some point I must have turned back, for I came to somewhere near the end of Sacramento Street–if it could be said to have an end–to find the moon far up toward the zenith. A man overtook me, walking rapidly; I caught the gleam of a watch chain, and on a sudden impulse I turned toward him.

  “Can you tell me what time it is?” I asked.

  The man extended his watch in the moonlight, and silently pointed to its face–with the muzzle of a revolver!

  “Half-past twelve,” said he.

  “Good Lord!” I cried with a shout of laughter. “Do you take me for a robber, Talbot?”

  *

  CHAPTER XLIII

  THE GOLDEN WEB

  He thrust away his watch and the pistol and with a shout of joy seized both my hands.

  “Well! well! well! well!” he cried over and over again. “But I am glad to see yo
u! I’d no idea where you were or what you were doing! Why couldn’t you write a man occasionally?”

  “I don’t know,” said I, rather blankly. “I don’t believe it ever occurred to us we could write.”

  “Where are the others? Are they with you?”

  “We’ll look them up,” said I.

  Together we walked away, arm in arm. Talbot had not changed, except that he had discarded his miner’s rig, and was now dressed in a rather quiet cloth suit, a small soft hat, and a blue flannel shirt. The trousers he had tucked into the tops of his boots. I thought the loose, neat costume very becoming to him. After a dozen swift inquiries as to our welfare, he plunged headlong into enthusiasms as to the town.

  “It’s the greatest city in the world!” he cried; then catching my expression, he added, “or it’s going to be. Think of it, Frank! A year ago it had less than a thousand people, and now we have at least forty thousand. The new Commercial Wharf is nearly half a mile long and cost us a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, but we raised the money in ten minutes! We’re going to build two more. And Sam Brannan and a lot of us are talking of putting down plank roads. Think what that will mean! And there’s no limit to what we can do in real estate! Just knock down a few of these hills to the north─”

  He stopped, for I was laughing.

  “Why not drain the bay?” I suggested. “There’s a plenty of land down there.”

  “Well,” said Talbot in a calmer manner, “we won’t quite do that. But we’ll put some of those sand hills into the edge of the bay. You wait and see. If you want to make money, you just buy some of those waterfront lots. You’ll wake up some morning to find you’re a mile inland.”

  I laughed again; but just the other day, in this year 1899, I rode in a street car where fifty years ago great ships had lain at anchor.

  We discovered Johnny and Yank, and pounded each other’s backs, and had drinks, and generally worked off our high spirits. Then we adjourned to a corner, lit cigars–a tremendous luxury for us miners–and plunged into recital. Talbot listened to us attentively, his eyes bright with interest, occasionally breaking in on the narrator to ask one of the others to supplement some too modestly worded statement.

  “Well!” he sighed when we had finished. “You boys have certainly had a time! What an experience! You’ll never forget it!” He brooded a while. “I suppose the world will never see its like again. It was the chance of a lifetime. I’d like–no I wouldn’t! I’ve lived, too. Well, now for the partnership. As I understand it, for the Hangman’s Gulch end of it, we have, all told, about five thousand dollars–at any rate, that was the amount McClellan sent down to me.”

  “That’s it,” said I.

  “And the Porcupine Flat venture was a bad loss?”

  “The robbers cleaned us out there except for what we sent you,” I agreed regretfully.

  “Since which time Yank has been out of it completely?”

  “Haven’t made a cent since,” acknowledged Yank cheerfully, “and I owe something to Frank, here, for my keep. Thought I had about fifteen hundred dollars, but I guess I ain’t.”

  “At Italian Bar,” went on Talbot, “how much did you make?”

  “Doesn’t matter what I made,” interposed Johnny, “for, as Frank told you, it’s all at the bottom of the Sacramento River.”

  “I did pretty well,” said I, and pulled out two hundred and sixteen ounces.

  “About three thousand dollars,” computed Talbot. “You’re the plutocrat, all right. Well, I’ve done pretty well with this end of the partnership, too. I think–but I guess we’d better take a fresh day to it. It must be ungodly late. Good Lord, yes! Three o’clock!”

  Nobody would have thought so. The place seemed nearly as full as ever. We accompanied Talbot to his hotel, where he managed, after some difficulty, to procure us a cot apiece.

  Our sleep was short; and in spite of our youth and the vitality we had stored in the healthy life of the hills we felt dragged out and tired. Five hours’ sleep in two days is not enough. I was up a few minutes before the rest; and I sat in front of the hotel basking in the sun like a lizard. The let-down from the toil and excitement of the past months still held me. I thought with lazy satisfaction of the two thousand-odd dollars which was my share of our partnership. It was a small sum, to be sure; but, then, I had never in my life made more than twelve dollars a week, and this had cost me nothing. Now that definitely I had dropped overboard my hopes of a big strike, I unexpectedly found that I had dropped with them a certain feeling of pride and responsibility as well. As long as I had been in the mining business I had vaguely felt it incumbent on me to do as well as the rest, were that physically possible. I was out of the mining business. As I now looked at it, I had been mighty well paid for an exciting and interesting vacation. I would go back to New York at a cost of two or three hundred dollars, and find some good opening for my capital and ability.

  Talbot appeared last, fresh and smiling. Breakfast finished, he took us all with him to the new brick building. After some business we adjourned once more to the Arcade. There Talbot made his report.

  I wish I could remember it, and repeat it to you verbatim. It was worth it. But I cannot; and the most I can do is to try to convey to you the sense of that scene–we three tanned, weather-beaten outlanders listening open-mouthed to the keen, competent, self-assured magician who before our eyes spun his glittering fabric. Talbot Ward had seized upon the varied possibilities of the new city. The earnings on his first scheme–the ship storehouses, and the rental of the brick building on Montgomery Street, you will remember–amounted net, the first month, I believe, to some six thousand dollars. With his share of this money he had laid narrow margins on a dozen options. Day by day, week by week, his operations extended. He was in wharves, sand lots, shore lots, lightering, plank roads, a new hotel. Day after day, week after week, he had turned these things over, and at each turn money had dropped out. Sometimes the plaything proved empty, and then Talbot had promptly thrown it away, apparently without afterthought or regret. I remember some of the details of one deal:

  “It looked to me,” said Talbot, “that somebody ought to make a good thing in flour, the way things were going. It all comes from South America just now, so enough capital ought to be able to control the supply. I got together four of the big men here and we agreed with the agents to take not less than a hundred and fifty thousand barrels nor more than two hundred thousand barrels at fourteen dollars. Each firm agreed to take seven hundred thousand dollars’ worth; and each agreed to forfeit one hundred thousand dollars for failure to comply. Flour could be held to twenty-five to thirty dollars a barrel; so there was a good thing.”

  “I should think so,” I agreed. “Where did you come in?”

  “Percentage of the profits. They took and sold quite a heap of flour at this rate–sixty thousand barrels to be exact–on which there was a net profit of seven hundred thousand dollars. Then one of those freak things happened that knocked us all silly. Flour just dropped down out of sight. Why? Manipulation. They’ve got a smart lot out here. The mines had flour enough for the time being; and the only thing that held the price up was the uncertainty of just where the flour was coming from in the future. Well, the other crowd satisfied that uncertainty, and our flour dropped from about twenty-five dollars down to eight. We had sold sixty thousand barrels, and we had ninety thousand to take on our contract, on each one of which we were due to lose six dollars. And the other fellows were sitting back chuckling and waiting for us to unload cheap flour.”

  “What was there to do?”

  Talbot laughed. “I told our crowd that I had always been taught that when a thing was hot, to drop it before I got burned. If each firm paid its forfeit it would cost us four hundred thousand dollars. If we sold all the flour contracted for at the present price, we stood to lose nearer six hundred thousand. So we simply paid our forfeits, threw over the contract, and were three hundred thousand ahead.”

  “But was tha
t fair to the flour people?” I asked doubtfully.

  “Fair?” retorted Talbot. “What in thunder did they put the forfeit clause in for if it wasn’t expected we might use it?”

  As fast as he acquired a dollar, he invested it in a new chance, until his interests extended from the Presidio to the waterfront of the inner bay. These interests were strange odds and ends. He and a man with his own given name, Talbot H. Green, had title in much of what is now Harbour View–that is to say, they would have clear title as soon as they had paid heavy mortgages. His shares in the Commercial Wharf lay in the safes of a banking house, and the dollars he had raised on them were valiantly doing duty in holding at bay a pressing debt on precariously held waterfront equities. Talbot mentioned glibly sums that reduced even the most successful mining to a child’s game. The richest strike we had heard rumoured never yielded the half of what our friend had tossed into a single deal. Our own pitiful thousands were beggarly by comparison, insignificant, not worth considering.

  Of all the varied and far-extending affairs the Ward Block was the flower. Talbot owned options, equities, properties, shares in all the varied and numerous activities of the new city; but each and every one of them he held subject to payments which at the present time he could by no possibility make. Mortgages and loans had sucked every immediately productive dollar; and those dollars that remained were locked tight away from their owner until such time as he might gain possession of a golden key. This did not worry him.

  “They are properties that are bound to rise in value,” he told us. “In fact, they are going up every minute we sit here talking. They are futures.”

  Among other pieces, Talbot had been able to buy the lot on the Plaza where now the Ward Block was going up. He paid a percentage down, and gave a mortgage for the rest. Now all the money he could squeeze from all his other interests he was putting into the structure. That is why I rather fancifully alluded to the Ward Block as the flower of all Talbot’s activities.

  “Building is the one thing you have to pay cash for throughout,” said Talbot regretfully. “Labour and materials demand gold. But I see my way clear; and a first-class, well-appointed business block in this town right now is worth more than the United States mint. That’s cash coming in for you–regularly every month. It will pay from the start four or five times the amount necessary to keep everything else afloat. Jim Reckett has taken the entire lower floor at thirty thousand. The offices upstairs will pay from a thousand a month up and they are every one rented in advance. Once we get our rents coming in, the strain is relieved. I can begin to take up my mortgages and loans, and once that is begun we are on the road to Millionaireville.”