Gold

by Stewart Edward White

  CHAPTER XLIII

  THE GOLDEN WEB

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

  "Well! well! well! well!" he cried over and over again. "But I _am_glad to see you! I'd no idea where you were or what you were doing! Whycouldn't you write a man occasionally?"

  "I don't know," said I, rather blankly. "I don't believe it everoccurred 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 thathe had discarded his miner's rig, and was now dressed in a rather quietcloth suit, a small soft hat, and a blue flannel shirt. The trousers hehad tucked into the tops of his boots. I thought the loose, neat costumevery 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 myexpression, he added, "or it's going to be. Think of it, Frank! A yearago it had less than a thousand people, and now we have at least fortythousand. The new Commercial Wharf is nearly half a mile long and costus a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, but we raised the money in tenminutes! We're going to build two more. And Sam Brannan and a lot of usare talking of putting down plank roads. Think what that will mean! Andthere's no limit to what we can do in real estate! Just knock down a fewof these hills to the north----"

  He stopped, for I was laughing.

  "Why not drain the bay?" I suggested. "There's a plenty of land downthere."

  "Well," said Talbot in a calmer manner, "we won't quite do that. Butwe'll put some of those sand hills into the edge of the bay. You waitand see. If you want to make money, you just buy some of thosewaterfront lots. You'll wake up some morning to find you're a mileinland."

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

  We discovered Johnny and Yank, and pounded each other's backs, and haddrinks, and generally worked off our high spirits. Then we adjourned toa corner, lit cigars--a tremendous luxury for us miners--and plungedinto recital. Talbot listened to us attentively, his eyes bright withinterest, occasionally breaking in on the narrator to ask one of theothers to supplement some too modestly worded statement.

  "Well!" he sighed when we had finished. "You boys have certainly had atime! 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 ofa lifetime. I'd like--no I wouldn't! I've lived, too. Well, now for thepartnership. As I understand it, for the Hangman's Gulch end of it, wehave, all told, about five thousand dollars--at any rate, that was theamount 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 agreedregretfully.

  "Since which time Yank has been out of it completely?"

  "Haven't made a cent since," acknowledged Yank cheerfully, "and I owesomething to Frank, here, for my keep. Thought I had about fifteenhundred 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 toldyou, it's all at the bottom of the Sacramento River."

  "I did pretty well," said I, and pulled out two hundred and sixteenounces.

  "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 beungodly 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 somedifficulty, to procure us a cot apiece.

  Our sleep was short; and in spite of our youth and the vitality we hadstored 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 minutesbefore the rest; and I sat in front of the hotel basking in the sun likea lizard. The let-down from the toil and excitement of the past monthsstill held me. I thought with lazy satisfaction of the two thousand-odddollars which was my share of our partnership. It was a small sum, to besure; but, then, I had never in my life made more than twelve dollars aweek, and this had cost me nothing. Now that definitely I had droppedoverboard my hopes of a big strike, I unexpectedly found that I haddropped 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 itincumbent on me to do as well as the rest, were that physicallypossible. I was out of the mining business. As I now looked at it, I hadbeen mighty well paid for an exciting and interesting vacation. I wouldgo back to New York at a cost of two or three hundred dollars, and findsome good opening for my capital and ability.

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

  I wish I could remember it, and repeat it to you verbatim. It was worthit. But I cannot; and the most I can do is to try to convey to you thesense of that scene--we three tanned, weather-beaten outlanderslistening open-mouthed to the keen, competent, self-assured magician whobefore our eyes spun his glittering fabric. Talbot Ward had seized uponthe varied possibilities of the new city. The earnings on his firstscheme--the ship storehouses, and the rental of the brick building onMontgomery Street, you will remember--amounted net, the first month, Ibelieve, to some six thousand dollars. With his share of this money hehad 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, hehad turned these things over, and at each turn money had dropped out.Sometimes the plaything proved empty, and then Talbot had promptlythrown it away, apparently without afterthought or regret. I remembersome of the details of one deal:

  "It looked to me," said Talbot, "that somebody ought to make a goodthing in flour, the way things were going. It all comes from SouthAmerica just now, so enough capital ought to be able to control thesupply. I got together four of the big men here and we agreed with theagents to take not less than a hundred and fifty thousand barrels normore than two hundred thousand barrels at fourteen dollars. Each firmagreed to take seven hundred thousand dollars' worth; and each agreed toforfeit one hundred thousand dollars for failure to comply. Flour couldbe held to twenty-five to thirty dollars a barrel; so there was a goodthing."

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

  "Percentage of the profits. They took and sold quite a heap of flour atthis rate--sixty thousand barrels to be exact--on which there was a netprofit of seven hundred thousand dollars. Then one of those freak thingshappened that knocked us all silly. Flour just dropped down out ofsight. Why? Manipulation. They've got a smart lot out here. The mineshad flour enough for the time being; and the only thing that held theprice up was the uncertainty of just where the flour was coming from inthe future. Well, the other crowd satisfied that uncertainty, and ourflour dropped from about twenty-five dollars down to eight. We had soldsixty thousand barrels, and we had ninety thousand to take on ourcontract, on each one of which we were due to lose six dollars. And theother fellows were sitting back chuckling and waiting for us to unloadcheap flour."

  "What was there to do?"

  Talbot laughed. "I told our crowd that I had always been taught thatwhen a thing was hot, to drop it before I got burned. If each firm paidits forfeit it would cost us four hundred thousand dollars. If we soldall the flour contracted for at the present price, we stood to losenearer six hundred thousand. So we simply paid our forfeits, threw overthe contract, and were three hundred thousand ahead."

  "But was that fair to the flour people?" I asked d
oubtfully.

  "Fair?" retorted Talbot. "What in thunder did they put the forfeitclause 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, untilhis interests extended from the Presidio to the waterfront of the innerbay. These interests were strange odds and ends. He and a man with hisown given name, Talbot H. Green, had title in much of what is nowHarbour View--that is to say, they would have clear title as soon asthey had paid heavy mortgages. His shares in the Commercial Wharf lay inthe safes of a banking house, and the dollars he had raised on them werevaliantly doing duty in holding at bay a pressing debt on precariouslyheld waterfront equities. Talbot mentioned glibly sums that reduced eventhe most successful mining to a child's game. The richest strike we hadheard rumoured never yielded the half of what our friend had tossed intoa 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 theflower. Talbot owned options, equities, properties, shares in all thevaried and numerous activities of the new city; but each and every oneof them he held subject to payments which at the present time he couldby no possibility make. Mortgages and loans had sucked every immediatelyproductive dollar; and those dollars that remained were locked tightaway from their owner until such time as he might gain possession of agolden key. This did not worry him.

  "They are properties that are bound to rise in value," he told us. "Infact, they are going up every minute we sit here talking. They arefutures."

  Among other pieces, Talbot had been able to buy the lot on the Plazawhere now the Ward Block was going up. He paid a percentage down, andgave a mortgage for the rest. Now all the money he could squeeze fromall his other interests he was putting into the structure. That is why Irather fancifully alluded to the Ward Block as the flower of allTalbot's activities.

  "Building is the one thing you have to pay cash for throughout," saidTalbot regretfully. "Labour and materials demand gold. But I see my wayclear; and a first-class, well-appointed business block in this townright now is worth more than the United States mint. That's cash comingin for you--regularly every month. It will pay from the start four orfive times the amount necessary to keep everything else afloat. JimReckett has taken the entire lower floor at thirty thousand. The officesupstairs will pay from a thousand a month up and they are every onerented in advance. Once we get our rents coming in, the strain isrelieved. I can begin to take up my mortgages and loans, and once thatis begun we are on the road to Millionaireville."

  Once more he recapitulated his affairs--the land on the Plaza twohundred thousand; the building eighty thousand; the Harbour View landsanything they might rise to, but nearly a quarter million now; tenthousand par value of the wharf stock already paying dividends; realestate here and there and everywhere in the path of the city's growth;shares in a new hotel that must soon touch par; the plank road--as wejotted down the figures, and the magic total grew, such trifling littleaffairs as gold mines dropped quite below the horizon. We stared atTalbot fascinated.

  And then for the first time we learned that the five thousand dollars wehad sent down from Hangman's Gulch, and the sum left from the robbery,was not slumbering in some banker's safe, but had been sent dancing withthe other dollars at Talbot's command.

  "I didn't know just what you fellows intended," said he, "but we werepartners up there at the mines, and I concluded it would be all right.You didn't mean----"

  "Sure not!" broke in Johnny heartily. "You're welcome to mine."

  "Same here," agreed Yank and I.

  And then Talbot let us see that he considered us to that extent partnersin the business.

  "I have the date it arrived," he told us, "and I know just how muchactual capital I had myself at that time. So I'm computing your sharesin the venture on that basis. It comes to about one tenth apiece forYank and Johnny. Frank and I have an agreement already."

  Johnny stared at the paper on which the totals had been pencilled.

  "Not any!" he protested vehemently. "It isn't fair! You've made thisthing by sheer genius, and it isn't fair for me to take a tenth of it onthe strength of a measly little consignment of gold dust. You give meyour note for a thousand dollars--or whatever the sum is--at interest,if you want to, and that's all that is coming to me."

  "I feel the same," said Yank.

  "Boys," argued Talbot earnestly, "that doesn't go. That five thousandsaved me. It came at a time when I had to have money or go down. I hadbeen to every bank, to every firm, to every man in town, and I couldn'traise ten cents more. If you refuse this thing, you will be doingsomething that----"

  "Oh, hush up, Tal!" broke in Johnny gruffly; "if that's how youfeel----"

  "It is."

  "It is now," said Johnny firmly, "10:30 A.M., but I'm going to havebubbles. If you fellows don't want me all drunk and dressed up, you'vegot to help me drink them."