MISSOURI JACK.
At the end of a month the settlement had considerably increased. A large
party from Missouri went to work farther up stream, and a few stray
emigrants also added themselves to the miners at River Bend, for this
was the name selected by Captain Fletcher for the location. The new
arrivals were a rougher and more disorderly class than Fletcher and his
companions. Already there was a saloon, devoted to the double purpose of
gambling and drinking; and the proprietor, Missouri Jack (no one knew
his last name), was doing a thriving business. Indeed his income
considerably exceeded that of any one in the settlement.
Neither Tom nor any of his party contributed much to Missouri Jack's
profits. In consequence, they had to bear the ill-will and sometimes
open abuse of Jack and his friends.
"Come in and take a drink, stranger," called out Jack, the day after the
opening of the saloon, to Captain Fletcher.
"No, thank you."
"It shan't cost you a cent."
"It would cost me my health," returned Fletcher.
"Do you mean to say I sell bad whiskey?" demanded Jack, angrily,
emphasizing the inquiry by an oath.
"I don't know anything about it."
"Then what _do_ you mean?"
"I mean that all whiskey is bad for the health," replied Fletcher.
"Oh, you're a temperance sneak!" exclaimed Missouri Jack,
contemptuously.
"I am a temperance man; you may leave out the other word," calmly
answered Fletcher.
"You're not a man!" exploded Jack. "A man that's afraid of whiskey is
a--a--isn't half a man. He isn't fit to be a woman."
"Have it as you like," said Fletcher, unruffled. "I shall not drink to
please any man. I had a younger brother--a bright, promising young man
poor Ben was--who drank himself to death. He'd have been alive now but
for whiskey."
"Oh, dry up your pious talk! You make me sick!" exclaimed Missouri Jack
in deep disgust.
Next he accosted John Miles, who curtly declined and received in return
a volley of abuse. Now Miles was a powerful man, and not possessed of
Fletcher's self-control. He paused, and surveyed Jack with a menacing
look.
"Look here, stranger," he said, sharply, "just have a care how you use
that tongue of yours. This is a free country, and if I choose to decline
your whiskey, there's no law against it that I know of."
"You're a white-livered sneak!"
Missouri Jack did not proceed with his remarks, for John Miles, seizing
him by the shoulder, tripped him up, and strode away, leaving him
prostrate, and pouring out a volley of curses. Being a bully, and
cowardly as most bullies are, he did not pursue his broad-shouldered
enemy, but vowed vengeance whenever a good opportunity came.
In fact, the only one of the original miners who accepted Jack's
invitation was Lawrence Peabody.
"Step in, stranger, and have a drink!" said Jack, a little dubiously,
having met with such poor luck heretofore.
The young Bostonian paused. He was not a drinker at home, but in his
discontent and disappointment he was tempted.
"My dear sir, you are very polite," he said.
"I hope you ain't one of them temperance sneaks," said Jack, his brow
clouding in anticipation of a refusal.
"I assure you I am not," Peabody hastened to say. "I have participated
in convivial scenes more than once in Boston."
"I don't understand college talk," said Jack; "but if you want a glass
of prime whiskey, just say the word."
"I don't care if I do," said Peabody, following his new friend into the
saloon.
The draught of prime whiskey scorched his throat as he swallowed it
down, but it was followed by a sense of exhilaration, and Peabody's
tongue was loosened.
"You're a gentleman!" said Missouri Jack. "You ain't like them fellows
you're with. They're sneaks."
"Really, you compliment me, Mr.--, what may I call your name?"
"Missouri Jack--that's the peg I hang on to."
"My dear Mr. Jack, I am glad to know you. You are really quite an
accession to our settlement."
"Well, if I ain't, my saloon is. How you've managed to live so long
without liquor beats me. Why, it ain't civilized."
"It _was_ pretty dull," admitted Peabody.
"No life, no amusement; for all the world like a parcel of Methodists.
What luck have you met with, stranger?"
"Beastly luck!" answered Peabody. "I tell you, Mr. Jack, California's a
fraud. Many a time I've regretted leaving Boston, where I lived in
style, and moved in the first circles, for such a place as this.
Positively, Mr. Jack, I feel like a tramp, and I'm afraid I look like
one. If my fashionable friends could see me now, they wouldn't know me."
"I ain't got no fashionable friends, and I don't want any," growled
Missouri Jack, spitting on the floor. "What I want is, to meet
gentlemen that ain't afraid to drink like gentlemen. I say, stranger,
you'd better leave them Methodist fellers, and join our gang."
"Thank you, Mr. Jack, you're very kind, and I'll think of it," said
Peabody, diplomatically. Though a little exhilarated, he was not quite
blind to the character of the man with whom he was fraternizing, and had
too much real refinement to enjoy his coarseness.
"Have another drink!"
"Thank you."
Peabody drank again, this time with a friend of Jack's, a man of his own
stripe, who straggled into the saloon.
"Do you play euchre?" asked Jack, producing a dirty pack of cards.
"I know little of it," said Peabody; "but I'll try a game."
"Then you and me and Bill here will have a game."
"All right," said Peabody, glad to while away the time.
"What'll you put up on your game, stranger?" asked Bill.
"You don't mean to play for money, do you?" asked Peabody, a little
startled.
"Sartain I do. What's the good of playin' for nothing?"
So the young Bostonian, out of his modest pile was tempted to stake an
ounce of gold-dust. Though his head was hardly in a condition to follow
the game intelligently, he won, or at least Bill and Jack told him he
had, and for the first time Lawrence felt the rapture of the successful
gambler, as he gathered in his winnings.
"He plays a steep game, Bill," said Jack.
"Tip-top--A No. 1."
"I believe I do play a pretty good game," said the flattered Peabody.
"My friends in Boston used to say so."
"You're hard to beat, and no mistake," said Bill. "Try another game."
"I'm ready, gentlemen," said Peabody, with alacrity.
"It's a great deal easier earning money this way," he reflected,
regarding complacently the two ounces of dust which represented his
winnings, "than washing dirt out of the river." And the poor dupe
congratulated himself that a new way of securing the favors of fortune
had been opened to him.
The reader will easily guess that Lawrence Peabody did not win the next
game, nor will he be surprised to hear that when he left the saloon his
pockets were empty.
"Better luck next time, stranger," said Jack, carelessly. "Take a drink
before you go?"
Peabody accepted the invitation, and soon after staggered into the tent
occupied by Tom and his friend Ferguson.
"What's the matter, Mr. Peabody?" asked Tom. "Are you sick?"
"Yes," answered Peabody, sinking to the floor. "Something's the matter
with my head. I don't feel well."
"Have you been to the saloon, Mr. Peabody?" asked Ferguson.
"Yes," answered the Bostonian.
"And while there you drank some of their vile whiskey, didn't you?"
"I'm a free man, Mr. Ferguson. If I choose to drink, what--what business
is it--yours?"
"None, except as a friend I advise you not to go there again."
Further inquiries elicited the facts about the gambling, and Ferguson
and Tom seriously remonstrated with Peabody, who, however, insisted that
Mr. Jack, as he called him, was a hospitable gentleman.
The dust which Peabody had lost should have been paid to Capt. Fletcher,
as his share of the expenses that same evening. Of course this was now
impossible. Fletcher warned him that any subsequent failure from the
same cause would be followed by an exclusion from his table.