BROUGHT TO BANK
The sanity of a man is mainly tested among his neighbors and kindred by
the amount of consideration which he has consistently given to cash.
If money has been the chief object of his life, and he for its sake has
spared nobody, no sooner is he known to be successful than admiration
overpowers all the ill-will he has caused. He is shrewd, sagacious,
long-headed, and great; he has earned his success, and few men grudge,
while many seek to get a slice of it; but he, as a general rule,
declines any premature distribution, and for this custody of his wealth
he is admired all the more by those who have no hope of sharing it.
As soon as ever it was known that Uncle Sam had lodged at his banker's
a tremendous lump of gold, which rumor declared to be worth at least a
hundred thousand dollars, friends from every side poured in, all in
hot haste, to lend him their last farthing. The Sawyer was pleased with
their kindness, but thought that his second-best whiskey met the merits
of the case. And he was more particular than usual with his words;
for, according to an old saying of the diggers, a big nugget always has
children, and, being too heavy to go very far, it is likely to keep all
its little ones at home. Many people, therefore, were longing to seek
for the frogs of this great toad; for so in their slang the miners
called them, with a love of preternatural history. But Mr. Gundry
allowed no search for the frogs, or even the tadpoles, of his
patriarchal nugget. And much as he hated the idea of sowing the seeds
of avarice in any one, he showed himself most consistent now in avoiding
that imputation; for not only did he refuse to show the bed of his great
treasure, after he had secured it, but he fenced the whole of it in,
and tarred the fence, and put loopholes in it; and then he established
Jowler where he could neither be shot nor poisoned, and kept a man with
a double-barreled rifle in the ruin of the mill, handy to shoot, but not
easy to be shot; and this was a resolute man, being Martin himself, who
had now no business. Of course Martin grumbled; but the worse his temper
was, the better for his duty, as seems to be the case with a great many
men; and if any one had come to console him in his grumbling, never
would he have gone away again.
It would have been reckless of me to pretend to say what any body ought
to do; from the first to the last I left every thing to those who knew
so much better; at the same time I felt that it might have done no
harm if I had been more consulted, though I never dreamed of saying so,
because the great gold had been found by me, and although I cared for it
scarcely more than for the tag of a boot-lace, nobody seemed to me able
to enter into it quite as I did; and as soon as Firm's danger and pain
grew less, I began to get rather impatient, but Uncle Sam was not to be
hurried.
Before ever he hoisted that rock of gold, he had made up his mind for me
to be there, and he even put the business off, because I would not come
one night, for I had a superstitious fear on account of its being my
father's birthday. Uncle Sam had forgotten the date, and begged my
pardon for proposing it; but he said that we must not put it off later
than the following night, because the moonlight would be failing, and
we durst not have any kind of lamp, and before the next moon the hard
weather might begin. All this was before the liberal offers of his
friends, of which I have spoken first, although they happened to come
after it.
While the Sawyer had been keeping the treasure perdu, to abide the issue
of his grandson's illness, he had taken good care both to watch it and
to form some opinion of its shape and size; for, knowing the pile which
I had described, he could not help finding it easily enough; and indeed
the great fear was that others might find it, and come in great force to
rob him; but nothing of that sort had happened, partly because he
held his tongue rigidly, and partly, perhaps, because of the simple
precaution which he had taken.
Now, however, it was needful to impart the secret to one man at least;
for Firm, though recovering, was still so weak that it might have killed
him to go into the water, or even to exert himself at all; and strong
as Uncle Sam was, he knew that even with hoisting-tackle, he alone could
never bring that piece of bullion to bank; so, after much consideration,
he resolved to tell Martin of the mill, as being the most trusty man
about the place, as well as the most surly; but he did not tell him
until every thing was ready, and then he took him straightway to the
place.
Here, in the moonlight, we stood waiting, Firm and myself and Suan Isco,
who had more dread than love of gold, and might be useful to keep watch,
or even to lend a hand, for she was as strong as an ordinary man. The
night was sultry, and the fire-flies (though dull in the radiance of the
moon) darted, like soft little shooting-stars, across the still face
of shadow, and the flood of the light of the moon was at its height,
submerging every thing.
While we were whispering and keeping in the shade for fear of attracting
any wanderer's notice, we saw the broad figure of the Sawyer rising from
a hollow of the bank, and behind him came Martin the foreman, and we
soon saw that due preparation had been made, for they took from under
some drift-wood (which had prevented us from observing it) a small
movable crane, and fixed it on a platform of planks which they set up in
the river-bed.
“Palefaces eat gold,” Suan Isco said, reflectively, and as if to satisfy
herself. “Dem eat, drink, die gold; dem pull gold out of one other's
ears. Welly hope Mellican mans get enough gold now.”
“Don't be sarcastic, now, Suan,” I answered; “as if it were possible to
have enough!”
“For my part,” said Firm, who had been unusually silent all the evening,
“I wish it had never been found at all. As sure as I stand here,
mischief will come of it. It will break up our household. I hope it will
turn out a lump of quartz, gilt on the face, as those big nuggets do,
ninety-nine out of a hundred. I have had no faith in it all along.”
“Because I found it, Mr. Firm, I suppose,” I answered, rather pettishly,
for I never had liked Firm's incessant bitterness about my nugget.
“Perhaps if you had found it, Mr. Firm, you would have had great faith
in it.”
“Can't say, can't say,” was all Firm's reply; and he fell into the
silent vein again.
“Heave-ho! heave-ho! there, you sons of cooks!” cried the Sawyer, who
was splashing for his life in the water. “I've tackled 'un now. Just
tighten up the belt, to see if he biteth centre-like. You can't lift
'un! Lord bless 'ee, not you. It 'll take all I know to do that, I
guess; and Firm ain't to lay no hand to it. Don't you be in such a
doggoned hurry. Hold hard, can't you?”
For Suan and Martin were hauling for their lives, and even I caught hold
of a rope-end, but had no idea what to do with it, when the Sawyer swung
himself up to bank, and in half a minute all was orderly. He showed
us exactly where to throw our weight, and he used his own to such good
effect that, after some creaking and groaning, the long horn of the
crane rose steadily, and a mass of dripping sparkles shone in the
moonlight over the water.
“Hurrah! what a whale! How the tough ash bends!” cried Uncle Sam,
panting like a boy, and doing nearly all the work himself. “Martin, lay
your chest to it. We'll grass him in two seconds. Californy never saw a
sight like this, I reckon.”
There was plenty of room for us all to stand round the monster and
admire it. In shape it was just like a fat toad, squatting with his
shoulders up and panting. Even a rough resemblance to the head and the
haunches might be discovered, and a few spots of quartz shone here and
there on the glistening and bossy surface. Some of us began to feel and
handle it with vast admiration; but Firm, with his heavy boots, made a
vicious kick at it, and a few bright scales, like sparks, flew off.
“Why, what ails the lad?” cried the Sawyer, in some wrath; “what harm
hath the stone ever done to him? To my mind, this here lump is a proof
of the whole creation of the world, and who hath lived long enough
to gainsay? Here this lump hath lain, without changing color, since
creation's day; here it is, as big and heavy as when the Lord laid hand
to it. What good to argue agin such facts? Supposin' the world come out
o' nothing, with nobody to fetch it, or to say a word of orders, how
ever could it 'a managed to get a lump of gold like this in it? They
clever fellers is too clever. Let 'em put all their heads together, and
turn out a nugget, and I'll believe them.”
Uncle Sam's reasoning was too deep for any but himself to follow. He was
not long in perceiving this, though we were content to admire his words
without asking him to explain them; so he only said, “Well, well,” and
began to try with both hands if he could heft this lump. He stirred it,
and moved it, and raised it a little, as the glisten of the light upon
its roundings showed; but lift it fairly from the ground he could not,
however he might bow his sturdy legs and bend his mighty back to it;
and, strange to say, he was pleased for once to acknowledge his own
discomfiture.
“Five hundred and a half I used to lift to the height of my knee-cap
easily; I may 'a fallen off now a hundred-weight with years, and
strings in my back, and rheumatics; but this here little toad is a
clear hundredweight out and beyond my heftage. If there's a pound here,
there's not an ounce under six hundred-weight, I'll lay a thousand
dollars. Miss Rema, give a name to him. All the thundering nuggets has
thundering names.”
“Then this shall be called 'Uncle Sam,'” I answered, “because he is the
largest and the best of all.”
“It shall stand, miss,” cried Martin, who was in great spirits, and
seemed to have bettered himself forever. “You could not have given it a
finer name, miss, if you had considered for a century. Uncle Sam is the
name of our glorious race, from the kindness of our natur'. Every body's
uncle we are now, in vartue of superior knowledge, and freedom, and
giving of general advice, and stickin' to all the world, or all the good
of it. Darned if old Sam aren't the front of creation!”
“Well, well,” said the Sawyer, “let us call it 'Uncle Sam,' if the dear
young lady likes it; it would be bad luck to change the name; but, for
all that, we must look uncommon sharp, or some of our glorious race will
come and steal it afore we unbutton our eyes.”
“Pooh!” cried Martin; but he knew very well that his master's words were
common-sense; and we left him on guard with a double-barreled gun, and
Jowler to keep watch with him. And the next day he told us that he had
spent the night in such a frame of mind from continual thought that when
our pet cow came to drink at daybreak, it was but the blowing of her
breath that saved her from taking a bullet between her soft tame eyes.
Now it could not in any kind of way hold good that such things should
continue; and the Sawyer, though loath to lose sight of the nugget,
perceived that he must not sacrifice all the morals of the neighborhood
to it, and he barely had time to dispatch it on its road at the bottom
of a load of lumber, with Martin to drive, and Jowler to sit up, and
Firm to ride behind, when a troop of mixed robbers came riding across,
with a four-wheel cart and two sturdy mules--enough to drag off every
thing. They had clearly heard of the golden toad, and desired to know
more of him; but Uncle Sam, with his usual blandness, met these men at
the gate of his yard, and upon the top rail, to ease his arm, he rested
a rifle of heavy metal, with seven revolving chambers. The robbers found
out that they had lost their way, and Mr. Gundry answered that so they
had, and the sooner they found it in another direction, the better it
would be for them. They thought that he had all his men inside, and they
were mighty civil, though we had only two negroes to help us, and Suan
Isco, with a great gun cocked. But their curiosity was such that they
could not help asking about the gold; and, sooner than shoot them, Uncle
Sam replied that, upon his honor, the nugget was gone. And the fame of
his word was so well known that these fellows (none of whom could tell
the truth, even at confession) believed him on the spot, and begged his
pardon for trespassing on his premises. They hoped that he would not say
a word to the Vigilance Committee, who hanged a poor fellow for losing
his road; and he told them that if they made off at once, nobody should
pursue them; and so they rode off very happily.