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GOLD
Other Books by the Same Author
The Claim Jumpers
The Westerners
The Blazed Trail
Arizona Night
Blazed Trail Stories
The Cabin
Camp and Trail
Conjuror's House
The Forest
The Rules of the Game
The Riverman
The Silent Places
The Adventures of Bobby Orde
The Mountains
The Pass
The Magic Forest
The Sign at Six
The Land of Footprints
African Camp Fires
The Mystery (with Samuel Hopkins Adams)
[Illustration: "'I TOLD YOU YOU COULDN'T LICK ME,' SAID HE"]
GOLD
by
STEWART EDWARD WHITE
Illustrated by
THOMAS FOGARTY
New York
Grosset & Dunlap
Publishers
Copyright, 1913, by
Doubleday, Page & Company
All rights reserved, including that of
translation into foreign languages,
including the Scandinavian
CONTENTS
Part I.--Panama
I. Oh, Susannah! 3
II. The Hammerlock 7
III. The Voyage 19
IV. The Village by the Lagoon 28
V. A Tropical River 38
VI. The Village in the Jungle 44
VII. The Trail 56
VIII. Panama 61
IX. Northward Ho! 76
Part II.--THE GOLDEN CITY
X. The Golden City 87
XI. I Make Twenty-five Dollars 101
XII. Talbot Deserts 115
XIII. Up-River 129
Part III.--THE MINES
XIV. Sutter's Fort 141
XV. The Gold Trail 148
XVI. The First Gold 164
XVII. The Diggings 170
XVIII. Beginnings of Government 176
XIX. Sunday at Hangman's Gulch 185
XX. The Gold Washers 192
XXI. We Leave the Diggings 203
XXII. The Strike 210
XXIII. The Camp on the Porcupine 216
XXIV. The Indians 221
XXV. Battle 235
XXVI. We Send Out Our Treasure 244
XXVII. The Robbery 249
XXVIII. The Bully 255
XXIX. The Challenge 272
XXX. The Fight 284
XXXI. The Express Messenger 291
XXXII. Italian Bar 298
XXXIII. The Overland Immigrants 312
XXXIV. The Prisoners 320
XXXV. The Trial 327
XXXVI. The Rule of the Lawless 333
XXXVII. The Last Straw 342
XXXVIII. The Vigilantes 351
XXXIX. The Vigilantes (continued) 359
Part IV.--The Law
XL. The Rains 371
XLI. We Go Out 380
XLII. San Francisco Again 392
XLIII. The Golden Web 404
XLIV. Plutocrats! 414
XLV. The Catastrophe 425
XLVI. The Vision 433
ILLUSTRATIONS
"'I told you you couldn't lick me,' said he"
Frontispiece
"'You hounds!' he roared. 'Don't you dare try
to sneak off!'" 78
"The big man whirled to the floor" 286
"We marched our prisoner in double-quick
time to the agreed rendezvous" 360
PART I
PANAMA
GOLD
CHAPTER I
OH, SUSANNAH!
Somewhere in this book I must write a paragraph exclusively about
myself. The fact that in the outcome of all these stirring events I have
ended as a mere bookkeeper is perhaps a good reason why one paragraph
will be enough. In my youth I had dreams a-plenty; but the event and the
peculiar twist of my own temperament prevented their fulfilment. Perhaps
in a more squeamish age--and yet that is not fair, either, to the men
whose destinies I am trying to record. Suffice it then that of these men
I have been the friend and companion, of these occasions I have been a
part, and that the very lacks and reservations of my own character that
have kept me to a subordinate position and a little garden have probably
made me the better spectator. Which is a longer paragraph about myself
than I had purposed writing.
Therefore I will pass over briefly the various reasons, romantic and
practical, why I decided to join the gold rush to California in the year
1849. It was in the air; and I was then of a romantic and adventurous
disposition.
The first news of the gold discovery filtered to us in a roundabout way
through vessels to the Sandwich Islands, and then appeared again in the
columns of some Baltimore paper. Everybody laughed at the rumour; but
everybody remembered it. The land was infinitely remote; and then, as
now, romance increases as the square of the distance. There might well
be gold there; but more authentic were the reports of fleas, rawhides,
and a dried-up coast. Minstrel shows made a good deal of fun of it all,
I remember. Then, when we were of a broad grin, came the publication of
the letter written by Governor Mason to the War Department. That was a
sober official document, and had to be believed, but it read like a
fairy tale.
"I have no hesitation in saying," wrote the governor, "that there is
more gold in the country drained by the Sacramento and San Joaquin
rivers than would pay the costs of the late war with Mexico a hundred
times over." And he then went on to report in detail big nuggets and big
washings, mentioning men, places, dates, in a circumstantial manner that
carried conviction.
Our broad grins faded. The minstrels' jokes changed colour. As I look
back, it seems to me that I can almost see with the physical eye the
broad restless upheaval beneath the surface of all society. The Mexican
war was just over, and the veterans--young veterans all--filled with the
spirit of adventure turned eagerly toward this glittering new emprise.
Out in the small villages, on the small farms, the news was talked over
seriously, almost without excitement, as offering a possible means of
lifting the burden war had laid. Families strained their resources,
mortgaged their possessions, to equip and send their single strongest
members to make the common fortune.
Then came the song that caught the popular ear; and the rush was on.
Most great movements are done to song, generally commonplace. It was so
in this instance. _Oh, Susannah!_ or rather a modification of the
original made to fit the occasion, first sung in some minstrel show, ran
like fire in the tinder of men's excited hopes. From every stage, on
every street corner, in every restaurant and hotel it was sung, played,
and whistled. At the sound of its first notes the audience always sprang
to its feet and cheered like mad.
The desire to go to El Dorado was universal, and almost irresistible.
The ability to go was much more circumscribed. For one thing, it cost a
good deal of money; and that was where _I_ bogged down at the first
pull. Then I suppose a majority did have ties of family, business or
other responsibilities impossible to shake off. However, we all joined
one or more of the various clubs formed for the purpose of getting at
least some of their members to California; and discussed heatedly the
merits of the different routes; and went into minute and fascinating
details as to processes of which we knew less than nothing; and sang
_Oh, Susannah_! and talked ourselves into a glorified fever of
excitement; and went home with our heads in the clouds. Once in a great
while some of these clubs came to something--as a body I mean; for
individual members were constantly working themselves up the summit of
resolution to rush headlong and regardless down the other side and out
of our sight. When a man had reached a certain pitch of excitement he
ran amuck. He sold anything, deserted anything, broke through anything
in the way of family, responsibility, or financial lacks in order to go.
But, as I say, occasionally one of these clubs pooled its individual
resources and bought some old tub of a whaler, or outfitted a wagon
train, and started off. But generally we got only as far as _Oh,
Susannah!_ I remember once, in coming out from one of our meetings,
finding myself next a solemn and earnest youth originally from my own
rural village. He walked by my side for several squares lost in a brown
study. Then suddenly he looked up.
"Frank," said he with conviction, "I believe I'll go. I know most of
this talk is wildly exaggerated, but I'm sensible enough to discount all
that sort of thing and to disbelieve absurd stories. I shan't go with
the slightest notion of finding the thing true, but will be satisfied if
I do reasonably well. In fact, if I don't pick up more than a hatful of
gold a day, I shall be perfectly satisfied."
Which remark sufficiently indicates about where we all were!
CHAPTER II
THE HAMMERLOCK
We had many sorts of men in our club, but nearly all young. One, in
especial, early attracted my attention, and held it through all the
changing vicissitudes of our many meetings. I say attracted me, though
fascinated would be perhaps the better word, for after the first evening
of his attendance I used deliberately so to place myself that I could
watch him.
He came always in a rather worn military cape, which on entering the
door he promptly threw back in such a manner as to display the red
lining. This seemed an appropriate envelopment of his flaming, buoyant
personality. He walked with his chin up and his back straight, and trod
directly on and over the ends of his toes so that he seemed fairly to
spring with vigour. His body was very erect and tall and pliant, bending
easily to every change of balance. If I were never to have seen his face
at all I should have placed him as one of the laughing spirits of the
world. His head was rather small, round, well poised, with soft
close-set ringlets all over it like a cap, in the fashion of some marble
gods I have seen. He had very regular, handsome features, with a clear,
biscuit-brown complexion, and a close-clipped, stubby, light moustache.
All these things were interesting and attractive, though no more so than
are the vigour and beauty of any perfect animal. But the quality of his
eyes placed him, at least to me, in a class apart. They were sober,
clear eyes, that looked out gray and contemplative on the world about
them; so that one got the instant impression of a soul behind them that
weighed and judged. Indeed they were not laughing eyes at all, and
rather negatived the impression made by the man's general bearing. But
somewhere down in them something flickered like a strong burning candle
in a brisk wind. Occasionally it was almost out; then again it blazed up
clear, so that one thought to see it plainly through the steady brooding
look. It always fascinated the beholder, for it was mysterious. Whether
it came and went, grew and shrank, following delicately the moods or
reflections of the spirit within, or whether it was a purely fortuitous
effect of light and refraction, no man was ever able to say. And some
men later made some very bad guesses. I myself think it was the devil of
genius--a devil behind the steady control of a clear brain. His name, I
soon discovered, was Talbot Ward.
At this period I was starting in as an assistant bookkeeper to a large
exporting firm. They were enterprising people, and already they were
laying plans to capture some of the California trade. The office talk I
heard concerning the purchase of ships, the consignment of arms, the
engagement of captains and of crews further inflamed my imagination. I
received the vast sum of nine dollars per week. As I was quite alone in
the world, and possessed no other resources, the saving of the five
hundred dollars agreed upon as the least sum with which it was possible
to get to California was fairly out of all question.
One evening, after the meeting, to my great surprise, Ward fell into
step with me. We had up to that moment never exchanged a word.
"In New York long?" he demanded.
"About six months," I told him.
"Farm bred, of course?" he remarked. "Where?"
"Ashbury in Vermont," I replied, without the slightest feeling that he
was intrusive.
He stopped short in the street and looked me up and down reflectively,
but without comment.
"I've been watching you at these fool meetings," said he, falling into
step again.
In spite of myself I experienced a glow of gratification at having been
the object of his interest.
"Fool meetings?" I echoed inquiringly.
"Suppose, by a miracle, all that lot could agree, and could start for
California to-morrow, in a body--that's what they are organized for, I
believe," he countered--"would you go with them?"
"Why not?"
"Martin is why not; and Fowler is why not; and that little Smith runt,
and six or eight others. They are weak sisters. If you are going into a
thing, go into it with the strong men. I wouldn't go with that crowd to
a snake fight if it was twelve miles away. Where do you live?"
"West Ninth Street."
"That's not far. Have you a good big room?"
"I have a very small hall bedroom," I replied wonderingly; "a number of
us have the whole of the top floor."
Somehow, I must repeat, this unexplained intrusion of a total stranger
into my private affairs did not offend.
"Then you must have a big sitting-room. How many of you?"
"Four."
"Can you lick all the others?"
I stopped to laugh. By some shrewd guess he had hit on our chief
difficulty as a community. We were all four country boys with a good
deal of residuary energy and high spirits; and we were not popular with
the tenants underneath.
"You see I'm pretty big----" I reminded him.
"Yes, I see you are. That's why I'm with you. Do you think you can lick
me?"
I stopped short again, in surprise.
"What in blazes----" I began.
He laughed, and the devils in his eyes danced right out to the surface
of them.
"I asked you a plain question," he said, "and I'd like the favour of a
plain answer. Do you think you can lick me as well as your rural
friends?"
"I can," said I shortly.
He ran his arm through mine eagerly.
"Come on!" he cried, "on to West Ninth!"
We found two of my roommates smoking and talking before the tiny open
fire. Talbot Ward, full of the business in hand, rushed directly at the
matter once the introductions were over.
Our arrangements were very simple; the chairs were few and pushed back
easily, and we had an old set of gloves.
"Which is it to be?" I asked my guest, "boxing or wrestling?"
"I said you couldn't _lick_ me," he replied. "Boxing is a game with
rules; it isn't fighting at all."
"You want to bite and gouge and scratch, then?" said I, greatly amused.
"I do not; they would not be fair; a fight's a fight; but a man can be
decent with it all. We'll put on the gloves, and we'll hit and wrestle
both--in fact, we'll fight."
He began rapidly to strip.
"Would you expect to get off your clothes in a real fight?" I asked him
a little sardonically.
"If I _expected_ to fight, yes!" said he. "Why not? Didn't the
Greek and Roman and Hebrew and Hun and every other good old fighter
'strip for the fray' when he got a chance? Of course! Takeoff your
shirt, man!"
I began also to strip for this strange contest whose rules seemed to be
made up from a judicious selection of general principles by Talbot Ward.
My opponent's body was as beautiful as his head. The smooth white skin
covered long muscles that rippled beneath it with every slightest
motion. The chest was deep, the waist and hips narrow, the shoulders
well rounded. In contrast my own big prominent muscles, trained by heavy
farm work of my early youth, seemed to move slowly, to knot sluggishly
though powerfully. Nevertheless I judged at a glance that my strength
could not but prove greater than his. In a boxing match his lithe
quickness might win--provided he had the skill to direct it. But in a
genuine fight, within the circumscribed and hampering dimensions of our
little room, I thought my own rather unusual power must crush him. The
only unknown quantity was the spirit or gameness of us two. I had no
great doubt of my own determination in that respect--I had been on too
many log-drives to fear personal encounter. And certainly Talbot Ward
seemed to show nothing but eager interest.
"You don't show up for what you are in your clothes," said he. "This is
going to be more fun than I had thought."
My roommates perched on the table and the mantelpiece out of the way. I
asked the length of the rounds.
"Rounds!" echoed Talbot Ward with a flash of teeth beneath his little
moustache. "Did you ever hear of rounds in a real fight?"
With the words he sprang forward and hit me twice. The blows started at
the very toe of his foot; and they shook me as no blows, even with the
bare fist, have ever shaken me before or since. Completely dazed, I
struck back, but encountered only the empty air. Four or five times,
from somewhere, these pile-driver fists descended upon me. Being now
prepared, to some extent, I raised my elbows and managed to defend my
neck and jaws. The attack was immediately transferred to my body, but I
stiffened my muscles thankfully and took the punishment. My river and
farm work had so hardened me there that I believe I could have taken the
kick of a mule without damage were I expecting it.
The respite enabled my brain to clear. I recovered slowly from the
effect of those first two vicious blows. I saw Ward, his eyes narrowed
calculatingly, his body swinging forward like a whalebone spring,
delivering his attack with nice accuracy. A slow anger glowed through
me. He had begun without the least warning: had caught me absolutely
unaware. I hit back.
He was so intent on his own assault, so certain of the blinding effect
of his first attack, that I hit him. I saw his head snap back, and the
blood come from his lips. The blows were weak, for I was still dazed;
but they served, together with the slow burn of my anger, greatly to
steady me. We were once more on equal terms.
For perhaps two minutes I tried to exchange with him. He was in and out
like lightning; he landed on me hard almost every time; he escaped nine
out of ten of my return counters. Decidedly I was getting the worst of
this; though my heavier body took punishment better than his lighter and
more nervous frame. Then suddenly it occurred to me that I was playing
his game for him. As long as he could keep away from me, he was at an
advantage. My best chance was to close.
From that moment I took the aggressive, and was in consequence the more
punished. My rushes to close in were skilfully eluded; and they
generally laid me wide open. My head was singing, and my sight
uncertain; though I was in no real distress. Ward danced away and
slipped around tense as a panther.
Then, by a very simple ruse, I got hold of him. I feinted at rushing
him, stopped and hit instead, and then, following closely the blow,
managed to seize his arm. For ten seconds he jerked and twisted and
struggled to release himself. Then suddenly he gave that up, dove
forward, and caught me in a grapevine.
He was a fairly skilful wrestler, and very strong. It was as though he
were made of whalebone springs. But never yet have I met a man of my
weight who possessed the same solid strength; and Ward would tip the
scales at considerably less. I broke his hold, and went after him.
He was as lively as an exceedingly slippery fish. Time after time he all
but wriggled from my grasp; and time after time he broke my hold by
sheer agility. His exertions must have been to him something terrible,
for they required every ounce of his strength at the greatest speed. I
could, of course, take it much easier, and every instant I expected to
feel him weaken beneath my hands; but apparently he was as vigorous as
ever. He was in excellent training. At last, however, I managed to jerk
him whirling past me, to throw his feet from under him, and to drop him
beneath me. As he fell he twisted, and by a sheer fluke I caught his
wrist.
Thus through no great skill of my own the fortunes of war had given me a
hammerlock on him. Most people know what that is. Any one else can find
out by placing his forearm across the small of his back and then getting
somebody else to press upward on the forearm. The Greek statue of "The
Wrestlers" illustrates it. As the pressure increases, so does the pain.
When the pain becomes intense enough, the wrestler rolls over and the
contest is won. Some people can stand it longer than others; but all
sooner or later must give up. In fact, skilled wrestlers, knowing that
otherwise the inevitable end is a broken arm, save themselves much
tribulation by immediately conceding the bout once this deadly hold is
gained.
I began to force Talbot Ward's hand slowly up his back.
Very gently, an inch at a time, I pressed. He said nothing. Once he
attempted to slip sidewise; but finding me of course fully prepared for
that, he instantly ceased struggling. After I had pushed the hand to the
hurting point, I stopped.
"Well?" said I.
He said nothing.
Now I was young, and none too well disciplined, heated by contest, and
very angry at having been so unexpectedly attacked at the beginning. I
was quite willing to hurt him a little. Slowly and steadily, and, I am
ashamed to say, with considerable satisfaction, I pressed the arm
upward. The pain must have been intense. I could feel the man's body
quiver between my knees, and saw the sweat break out afresh. Still he
made no sign, but dug his forehead into the floor. "I can stand this as
long as you can," said I to myself grimly.
But at last I reached the point where I knew that another inch, another
pound, would break the bone.
"Do you give up?" I demanded.
"No!" he gasped explosively.
"I'll break your arm!" I snarled at him.
He made no reply.
The blood was running into my eyes from a small scrape on my forehead.
It was nothing, but it annoyed me. I was bruised and heated and mad.
Every bit of antagonism in me was aroused. As far as I was concerned, it
was a very real fight.
"All right," I growled, "I'll keep you there then, damn you!"
Holding the arm in the same position, I settled myself. The pain to the
poor chap must have been something fearful, for every muscle and tendon
was stretched to the cracking point. His breath came and went in sharp
hisses; but he gave no other sign. My heat cooled, though, as I look
back on it, far too slowly. Suddenly I arose and flung him from me. He
rolled over on his back, and lay, his eyes half closed, breathing
deeply. We must have been a sweet sight, we two young barbarians--myself
marked and swollen and bloody, he with one eye puffed, and pale as
death. My roommates, absolutely fascinated, did not stir.
The tableau lasted only the fraction of a minute, after all. Then
abruptly Talbot Ward sat up. He grinned up at me with his characteristic
momentary flash of teeth.
"I told you you couldn't lick me," said he.
I stared at him in astonishment.
"Licked? Why, I had you cold!"
"You had not."
"I'd have broken your arm, if I had gone any farther."
"Well, why didn't you?"
I stared into his eyes blankly.
"Would you have done it?" I asked, in a sudden flash of illumination.
"Why, of course," said he, with a faint contempt, as he arose.
"Why did you hit me at first, as you did? You gave me no warning
whatever."
"Do you get any warning in a real fight?"
I could not controvert this; and yet uneasily, vaguely, I felt there
must be a fallacy somewhere. I had been told and not told, what should,
or should not, be done, in an affair that apparently could have no
rules, and yet had distinctions as to fair and unfair, some of which
were explained and some left as obvious. I felt somewhat confused. But
often in my later experience with Talbot Ward I felt just that way, so
in retrospect it does not strike me so forcibly as it did at that time.
"But you're a wonder! a perfect wonder!" Ward was saying.
Then we all became aware of a knocking and a rattling at the door. It
must have been going on for some time.
"If you don't open, I'll get the police! I promise you, I'll get the
police!" the voice of our landlady was saying.
We looked at each other aghast.
"I suppose we must have been making a little noise," conceded Talbot
Ward. Noise! It must have sounded as though the house were coming down.
Our ordinary little boxing matches were nothing to it.
Ward threw his military cape around his shoulders, and sank back into a
seat beneath the window. I put on an overcoat. One of the boys let her
in.
She was thoroughly angry, and she gave us all notice to go. She had done
that same every Saturday night for a year; but we had always wheedled
her out of it. This time, however, she seemed to mean business. I
suppose we _had_ made a good deal of a riot. When the fact became
evident, I, of course, shouldered the whole responsibility. Thereupon
she turned on me. Unexpectedly Talbot Ward spoke up from the obscurity
of his corner. His clear voice was incisive, but so courteous with the
cold finality of the high-bred aristocrat, that Mrs. Simpkins was cut
short in the middle of a sentence.
"I beg you, calm yourself, madam," said he; "it is not worth heating
yourself over: for the annoyance, such as it is, will soon be removed.
Mr. Munroe and myself are shortly departing together for California."
CHAPTER III
THE VOYAGE
If I had any scruples--and I do not remember many--they were overcome
within the next day or two. It was agreed that I was to go in Ward's
employ, he to pay my passage money and all expenses, I to give him half
the gold I might pick up. This seemed to me, at least, an eminently
satisfactory and businesslike arrangement. Ward bought the outfits for
both of us. It turned out that he was a Mexican war veteran--hence the
military cape--and in consequence an old campaigner. His experience and
my rural upbringing saved us from most of the ridiculous purchases men
made at that time. We had stout clothes and boots, a waterproof apiece,
picks and shovel, blankets and long strips of canvas, three axes,
knives, one rifle, a double shotgun, and a Colt's revolver apiece. The
latter seemed to me a wonderful weapon, with its six charges in the
turning cylinder; but I had no opportunity to try it.
Ward decided instantly for the Panama route.
"It's the most expensive, but also the quickest," said he; "a sailing
ship around the Horn takes forever; and across the plains is ditto.
Every day we wait, some other fellow is landing in the diggings."
Nearly every evening he popped into our boarding house, where, owing to
the imminence of my departure, I had been restored to favour. I never
did find out where he lived. We took our passage at the steamship
office; we went to the variety shows and sang _Oh, Susannah!_ with
the rest; we strutted a bit, and were only restrained from donning our
flannel shirts and Colt's revolving pistols in the streets of New York
by a little remnant, a very little remnant, of common sense. When the
time at last came, we boarded our steamship, and hung over the rail, and
cheered like crazy things. I personally felt as though a lid had been
lifted from my spirit, and that a rolling cloud of enthusiasm was at
last allowed to puff out to fill my heaven.
In two days we were both over being seasick, and had a chance to look
around us. Our ship was a sidewheel steamer of about a thousand tons,
and she carried two hundred and eighty passengers, which was about two
hundred more than her regular complement. They were as miscellaneous a
lot as mortal eye ever fell upon: from the lank Maine Yankee to the
tall, sallow, black-haired man from Louisiana. I suppose, too, all
grades of the social order must have been represented; but in our youth
and high spirits we did not go into details of that sort. Every man,
with the exception of a dozen or so, wore a red shirt, a slouch hat, a
revolver and a bowie knife; and most of us had started to grow beards.
Unless one scrutinized closely such unimportant details as features,
ways of speech or manners, one could not place his man's former status,
whether as lawyer, physician or roustabout. And we were too busy for
that. I never saw such a busy place as that splattering old ship slowly
wallowing her way south toward the tropical seas. We had fifty-eight
thousand things to discuss, beginning with Marshall's first discovery,
skipping through the clouds of rumours of all sorts, down to intimate
details of climate, outfit, prospects, plans, and the best methods of
getting at the gold. And to all these subjects we brought a dozen points
of view, each of which was strange to all the others. We had with us men
from every stratum of society, and from every point of the compass. Each
was a product of his own training and mental upbringing, and was
incapable, without great effort, of understanding his neighbour's point
of view. Communication and travel were in those days very limited, it
must be remembered, and different communities and sections of the
country produced strong types. With us discussion became an adventurous
exploration into a new country; the man from Maine could not but be
interested in finding out what that strange, straight-haired, dark
creature from Carolina might think of even the most commonplace subject.
Only our subjects were not commonplace.
So my chief impression of that voyage down was of knots of men talking
hurriedly and excitedly, as though there were not a moment to waste; and
the hum of voices rising and falling far into the night.
Only two things were capable of breaking in on this tense absorption of
the men in each other and in their subject--one was dolphins, and the
other the meal gong. When dolphins appeared each rushed promptly to the
side of the ship and discharged his revolver at the beasts. I never saw
any harm come from these fusillades, but they made a wonderful row. Meal
times always caught the majority unaware. They tumbled and jostled down
the companionways only to find the wise and forethoughtful had preempted
every chair. Whereupon, with most ludicrous expressions of chagrin or of
assumed nonchalance, they trooped back to meet the laughter of the wise,
if not forethoughtful, who had realized the uselessness of the rush.
After a moment's grumbling, however, the discussions were resumed.
There was some quarrelling, but not much. A holiday spirit pervaded the
lot; for they were men cut off from all experience, all accustomed
surroundings, all the restraints of training, and they were embarked on
the great adventure. I do not now remember many of them individually.
They were of a piece with the thousands we were destined to encounter.
But I do retain a most vivid mental picture of them collectively, with
their red shirts, their slouch hats, their belts full of weapons, their
eyes of eagerness, their souls of dreams; brimming with pent energy;
theorizing, arguing, disputing; ready at an instant's notice for any
sort of a joke or excitement that would relieve the tension; boisterous,
noisy, laughing loudly, smothering by sheer weight of ridicule
individual resentments--altogether a wonderful picture of the youth and
hope and energy and high spirits of the time.
Never before nor since have I looked upon such a variety of equipment as
strewed the decks and cabins of that ship. A great majority of the
passengers knew nothing whatever about out-of-door life, and less than
nothing as to the conditions in California and on the way. Consequently
they had bought liberally of all sorts of idiotic patent contraptions.
India rubber played a prominent part. And the deck was cumbered with at
least forty sorts of machines for separating gold from the soil: some of
them to use water, some muscular labour, and one tremendous affair with
wings was supposed to fan away everything but the gold. Differing in
everything else, they were alike in one thing: they had all been devised
by men who had never seen any but manufactured gold. I may add that I
never saw a machine of the kind actually at work in the diggings.
Just now, however, I looked on the owners of these contraptions with
envy, and thought ourselves at a disadvantage with only our picks,
shovels, and axes.
But we had with us a wonderful book that went far toward cheering up the
poorly equipped. Several copies had been brought aboard, so we all had a
chance to read it. The work was entitled "Three Weeks in the Gold
Mines," and was written by a veracious individual who signed himself H.
I. Simpson. I now doubt if he had ever left his New York hall bedroom,
though at the time we took his statements for plain truth. Simpson could
spare only ten days of this three weeks for actual mining. In that
period, with no other implement than a pocket knife, he picked out fifty
thousand dollars. The rest of the time he preferred to travel about and
see the country, picking up only what incidental nuggets he came across
while walking. We believed this.
As we drew southward the days became insufferably warm, but the nights
were glorious. Talbot and I liked to sleep on the deck; and generally
camped down up near the bitts. The old ship rolled frightfully, for she
was light in freight in order to accommodate so many passengers; and the
dark blue sea appeared to swoop up and down beneath the placid tropic
moon.
We had many long, quiet talks up there; but in them all I learned
nothing, absolutely nothing, of my companion.
"If you had broken my arm that time, I should not have taken you," he
remarked suddenly one evening.
"Shouldn't blame you," said I.
"No! I wouldn't have wanted that kind of a man," he continued, "for I
should doubt my control of him. But you gave up."
This nettled me.
"Would you have had me, or any man, brute enough to go through with it?"
I demanded.
"Well"--he hesitated--"it was agreed that it was to be _fight_, you
remember. And after all, if you had broken my arm, it would have been my
fault and not yours."
Two young fellows used occasionally to join us in our swooping, plunging
perch. They were as unlike as two men could be, and yet already they had
become firm friends. One was a slow, lank, ague-stricken individual from
somewhere in the wilds of the Great Lakes, his face lined and brown as
though carved from hardwood, his speed slow, his eyes steady with a
veiled sardonic humour. His companion was scarcely more than a boy, and
he came, I believe, from Virginia. He was a dark, eager youth, with a
mop of black shiny hair that he was always tossing back, bright glowing
eyes, a great enthusiasm of manner, and an imagination alert to catch
fire. The backwoodsman seemed attracted to the boy by this very quick
and unsophisticated bubbling of candid youth; while the boy most
evidently worshipped his older companion as a symbol of the mysterious
frontier. The Northerner was named Rogers, but was invariably known as
Yank. The Southerner had some such name as Fairfax, but was called
Johnny, and later in California, for reasons that will appear, Diamond
Jack. Yank's distinguishing feature was a long-barrelled "pea shooter"
rifle. He never moved ten feet without it.
Johnny usually did most of the talking when we were all gathered
together. Yank and I did the listening and Talbot the interpellating.
Johnny swarmed all over himself like a pickpocket, and showed us
everything he had in the way of history, manners, training, family,
pride, naivete, expectations and hopes. He prided himself on being a
calm, phlegmatic individual, unemotional and not easily excited, and he
constantly took this attitude. It was a lovely joke.
"Of course," said he, "it won't be necessary to stay out more than a
year. They tell me I can easily make eleven hundred dollars a day; but
you know I am not easily moved by such reports"--he was at the time
moving under a high pressure, at least ten knots an hour--"I shall be
satisfied with three hundred a day. Allowing three hundred working days
to the year, that gives me about ninety thousand dollars--plenty!"
"You'll have a few expenses," suggested Talbot.
"Oh--yes--well, make it a year and a half, just to be on the safe side."
Johnny was eagerly anxious to know everybody on the ship, with the
exception of about a dozen from his own South. As far as I could see
they did not in the slightest degree differ except in dress from any of
the other thirty or forty from that section, but Johnny distinguished.
He stiffened as though Yank's gunbarrel had taken the place of his spine
whenever one of these men was near; and he was so coldly and pointedly
courteous that I would have slapped his confounded face if he had acted
so to me.
"Look here, Johnny," I said to him one day, "what's the matter with
those fellows? They look all right to me. What do you know against
them?"
"I never laid eyes on them before in my life, sir," he replied,
stiffening perceptibly.
"Take that kink out of your back," I warned him. "That won't work worth
a cent with me!"
He laughed.
"I beg pardon. They are not gentlemen."
"I don't know what you mean by gentlemen," said I; "it's a wide term.
But lots of us here aren't gentlemen--far, far from it. But you seem to
like us."
He knit his brows.
"I can't explain. They are the class of cheap politician that brings
into disrepute the chivalry of the South, sir."
Talbot and I burst into a shout of laughter, and even Yank, leaning
attentively on the long barrel of his pea rifle, grinned faintly. We
caught Johnny up on that word--and he was game enough to take it well.
Whenever something particularly bad happened to be also Southern, we
called it the Chivalry. The word caught hold; so that later it came to
be applied as a generic term to the Southern wing of venal politicians
that early tried to control the new state of California.
I must confess that if I had been Johnny I should have stepped more
carefully with these men. They were a dark, suave lot, and dressed well.
In fact, they and a half dozen obviously professional men alone in all
that ship wore what we would call civilized clothes. I do not know which
was more incongruous--our own red shirts, or the top hats, flowing
skirts, and light pantaloons of these quietly courteous gentlemen. They
were quite as well armed as ourselves, however, wearing their revolvers
beneath their armpits, or carrying short double pistols. They treated
Johnny with an ironically exaggerated courtesy, and paid little
attention to his high airs. It was obvious, however, that he was making
enemies.
Talbot Ward knew everybody aboard, from the captain down. His laughing,
half-aloof manner was very taking; and his ironical comments on the
various points of discussion, somehow, conveyed no sting. He was
continually accepting gifts of newspapers--of which there were a half a
thousand or so brought aboard--with every appearance of receiving a
favour. These papers he carried down to our tiny box of a room and added
to his bundle. I supposed at the time he was doing all this on Moliere's
principle, that one gains more popularity by accepting a favour than by
bestowing one.
CHAPTER IV
THE VILLAGE BY THE LAGOON
In the early morning one day we came in sight of a round high bluff with
a castle atop, and a low shore running away. The ship's man told us this
was Chagres.
This news caused a curious disintegration in the ship's company. We had
heretofore lived together a good-humoured community. Now we immediately
drew apart into small suspicious groups. For we had shortly to land
ourselves and our goods, and to obtain transportation across the
Isthmus; and each wanted to be ahead of his neighbour.
Here the owners of much freight found themselves at a disadvantage. I
began to envy less the proprietors of those enormous or heavy machines
for the separation of gold. Each man ran about on the deck collecting
busily all his belongings into one pile. When he had done that, he spent
the rest of his time trying to extract definite promises from the
harassed ship's officers that he should go ashore in the first boat.
Talbot and I sat on our few packages and enjoyed the scene. The ship
came to anchor and the sailors swung the boat down from the davits. The
passengers crowded around in a dense, clamouring mob. We arose,
shouldered our effects, and quietly slipped around to the corresponding
boat on the other side the ship. Sure enough, that also was being
lowered. So that we and a dozen who had made the same good guess, were,
after all, the first to land.
The town proved to be built on low ground in a bay the other side the
castle and the hill. It must be remembered that I had never travelled.
The cane houses or huts, with their high peaked roofs thatched with palm
leaves, the straight palms in the background against the sky, the
morasses all about, the squawk and flop of strange, long-legged marsh
birds, the glare of light, the queer looking craft beached on the mud,
and the dark-skinned, white-clad figures awaiting us--all these struck
strongly at my imagination.
We beached in the mud, and were at once surrounded by a host of little,
brown, clamorous men. Talbot took charge, and began to shoot back
Spanish at a great rate. Some of the little men had a few words of
English. Our goods were seized, and promptly disappeared in a dozen
directions. I tried to prevent this, but could only collar one man at a
time. All the Americans were swearing and threatening at a great rate. I
saw Johnny, tearing up the beach after a fleet native, fall flat and
full length in the mud, to the vast delight of all who beheld.
Finally Talbot ploughed his way to me.
"It's all settled," said he. "I've made a bargain with my friend here to
take us up in his boat to Cruces for fifteen dollars apiece for four of
us."
"Well, if you need two more, for heaven's sake rescue Johnny," I
advised. "He'll have apoplexy."
We hailed Johnny and explained matters. Johnny was somewhat put to it to
attain his desired air of imperturbable calm.
"They've got every blistered thing I own, and made off with it!" he
cried. "Confound it, sir, I'm going to shoot every saddle-coloured hound
in the place if I don't get back my belongings!"
"They've got our stuff, too," I added.
"Well, keep calm," advised Talbot. "I don't know the game down here, but
it strikes me they can't get very far through these swamps, if they
_do_ try to steal, and I don't believe they're stealing anyway; the
whole performance to me bears a strong family resemblance to hotel
runners. Here, _compadre_!"
He talked a few moments with his boatman.
"That's right," he told us, then. "Come on!"
We walked along the little crescent of beach, looking into each of the
boats in the long row drawn up on the shore. They were queer craft, dug
out from the trunks of trees, with small decks in bow and stern, and
with a low roof of palmetto leaves amidships. By the time we had reached
the end of the row we had collected all our effects. Our own boatman
stowed them in his craft.
Thereupon, our minds at rest, we returned to the landing to enjoy the
scene. The second ship's boat had beached, and the row was going on,
worse than before. In the seething, cursing, shouting mass we caught
sight of Yank's tall figure leaning imperturbably on his rifle muzzle.
We made our way to him.
"Got your boat yet?" Talbot shouted at him.
"Got nothin' yet but a headache in the ears," said Yank.
"Come with us then. Where's your plunder?"
Yank stooped and swung to his shoulder a small bundle tied with ropes.
"She's all thar," said he.
These matters settled, we turned with considerable curiosity to the
little village itself. It was all exotic, strange. Everything was
different, and we saw it through the eyes of youth and romance as
epitomizing the storied tropics.
There were perhaps a couple of hundred of the cane huts arranged roughly
along streets in which survived the remains of crude paving. All else
was a morass. Single palm trees shot up straight, to burst like rockets
in a falling star of fronds. Men and women, clad in a single cotton
shift reaching to the knees, lounged in the doorways or against the
frail walls, smoking cigars. Pot-bellied children, stark naked, played
everywhere, but principally in the mudholes and on the offal dumps.
Innumerable small, hairless dogs were everywhere about, a great
curiosity to us, who had never even heard of such things. We looked into
some of the interiors, but saw nothing in the way of decent furniture.
The cooking appeared to be done between two stones. A grand tropical
smell hung low in the air. On the thresholds of the doors, inside the
houses, in the middle of the streets, anywhere, everywhere, were old
fish, the heads of cattle, drying hides, all sorts of carrion, most of
it well decomposed. Back of the town was a low, rank jungle of green,
and a stagnant lake. The latter had a delicate border of greasy blue
mud.
Johnny and I wandered about completely fascinated. Talbot and Yank did
not seem so impressed. Finally Talbot called a halt.
"This is all very well; if you kids like to look at yellow fever,
blackjack, and corruption, all right," said he. "But we've got to start
pretty soon after noon, and in the meantime where do we eat?"
We returned through the town. It was now filled to overflowing with our
compatriots. They surged everywhere, full of comment and curiosity. The
half-naked men and women with the cigars, and the wholly naked children
and dogs, seemed not in the least disturbed nor enlivened.
Talbot's earnest inquiries finally got us to the Crescent Hotel. It was
a hut exactly like all the rest, save that it had a floor. From its name
I suppose it must have been kept by a white man, but we never got near
enough through the crowd to find out. Without Talbot we should have gone
hungry, with many others, but he inquired around until we found a native
willing to feed us. So we ate on an upturned hencoop outside a native
hut. The meal consisted of pork, bread, and water.
We strolled to the beach at the hour appointed with our boatman. He was
not there; nor any other boatman.
"Never mind," said Ward; "I'll know him if I see him. I'll go look him
up. You fellows find the boat with our things in it."
He and I reentered the village, but a fifteen minutes' search failed to
disclose our man. Therefore we returned to the beach. A crowd was
gathered close about some common centre in the unmistakable restless
manner of men about a dog fight or some other kind of a row. We pushed
our way in.
Johnny and Yank were backed up against the palmetto awning of one of the
boats in an attitude of deadly and quiet menace. Not two yards away
stood four of our well-dressed friends. Nobody as yet displayed a
weapon, except that Yank's long rifle lay across the hollow of his left
arm instead of butt to earth; but it was evident that lightnings were
playing. The boatman, who had appeared, alone was saying anything, but
he seemed to be supplying language for the lot.
Johnny's tense, alert attitude relaxed a little when he saw us.
"Well?" inquired Ward easily. "What's the trouble?"
"Yank and I found our goods dumped out on the beach, and others in their
place," said Johnny.
"So you proceeded to reverse matters? How about it?" he inquired
pleasantly of the four men.
"I know nothing about it," replied one of them shortly. "We hired this
boat, and we intend to have it; and no whipper-snapper is going to keep
us from it."
"I see," said Talbot pleasantly. "Well, excuse me a moment while I talk
to our friend." He addressed the man in Spanish, and received short,
sullen replies. "He says," Talbot explained to us, "that he never saw us
before in his life, and never agreed to take us up the river."
"Well, that settles it," stated the other man.
"How much did you offer to pay him?" asked Talbot.
The man stared. "None of your business," he replied.
"They're askin' twenty dollars a head," volunteered one of the
interested spectators.
"Exactly. You see," said Talbot to us, "we got here a little too early.
Our bargain was for only fifteen dollars; and now this worthy citizen
has made a better rate for himself."
"You should have had the bargain immediately registered before the
_alcalde_, senor," spoke up a white-dressed Spaniard of the better
class, probably from the castle.
"I thank you, senor," said Talbot courteously. "That neglect is due to
my ignorance of your charming country."
"And now if you'll move, young turkey cock, we'll just take our boat,"
said another of the claimants.
"One moment!" said Talbot Ward, with a new edge to his voice. "This is
my boat, not yours; my baggage is in it, my boatman is on the ground.
That he is forgetful has nothing to do with the merits of the case. You
know this as well as I do. Now you can acknowledge this peacefully and
get out, or you can fight. I don't care a continental red copper which.
Only I warn you, the first man who makes a move with anything but his
two feet will be shot dead."
He stood, his hands hanging idly by his sides, and he spoke very
quietly. The four men were not cowards, that I'll swear; but one and all
they stared into Ward's eyes, and came individually to the same
conclusion. I do not doubt that dancing flicker of refraction--or of
devilment--was very near the surface.
"Of course, if you are very positive, I should not dream of doubting
your word or of interfering," said the tallest and quietest, who had
remained in the background. "We desire to do injustice to no man----"
Johnny, behind us, snorted loudly and derisively.
"If my knowledge of Spanish is of any value in assisting you to a boat,
pray command me," broke in Ward.
The crowd moved off, the boatman with it. I reached out and collared
him.
Talbot had turned on Johnny.
"Fairfax," said he icily, "one of the first things you must learn is not
to stir things up again once a victory is gained. Those men were sore;
and you took the best method possible of bringing on a real fight."
Poor Johnny flushed to the roots of his hair.
"You're right," said he in a stifled voice.
Talbot Ward thawed completely, and a most winning smile illumined his
face.
"Why, that's what I call handsome, Johnny!" he cried. "It's pretty hard
to admit the wrong. You and Yank certainly looked bold and warlike when
he came along. Where's that confounded _mozo_? Oh, you have him,
Frank. Good boy! Come here, my amiable citizen. I guess you understand
English after all, or you couldn't have bargained so shrewdly with our
blackleg friends."
The flush slowly faded from Johnny's face. Yank's sole contribution to
the changed conditions was to spit with great care, and to shift the
butt of his rifle to the ground.
"Now," Talbot was admonishing the boatman, "that was very bad. When you
make a bargain, stick to it. But I'll tell you what I will do. I will
ask all people, _sabe_, everywhere, your people, my people, and if
everybody pay twenty dollars, then we pay twenty dollars. _Sabe?_
But we no pay twenty dollars unless you get us to Cruces _poco pronto,
sabe_? Now we start."
The boatman broke into a torrent of talk.
"Says he's got to find his assistant," Talbot explained to us. "Come on,
my son, I'll just go with you after that precious assistant."
We sat on the edge of our boat for half an hour, watching the most
comical scenes. Everybody was afflicted with the same complaint--absence
of boatmen. Some took possession, and settled themselves patiently
beneath their little roofs. Others made forays and returned dragging
protesting natives by the arm. These generally turned out to be the
wrong natives; but that was a mere detail. Once in a lucky while the
full boat's complement would be gathered; and then the craft would pull
away up the river to the tune of pistol shots and vociferous yells.
At the end of the period mentioned Talbot and the two men appeared. They
were quite amicable; indeed, friendly, and laughed together as they
came. The "assistant" proved to be a tremendous negro, nearly naked,
with fine big muscles, and a good-natured, grinning face. He wore large
brass ear circlets and bracelets of copper. We all pushed the canoe to
the very edge of the water and clambered aboard. The negro bent his
mighty shoulders. We were afloat.
CHAPTER V
A TROPICAL RIVER
Our _padrone_, as Talbot told us we should call him, stood in front
clad in a coloured muslin shirt. The broad sluggish river was alive with
boats, all making their way against the current. By the time the lagoon
had narrowed, however, they had pretty well scattered.
We entered a tropical forest, and never shall I forget the wonder of it.
The banks were lined to the water's edge with vegetation, so that one
could see nothing but the jungle. There were great palm trees, which we
recognized; and teak trees, which we did not, but which Talbot
identified for us. It was a very bald sort of tree, as I remember it.
Then there were tremendous sycamores in which were ants' nests as big as
beehives; and banana trees with torn leaves, probably the most exotic
touch of all; and beautiful noble mangoes like domes of a green
cathedral; and various sorts of canes and shrubs and lilies growing
among them. And everywhere leaped and swung the vines--thick ropy vines;
knotted vines, like knotted cables; slender filament vines; spraying
gossamer vines, with gorgeous crimson, purple, and yellow blooms; and
long streamers that dipped to trail in the waters. Below them were broad
pads of lotus and water lilies; with alligators like barnacled logs, and
cormorants swimming about, and bright-eyed waterfowl. The shadows in the
forest were light clear green, and the shadows under the hanging jungle
near the water were dull green; and the very upper air itself, in that
hot steaming glade, seemed delicately green, too. Butterflies were among
the vine blossoms, so brilliant of colour that it seemed to me that the
flowers were fluttering from their stems. Across the translucent green
shadows flashed birds. I recognized little green paroquets. I had never
before seen them outside of cages. No man can realize the wonder of
finding himself actually part of romantic scenes so long familiar in the
pages of books that they have become almost mythical. We sat there
absolutely silent, save when calling attention to some new marvel,
drinking it in.
Our men paddled steadily ahead. The negro hummed strange minor songs to
himself. Suddenly he flashed his teeth at us and broke into full voice:
"Oh, Susannah! don't cry for me!
I'm off to California wid my banjo on my knee."
The accent was queer, but the words and tune were right. Talbot
questioned him in Spanish.
"He says all Americans sing it. He has taken many up the river."
"Too many," muttered Johnny. "I wish we'd started three months sooner."
It was growing dusk when we came in sight of a village of bamboo huts on
the right bank. To this we headed. Hardly had the boat struck the beach
when both of our men leaped ashore and raced madly toward the huts.
Pausing only long enough to slide the boat beyond the grip of the river,
we followed, considerably mystified. Quick as we were, we found both the
_padrone_ and his man, together with a dozen others, already seated
at a _monte_ table. The _padrone_ was acting as banker!
We discovered the name of this place to be Gatun. Talbot found us a
native hut in which were hammocks we could rent for the night. The hut
was a two-storied affair, with a notched pole by which to clamber aloft.
I took one look and decided to stay below. My weight seemed sufficient
to bring the whole thing down about our ears.
I do not know which had the better of it. My hammock was slung across
one corner of the single room. A cooking fire blazed merrily five or six
feet away. Some ten or a dozen natives were drinking and talking until
nearly morning; and to my personal knowledge some ten or a dozen
thousand fleas were doing the same. Six dogs were that hut's allowance.
They discovered that my weight sagged my hammock down to a height just
suitable for the rubbing of their backs. In vain I smote with boot or
pistol barrel. They kiyied and departed; but only for a moment. I had
not even time to fall into a doze before one of the others was back at
it. This amused the drinking natives. I suppose the poor beasts very
passionately wanted to scratch their backs. I could sympathize with
them; none of them could have had as many fleas as I had, for their
superficial area was not as great; but perhaps they had as many per
square inch.
In the course of the night it began to rain. I mean really rain,
"without going into details as to drops," as somebody has said. Then I
ceased envying my friends upstairs; for from all sounds I judged the
roof was leaking.
Next morning it was still drizzling. The town was full of sad-eyed,
wearied men. I think every one had had about the same experience. The
_padrone_ was at first a little inclined to delay; but he quickly
recognized that our mood was bad, so shortly we were under way.
That day was not an unmitigated joy. It rained, picking the surface of
the river up in little spots and rings. The forest dripped steadily. All
the butterflies and bright birds had disappeared; and sullen, shifting
clouds fairly touched the treetops. It was cold. Wrap ourselves as we
would, we became thoroughly chilled. We should have liked to go ashore
for a little fire, or at least a tramp about; but there seemed to be no
banks, and the vegetation would not let us approach whatever earth there
might be. The _padrone_ and the big negro thrust their heads
through holes cut in the middle of their blankets, and seemed happy.
Talbot Ward and Yank took it with the philosophy of old campaigners; but
Johnny and I had not had experience enough to realize that things have a
habit of coming to an end. We were too wet even to smoke.
That night we spent at a place called Pena Blanca, which differed in no
essential from Gatun. We slept there in small sheds, along with twenty
or thirty of our ship's companions wedged tightly together. A dozen
other similar sheds adjoined. We were all quarrelsome and disinclined to
take much nonsense either from the natives or from each other. Also we
needed and wanted food; and we had difficulty in getting it. A dozen
incipient quarrels were extinguished because the majority of the crowd
would not stand for being bothered by the row. Finally the whole hutful
became involved, and it really looked for a moment like a riot. A good
deal of bad language flew about, and men seized their weapons. Yank rose
to the occasion by appealing to them not "to kick up a muss," because
there was "a lady of our own colour in the next room." The lady was
mythical, but the riot was averted.
The next day was clearing, with occasional heavy dashing showers, just
to keep us interested. The country began more to open up. We passed many
grass savannahs dotted with palms and a tree something like our locust.
Herds of cattle fed there. The river narrowed and became swifter. Often
our men had to lay aside their paddles in favour of the pole or tracking
line. Once or twice we landed and walked for a short distance along the
banks. At one place we saw several wild turkeys. At another something
horrifying, rustling, and reptilian made a dash fairly from between my
feet, and rushed _flop_ into the water. The boys claimed I jumped
straight upward four feet; but I think it was nearer ten. Talbot said
the thing was an iguana. I should like very much to be able to describe
it accurately, but my observation was somewhat confused. Beyond the
evident fact that it snorted actual fire, I am not prepared to go.
Along in the early afternoon we reached bolder shores in which the trap
rock descended sheer beneath the surface of the water. Directly ahead of
us rose a mountain like a cone of verdure. We glided around the base of
it, and so came to Gorgona, situated on a high bluff beyond. This we had
decided upon as the end of our river journey. To be sure we had
bargained for Cruces, six miles beyond; but as the majority of our
ship's companions had decided on that route, we thought the Gorgona
trail might be less crowded. So we beached our boat, and unloaded our
effects; and set forth to find accommodations for the present, and mules
for the immediate future.
CHAPTER VI
THE VILLAGE IN THE JUNGLE
At first there seemed slight chance of getting either. The place was
crowded beyond its capacity. The Hotel Francaise--a shed-and-tent sort
of combination with a muddy natural floor--was jammed. The few native
huts were crowded. Many we saw making themselves as comfortable as
possible amid their effects out in the open. Some we talked with said
they had been there for over a week, unable to move because of lack of
transportation. They reported much fever; and in fact we saw one poor
shaking wretch, wistful-eyed as a sick dog, braced against a tree all
alone. The spirit was drained out of him; and all he wanted was to get
back.
While we were discussing what to do next, our muslin-clad
ex-_padrone_, who had been paid and shaken by the hand some time
since, approached smoking a longer cigar than ever. This he waved at us
in a most debonair and friendly manner.
"Bread on the water," commented Talbot after a short conversation. "He
says we have treated him like a brother and a true comrade in arms;
which means that _I_ did; you fellows, confound your spiteful
souls, wanted to throw him overboard a dozen times. And now he says to
follow him, and he'll get us a place to stay."
"Some native pig-sty with fleas," I remarked skeptically, aside, to
Johnny.
"You com'," begged the _padrone_, with a flash of teeth.
We came bearing our household goods, because we could nowhere see any
one to bear them for us. At that we had to leave the heaviest pieces on
the beach. Talbot insisted on lugging his huge bundle of newspapers.
"They may come in handy," he answered us vaguely. "Well, they're mine,
and this is my back," he countered to Johnny's and my impatience with
such foolishness.
The _padrone_ led us through town to the outskirts. There we came
to a substantial low house of several rooms, with a veranda and
veritable chimneys. The earth in front had been beaten so hard that even
the downpour of yesterday had not appreciably softened it. To our
summons appeared a very suave and courteous figure--that, it appeared,
of the _alcalde_ of the place.
"My fren'," explained the _padrone_ in English, for our benefit,
"they good peepele. They wan' estay. Got no place estay."
The _alcalde_, a portly gentleman with side whiskers and a great
deal of dignity, bowed.
"My house is all yours," said he.
Thus, although arriving late, we stopped at the best quarters in the
town. The sense of obligation to any one but our boatman was
considerably relieved when next day we paid what we owed for our
lodging. Also, had it not been for Talbot and Johnny, I am sure Yank and
I would have taken to the jungle. There seemed to be required so much
bowing, smiling, punctiliousness and elaborate complimenting that in a
short time I felt myself in the precise mental attitude of a very small
monkey shaking the bars of his cage with all four hands and gibbering in
the face of some benign and infinitely superior professor. I fairly
ached behind the ears trying to look sufficiently alert and bland and
intelligent. Yank sat stolid, chewed tobacco and spat out of the window,
which also went far toward stampeding me. Talbot and Johnny, however,
seemed right at home. They capped the old gentleman's most elaborate and
involved speeches, they talked at length and pompously about nothing at
all; their smiles were rare and sad and lingering--not a bit like my
imbecile though well-meant grinning--and they seemed to be able to stick
it out until judgment day. Not until I heard their private language
after it was all over did I realize they were not enjoying the occasion
thoroughly.
Toward sunset occurred a welcome break. A mob of natives suddenly burst
into view, from the direction of town. They were running madly, led by a
very little man and a very big man. The two latter rushed up to the edge
of the veranda, on which we were all sitting, and began to talk
excitedly, both at once.
"What's the row?" we asked Talbot in a breath.
"Can't make out yet; something about a fight."
The _alcalde_ commanded order. Then the matter became clear. The
very large man and the very little man had had a fight, and they had
come for justice. This much Talbot made plain. Then he chuckled
explosively.
"The little man is making his accusation against himself!" he told us.
"He is charging _himself_ with having assaulted and beaten the
other fellow. And the big one is charging _himself_ with having
licked the little one. Neither wants to acknowledge he got licked; and
each would rather pay a fine and have it entered on the records that he
won the fight. So much for sheer vanity!"
Each had his desire. The _alcalde_, with beautiful impartiality,
fined them both; and nonchalantly pocketed the proceeds.
At dusk millions of fireflies came out, the earth grew velvet black, and
the soft, tepid air breathed up from the river. Lights of the town
flickered like larger yellower fireflies through the thin screen of
palms and jungle; and the various noises, subdued by distance, mingled
with the voices of thousands of insects, and a strange booming from the
river. I thought it very pleasant; and wanted to stay out; but for some
reason we were haled within. There the lamps made the low broad room
very hot. We sat on real chairs and the stilted exchange resumed. I have
often wondered whether our host enjoyed it, or whether he did it merely
from duty, and was as heartily bored as the rest of us.
A half-naked servant glided in to tell us that we were wanted in the
next room. We found there our good _padrone_ and another, a fine
tall man, dressed very elaborately in short jacket and slit loose
trousers, all sewn with many silver buttons and ornaments.
"He my fren'," explained the _padrone_. "He have dose
_mulas_."
With the gorgeous individual Talbot concluded a bargain. He was to
furnish us riding animals at ten dollars each per day; and agreed to
transport our baggage at six dollars a hundredweight. The _padrone_
stood aside, smiling cheerfully.
"I ver' good fren'? Eh?" he demanded.
"My son," said Talbot with feeling, "you're a gentleman and a scholar;
indeed, I would go farther and designate you as a genuine
lallapaloozer!"
The _padrone_ seemed much gratified; but immediately demanded five
dollars. This Talbot gave him. Johnny thought the demand went far toward
destroying the value of the _padrone's_ kindness: but the rest of
us differed. I believe this people, lazy and dishonest as they are, are
nevertheless peculiarly susceptible to kindness. The man had started by
trying to cheat us of our bargain; he ended by going out of his way to
help us along.
At supper, which was served very shortly, we had our first glimpse of
the ladies of the establishment. The older was a very dignified, placid,
rather fat individual, whose chief feature was her shining dark hair.
She bowed to us gravely, said a few words in Spanish, and thereafter
applied herself with childlike and unfeigned zest to the edibles. The
younger, Mercedes by name, was a very sprightly damsel indeed. She too
had shining black hair, over which she had flung the most coquettish
sort of lace shawl they call a _rebosa_. Her eyes were large, dark,
and expressive; and she constantly used them most provocatively, though
with every appearance of shyness and modesty. Her figure, too, was lithe
and rounded; and so swathed, rather than clothed, that every curve was
emphasized. I suppose this effect was the result of the Spanish mode
rather than of individual sophistication; just as the succession of lazy
poses and bendings were the result of a racial feminine instinct rather
than of conscious personal coquetry. Certainly we four red-shirted
tramps were poor enough game. Nevertheless, whatever the motive, the
effect was certainly real enough. She was alluring rather than charming,
with her fan and her _rebosa_, her veiled glances, her languorous,
bold poses, and the single red flower in her hair. And a great deal of
this allurement resided in the very fact that no one could tell how much
was simple, innocent, and unconscious instinct, and how much was
intended. An unpleasing note in both women was furnished by the powder.
This so liberally covered their faces as to conceal the skin beneath a
dead mat white.
Yank and I were kept out of it, or thought we were, by our ignorance of
the language. This did not seem to hinder Johnny in the least. In five
minutes he was oblivious to everything but his attempts to make himself
agreeable by signs and laughing gestures, and to his trials--with
help--at the unknown language. The girl played up to him well. Talbot
was gravely and courteously polite. At the close of the meal the women
rose suddenly, bowed, and swept from the room. Johnny turned back to us
a good deal flushed and excited, a little bewildered, and considerably
disappointed. The _alcalde_ looked as though nothing unusual were
under way. The rest of us were considerably amused.
"You'll see her later," soothed Talbot mockingly.
Johnny gulped down his coffee without reply.
After the meal we went outside. Fires had been built on opposite sides
of the hard beaten earth in front of the house. Four men with guitars
sat chair tilted, backed against the veranda. Thirty or forty people
wandered to and fro. They were of the usual native class; our host's
family, and one other, consisting of parents and three grown children,
seemed to represent all the aristocracy. These better-class guests came
to join us on the veranda. The older people did not greatly differ from
our host and his wife, except in cut of masculine whisker, or amount of
feminine fat. The younger members consisted of a young lady, tall and
graceful, a young girl in white, and a man of twenty or thereabout. He
was most gaudily gotten up, for a male creature, in a soft white shirt,
a short braided jacket of blue, a wide, red-tasselled sash, and trousers
slit from the knees down. The entire costume was sewn at all places,
likely and unlikely, with silver buttons. As he was a darkly handsome
chap, with a small moustache, red lips and a little flash of teeth, the
effect was quite good, but I couldn't care for his style. The bulk of
the villagers were dressed in white. The women all carried the
_rebosa_, and were thickly powdered. We could see a number of the
Americans in the background.
The musicians struck up a strummy, decided sort of marchlike tune; and
the dancers paired off. They performed a kind of lancer figure, very
stately and solemn, seemingly interminable, with scant variation, small
progressions, and mighty little interest to me. We sat in a stiff row
and shed the compliment of our presence on the scene. It was about as
inspiring as a visit to a hospital ward. What determined the duration of
the affair, I cannot tell you; whether the musicians' fingers gave out,
or the dancers' legs, or the official audience's patience. But at last
they ceased.
At the beginning of another tune, of much the same solemn character, our
young visitor bowed ceremoniously to our host's daughter, and led her
down the steps.
"Come on, Johnny, be a sport. Dance this one," said Talbot rising.
"Don't know how," replied Johnny gloomily, his eyes on the receding
figure of Mercedes.
"The lady'll show you. Come along!"
Talbot bowed gravely to the young girl, who arose enchanted. Johnny,
with his natural grace and courtesy, offered his arm to the other. She
took it with a faintly aloof and indifferent smile, and descended the
step with him. She did not look toward him, nor did she vouchsafe him a
word. Plainly, she was not interested, but stood idly flirting with her
fan, her eyes fixed upon the distance. The dance began.
It was another of the same general character as the first. The couples
advanced and retreated, swung slowly about each other, ducked and passed
beneath each other's arms, all to the stately strumming of the guitars.
They kept on doing these things. Johnny and Talbot soon got hold of the
sequence of events, and did them too.
At first Johnny was gloomy and distrait. Then, after he had, in the
changes of the dance, passed Mercedes a few times, he began to wake up.
I could make out in the firelight only the shapes of their figures and
the whiteness of their faces; but I could see that she lingered a moment
in Johnny's formal embrace, that she flirted against him in passing, and
I could guess that her eyes were on duty. When they returned to the
veranda, Johnny was chipper, the visitor darkly frowning, Mercedes
animated, and the other girl still faintly and aloofly smiling.
The fandango went on for an hour; and the rivalry between Johnny and the
young Spaniard grew in intensity. Certainly Mercedes did nothing to
modify it. The scene became more animated and more interesting. A slow,
gliding waltz was danced, and several posturing, stamping dances in
which the partners advanced and receded toward and from each other,
bending and swaying and holding aloft their arms. It was very pretty and
graceful and captivating; and to my unsophisticated mind a trifle
suggestive; though that thought was probably the result of my training
and the novelty of the sight. It must be remembered that many people see
harm in our round dances simply because they have not become
sufficiently accustomed to them to realize that the position of the
performers is meaninglessly conventional. Similarity the various rather
daring postures of some of these Spanish dances probably have become so
conventionalized by numberless repetitions along the formal requirements
of the dance that their possible significance has been long since
forgotten. The apparently deliberate luring of the man by the woman
exists solely in the mind of some such alien spectator as myself. I was
philosophical enough to say these things to myself; but Johnny was not.
He saw Mercedes languishing into the eyes of his rival; half fleeing
provocatively, her glances sparkling; bending and swaying her body in
allurement; finally in the finale of the dance, melting into her
partner's arms as though in surrender. He could not realize that these
were formal and established measures for a dance. He was too blind to
see that the partners separated quite calmly and sauntered nonchalantly
toward the veranda, the man rolling a paper cigarro, the woman flirting
idly her fan. His eyes glowing dully, he stared straight before him; a
spot of colour mounted on his cheekbones.
With an exclamation Talbot Ward arose swiftly but quietly and moved down
the veranda, motioning me to follow. He bent over Johnny's chair.
"I want to speak to you a moment," he said in a low voice.
Johnny looked up at him a moment defiantly. Talbot stood above him,
inflexibly waiting. With a muttered exclamation Johnny finally arose
from his chair. Ward grasped his arm and drew him through the wandering
natives, past the fringe of American spectators, and down the hard
moonlit path to the village.
Johnny jerked his arm loose and stopped short.
"Well, sir!" he demanded, his head high.
"You are on your way to California," said Ward, "and you are stopping
here over one night. The girl is pretty and graceful and with much
charm, but uneducated, and quite empty headed."
"I will thank you to leave all young ladies out of this discussion,"
broke in Johnny hotly.
"This young lady is the whole of this discussion and cannot be left
out."
"Then we will abandon the discussion."
"Also," said Talbot Ward irrelevantly, "did you notice how fat all their
mothers are?"
We were wandering forward slowly. Again Johnny stopped.
"I must tell you, sir, that I consider my affairs none of your business,
sir; and that I resent any interference with them," said he with heat.
"All right, Johnny," replied Talbot sadly; "I am not going to try to
advise you. Only I wanted to call your attention to all the elements of
the situation, which you probably had forgotten. I will repeat--and then
I am done--she is nothing to you, she is beneath you, you are stopping
here but one day, she is charming but ignorant--and her mother is very
fat. Now go have your fool fight--for that is what you are headed
straight for--if you think it at all worth while."
Johnny's generous heart must have been smiting him sorely, now that his
heat and excitement had had time to cool a little. He followed us a few
steps irresolutely. We came to the large tree by the wayside. The man
with the fever still sat there miserably indifferent to his
surroundings.
"Here, this won't do!" cried Talbot. "He mustn't be allowed to sit there
all night; he'll catch a chill sure. My friend, give us your arm. We'll
find you some sort of a bunk."
The man was dead.
We carried him to the village and raised a number of our compatriots.
Not one knew who the man might be, nor even where his belongings had
been stored. He had no mark of identification on his person. After a
diligent search, we were forced to give it up. The body we buried with
all reverence at the edge of the jungle. I wanted to place the matter on
an official footing by notifying the _alcalde_, but Talbot
negatived this.
"I know this people," said he. "Once let the news of a man's death get
abroad, and it's good-bye to any chance of finding his effects
to-morrow. And that's our only show to identify him. Best say nothing."
We returned slowly to the _alcalde's_ house. The fandango was still
in progress. Mercedes flashed her bright eyes at Johnny as we mounted
the steps; the Spaniard scowled and muttered an imprecation. Johnny
bowed gravely and passed into the house.
We told Yank the circumstances.
"Poor devil," said I. "Like the rest of us, he was so full of hope so
short time ago."
Ward nodded.
"And his death was so unnecessary, so utterly and completely useless."
"I don't know," spoke up Talbot musingly. "It seems to us unnecessary,
but who can tell? And useless? I don't know. If we hadn't happened to
stumble on that poor chap just then, Johnny Fairfax might be in his fix
right this minute, and Johnny Fairfax seems to me likely to prove a very
valuable citizen."
"And what did the blame critter mean by that?" Yank asked me later.
CHAPTER VII
THE TRAIL
We made desperate efforts next morning to find somebody who knew the
man, or at least could point out to us his effects; but in vain. All was
confusion, and everybody was too busy getting away to pay us very much
attention. This, I am convinced, was not hardheartedness on the part of
most; but merely that all men's minds were filled with a great desire.
Our own transport men were impatient to be off; and we had finally to
abandon the matter. Whether or not the man had a family or friends who
would never know what had become of him, we shall never find out. Later
in the gold rush there were many scores of such cases.
Having paid the _alcalde_ we set forth. Mercedes did not appear.
Our good _padrone_ was on hand to say farewell to us at the edge of
town. He gave us a sort of cup made from coconut husk to which long
cords had been attached. With these, he explained, we could dip up water
without dismounting. We found them most convenient.
Shortly after we had left town, and before we had really begun our
journey in earnest, we passed a most astonishing caravan going the other
way. This consisted of sixteen mules and donkeys under sole charge of
three men armed with antiquated and somewhat rusty muskets. On either
side of each mule, slung in a rope and plain to see, hung a heavy ingot
of gold! Fascinated, we approached and stroked the satiny beautiful
metal; and wondered that, on a road so crowded with travellers of all
grades, so precious a train should be freely entrusted to the three
ragged lazy natives. So curious did this seem that Talbot inquired of
the leader why it was allowed.
"Whither would a thief run to? How could he carry away these heavy
ingots?" the man propounded.
Often around subsequent campfires we have in idle curiosity attempted to
answer these two questions successfully, but have always failed. The
gold was safe.
Talbot insisted, with a good deal of heavy argument, that our effects
should precede us on the trail. The wisdom of this was apparent before
we had been out an hour. We came upon dozens of porters resting sprawled
out by the side of their loads. I could hardly blame them; for these men
carried by means of a bamboo screen and straps across the shoulders and
forehead the most enormous loads. But farther on we passed also several
mule trains, for whose stopping there could be no reason or excuse
except that their natives were lazy. Our own train we were continually
overtaking and prodding on, to its intense disgust. Thus Talbot's
forethought, or experience with people of this type, assured us our
goods. Some of our shipmates were still waiting for their baggage when
we sailed to the north.
We now entered a dense forest country. The lofty trees, thick foliage,
swinging vines, and strange big leaves undoubtedly would have impressed
us under other conditions. But just now we were too busy. The rains had
softened the trail, until it was of the consistency of very stiff mud.
In this mud the first mule had left his tracks. The next mule trod
carefully in the first mule's footsteps; and all subsequent mules did
likewise. The consequence was a succession of narrow, deep holes in the
clay, into which an animal's leg sank halfway to the shoulder. No power
on earth, I firmly believe, could have induced those mules to step
anywhere else. Each hole was full of muddy water. When the mule inserted
his hoof the water spurted out violently, as though from a squirt gun.
As a result we were, I believe, the most muddied and bedraggled crew on
earth. We tried walking, but could not get on at all. Occasionally we
came to a steep little ravine down and up the slippery banks of which we
slid and scrambled. Yank and his mule once landed in a heap, plump in
the middle of a stream.
In the course of these tribulations we became somewhat separated. Johnny
and I found ourselves riding along in company, and much too busy to
talk. As we neared a small group of natives under a tree, three of them
started toward us on a run, shouting something. We stopped, and drew
together.
One of the assailants seized Johnny's animal by the bit, and another's
gesture commanded him to dismount.
"Get out of that!" shouted Johnny threateningly; and as the men did not
obey his emphatic tone, he snatched out his Colt's pistol. I closed in
next him and did the same.
Our threatening attitude caused the men to draw back a trifle; but they
redoubled their vociferations. Johnny attempted to spur his mule
forward; but all three threw themselves in his way. The rest of the
natives, four in number, joined the group. They pointed at Johnny's
animal, motioned peremptorily for him to descend; and one of them
ventured again to seize his bridle.
"I don't believe it's robbery, anyhow," said I. "They seem to recognize
your mule. Probably you're riding a stolen animal."
"I don't know anything about that," said Johnny, a trifle angrily, "but
I do know I hired it to go to Panama with: and to Panama I'm going. They
can settle their mule question afterward."
But when he gathered his reins again, he was prevented from going on.
Johnny reached suddenly forward and struck with his pistol barrel at the
head of the man holding his rein. He missed by the fraction of an inch;
and the man leaped back with a cry of rage. Everybody yelled and drew
near as though for a rush. Johnny and I cocked our weapons.
At this moment we heard Talbot Ward's voice from beyond. "Take 'em from
that side!" yelled Johnny excitedly. "Give it to 'em, Tal!"
Talbot shouted again, in Spanish. Every brigand in the lot immediately
turned in his direction, shouting perfect fountains of words. After a
moment Talbot, afoot, emerged from the jungle and calmly picked his way
through the mud toward us.
"Put up your shooting irons," he grinned at us. "These men tell me your
saddle pad is on crooked and they want to straighten it for you."
Johnny, and I am sure myself, turned red; then everybody howled with
glee. Johnny dismounted, and a dozen eager hands adjusted the harness.
We shook hands all around, laughed some more, and resumed our very
sloppy journey.
This to me was one of the most terrible days I ever spent. We passed
dozens of dead mules, and vultures that sat in trees; and exhausted men
lying flat as though dead; and sick men shaken with fever; and one poor
wretch, whom we picked up and took with us, who had actually lain down
to die. He was half raving with fever, and as near as we could make out
had had companions. We twisted him aboard a mule, and took turns walking
alongside and holding him on. Beyond the fact that he was a very small
individual with light hair and an English accent, we could tell nothing
about him. He was suffering from cholera, although we did not know that
at the time. That night we spent at a wayside hut, where we left our
patient.
Early the next morning we began to ascend a little; and so came to a
rocky tableland with palms, and beyond it another ridge of hills. We
climbed that ridge and descended the other side. Another elevation lay
before us. This we surmounted, only to find a third. After we had put a
dozen such ranges behind us, we made the mistake of thinking the next
was sure to be the last. We got up our hopes a number of times in this
fashion, then fell dully into a despair of ever getting anywhere. The
day was fearfully hot. The Indian who had stolidly preceded us as guide
at last stopped, washed his feet carefully in a wayside mud hole and put
on his pantaloons.
"That looks to me like an encouraging symptom," I remarked.
Shortly after we entered the city of Panama.
CHAPTER VIII
PANAMA
We arrived early in the afternoon, and we were all eyes; for here was a
city taken directly from the pages of the Boy's Own Pirate. Without the
least effort of the imagination we could see Morgan or Kidd or some
other old swashbuckler, cutlass in teeth, pistols in hand, broad sashed,
fierce and ruthless rushing over the walls or through the streets, while
the cathedral bells clanged wildly and women screamed. Everything about
it was of the past; for somehow the modern signs of American invasion
seemed temporary and to be blown away. The two-story wooden houses with
corridor and veranda across the face of the second story, painted in
bright colours, leaned crazily out across the streets toward each other.
Narrow and mysterious alleys led up between them. Ancient cathedrals and
churches stood gray with age before grass-grown plazas. And in the
outskirts of town were massive masonry ruins of great buildings, convent
and colleges, some of which had never been finished. The immense blocks
lay about the ground in a confusion, covered softly by thousands of
little plants; or soared against the sky in broken arches and corridors.
Vegetation and vines grew in every crevice; and I saw many full-sized
trees rooted in midair. The place was strongly fanciful; and I loved to
linger there. To me the jungle seemed like an insidiously beautiful
creature enveloping thus, little by little, its unsuspecting prey. The
old gray tumbled ruins seemed to be lost in dreams of their ancient
days. And through the arches and the empty corridors open to the sky
breathed a melancholy air from a past so dead and gone and buried and
forgotten that of it remained no echo, no recollection, no knowledge,
nothing but squared and tumbled stones.
To tell the truth I generally had these reflections quite to myself. The
body of the town was much more exciting. The old dilapidated and
picturesque houses had taken on a new and temporary smartness of
modernity--consisting mainly of canvas signs. The main street was of
hotels, eating houses, and assorted hells. It was crowded day and night,
for we found something over a thousand men here awaiting the chance of
transportation. Some had been here a long time, and were broke and
desperate. A number of American gambling joints did a good business.
Native drinking houses abounded. The natives were in general a showy
lot, but too lazy even to do a good job at fleecing the stranger within
their gates. That was therefore undertaken--and most competently--by the
enterprising foreigners of all nations. Foreigners kept two of the three
hotels, as is indicated by their names--Hotel Francaise, Fonda Americano,
and the Washington House. Americans ran the gambling joints. French and
Germans, mainly, kept the restaurants.
We stopped over one day at the Fonda Americano; and then realizing that
we were probably in for a long wait, found two rooms in a house off the
main street. These we rented from a native at a fairly reasonable rate.
They were in the second story of a massive stone ruin whose walls had
been patched up with whitewash. The rooms were bare and geometrically
cat-a-cornered and extraordinarily chilly, like vaults; but they gave
out on a charmingly unkempt walled garden with a stone fountain in the
middle whose features were all rounded by time and blurred with moss,
with tall ragged bananas and taller wind-swept palms, and a creeping
lush tangle of old plants, and the damp soft greenness of moss and the
elfin tinkling of little waters. On our balcony the sun shone strong; so
that we could warm our chilled bones gratefully like lizards against a
wall.
We tried all the restaurants, one after the other, and found them about
equally bad. We also went in--once--for a real Spanish dinner. It
consisted of a succession of dishes highly seasoned with the hottest
sort of pepper, generally drowned in rich gravy, and composed of such
things as cheese, chunks of meat, corn meal, and the like. Any one of
these dishes would have been a fine strength test for the average
unsophisticated stomach; but your true Spanish dinner consists of a
dozen of them. We had horrible indigestion.
In one place, kept by a German, we were treated very disagreeably, and
overcharged so badly that Yank vowed he intended to get even. As to just
how he was going to do it, he maintained a deep silence; but he advised
us he would eat there the following evening. Also he asked four or five
other men, with whom we had become friendly, to meet us at the
restaurant. We met, ate our meal leisurely, and had a very good time.
"Now," said Yank to us, "when we get up, you fellows all go right out
the front door and keep going until you get to the Fonda bar, and there
you wait for me. No lingering, now. Do as you are told."
We did as we were told. After about fifteen or twenty minutes Yank
sauntered in.
"Now," said Johnny, "I hope you'll explain. We're much obliged for your
dinner party, but we want to know what it is all about."
"Well," chuckled Yank, "I just dealt the Dutchman what you might call
idle persiflage until you fellows had been gone a few minutes, and then
I held him out my dollar. 'What's that?' says he. 'That's a dollar,'
says I, 'to pay for my dinner.' 'How about all those other fellows?'
says he. 'I got nothing to do with them,' says I. 'They can pay for
their own dinners,' and after a while I come away. He was having some
sort of Dutch fit, and I got tired of watching him."
Outside the walls of the city was a large encampment of tents in which
dwelt the more impecunious or more economical of the miners. Here too
had been located a large hospital tent. There was a great deal of
sickness, due to the hardships of the journey, the bad climate,
irregular living, the overeating of fruit, drinking, the total lack of
sanitation. In fact only the situation of the city--out on an isthmus in
the sea breezes--I am convinced, saved us from pestilence. Every
American seemed to possess a patent medicine of some sort with which he
dosed himself religiously in and out of season. A good many, I should
think, must have fallen victims to these nostrums.
Each morning regularly we went down to harass the steamship employees.
Roughly speaking some three hundred of us had bought through passage
before leaving New York: and it was announced that only fifty-two
additional to those already aboard could be squeezed into the first
steamer. The other two hundred and forty-eight would have to await the
next. Naturally every man was determined that he would not be left; for
such a delay, in such a place, at the time of a gold rush was
unthinkable. The officials at that steamship office had no easy time.
Each man wanted first of all to know just when the ship was to be
expected; a thing no one could guess. Then he demanded his
accommodations; and had a dozen reasons why his claim should be
preferred over that of the others. I never saw a more quarrelsome noisy
dog-kennel than that steamship office. Why no one was ever shot there I
could not tell you.
After bedevilling the officials for a time, our business for the day was
over. We had the privilege of sauntering through the streets, of walking
down the peninsula or of seating ourselves in any of the numerous bars
or gambling halls. All were interesting; though neither the streets nor
the gambling places were in full action until late afternoon.
About four o'clock, or half after, when the invariable siesta was over,
the main street began to fill with idlers. The natives wore white, with
wide soft straw hats, and lounged along with considerable grace. They
were a weak, unenergetic, inoffensive race, always ready to get off the
sidewalk for other nations provided the other nations swaggered
sufficiently. The women, I remember, had wonderful piles of glossy black
hair, arranged in bands and puffs, in which they stuck cigars. The
streets were very narrow. When a vehicle came along, we all had to make
way for it; as also for the gangs of prisoners connected with heavy iron
chains around their necks. These were very numerous; and I can hear yet
as the leading notes of the place, the clinking of their chains, and the
cracked jangling of some of the many cathedral bells.
There was a never-failing joy to us also in poking around the odd places
of the town. The dim interiors of cathedrals, the splashed stones of
courtyards, the shadows of doorways, the privacies of gardens all lured
us; and we saw many phases of native life. Generally we were looked on
at first with distrust. There were a number of roughs among the gold
seekers; men whose brutal instincts or whose merely ignorant love of
horseplay had now for the first time no check. They found that the
native could be pushed off the sidewalk, so they pushed him off. I once
saw a number of these men light their cigars at altar candles. But
Talbot's Spanish and our own demeanour soon gained us admission.
Thus we ran across a most delightful institution. We were rambling in a
very obscure portion of town when we came to quite a long wall unbroken
save by a little wicket gate. A bell pull seemed to invite
investigation; so we gave it a heave. Almost immediately the gate swung
open and we entered.
We found ourselves in a wide space paved with smooth great slabs of
rocks, wet as though from a recent rain. The space was thickly built up
by small round huts of reeds, but without roofs. In the centre was a
well, probably ten or twelve feet wide, over which slanted a cross arm
and wheel for the drawing of water. No human being was in sight; the
gate had been unlatched by an overhead cord.
We shouted. In a minute or so a very irascible old woman hobbled to us
from some mysterious lurking place among the reed huts. She spoke
impatiently. Talbot questioned her; she replied briefly, then turned and
hobbled off as fast as she could go.
"What did she say?" some one asked Talbot curiously.
"She said," replied Ward, "literally this: 'Why don't you take any of
them without bothering me? They are all ready.' I imagine she must mean
these bird cages; though what they are for I couldn't tell you."
We investigated the nearest. It was divided into two tiny rooms each
just big enough to hold a man. In one was a three legged stool; in the
other stood two tall graceful jars of red clay, their sides bedewed with
evaporation. A dipper made from a coconut lay across the top of one of
them.
"Bath house!" shouted Johnny, enchanted.
The water in the porous earthen jars was cold. We took each a hut and
poured the icy stuff over us to our heart's content. All except Yank. He
looked on the proceedings we thought with some scorn; and departed
carrying his long rifle.
"Hey!" shouted Johnny finally, "where's the towels?"
To this inquiry we could find no substantial answer. There were no
towels. The old woman declined to come to our yells. She was on hand,
however, when we were ready to depart, and took one American dime as
payment for the three of us. This was the only cheap thing we found in
Panama. We came every day, after the hour of siesta--with towels. Yank
refused steadfastly to indulge.
"I'm having hard enough dodging to keep clear of fever'n ager now," he
told us. "You don't seem to recollect what neck of the woods I come
from. It's a fever'n ager country out there for keeps. They can't keep
chickens there at all."
"Why not?" asked Johnny innocently.
"The chills they get shakes all the feathers off'n 'em," replied Yank,
"and then they freeze to death."
In the evening the main street was a blaze of light, and the byways
were cast in darkness. The crowd was all afoot, and moved restlessly to
and fro from one bar or gambling hell to another. Of the thousand or so
of strangers we came in time to recognize by sight a great many. The
journey home through the dark was perilous. We never attempted it except
in company; and as Johnny seemed fascinated with a certain game called
Mexican _monte_, we often had to endure long waits before all our
party was assembled.
One morning our daily trip to the steamship office bore fruit. We found
the plaza filled with excited men; all talking and gesticulating. The
much tired officials had evolved a scheme, beautiful in its simplicity,
for deciding which fifty-two of the three hundred should go by the first
ship. They announced that at eleven o'clock they would draw lots.
This was all very well, but how did the general public know that the
lots would be drawn fairly?
The officials would permit a committee of citizens to be present.
Not by the eternal! Where would you get any one to serve? No member of
that committee would dare accept his own ticket, provided he drew one.
No one would believe it had been done honestly.
Very well. Then let fifty-two out of three hundred slips of paper be
marked. Each prospective passenger could then draw one slip out of a
box.
"It's all right, boys," the observers yelled back at those clamouring in
the rear.
One of the officials stood on a barrel holding the box, while a clerk
with a list of names sat below.
"As I call the names, will each gentleman step forward and draw his
slip?" announced the official.
We were all watching with our mouths open intensely interested.
"Did you ever hear of such a damfool way of doing the thing?" said
Talbot. "Here, give me a boost up!"
Johnny and I raised him on our shoulders.
"Gentlemen! gentlemen!" he cried a number of times before he could be
heard above the row. Finally they gave him attention.
"I'm a ticket holder in this thing; and I want to see it done right. I
want to ask that gentleman there what is to prevent the wrong man from
answering to a name, from drawing a slip without having any right to?"
"The right man will prevent him," answered a voice. The crowd laughed.
"Well, who's to decide, in case of dispute, which is the right man and
which the wrong man? And what's to prevent any man, after the drawing,
from marking a blank slip--or making a new slip entirely?"
"That's right!" "Correct!" shouted several voices.
The officials consulted hurriedly. Then one of them announced that the
drawing would be postponed until the following morning. Each was to
bring his steamship ticket with him. The winners in the drawing must be
prepared to have their tickets countersigned on the spot. With this
understanding we dispersed.
This was Talbot Ward's first public appearance; the first occasion in
which he called himself to the attention of his fellows assembled in
public meeting. The occasion was trivial, and it is only for this reason
that I mention it. His personality at once became known, and remembered;
and I recollect that many total strangers spoke to him that evening.
By next morning the transportation officials had worked it out. We could
not all get into the office, so the drawing took place on the Plaza
outside. As each man's name was called, he stepped forward, showed his
ticket, and was allowed to draw a slip from the box. If it proved to be
a blank, he went away; if he was lucky, he had his ticket _vised_
on the spot. Such a proceeding took the greater part of the day; but the
excitement remained intense. No one thought of leaving even for the noon
meal.
Yank drew passage on the first steamer. Talbot, Johnny, and I drew
blanks.
We walked down to the shore to talk over the situation.
[Illustration: "'YOU HOUNDS!' HE ROARED. 'DON'T YOU DARE TRY TO SNEAK
OFF!'"]
"We ought to have bought tickets good on this particular ship, not
merely good on this line," said Johnny.
"Doesn't matter what we _ought_ to have done," rejoined Talbot a
little impatiently. "What are we _going_ to do? Are we going to
wait here until the next steamer comes along?"
"That's likely to be two or three months--nobody knows," said Johnny.
"No; it's in six weeks, I believe. They tell me they've started regular
trips on a new mail contract."
"Well, six weeks. If we stay in this hole we'll all be sick; we'll be
broke; and in the meantime every ounce of gold in the country will have
been picked up."
"What's the alternative?" I asked.
"Sailing vessel," said Talbot briefly.
"That's mighty uncertain," I objected. "Nobody knows when one will get
in; and when it does show up it'll be a mad scramble to get to her.
There's a mob waiting to go."
"Well, it's one or the other. We can't walk; and I don't see that the
situation is going to be much better when the next steamer does get
here. There are a couple of hundred to crowd in on her--just counting
those who are here and have tickets. And then there will be a lot more."
"I'm for the sailing vessel," said Johnny. "They come in every week or
two now; and if we can't make the first one, we'll have a good chance at
the second or the third."
Talbot looked at me inquiringly.
"Sounds reasonable," I admitted.
"Then we've no time to lose," said Talbot decisively, and turned away
toward the town.
Yank, who had listened silently to our brief discussion, shifted his
rifle to his shoulder and followed. Shortly he fell behind; and we lost
him.
We accompanied Talbot in some bewilderment, for there was no ship in
sight nor in prospect, and we could not understand any reason for this
haste. Talbot led the way directly to the steamship office.
"I want to see Brown," he asserted, naming the chief agent for the
company.
The clerk hesitated: Brown was an important man and not to be disturbed
for trivial matters. But Talbot's eye could be very assured.
"What is your business with Mr. Brown?" asked the clerk.
"It is with Mr. Brown," said Talbot firmly, "and I may add that it is to
Mr. Brown's own interest to see me. Tell him just that, and that Mr.
Talbot Ward of New York City desires an immediate interview."
The clerk was gone for some moments, to the manifest annoyance of a
dozen miners who wanted his attention. When he returned he motioned us
to a screened-off private office in the rear.
"Mr. Brown will see you," said he.
We found Brown to be a florid, solidly built man of fifty, with a keen
eye and a brown beard. He nodded to us briefly and looked expectant.
"We three men," said Talbot directly, "hold three tickets on your line.
We were not fortunate enough to get passage on the next steamer, and our
business will not permit us to wait until the one after. We want our
money back."
Brown's face darkened.
"That is a matter for my clerks, not for me," he said curtly. "I was
told your business was to my advantage. I have nothing to do with
tickets."
"One minute," said Talbot. "There are between two and three hundred men
in this town each one of whom bought a ticket from your company in New
York in the expectation, if not under the understanding, that they were
to get through passage immediately."
"No such thing was expected or guaranteed," interposed Brown abruptly.
"Not guaranteed, nor expected by you--by us, yes."
"I cannot argue that matter. I have no further time for you. Good-day."
And Brown once more reached his hand toward his bell.
"Suppose," said Talbot softly, leaning forward. "I should put it into
the heads of those three hundred men that they ought to get their
passage money back?"
Brown's hand stopped in midair.
"They are large, violent, armed men; and they are far from pure home
influences," went on Talbot mockingly. "Here's a sample of them," said
he indicating my huge frame. "And there are a thousand or so more, not
directly interested but dying for excitement."
"Are you trying to intimidate me, sir?" demanded Brown.
"I am just stating conditions."
"You are threatening me."
"Ah, that is different," said Talbot Ward.
Brown sat lost in thought for some moments. Then he reached forward and
at last struck the bell.
"Let me have your tickets," he commanded us shortly.
He endorsed them and handed them to the clerk, together with a written
order. We all sat in absolute silence for perhaps five minutes. Then the
clerk returned with a handful of gold. This Brown counted over and
shoved across to Talbot. The latter also counted it, and thrust it in
his pocket.
"Now," said Brown, with something approaching geniality, "I am counting
on your honour to say nothing of this outside. I am gambling on your
evident class in life at home."
"You have our promise, and it will be kept," said Talbot rising. "But
undoubtedly within two days you will think I am the biggest liar unhung.
There will be many more who will think of this same simple plan of
getting a refund on their tickets and who will blab it out to every one
on the street. You would do well to make your plans now as to how you
intend to deal with them. But remember, I, nor my friends, will have had
nothing to do with it."
"I understand that there will be plenty making your same demand," said
Brown, "but I doubt any of them will think of urging that demand."
We left. As a matter of interest, Talbot's prediction was correct; as,
indeed, Brown had immediately recognized it would be. Talbot had only
the advantage of thinking a little quicker than the next man, of acting
immediately, and of allowing no time for reflection to the other. The
steamship office had a strenuous time. Talbot's threat had this much of
real significance: that there was, lacking him, no organized
demonstration. Each man went for himself and demanded his money back. In
a few rare cases he got it; but was generally bluffed out, or blandly
referred back to the New York offices, or reasoned out. The situation
came near to riot, but in some difficult manner it was tided over. A few
settled down to wait for the next steamer. The majority decided for
sailing ships, and pocketed their steamer tickets in hopes of future
reimbursement. One score of fanatics and ignoramuses, in dense ignorance
as to the nature of the journey, actually started out to row to San
Francisco in an open boat! They were never heard of again. One or two
parties modified this plan by proceeding in fishing boats to the
extremity of the peninsula of Lower California, and thence marched
overland to San Diego. Their sufferings in that arid region were great,
but they managed to arrive many months later.
We returned to our lodgings, congratulating Talbot on the promptitude of
his action, for already we saw determined looking men hurrying across
the plaza toward the offices.
At our place we found that Yank had not returned. At first we thought
nothing of this; but about dusk we found that all his belongings had
disappeared.
CHAPTER IX
NORTHWARD HO!
We could not understand this sudden departure, except on the possible
ground that Yank, realizing that now the party must split forces, had
decided to seek new companions among those lucky enough to sail on the
first steamer.
"Even then he needn't have been in such a hurry," complained Johnny a
trifle bitterly. "And he needn't have thought we'd be in his way."
"Has he paid his share of the lodgings?" it occurred to me to ask.
We felt quite bitter against Yank, and we carefully avoided his usual
haunts, for we did not want to meet him. Then we began to think it
strange we had not run across him somewhere on the streets. Then we
began to look for him. We found that Yank had disappeared!
At that, a little alarmed, we set ourselves to a serious search and
inquiry. A few remembered to have seen him, but were vague as to when
and where. The authorities moved sluggishly, and with little enthusiasm.
Men were dying every day; and disappearing underground, leaving no trace
of themselves behind. One more or less seemed unimportant.
In the meanwhile we spent much of our time by the shore, together with a
comfortable majority of our fellow argonauts, awaiting the sighting of a
vessel. We had engaged, and paid daily, a boatman to be in readiness to
take us off; and we settled our lodgings account a week ahead.
"There's going to be a scramble for that blessed ship," said Talbot;
"and we'll just be prepared."
To that end we also kept our effects packed and ready for instant
removal.
The beach was not a bad place. It ran out the peninsula in a long gentle
curve; and the surges broke snow white on yellow sands. Across deep blue
water was an island; and back of us palm trees whipped in the trade
winds. We sat under them, and yarned and played cards and smoked. In bad
weather--and it rained pretty often--we huddled in smoky little huts;
those of us who could get in. The rest tried to stick it out; or
returned with rather a relieved air to the town.
The expected ship came, of course, on one of these dull gray days; and
those who had thought themselves unlucky in being crowded out of the
huts were the first to sight her. They sneaked down very quietly and
tried to launch two of the boats. Of course the native boatmen were all
inside; trust them! As a high surf was running, and as none of the men
were in any sense good boatmen, they promptly broached to and filled.
The noise brought us to the door.
Then there was a fine row. One of the two boats commandeered by the
early birds happened to be ours! All our forethought seemed to have been
in vain. The bedraggled and crestfallen men were just wading ashore when
we descended upon them. Talbot was like a raving lunatic.
"You hounds!" he roared. "Don't you dare try to sneak off! You catch
hold here and help empty these boats! You would, would you?" He caught
one escaping worthy by the collar and jerked him so rapidly backward
that his heels fairly cracked together. Johnny flew to combat with a
chuckle of joy. I contented myself by knocking two of them together
until they promised to be good. The four we had collared were very meek.
We all waded into the wash where the boat lay sluggishly rolling. It is
no easy matter to empty a boat in that condition. Water weighs a great
deal; is fearfully inert, or at least feels so; and has a bad habit of
promptly slopping in again. We tugged and heaved, and rolled and hauled
until our joints cracked; but at last we got her free.
In the meantime forty other boats had been launched and were flying over
the waves halfway between the shore and the ship.
Talbot was swearing steadily and with accuracy; Johnny was working like
a crazy man; I was heaving away at the stern and keeping an eye on our
involuntary helpers. The boatman, beside himself with frantic
excitement, jabbered and ran about and screamed directions that no one
understood. About all we were accomplishing now was the keeping of that
boat's head straight against the heavy wash.
It seemed as though we tugged thus at cross purposes for an hour. In
reality it was probably not over two or three minutes. Then Talbot
regained sufficient control to listen to the boatman. At once he calmed
down.
"Here, boys," said he, "ease her backward. You, Johnny, stand by at the
bow and hold her head on. Frank and I will give her a shove at the
stern. When the time comes, I'll yell and you pile right in, Johnny.
_Vamos_, Manuel!"
We took our places; the boatman at the oars, his eyes over his shoulder
watching keenly the in-racing seas.
The four dripping culprits looked at each other uncertainly, and one of
them started to climb in the boat.
"Well, for _God's_ sake!" screeched Talbot, and made a headlong
bull rush for the man.
The latter tumbled right out of the boat on his back in the shallow
water. His three companions fled incontinently up the beach, where he
followed them as soon as he could scramble to his feet.
Manuel said something sharply, without looking around.
"Shove!" screeched Talbot. "Pile in, Johnny!"
We bent our backs. The boat resisted, yielded, gathered headway. It
seemed to be slipping away from me down a steep hill.
"Jump in!" yelled Talbot.
I gave a mighty heave and fell over the stern into the bottom of the
boat. Waters seemed to be crashing by; but by the time I had gathered
myself together and risen to my knees, we were outside the line of
breakers, and dancing like a gull over the smooth broad surges.
Ships could anchor no nearer than about a mile and a half offshore. By
the time we had reached the craft she was surrounded by little boats
bobbing and rubbing against her sides. She proved to be one of that very
tubby, bluff-bowed type then so commonly in use as whalers and
freighters. The decks swarmed black with an excited crowd.
We rowed slowly around her. We were wet, and beginning to chill. No way
seemed to offer by which we could reach her decks save by difficult
clambering, for the gang ladder was surrounded ten deep by empty boats.
A profound discouragement succeeded the excitement under which we had
made our effort.
"To hell with her!" snarled Johnny, "There's no sense going aboard her.
There's enough on deck now to fill her three times over. Let's get back
where it's warm."
"If I run across any of those fellows in town I'll break their necks!"
said I.
"What makes me mad----" continued Johnny.
"Oh, for heaven's sake shut up!" cried Talbot.
If he had been a little less cold and miserable we probably would have
quarrelled. As it was, we merely humped over, and motioned the
astonished Manuel to return to the shore. Our boat's head turned, we
dropped down under the bow of the ship. In order to avoid the sweep of
the seas Manuel held us as closely as possible under the bowsprit. We
heard a hail above us. Looking up we saw Yank bending over the rail.
We stared at him, our mouths open, so astonished that for a moment we
did not even think to check the boat. Then we came back in a clumsy
circle. Yank yelled at us; and we yelled back at him; but so great was
the crash of waters and the whistling of wind that we could make out
nothing. Then Yank motioning us to remain where we were, disappeared, to
return after a short interval, with a speaking trumpet.
"Have you got your baggage with you?" he roared.
We shook our heads and waved our arms.
"Go get it!" he ordered.
We screamed something back at him.
"Go get it!" he repeated; and withdrew his head entirely.
We rowed back to town; it was no longer necessary to return to the
exposed beach where we had waited to sight the ships. Johnny and I
indulged in much excited speculation, but Talbot refused to show
curiosity.
"He's there, and he's evidently engaged us passage; and he wants us
aboard to claim it," said he, "and that's all we can know now; and
that's enough for me."
On our way we met a whole fleet of boats racing their belated way from
town. We grinned sardonically over the plight of these worthies. A
half-hour sufficed us to change our clothes, collect our effects, and
return to the water front. On the return journey we crossed the same
fleet of boats inward bound. Their occupants looked generally very
depressed.
Yank met us at the top of the gangway, and assisted us in getting our
baggage aboard. Johnny and I peppered him with questions, to which he
vouchsafed no answer. When we had paid off the boatman, he led the way
down a hatch into a very dark hole near the bows. A dim lantern swayed
to and fro, through the murk we could make out a dozen bunks.
"They call this the fo'cas'le," said Yank placidly. "Crew sleeps here.
This is our happy home. Everything else full up. We four," said he, with
a little flash of triumph, "are just about the only galoots of the whole
b'iling at Panama that gets passage. She's loaded to the muzzle with men
that's come away around the Horn in her; and the only reason she stopped
in here at all is to get a new thing-um-a-jig of some sort that she had
lost or busted or something."
"Well, I don't like my happy home while she wobbles so," said Johnny.
"I'm going to be seasick, as usual. But for heaven's sake, Yank, tell us
where you came from, and all about it. And make it brief, for I'm going
to be seasick pretty soon."
He lay down in one of the bunks and closed his eyes.
"You'd much better come up on deck into the fresh air," said Talbot.
"Fire ahead, Yank! Please!" begged Johnny.
"Well," said Yank, "when I drew that steamer ticket, it struck me that
somebody might want it a lot more than I did, especially as you fellows
drew blank. So I hunted up a man who was in a hurry, and sold it to him
for five hundred dollars. Then I hired one of these sail-rigged fishing
boats and laid in grub for a week and went cruising out to sea five or
six miles."
Johnny opened one eye.
"Why?" he demanded feebly.
"I was figgerin' on meeting any old ship that came along a little before
the crowd got at her," said Yank. "And judgin' by the gang's remarks
that just left, I should think I'd figgered just right."
"You bet you did," put in Talbot emphatically.
"It must have been mighty uncomfortable cruising out there in that
little boat so long," said I. "I wonder the men would stick."
"I paid them and they had to," said Yank grimly.
"Why didn't you let us in on it?" I asked.
"What for? It was only a one-man job. So then I struck this ship, and
got aboard her after a little trouble persuading her to stop. There
wasn't no way of making that captain believe we'd sleep anywheres we
could except cash; so I had to pay him a good deal."
"How much?" demanded Talbot.
"It came to two hundred apiece. I'm sorry."
"Glory be!" shouted Talbot, "we're ahead of the game. Yank, you
long-headed old pirate, let me shake you by the hand!"
"I wish you fellows would go away," begged Johnny.
We went on deck. The dusk was falling, and the wind with it; and to
westward an untold wealth of gold was piling up. Our ship rolled at her
anchor, awaiting the return of those of her people who had gone ashore.
On the beach tiny spots of lights twinkled where some one had built
fires. A warmth was stealing out from the shore over the troubled
waters. Talbot leaned on the rail by my side. Suddenly he chuckled
explosively.
"I was just thinking," said he in explanation, "of us damfools roosting
on that beach in the rain."
Thus at last we escaped from the Isthmus. At the end of twenty-four
hours we had left the island of Tobago astern, and were reaching to the
north.
PART II
THE GOLDEN CITY
CHAPTER X
THE GOLDEN CITY
We stood in between the hills that guarded the bay of San Francisco
about ten o'clock of an early spring day. A fresh cold wind pursued us;
and the sky above us was bluer than I had ever seen it before, even on
the Isthmus. To our right some great rocks were covered with seals and
sea lions, and back of them were hills of yellow sand. A beautiful great
mountain rose green to our left, and the water beneath us swirled and
eddied in numerous whirlpools made by the tide.
Everybody was on deck and close to the rail. We strained our eyes ahead;
and saw two islands, and beyond a shore of green hills. None of us knew
where San Francisco was located, nor could we find out. The ship's
company were much too busy to pay attention to our questions. The great
opening out of the bay beyond the long narrows was therefore a surprise
to us; it seemed as vast as an inland sea. We hauled to the wind,
turning sharp to the south, glided past the bold point of rocks.
Then we saw the city concealed in a bend of the cove. It was mainly of
canvas; hundreds, perhaps thousands of tents and canvas houses scattered
about the sides of hills. The flat was covered with them, too, and they
extended for some distance along the shore of the cove. A great dust,
borne by the wind that had brought us in, swept across the city like a
cloud of smoke. Hundreds and hundreds of vessels lay at anchor in the
harbour, a vast fleet.
We were immediately surrounded by small boats, and our decks filled with
men. We had our first sight of the genuine miners. They proved to be as
various as the points of the compass. Big men, little men, clean men,
dirty men, shaggy men, shaven men, but all instinct with an eager life
and energy I have never seen equalled. Most wore the regulation dress--a
red shirt, pantaloons tucked into the tops of boots, broad belts with
sometimes silver buckles, silk Chinese sashes of vivid raw colours, a
revolver, a bowie knife, a floppy old hat. Occasionally one, more
dignified than the rest, sported a shiny top hat; but always with the
red shirt. These were merchants, and men permanently established in the
town.
They addressed us eagerly, asking a thousand questions concerning the
news of the outside world. We could hardly answer them in our desire to
question in return. Were the gold stories really true? Were the diggings
very far away? Were the diggings holding out? What were the chances for
newcomers? And so on without end; and the burden always of gold! gold!
gold!
We were answered with the enthusiasm of an old-timer welcoming a
newcomer to any country. Gold! Plenty of it! They told us, in breathless
snatches, the most marvellous tales--one sailor had dug $17,000 in a
week; another man, a farmer from New England, was taking out $5,000 to
$6,000 daily. They mentioned names and places. They pointed to the
harbour full of shipping. "Four hundred ships," said they, "and hardly a
dozen men aboard the lot! All gone to the mines!" And one man snatching
a long narrow buckskin bag from his pocket, shook out of its mouth to
the palm of his hand a tiny cascade of glittering yellow particles--the
Dust! We shoved and pushed, crowding around him to see this marvellous
sight. He laughed in a sort of excited triumph, and tossed the stuff
into the air. The breeze caught it and scattered it wide. A number of
the little glittering particles clung to my rough coat, where they
flashed like spangles.
"Plenty more where that came from!" cried the man; and turned away with
a reckless laugh.
Filled with the wine of this new excitement we finally succeeded in
getting ashore in one of the ship's boats.
We landed on a flat beach of deep black sand. It was strewn from one end
to the other by the most extraordinary wreckage. There were levers,
cogwheels, cranks, fans, twisted bar, and angle iron, in all stages of
rust and disintegration. Some of these machines were half buried in the
sand; others were tidily laid up on stones as though just landed. They
were of copper, iron, zinc, brass, tin, wood. We recognized the genus at
a glance. They were, one and all, patent labour-saving gold washing
machines, of which we had seen so many samples aboard ship. At this
sight vanished the last remains of the envy I had ever felt for the
owners of similar contraptions.
We looked about for some sort of conveyance into which to dump our
belongings. Apparently none existed. Therefore we piled most of our
effects neatly above high tide, shouldered our bundles, and started off
up the single street.
On either side this thoroughfare stood hundreds of open sheds and
buildings in the course of construction. Goods of all sorts, and in
great quantity, lay beneath them, wholly or partially exposed to the
dust and weather. Many unopened bales had been left in the open air. One
low brick building of a single story seemed to be the only substantial
structure in sight. We saw quantities of calicos, silks, rich furniture,
stacks of the pieces of knock-down houses, tierces of tobacco, piles of
all sorts of fancy clothing. The most unexpected and incongruous items
of luxury seemed to have been dumped down here from the corners of the
earth, by the four hundred ships swinging idly at anchor in the bay.
The street was, I think, the worst I have ever seen anywhere. It was a
morass of mud, sticky greasy mud, of some consistency, but full of
water-holes and rivulets. It looked ten feet deep; and I should
certainly have ventured out on it with misgivings. And yet,
incongruously enough, the surface ridges of it had dried, and were
lifting into the air in the form of dust! This was of course my first
experience with that common California phenomenon, and I was greatly
astonished.
An attempt had been made to supply footing for pedestrians. Bags of sand
had been thrown down, some rocks, a very few boxes and boards. Then our
feet struck something soft and yielding, and we found we were walking
over hundred pound sacks of flour marked as from Chili. There must have
been many hundred of them. A man going in the opposite direction sidled
past us.
"Cheaper than lumber," said he briefly, seeing our astonishment.
"I'd hate to ask the price of lumber," remarked one of our ship's
companions, with whom--and a number of others--we were penetrating the
town. This man carried only a very neat black morocco satchel and a net
bag containing a half dozen pineapples, the last of a number he had
brought from the Isthmus. The contrast of that morocco bag with the rest
of him was quite as amusing as any we saw about us; though, of course,
he did not appreciate that.
We walked on flour for a hundred feet or so, and then came to cook
stoves. I mean it. A battalion of heavy iron cook stoves had been laid
side by side to form a causeway. Their weight combined with the traffic
over them had gradually pressed them down into the mud until their tops
were nearly level with the surface. Naturally the first merry and
drunken joker had shied the lids into space. The pedestrian had now
either to step in and out of fire boxes or try his skill on narrow
ledges! Next we came to a double row of boxes of tobacco; then to some
baled goods, and so off onto solid ground.
We passed many people, all very intent on getting along safely. From the
security of the shed stores the proprietors and an assorted lot of
loafers watched proceedings with interest. The task of crossing the
street from one side to the other, especially, was one not lightly to be
undertaken! A man had to balance, to leap, to poise; and at last
probably, to teeter back and forth trying to keep his balance like a
small boy on a fence rail, until, with an oath of disgust, he stepped
off into the slime.
When we had gained the dry ground near the head of the street we threw
down our burdens for a rest.
"I'll give you ten dollars for those pineapples!" offered a passerby,
stopping short.
Our companion quickly closed the bargain.
"What do you think of that?" he demanded of us wide-eyed, and in the
hearing of the purchaser.
The latter grinned a little, and hailed a man across the street.
"Charley!" he yelled. "Come over here!"
The individual addressed offered some demur, but finally picked his way
across to us.
"How do you like these?" demanded the pineapple purchaser, showing his
fruit.
"Jerusalem!" cried Charley admiringly, "where did you get them? Want to
sell 'em?"
"I want some myself, but I'll sell you three of them."
"How much?"
"Fifteen dollars."
"Give 'em to me."
The first purchaser grinned openly at our companion.
The latter followed into the nearest store to get his share of the dust
weighed out. His face wore a very thoughtful expression.
We came shortly to the Plaza, since called Portsmouth Square. At that
time it was a wind-swept, grass-grown, scrubby enough plot of ground. On
all sides were permanent buildings. The most important of these were a
low picturesque house of the sun-dried bricks known as adobes, in which,
as it proved, the customs were levied; a frame two-story structure known
as the Parker House, and a similar building labelled "City Hotel." The
spaces between these larger edifices was occupied by a dozen or so of
smaller shacks. Next door to the Parker House stood a huge flapping
tent. The words _El Dorado_ were painted on its side.
The square itself was crowded with people moving to and fro. The solid
majority of the crowd consisted of red or blue shirted miners; but a
great many nations and frames of minds seemed to be represented. Chinese
merchants, with red coral buttons atop their stiff little skullcaps,
wandered slowly, their hands tucked in capacious sleeves of the richest
brocade. We had seen few of this race; and we looked at them with the
greatest interest, examining closely their broad bland faces, the
delicate lilacs and purples and blues of their rich costumes, the
swaying silk braided queues down their backs. Other Chinese, of the
lower castes, clad in blue canvas with broad bowl-shaped hats of straw
on their heads, wormed their way through the crowd balancing baskets at
the ends of poles. Rivalling the great Chinese merchants in their
leisure, strolled the representatives of the native race, the Spanish
Californians. They were darkly handsome men, dressed gloriously in short
velvet jackets, snowy ruffles, plush trousers flaring at the bottom, and
slit up the side of the leg, soft leather boots, and huge spurs
ornamented with silver. They sauntered to and fro smoking brown-paper
cigarettos. Beside these two, the Chinese and the Californians, but one
other class seemed to be moving with any deliberation. These were men
seen generally alone, or at most in pairs. They were quiet, waxy pale,
dressed always neatly in soft black hat, white shirt, long black coat,
and varnished boots. In the face of a general gabble they seemed to
remain indifferently silent, self-contained and aloof. To occasional
salutations they responded briefly and with gravity.
"Professional gamblers," said Talbot.
All the rest of the crowd rushed here and there at a great speed. We saw
the wildest incongruities of demeanour and costume beside which the
silk-hat-red-shirted combination was nothing. They struck us
open-mouthed and gasping; but seemed to attract not the slightest
attention from anybody else. We encountered a number of men dressed
alike in suits of the finest broadcloth, the coats of which were lined
with red silk, and the vests of embroidered white. These men walked with
a sort of arrogant importance. We later found that they were members of
that dreaded organization known as _The Hounds_, whose ostensible
purpose was to perform volunteer police duty, but whose real effort was
toward the increase of their own power. These people all surged back and
forth good-naturedly, and shouted at each other, and disappeared with
great importance up the side streets, or darted out with equal busyness
from all points of the compass. Every few minutes a cry of warning would
go up on one side of the square or another. The crowd would scatter to
right and left, and down through the opening would thunder a horseman
distributing clouds of dust and showers of earth.
"Why doesn't somebody kill a few of those crazy fools!" muttered Talbot
impatiently, after a particularly close shave.
"Why, you see, they's mostly drunk," stated a bystander with an air of
explaining all.
We tacked across to the doors of the Parker House. There after some
search was made we found the proprietor. He, too, seemed very busy, but
he spared time to trudge ahead of us up two rickety flights of raw
wooden stairs to a loft where he indicated four canvas bunks on which
lay as many coarse blue blankets.
Perhaps a hundred similar bunks occupied every available inch in the
little loft.
"How long you going to stay?" he asked us.
"Don't know; a few days."
"Well, six dollars apiece, please."
"For how long?"
"For to-night."
"Hold on!" expostulated Talbot. "We can't stand that especially for
these accommodations. At that price we ought to have something better.
Haven't you anything in the second story?"
The proprietor's busy air fell from him; and he sat down on the edge of
one of the canvas bunks.
"I thought you boys were from the mines," said he. "Your friend, here,
fooled me." He pointed his thumb at Yank. "He looks like an old-timer.
But now I look at you, I see you're greenhorns. Just get here to-day?
Have a smoke?"
He produced a handful of cigars, of which he lit one.
"We just arrived," said Talbot, somewhat amused at this change. "How
about that second story?"
"I want to tell you boys a few things," said the proprietor, "I get
sixty thousand dollars a year rent for that second story just as she
stands. That tent next door belongs to my brother-in-law. It is just
fifteen by twenty-five feet, and he rents it for forty thousand."
"Gamblers?" inquired Talbot.
"You've guessed it. So you see I ain't got any beds to speak of down
there. In fact, here's the whole layout."
"But we can't stand six dollars a night for these things," expostulated
Johnny. "Let's try over at the other place."
"Try ahead, boys," said the proprietor quite good-naturedly. "You'll
find her the same over there; and everywhere else." He arose. "Best
leave your plunder here until you find out. Come down and have a drink?"
We found the City Hotel offered exactly the same conditions as did the
Parker House; except that the proprietor was curt and had no time for us
at all. From that point, still dissatisfied, we extended our
investigations beyond the Plaza. We found ourselves ankle deep in
sandhills on which grew coarse grass and a sort of sage. Crazy,
ramshackle huts made of all sorts of material were perched in all sorts
of places. Hundreds of tents had been pitched, beneath which and in
front of which an extremely simple housekeeping was going on. Hunt as we
might we could find no place that looked as though it would take
lodgers. Most of even the better looking houses were simply tiny
skeletons covered with paper, cloth or paint. By painstaking persistence
we kept at it until we had enquired of every building of any
pretensions. Then, somewhat discouraged, we picked our way back to the
shore after our heavier goods.
The proprietor of the Parker House greeted us with unabated good nature.
"I know how you boys feel," said he. "There's lots in your fix. You'd
better stick here to-night and then get organized to camp out, if you're
going to be here long. I suppose, though, you're going to the mines?
Well, it'll take you several days to make your plans and get ready. When
you get back from the mines you won't have to think about these things."
"There's plenty of gold?" ventured Johnny.
"Bushels."
"I should think you'd be up there."
"I don't want any better gold mine than the old Parker House," said he
comfortably.
We paid him twenty-four dollars.
By now it was late in the afternoon. The wind had dropped, but over the
hills to seaward rolled a soft beautiful bank of fog. The sun was
blotted out behind it and a chill fell. The crowds about the Plaza
thinned.
We economized our best at supper, but had to pay some eight dollars for
the four of us. The bill was a la carte and contained such items as
grizzly steak, antelope, elk, and wild duck and goose. Grizzly steak, I
remember, cost a dollar and a quarter. By the time we had finished, it
had grown dark. The lamps were alight, and the crowds were beginning to
gather. All the buildings and the big tent next door were a blaze of
illumination. The sounds of music and singing came from every side. A
holiday spirit was in the air.
Johnny and I were crazy to be up and doing, but Talbot sternly repressed
us, and Yank agreed with his decision by an unusually emphatic nod.
"It is all a lot of fun, I'll admit," said he; "but this is business.
And we've got to face it. Sit down here on the edge of this veranda, and
let's talk things over. How much money have you got, Yank?"
"Two hundred and twenty dollars," replied Yank promptly.
"You're partners with me, Frank, so I know our assets," said Talbot with
tact. "Johnny?"
"Hanged if I know," replied that youth. "I've got quite a lot. I keep it
in my pack."
"Well, go find out," advised Talbot.
Johnny was gone for some time. We smoked and listened to the rather
blatantly mingled strains of music, and watched the figures of men
hurrying by in the spangled darkness.
Johnny returned very much excited.
"I've been robbed!" he cried.
"Robbed? Is your money all gone?"
"No, there's a little left, but----"
Talbot laughed quietly.
"Sit down, Johnny, and cool off," he advised. "If anybody had robbed
you, they'd have taken the whole kit and kaboodle. Did you come out
ahead on those _monte_ games?"
Johnny blushed, and laughed a little.
"I see what you're at, but you're away off there. I just played for
small stakes."
"And lost a lot of them. I sort of look-out your game. But that's all
right. How much did the 'robbers' leave you?"
"Twelve dollars, besides what I have in my clothes--twenty-one dollars
in all," said Johnny.
"Well, that's pretty good. You beat Frank and me to death. There's our
total assets," said Talbot, and laid a ten-dollar gold piece and a dime
on his knee.
"We'll call that dime a curiosity," said he, "for I notice a quarter is
the smallest coin they use out here. Now you see that we've got to talk
business. Frank and I haven't got enough to live on for one more day."
"There's enough among us----" began Yank.
"You mean you already have your share of the partnership finances,"
corrected Talbot, quickly. "If we're going to be partners--and that's
desired and understood, I suppose?" We all nodded emphatic agreement. "We
must all put in the same amount. I move that said amount be two hundred
and twenty dollars apiece. Yank, you can loaf to-morrow; you've got your
share all made up. You can put in the day finding out all about getting
to the mines, and how much it costs, and what we will need."
"All right; I'll do it," said Yank.
"As for the rest of us," cried Talbot, "we've got to rustle up two
hundred and twenty dollars each before to-morrow evening!"
"How?" I asked blankly
"How should I know? Out there" he waved his hand abroad at the
flickering lights. "There is the Golden City, challenging every man as
he enters her gates. She offers opportunity and fortune. All a man has
to do is go and take them! Accept the challenge!"
"The only way I could take them would be to lift them off some other
fellow at the point of a gun," said Johnny gloomily.
CHAPTER XI
I MAKE TWENTY-FIVE DOLLARS
We talked the situation over thoroughly, and then turned in, having lost
our chance to see the sights. Beneath us and in the tent next door went
on a tremendous row of talking, laughing, and singing that for a little
while prevented me from falling asleep. But the last month had done
wonders for me in that way; and shortly I dropped off.
Hours later I awakened, shivering with cold to find the moonlight
pouring into the room, and the bunks all occupied. My blanket had
disappeared, which accounted for my dreams of icebergs. Looking
carefully over the sleeping forms I discerned several with two blankets,
and an equal number with none! At first I felt inclined to raise a row;
then thought better of it, by careful manipulation I abstracted two good
blankets from the most unprotected of of my neighbours, wrapped them
tightly about me, and so slept soundly.
We went downstairs and out into the sweetest of mornings. The sun was
bright, the sky clear and blue, the wind had not yet risen, balmy warmth
showered down through every particle of the air. I had felt some May
days like this back on our old farm. Somehow they were associated in my
mind with Sunday morning and the drawling, lazy clucking of hens. Only
here there were no hens, and if it was Sunday morning--which it might
have been--nobody knew it.
The majority of the citizens had not yet appeared, but a handful of the
poorer Chinese, and a sprinkling of others, crossed the Plaza. The doors
of the gambling places were all wide open to the air. Across the square
a number of small boys were throwing dust into the air. Johnny, with his
usual sympathy for children, naturally gravitated in their direction. He
returned after a few moments, his eyes wide.
"Do you know what they are doing?" he demanded.
We said politely that we did not.
"They are panning for gold."
"Well, what of it?" I asked, after a moment's pause; since Johnny seemed
to expect some astonishment. "Boys are imitative little monkeys."
"Yes, but they're getting it," insisted Johnny.
"What!" cried Talbot. "You're crazy. Panning gold--here in the streets.
It's absurd!"
"It's not absurd; come and see."
We crossed the Plaza. Two small Americans and a Mexican youth were
scooping the surface earth into the palms of their hands and blowing it
out again in a slantwise stream. When it was all gone, they examined
eagerly their hands. Four others working in partnership had spread a
small sheet. They threw their handfuls of earth into the air, all the
while fanning vigorously with their hats. The breeze thus engendered
puffed away the light dust, leaving only the heavier pieces to fall on
the canvas. Among these the urchins searched eagerly and carefully,
their heads close together. Every moment or so one of them would wet a
forefinger to pick up carefully a speck of something which he would then
transfer to an old buckskin sack.
As we approached, they looked up and nodded to Johnny in a friendly
fashion. They were eager, alert, precocious gamins, of the street type
and how they had come to California I could not tell you. Probably as
cabin boys of some of the hundreds of vessels in the harbour.
"What are you getting, boys?" asked Talbot after a moment.
"Gold, of course," answered one of them.
"Let's see it."
The boy with the buckskin sack held it open for our inspection, but did
not relax his grip on it. The bottom of the bag was thickly gilded with
light glittering yellow particles.
"It looks like gold," said I, incredulously.
"It _is_ gold," replied the boy with some impatience. "Anyway, it
buys things."
We looked at each other.
"Gold diggings right in the streets of San Francisco," murmured Yank.
"I should think you'd find it easier later in the day when the wind came
up?" suggested Talbot.
"Of course; and let some other kids jump our claim while we were
waiting," grunted one of the busy miners.
"How much do you get out of it?"
"Good days we make as high as three or four dollars."
"I'm afraid the diggings are hardly rich enough to tempt us," observed
Talbot; "but isn't that the most extraordinary performance! I'd no
notion----"
We returned slowly to the hotel, marvelling. Yesterday we had been
laughing at the gullibility of one of our fellow-travellers who had
believed the tale of a wily ship's agent to the effect that it was
possible to live aboard the ship and do the mining within reach ashore
at odd hours of daylight! Now that tale did not sound so wild; although
of course we realized that the gold must occur in very small quantities.
Otherwise somebody beside small boys would be at it. As a matter of
fact, though we did not find it out until very much later, the soil of
San Francisco is not auriferous at all. The boys were engaged in working
the morning's sweepings from the bars and gambling houses which the
lavish and reckless handling of gold had liberally impregnated. In some
of the mining towns nearer the source of supply I have known of from one
hundred to three hundred dollars a month being thus "blown" from the
sweepings of a bar.
We ate a frugal breakfast and separated on the agreed business of the
day. Yank started for the water front to make inquiries as to ways of
getting to the mines; Talbot set off at a businesslike pace for the
hotel as though he knew fully what he was about; Johnny wandered rather
aimlessly to the east; and I as aimlessly to the west.
It took me just one hour to discover that I could get all of any kind of
work that any dozen men could do, and at wages so high that at first I
had to ask over and over again to make sure I had heard aright. Only
none of them would bring me in two hundred and twenty dollars by
evening. The further I looked into that proposition, the more absurd, of
course, I saw it to be. I could earn from twenty to fifty dollars by
plain day-labour at some jobs; or I could get fabulous salaries by the
month or year; but that was different. After determining this to my
satisfaction I came to the sensible conclusion that I would make what I
could.
The first thing that caught my eye after I had come to this decision was
a wagon drawn by four mules coming down the street at a sucking walk.
The sight did not impress me particularly; but every storekeeper came
out from his shop and every passerby stopped to look with respect as the
outfit wallowed along. It was driven by a very large, grave, blond man
with a twinkle in his eye.
"That's John A. McGlynn," said a man next my elbow.
"Who's he?" I asked.
The man looked at me in astonishment.
"Don't know who John McGlynn is?" he demanded. "When did you get here?"
"Last night."
"Oh! Well, John has the only American wagon in town. Brought it out from
New York in pieces, and put it together himself. Broke four wild
California mules to drag her. He's a wonder!"
I could not, then, see quite how this exploit made him such a wonder;
but on a sudden inspiration I splashed out through the mud and climbed
into the wagon.
McGlynn looked back at me.
"Freightin'," said he, "is twenty dollars a ton; and at that rate it'll
cost you about thirty dollars, you dirty hippopotamus. These ain't no
safe-movers, these mules!"
Unmoved, I clambered up beside him.
"I want a job," said I, "for to-day only."
"Do ye now?"
"Can you give me one?"
"I can, mebbe. And do you understand the inner aspirations of mules,
maybe?"
"I was brought up on a farm."
"And the principles of elementary navigation by dead reckoning?"
I looked at him blankly.
"I mean mudholes," he explained. "Can you keep out of them?"
"I can try."
He pulled up the team, handed me the reins, and clambered over the
wheel.
"You're hired. At six o'clock I'll find you and pay you off. You get
twenty-five dollars."
"What am I to do?"
"You go to the shore and you rustle about whenever you see anything that
looks like freight; and you look at it, and when you see anything marked
with a diamond and an H inside of it, you pile it on and take it up to
Howard Mellin & Company. And if you can't lift it, then leave it for
another trip, and bullyrag those skinflints at H. M. & Co.'s to send a
man down to help you. And if you don't know where they live, find out;
and if you bog them mules down I'll skin you alive, big as you are. And
anyway, you're a fool to be working in this place for twenty-five
dollars a day, which is one reason I'm so glad to find you just now."
"What's that, John?" inquired a cool, amused voice. McGlynn and I looked
around. A tall, perfectly dressed figure stood on the sidewalk surveying
us quizzically. This was a smooth-shaven man of perhaps thirty-five
years of age, grave faced, clean cut, with an air of rather ponderous
slow dignity that nevertheless became his style very well. He was
dressed in tall white hat, a white winged collar, a black stock, a long
tailed blue coat with gilt buttons, an embroidered white waistcoat,
dapper buff trousers, and varnished boots. He carried a polished cane
and wore several heavy pieces of gold jewellery--a watch fob, a
scarf-pin, and the like. His movements were leisurely, his voice low. It
seemed to me, then, that somehow the perfection of his appointments and
the calm deliberation of his movement made him more incongruous and
remarkable than did the most bizarre whims of the miners.
"Is it yourself, Judge Girvin?" replied McGlynn, "I'm just telling this
young man that he can't have the job of driving my little California
canaries for but one day because I've hired a fine lawyer from the East
at two hundred and seventy-five a month to drive my mules for me."
"You have done well," Judge Girvin in his grave, courteous tones. "For
the whole business of a lawyer is to know how to manage mules and asses
so as to make them pay!"
I drove to the beach, and speedily charged my wagon with as large a load
as prudence advised me. The firm of Howard Mellin & Company proved to
have quarters in a frame shack on what is now Montgomery Street. It was
only a short haul, but a muddy one. Nearly opposite their store a new
wharf was pushing its way out into the bay. I could see why this and
other firms clung so tenaciously to their locations on rivers of
bottomless mud in preference to moving up into the drier part of town.
I enjoyed my day hugely. My eminent position on the driver's
seat--eminent both actually and figuratively--gave me a fine opportunity
to see the sights and to enjoy the homage men seemed inclined to accord
the only wagon in town. The feel of the warm air was most grateful. Such
difficulties as offered served merely to add zest to the job. At noon I
ate some pilot bread and a can of sardines bought from my employers.
About two o'clock the wind came up from the sea, and the air filled with
the hurrying clouds of dust.
In my journeys back and forth I had been particularly struck by the
bold, rocky hill that shut off the view toward the north. Atop this hill
had been rigged a two-armed semaphore, which, one of the clerks told me,
was used to signal the sight of ships coming in the Golden Gate. The
arms were variously arranged according to the rig or kind of vessel.
Every man, every urchin, every Chinaman, even, knew the meaning of these
various signals. A year later, I was attending a theatrical performance
in the Jenny Lind Theatre on the Plaza. In the course of the play an
actor rushed on frantically holding his arms outstretched in a
particularly wooden fashion, and uttering the lines, "What means this,
my lord!"
"A side-wheel steamer!" piped up a boy's voice from the gallery.
Well, about three o'clock of this afternoon, as I was about delivering
my fifth load of goods, I happened to look up just as the semaphore arms
hovered on the rise. It seemed that every man on the street must have
been looking in the same direction, for instantly a great shout went up.
"A side-wheel steamer! The _Oregon_!"
At once the streets were alive with men hurrying from all directions
toward the black rocks at the foot of Telegraph Hill, where, it seems,
the steamer's boats were expected to land. Flags were run up on all
sides, firearms were let off, a warship in the harbour broke out her
bunting and fired a salute. The decks of the steamer, as she swept into
view, were black with men; her yards were gay with colour. Uptown some
devoted soul was ringing a bell; and turning it away over and over, to
judge by the sounds. I pulled up my mules and watched the vessel swing
down through the ranks of the shipping and come to anchor. We had beaten
out our comrades by a day!
At five o'clock a small boy boarded me.
"You're to drive the mules up to McGlynn's and unhitch them and leave
them," said he. "I'm to show you the way."
"Where's McGlynn?" I asked.
"He's getting his mail."
We drove to a corral and three well-pitched tents down in the southern
edge of town. Here a sluggish stream lost its way in a swamp of green
hummocky grass. I turned out the mules in the corral and hung up the
harness.
"McGlynn says you're to go to the post-office and he'll pay you there,"
my guide instructed me.
The post-office proved to be a low adobe one-story building, with the
narrow veranda typical of its kind. A line of men extended from its door
and down the street as far as the eye could reach. Some of them had
brought stools or boxes, and were comfortably reading scraps of paper.
I walked down the line. A dozen from the front I saw Johnny standing.
This surprised me, for I knew he could not expect mail by this steamer.
Before I had reached him he had finished talking to a stranger, and had
yielded his place.
"Hullo!" he greeted me. "How you getting on?"
"So-so!" I replied. "I'm looking for a man who owes me twenty-five
dollars."
"Well, he's here," said Johnny confidently. "Everybody in town is here."
We found McGlynn in line about a block down the street. When he saw me
coming he pulled a fat buckskin bag from his breeches pocket, opened its
mouth, and shook a quantity of its contents, by guess, into the palm of
his hand.
"There you are," said he; "that's near enough. I'm a pretty good
guesser. I hope you took care of the mules all right; you ought to,
you're from a farm."
"I fixed 'em."
"And the mud? How many times did you get stuck?"
"Not at all."
He looked at me with surprise.
"Would you think of that, now!" said he. "You must have loaded her
light."
"I did."
"Did you get all the goods over?"
"Yes."
"Well, I'll acknowledge you're a judgematical young man; and if you want
a job with me I'll let that lawyer go I spoke to the judge about. He
handed it to me then, didn't he?" He laughed heartily. "No? Well, you're
right. A man's a fool to work for any one but himself. Where's your bag?
Haven't any? How do you carry your dust? Haven't any? I forgot; you're a
tenderfoot, of course." He opened his buckskin sack with his teeth, and
poured back the gold from the palm of his hand. Then he searched for a
moment in all his pockets, and produced a most peculiar chunk of gold
metal. It was nearly as thick as it was wide, shaped roughly into an
octagon, and stamped with initials. This he handed to me.
"It's about a fifty-dollar slug," said he, "you can get it weighed. Give
me the change next time you see me."
"But I may leave for the mines to-morrow," I objected.
"Then leave the change with Jim Recket of the El Dorado."
"How do you know I'll leave it?" I asked curiously.
"I don't," replied McGlynn bluntly. "But if you need twenty-five dollars
worse than you do a decent conscience, then John A. McGlynn isn't the
man to deny you!"
Johnny and I left for the hotel.
"I didn't know you expected any mail," said I.
"I don't."
"But thought I saw you in line----"
"Oh, yes. When I saw the mail sacks, it struck me that there might be
quite a crowd; so I came up as quickly as I could and got in line. There
were a number before me, but I got a place pretty well up in front. Sold
the place for five dollars, and only had to stand there about an hour at
that."
"Good head!" I admired. "I'd never have thought of it. How have you
gotten on?"
"Pretty rotten," confessed Johnny. "I tried all morning to find a decent
opportunity to do something or deal in something, and then I got mad and
plunged in for odd jobs. I've been a regular errand boy. I made two
dollars carrying a man's bag up from the ship."
"How much all told?"
"Fifteen. I suppose you've got your pile."
"That twenty-five you saw me get is the size of it."
Johnny brightened; we moved up closer in a new intimacy and sense of
comradeship over delinquency. It relieved both to feel that the other,
too, had failed. To enter the Plaza we had to pass one of the larger of
the gambling places.
"I'm going in here," said Johnny, suddenly.
He swung through the open doors, and I followed him.
The place was comparatively deserted, owing probably to the distribution
of mail. We had full space to look about us; and I was never more
astonished in my life. The outside of the building was rough and
unfinished as a barn, having nothing but size to attract or recommend.
The interior was the height of lavish luxury. A polished mahogany bar
ran down one side, backed by huge gilt framed mirrors before which were
pyramided fine glasses and bottles of liquor. The rest of the wall space
was thickly hung with more plate mirrors, dozens of well-executed oil
paintings, and strips of tapestry. At one end was a small raised stage
on which lolled half-dozen darkies with banjos and tambourines. The
floor was covered with a thick velvet carpet. Easy chairs, some of them
leather upholstered, stood about in every available corner. Heavy
chandeliers of glass, with hundreds of dangling crystals and prisms,
hung from the ceiling. The gambling tables, a half dozen in number, were
arranged in the open floor space in the centre. Altogether it was a most
astounding contrast in its sheer luxury and gorgeous furnishing to the
crudity of the town. I became acutely conscious of my muddy boots, my
old clothes, my unkempt hair, my red shirt and the armament strapped
about my waist.
A relaxed, subdued air of idleness pervaded the place. The gamblers
lounged back of their tables, sleepy-eyed and listless. On tall stools
their lookouts yawned behind papers. One of these was a woman, young,
pretty, most attractive in the soft, flaring, flouncy costume of that
period. A small group of men stood at the bar. One of the barkeepers was
mixing drinks, pouring the liquid, at arm's length from one tumbler to
another in a long parabolic curve, and without spilling a drop. Only one
table was doing business, and that with only three players. Johnny
pushed rapidly toward this table, and I, a little diffidently, followed.
The game was roulette. Johnny and the dealer evidently recognized each
other, for a flash of the eye passed between them, but they gave no
other sign. Johnny studied the board a moment then laid twenty-two
dollars in coin on one of the numbers. The other players laid out small
bags of gold dust. The wheel spun, and the ball rolled. Two of the men
lost; their dust was emptied into a drawer beneath the table and the
bags tossed back to them. The third had won; the dealer deftly estimated
the weight of his bet, lifting it in the flat of his left hand; then
spun several gold pieces toward the winner. He seemed quite satisfied.
The gambler stacked a roll of twenty-dollar pieces, added one to them,
and thrust them at Johnny. I had not realized that the astounding luck
of winning off a single number had befallen him.
"Ten to one--two hundred and twenty dollars!" he muttered to me.
The other three players were laying their bets for the next turn of the
wheel. Johnny swept the gold pieces into his pocket, and laid back the
original stake against _even_. He lost. Thereupon he promptly arose
and left the building.
CHAPTER XII
TALBOT DESERTS
I followed him to the hotel somewhat gloomily; for I was now the only
member of our party who had not made good the agreed amount of the
partnership. It is significant that never for a moment did either Johnny
or myself doubt that Talbot would have the required sum. Johnny, his
spirits quite recovered, whistled like a lark.
We arrived just in time for the first supper call, and found Talbot and
Yank awaiting us. Yank was as cool and taciturn, and nodded to us as
indifferently, as ever. Talbot, however, was full of excitement. His
biscuit-brown complexion had darkened and flushed until he was almost
Spanish-black, and the little devils in his eyes led a merry dance
between the surface and unguessed depths. He was also exceedingly
voluble; and, as usual when in that mood, aggravatingly indirect. He
joked and teased and carried on like a small boy; and insisted on
ordering an elaborate dinner and a bottle of champagne, in the face of
even Johnny's scandalized expostulations. When Johnny protested against
expenditure, it was time to look out!
"This is on me! This is my party! Dry up, Johnny!" cried Talbot. "Fill
your glasses. Drink to the new enterprise; the Undertakers' Mining
Company, Unlimited."
"Undertakers?" I echoed.
"Well, you all look it. Call it the Gophers, then. Capital stock just
eight hundred and eighty dollars, fully subscribed. I suppose it is
fully subscribed, gentlemen?" He scrutinized us closely. "Ah, Frank! I
see we'll have to take your promissory note. But the artistic
certificates are not yet home from the engravers. Take your time. Maybe
a relative will die."
"Talbot," said I disgustedly, "if I hadn't happened to smell your breath
before supper I'd think you drunk."
"I _am_ drunk, old deacon," rejoined Talbot, "but with the Wine of
Enchantment--do you know your Persian? No? Well, then, this:
"Drink to me only with thine eyes,
And I'll not ask for wine!"
"A woman!" grumbled the literal Yank.
"The best, the most capricious, the most beautiful woman in the world,"
cried Talbot, "whose smile intoxicates, whose frown drives to despair."
"What _are_ you drivelling about?" I demanded.
"The goddess fortune--what else? But come," and Talbot rose with a
sudden and startling transition to the calm and businesslike. "We can
smoke outside; and we must hear each other's reports."
He paid for the dinner, steadfastly refusing to let us bear our share. I
noticed that he had acquired one of the usual buckskin sacks, and shook
the yellow dust from the mouth of it to the pan of the gold scales with
quite an accustomed air.
We lit our pipes and sat down at one end of the veranda, where we would
not be interrupted.
"Fire ahead, Yank," advised Talbot.
"There's two ways of going to the mines," said Yank: "One is to go
overland by horses to Sutter's Fort or the new town of Sacramento, and
then up from there into the foothills of the big mountains way yonder.
The other is to take a boat and go up river to Sacramento and then pack
across with horses."
"How much is the river fare?" asked Talbot.
"You have to get a sailboat. It costs about forty dollars apiece."
"How long would it take?"
"Four or five days."
"And how long from here to Sutter's Fort by horse?"
"About the same."
"Depends then on whether horses are cheaper here or there."
"They are cheaper there; or we can get our stuff freighted in by
Greasers and hoof it ourselves."
"Then I should think we ought to have a boat."
"I got one," said Yank.
"Good for you!" cried Talbot. "You're a man after my own heart! Well,
Johnny?"
Johnny told his tale, a little proudly and produced his required two
hundred and twenty dollars.
"You had luck," said Talbot non-committally, "and you ran a strong risk
of coming back here without a cent, didn't you? I want to ask you one
question, Johnny. If you had lost, would you have been willing to have
taken the consequences?"
"What do you mean?" asked Johnny blankly.
"Would you have been willing to have dropped out of this partnership?"
Johnny stared.
"I mean," said Talbot kindly, "that you had no right to try to get this
money by merely a gambler's chance unless you were willing to accept the
logical result if you failed. It isn't fair to the rest of us."
"I see what you mean," said Johnny slowly. "No; I hadn't thought of it
that way."
"Well, as I said, you had luck," repeated Talbot cheerfully, "so we
needn't think of it further." It was characteristic that Johnny took
this veiled rebuke from Talbot Ward in a meek and chastened spirit; from
any one else his high temper could never stand even a breath of
criticism. "How about you, Frank?" Talbot asked me.
I detailed my experiences in a very few words and exhibited my gold
slug.
"That's the best I can do," I ended, "and half of that does not belong
to me. I can, however, in a few days scrape up the full amount; there is
plenty to do here. And barring bull luck, like Johnny's, I don't see
much show of beating that, unless a man settled down to stay here."
Talbot stared at me, ruminatively, until I began to get restive. Then he
withdrew his eyes. He made no comment.
"I suppose you have your money," suggested Yank to him, after a pause.
"Oh--yes," said Talbot as though awaking from profound reverie.
"Well, tell us about it. How did you get it? How long did it take you?"
"About half an hour. I figured that everybody in a place like this would
be wanting news. So I sorted out that bundle of old newspapers you
fellows were always laughing at, and I went out and sold them. Lucky I
got busy with them early; for I don't doubt the arrival of the
_Oregon_ broke the market."
"How much did you get for them?" asked Johnny.
"A dollar apiece for most, and fifty cents for the rest. I came out two
hundred and seventy dollars ahead all told. That, with Frank's and my
ten dollars, gave me sixty dollars above the necessary amount."
Johnny arose and kicked himself solemnly.
"For not guessing what newspapers were good for," he explained. "Go on!
What next? What did you do with the rest of the day?"
Talbot leaned forward, and all the animation of the dinner table
returned to his manner and to his face.
"Boys," said he earnestly, "this is the most wonderful town that has
ever been! There has been nothing like it in the past; and there will
never be anything like it again. After I had sold out my papers I went
wandering across the Plaza with my hands in my pockets. Next the El
Dorado there is a hole in the ground. It isn't much of a hole, and the
edges are all caving in because it is sandy. While I was looking at it
two men came along. One was the owner of the hole, and the other said he
was a lawyer. The owner offered to rent the hole to the lawyer for two
hundred and fifty dollars a month; and the lawyer was inclined to take
him up. After they had gone on I paced off the hole, just for fun. It
was twelve feet square by about six feet deep! Then I walked on down
toward the water front, and talked with all the storekeepers. They do a
queer business. All these goods we see around came out here on
consignment. The local storekeepers have a greater or lesser share and
sell mainly on commission. Since they haven't any adequate storehouses,
and can't get any put up again, they sell the stuff mainly at auction
and get rid of it as quickly as possible. That's why some things are so
cheap they can make pavements of them when a ship happens to come in
loaded with one article. I talked with some of them and told them they
ought to warehouse a lot of this stuff so as to keep it over until the
market steadied. They agreed with that; but pointed out that they were
putting up warehouses as fast as they could--which wasn't very fast--and
in the meantime the rains and dust were destroying their goods. It was
cheaper to sell at auction."
"And a heap more exciting," put in Johnny. "I went to one of them."
"Well, I wandered down to the shore, and looked out over the bay. It was
full of shipping, riding high at anchor. I had an idea. I hired a boat
for five dollars, and rowed out to some of the ships. Believe me or not,
most of them were empty; not even a watchman aboard! I found some of the
captains, however, and talked with each of them. They all told the same
story."
"Crews skipped to the mines, I suppose?" said Yank.
"Exactly. And they _couldn't_ get any more. So I offered to hire a
few of them."
"The captains?" I inquired.
"No; the ships."
"The _what?_" we yelled in chorus.
"The ships."
"But if the captains can't get crews----"
"Oh, I don't want to sail them," went on Talbot impatiently. "It was
hard work getting them to agree; they all cherished notions they could
get crews and go sailing some more--good old salts! But I hired four, at
last. Had to take them for only a month, however; and had to pay them in
advance five hundred apiece."
"I beg pardon," said Johnny softly, "for interrupting your pleasing
tale; but the last item interested me. I do not know whether I quite
heard it right."
"Oh, shut up, Johnny," said Yank; "let the man tell his story. Of course
he didn't have the money in his pocket. How did you get it, Tal?"
Ward shot him a grateful glance.
"I told them I'd pay them at four o'clock which gave me plenty of time."
"Two thousand dollars--oh, of course!" murmured Johnny.
"So then," continued Talbot, "I hustled ashore; and went to see some of
my merchant friends. In two hours I had contracts with twelve of them
that totalled six thousand dollars."
"Why didn't some of them go out and hire ships on their own account?"
asked Yank shrewdly.
"Because I didn't mention the word 'ship' until I had their business,"
said Talbot. "I just guaranteed them storage, waterproof, practically
fireproof, dustproof, and within twenty-four hours. I guess most of them
thought I was crazy. But as it didn't cost them anything, they were
willing to take a chance."
"Then you didn't raise your ten thousand dollars from them in advance
payments!" I marvelled.
"Certainly not. That would have scared off the whole lot of them. But I
got their agreements; I told you it took me two hours. Then I walked up
the street figuring where I'd get the money. Of course I saw I'd have to
divide the profits. I didn't know anybody; but after a while I decided
that the best chance was to get some advice from honest and
disinterested man. So I asked the first man I met who ran the biggest
gambling place in town. He told me Jim Recket."
"Jim Recket?" I echoed. "He's the man I was to leave change for my gold
slug with."
"Recket keeps the El Dorado, next door in the tent. He impressed me as a
very quiet, direct, square sort of a fellow. The best type of
professional gambler, in matters of this sort, generally is.
"'I am looking for a man,' said I, 'who has a little idle money, some
time, no gold-mining fever, plenty of nerve, and a broad mind. Can you
tell me who he is?'
"He thought a minute and then answered direct, as I knew he would.
"'Sam Brannan,' he said.
"'Tell me about him.'
"'To take up your points,' said Recket, checking off his fingers, 'he
came out with a shipload of Mormons as their head, and he collected
tithes from them for over a year; that's your idle money. He has all the
time the Lord stuck into one day at a clip; that's your "some time." He
has been here in the city since '48 which would seem to show he doesn't
care much for mining. He collected the tithes from those Mormons, and
sent word to Brigham Young that if he wanted the money to come and get
it. That's for your nerve. As for being broad minded--well, when a
delegation of the Mormons, all ready for a scrap, came to him solemnly
to say that they were going to refuse to pay him the tithes any more,
even if he was the California head of the church, he laughed them off
the place for having been so green as to pay them as long as they had.'
"I found Sam Brannan, finally, at the bar in Dennison's Exchange."
"What was he like?" asked Johnny eagerly. "I'll bet I heard his name
fifty times to-day."
"He is a thickset, jolly looking, curly headed fellow, with a thick
neck, a bulldog jaw, and a big voice," replied Talbot. "Of course he
tried to bully me, but when that didn't work, he came down to business.
We entered into an agreement.
"Brannan was to furnish the money, and take half the profits, provided
he liked the idea. When we had settled it all, I told him my scheme. He
thought it over a while and came in. Then we rowed off and paid the
captains of the ships. It was necessary now to get them warped in at
high tide, of course, but Sam Brannan said he'd see to that--he has some
sort of a pull with the natives, enough to get a day's labour, anyway."
"Warp them in?" I echoed.
"Certainly. You couldn't expect the merchants to lighter their stuff off
in boats always. We'll beach these ships at high tide, and then run some
sort of light causeway out to them. There's no surf, and the bottom is
soft. It'll cost us something, of course; but Sam and I figure we ought
to divide three thousand clear."
"I'd like to ask a question or so," said I. "What's to prevent the
merchants doing this same hiring of ships for themselves?"
"Nothing," said Talbot, "after the first month."
"And what prevented Brannan, after he had heard your scheme, from going
out on his own hook, and pocketing _all_ the proceeds?"
"You don't understand, Frank," said Talbot impatiently. "Men of our
stamp don't do those things."
"Oh!" said I.
"This," said Johnny, "made it about two o'clock, as I figure your story.
Did you then take a needed rest?"
"Quarter of two," corrected Talbot, "I was going back to the hotel, when
I passed that brick building--you know, on Montgomery Street. I
remembered then that lawyer and his two hundred and fifty dollars for a
hole in the ground. It seemed to me there was a terrible waste
somewhere. Here was a big brick building filled up with nothing but
goods. It might much better be filled with people. There is plenty of
room for goods in those ships; but you can't very well put people on the
ships. So I just dropped in to see them about it. I offered to hire the
entire upper part of the building; and pointed out that the lower part
was all they could possibly use as a store. They said they needed the
upper part as storehouse. I offered to store the goods in an accessible
safe place. Of course they wanted to see the place; but I wouldn't let
on, naturally, but left it subject to their approval after the lease was
signed. The joke of it is they were way overstocked anyway. Finally I
made my grand offer.
"'Look here,' said I, 'you rent me that upper story for a decent length
of time--say a year--and I'll buy out the surplus stock you've got up
there at a decent valuation.' They jumped at that; of course they
pretended not to, but just the same they jumped. I'll either sell the
stuff by auction, even if at a slight loss, or else I'll stick it aboard
a ship. Depends a good deal on what is there, of course. It's mostly
bale and box goods of some sort or another. I've got an inventory in my
pocket. Haven't looked at it yet. Then I'll partition off that wareroom
and rent it out for offices and so forth. There are a lot of lawyers and
things in this town just honing for something dignified and stable. I
only pay three thousand a month for it."
Johnny groaned deeply.
"Well," persisted Talbot, "I figure on getting at least eight thousand a
month out of it. That'll take care of a little loss on the goods, if
necessary. I'm not sure a loss is necessary."
"And how much, about, are the goods?" I inquired softly.
"Oh, I don't know. Somewhere between ten and twenty thousand, I
suppose."
"Paid for how, and when?"
"One third cash, and the rest in notes. The interest out here is rather
high," said Talbot regretfully.
"Where do you expect to get the money?" I insisted.
"Oh, money! money!" cried Talbot, throwing out his arms with a gesture
of impatience. "The place is full of money. It's pouring in from the
mines, from the world outside. Money's no trouble!"
He fell into an intent reverie, biting at his short moustache. I arose
softly to my feet.
"Johnny," said I, in a strangled little voice, "I've got to give back
McGlynn's change. Want to go with me?"
We tiptoed around the corner of the building, and fell into each other's
arms with shrieks of joy.
"Oh!" cried Johnny at last, wiping the tears from his eyes. "Money's no
trouble!"
After we had to some extent relieved our feelings we changed my gold
slug into dust--I purchased a buckskin bag--and went to find McGlynn.
Our way to his quarters led past the post-office, where a long queue of
men still waited patiently and quietly in line. We stood for a few
moments watching the demeanour of those who had received their mail, or
who had been told there was nothing for them. Some of the latter were
pathetic, and looked fairly dazed with grief and disappointment.
The letters were passed through a small window let in the adobe of the
wall; and the men filed on to the veranda at one end and off it at the
other. The man distributing mail was a small, pompous, fat Englishman. I
recognized McGlynn coming slowly down with the line, and paid him half
the dust in my bag.
As McGlynn reached the window, the glass in it slammed shut, and the
clerk thrust a card against it.
"_Mails close at 9 P.M._"
McGlynn tapped at the glass, received no attention, and commenced to
beat a tattoo. The window was snatched open, and the fat clerk, very
red, thrust his face in the opening.
"What do you want?" he demanded truculently.
"Any letters for John A. McGlynn?"
"This office opens at 8:30 A.M." said the clerk, slamming shut the
window.
Without an instant's hesitation, and before the man had a chance to
retire, McGlynn's huge fist crashed through the glass and into his face.
The crowd had waited patiently; but now, with a brutal snarl, it surged
forward. McGlynn, a pleasant smile on his face, swung slowly about.
"Keep your line, boys! Keep your line!" he boomed. "There's no trouble!
It's only a little Englishman who don't know our ways yet."
Inside the building the postal force, white and scared yet over the
menacing growl of the beast they had so nearly roused, hastened to
resume their tasks. I heard later that the last man in line reached the
window only at three o'clock in the morning. Also that next day McGlynn
was summoned by Geary, then postmaster, to account for his share in the
row; and that in the end Geary apologized and was graciously forgiven by
McGlynn! I can well believe it.
We found Yank and Talbot still at the edge of the hotel veranda.
"Look here, Tal!" said Johnny at once. "How are you going to finish all
this business you've scared up, and get off to the mines within a
reasonable time? We ought to start pretty soon."
"Mines?" echoed Talbot, "I'm not going to the mines! I wouldn't leave
all this for a million mines. No: Yank and I have been talking it over.
You boys will have to attend to the mining end of this business. I'll
pay Frank's share and take a quarter of the profits, and Frank can pay
me in addition half his profits. In return for the work I don't do, I'll
put aside two hundred and twenty dollars and use it in my business here,
and all of us will share in the profits I make from that amount. How
does that strike you?"
"I don't like to lose you out of this," said Johnny disappointedly.
"Nor I," said I.
"And I hate to lose the adventure, boys," agreed Talbot earnestly. "But,
honestly, I can't leave this place now even if I want to; and I
certainly don't want to."
I turned in that night with the feeling that I had passed a very
interesting day.
CHAPTER XIII
UP-RIVER
Two days later Yank, Johnny, and I embarked aboard a small bluff-bowed
sailboat, waved our farewells to Talbot standing on the shore, and laid
our course to cross the blue bay behind an island called Alcatraz. Our
boatman was a short, swarthy man, with curly hair and gold rings in his
ears. He handled his boat well, but spoke not at all. After a dozen
attempts to get something more than monosyllables out of him, we gave it
up, and settled ourselves to the solid enjoyment of a new adventure.
The breeze was strong, and drove even our rather clumsy craft at
considerable speed. The blue waters of the bay flashed in the sun and
riffled under the squalls. Spray dashed away from our bows. A chill
raced in from the open Pacific, diluting the sunlight.
We stared ahead of us, all eyes. The bay was a veritable inland sea; and
the shores ahead of us lay flat and wide, with blue hazy hills in the
distance, and a great mountain hovering in midair to our right. Black
cormorants going upwind flapped heavily by us just above the water,
their necks stretched out. Gulls wheeled and screamed above us, or
floated high and light like corks over the racing waves. Rafts of ducks
lay bobbing, their necks furled, their head close to their bodies. A
salt tang stirred our blood; and on the great mountain just north of the
harbour entrance the shadows of canons were beginning most beautifully
to define themselves.
Altogether it was a pleasant sail. We perched to windward, and smoked
our pipes, and worked ourselves to a high pitch of enthusiasm over what
we were going to see and do. The sailor too smoked his pipe, leaning
against the long, heavy tiller.
The distant flat shores drew nearer. We turned a corner and could make
out the mouth of a river, and across it a white line that, as we came up
on it, proved to be the current breaking against the wind over a very
solid bar. For the first time our sailor gave signs of life. He stood on
his feet, squinted ahead, ordered us amidships, dropped the peak of the
mainsail, took the sheet in his hand. We flew down against the breakers.
In a moment we were in them. Two sickening bumps shook our very
vertebrae. The mast swayed drunkenly from side to side as the boat rolled
on her keel, the sail flopped, a following wave slopped heavily over the
stern, and the water swashed forward across our feet. Then we recovered
a trifle, staggered forward, bumped twice more, and slid into the
smoother deep water. The sailor grunted, and passed us a dipper. We
bailed her out while he raised again the peak of his sail.
Shortly after this experience we glided up the reaches of a wide
beautiful river. It had no banks, but was bordered by the tall reeds
called tules. As far as the eye could reach, and that was very far when
we climbed part way up the mast to look, these tules extended. League
after league they ran away like illimitable plains, green and brown and
beautiful, until somewhere over the curve of the earth straight ahead
they must have met distant blue hills. To the southeast there seemed no
end but the sky.
From the level of the boat, however, we saw only a little way into the
outer fringe. The water lay among the stalks, and mud hens with white
bills pushed their way busily into intricate narrow unguessed waterways.
Occasionally the hedge of the tules broke to a greater or lesser opening
into a lagoon. These were like shallow lakes, in which sometimes grew
clumps of grasses. They were covered with waterfowl. Never have I seen
so many ducks and geese of all kinds. They literally covered the surface
of the water, and fairly seemed to jostle each other as they swam busily
to and fro, intent on some business of their own. Their comfortable, low
conversational clucking and quacking was a pleasure to hear. When, out
of curiosity, we fired a revolver shot, they rose in the air with a roar
like that of a great waterfall, and their crossing lines of flight in
the sky was like the multitude of midges in the sun. I remember one
flock of snow-white geese that turned and wheeled, alternately throwing
their bodies in shadow or in the sunlight, so that they flashed
brilliantly.
As the sun declined, the wind fell. Fortunately the current in the river
was hardly perceptible. We slipped along on glassy waters. Thousands
upon thousands of blackbirds dipped across us uttering their calls.
Against a saffron sky were long lines of waterfowl, their necks
outstretched. A busy multitudinous noise of marsh birds rose and fell
all about us. The sun was a huge red ball touching the distant hills.
At last the wind failed us entirely, but the sailor got out a pair of
sweeps, and we took turns rowing. Within a half hour we caught the
silhouette of three trees against the sky, and shortly landed on a
little island of solid ground. Here we made camp for the night.
All next day, and the days after, being luckily favoured by steady fair
winds, we glided up the river. I could not but wonder at the certainty
with which our sailor picked the right passage from the numerous false
channels that offered themselves. The water was beautifully clear and
sweet; quite different from the muddy currents of to-day. Shortly the
solid ground had drawn nearer; so that often we passed long stretches of
earth standing above the tule-grown water. Along these strips grew
sycamore and cottonwood trees of great size, and hanging vines of the
wild grape. The trees were as yet bare of leaves, but everything else
was green and beautiful. We could see the tracks of many deer along the
flats, but caught no sight of the animals themselves. At one place,
however, we did frighten a small band of half a dozen elk. They crashed
away recklessly through the brush, making noise and splashing enough for
a hundred. Yank threw one of his little pea bullets after them; and
certainly hit, for we found drops of blood. The sailor shook his head
disparagingly over the size of the rifle balls, to Yank's vast disgust.
I never saw him come nearer to losing his temper. As a matter of fact I
think the sailor's contention had something in it; the long accurate
weapon with its tiny missile was probably all right when its user had a
chance to plant the bullet exactly in a fatal spot, but not for such
quick snap shooting as this. At any rate our visions of cheap fresh meat
vanished on the hoof.
The last day out we came into a wide bottomland country with oaks. The
distant blue hills had grown, and had become slate-gray. At noon we
discerned ahead of us a low bluff, and a fork in the river; and among
the oak trees the gleam of tents, and before them a tracery of masts
where the boats and small ships lay moored to the trees. This was the
_embarcadero_ of Sutter's Fort beyond; or the new city of
Sacramento, whichever you pleased. Here our boat journey ended.
We disembarked into a welter of confusion. Dust, men, mules, oxen,
bales, boxes, barrels, and more dust. Everything was in the open air.
Tents were pitched in the open, under the great oaks, anywhere and
everywhere. Next, the river, and for perhaps a hundred yards from the
banks, the canvas structures were arranged in rows along what were
evidently intended to be streets; but beyond that every one simply
"squatted" where he pleased. We tramped about until we found a clear
space, and there dumped down our effects. They were simple enough; and
our housekeeping consisted in spreading our blankets and canvas, and
unpacking our frying pan and pots. The entire list of our provisions
consisted of pork, flour, salt, tea, coffee, sugar, tobacco, and some
spirits.
After supper we went out in a body to see what we could find out
concerning our way to the mines. We did not even possess a definite idea
as to where we wanted to go!
In this quest we ran across our first definite discouragement. The place
was full of men and they were all willing to talk. Fully three quarters
were, like ourselves, headed toward the mines; and were consequently
full of theoretical advice. The less they actually knew the more
insistent they were that theirs was the only one sure route or locality
or method. Of the remainder probably half were the permanent population
of the place, and busily occupied in making what money they could. They
were storekeepers, gamblers, wagon owners, saloonkeepers, transportation
men. Of course we could quickly have had from most of these men very
definite and practical advice as to where to go and how to get there;
but the advice would most likely have been strongly tempered with
self-interest. The rest of those we encountered were on their way back
from the mines. And from them we got our first dash of cold water in the
face.
According to them the whole gold-fable was vastly exaggerated. To be
sure there was gold, no one could deny that, but it occurred very
rarely, and in terrible places to get at. One had to put in ten dollars'
worth of work, to get out one dollars' worth of dust. And provisions
were so high that the cost of living ate up all the profits. Besides, we
were much too late. All the good claims had been taken up and worked out
by the earliest comers. There was much sickness in the mines, and men
were dying like flies. A man was a fool ever to leave home but a
double-dyed fool not to return there as soon as possible. Thus the army
of the discouraged. There were so many of them, and they talked so
convincingly, that I, for one, felt my golden dream dissipating; and a
glance at Johnny's face showed that he was much in the same frame of
mind. We were very young; and we had so long been keyed up so high that
a reaction was almost inevitable. Yank showed no sign; but chewed his
tobacco imperturbably.
We continued our inquiries, however, and had soon acquired a mass of
varied information. The nearest mines were about sixty miles away; we
could get our freight transported that far by the native Californian
_cargadores_ at fifty dollars the hundredweight. Or we could walk
and carry our own goods. Or we might buy a horse or so to pack in our
belongings. If we wanted to talk to the _cargadores_ we must visit
their camp over toward the south; if we wanted to buy horses we could do
nothing better than to talk to McClellan, at Sutter's Fort. Fifty
dollars a hundred seemed pretty steep for freighting; we would not be
able to carry all we owned on our backs; we decided to try to buy the
horses.
Accordingly next morning, after a delicious sleep under the open sky, we
set out to cover the three or four miles to Sutter's Fort.
This was my first sight of the California country landscape, and I saw
it at the most beautiful time of year. The low-rolling hills were bright
green, against which blended the darker green of the parklike oaks. Over
the slopes were washes of colour where the wild flowers grew, like
bright scarves laid out in the sun. They were of deep orange, or an
equally deep blue, or, perhaps, of mingled white and purple. Each
variety, and there were many of them, seemed to grow by itself so that
the colours were massed. Johnny muttered something about "the trailing
glory--banners of the hills"; but whether that was a quotation or just
Johnny I do not know.
The air was very warm and grateful, and the sky extraordinarily blue.
Broad-pinioned birds wheeled slowly, very high; and all about us, on the
tips of swaying bushes and in the tops of trees, thousands of golden
larks were singing. They were in appearance like our meadow-larks back
east, but their note was quite different; more joyous and lilting, but
with the same liquid quality. We flushed many sparrows of different
sorts; and we saw the plumed quail, the gallant, trim, little,
well-groomed gentlemen, running rapidly ahead of us. And over it all
showered the clear warmth of the sun, like some subtle golden ether that
dissolved and disengaged from the sleeping hills multitudinous hummings
of insects, songs of birds, odours of earth, perfumes of flowers.
In spite of ourselves our spirits rose. We forgot our anxious figurings
on ways and means, our too concentrated hopes of success, our feverish,
intent, single-minded desire for gold. Three abreast we marched forward
through the waving, shimmering wild oats, humming once more the strains
of the silly little song to which the gold seekers had elected to
stride:
"I soon shall be in mining camps,
And then I'll look around,
And when I see the gold-dust there,
I'll pick it off the ground.
"I'll scrape the mountains clean, old girl,
I'll drain the rivers dry;
I'm off for California.
Susannah, don't you cry!"
Even old Yank joined in the chorus, and he had about as much voice as a
rusty windmill, and about the same idea of tune as a hog has of war.
"Oh, Susannah! don't you cry for me!
I'm off to California with my washbowl on my knee!"
We topped a rise and advanced on Sutter's Fort as though we intended by
force and arms to take that historic post.
PART III
THE MINES