Kitabı oku: «Gold», sayfa 22

“I feel the same,” said Yank.

“Boys,” argued Talbot earnestly, “that doesn’t go. That five thousand saved me. It came at a time when I had to have money or go down. I had been to every bank, to every firm, to every man in town, and I couldn’t raise ten cents more. If you refuse this thing, you will be doing something that─”

“Oh, hush up, Tal!” broke in Johnny gruffly; “if that’s how you feel─”

“It is.”

“It is now,” said Johnny firmly, “10:30 A.M., but I’m going to have bubbles. If you fellows don’t want me all drunk and dressed up, you’ve got to help me drink them.”

CHAPTER XLIV
PLUTOCRATS!

We felt very elated–and rather small. Talbot had alone and without, so to speak, moving from his tracks, made a fortune, while we, after going through many hardships, adventures, and hard work, had returned almost penniless. One of our first tasks was to convince Talbot of the injustice to himself in giving us shares based on a proportionate money investment. We made him see, after a while, that his own genius counted for something in the matter. He then agreed, but reluctantly, to reduce our shares to a twentieth each, and included me in this, despite our previous agreement. If we had adhered to that, my proportion would have been nearer a fortieth.

This having been decided–after considerable argument–we settled down to wait for the completion of the Ward Block. Once the rents from that structure should begin to come in, it was agreed we should take out ready money enough to return East. The remainder, less Talbot’s expenses, would of course have to go back into releasing all the other interests. The formal opening had been arranged for the first of January.

In the meantime we loafed magnificently, and lived on my money. Now that our futures were all assured, Yank and Johnny condescended to temporary loans. Occasionally we could help Talbot in some of the details of his varied businesses, but most of the time we idled. I do think we deserved a rest.

Our favourite occupation was that of reviewing our property. To this end we took long tramps over the hills, hunting painstakingly for obscure corner stakes or monuments that marked some one of our numerous lots. On them we would gaze solemnly, although in no manner did they differ from all the other sage-brush hill country about them. In a week we knew accurately every piece of property belonging to Our Interests, and we had listed every other more intangible equity or asset. One of Johnny’s favourite feats was to march Yank and me up to a bar, face us, and interrogate us according to an invariable formula. We must have presented a comical sight–I with my great bulk and round, fresh face alongside the solemn, lank, and leathery Yank; both of us drawn up at attention, and solemn as prairie dogs.

“How much is one twentieth of two thousand thousand?” inquired Johnny.

“One hundred thousand,” Yank and I chorused.

“Is that a plutocrat?” demanded Johnny cryptically.

“It is!” we cried.

Our sense of our own financial importance being thus refreshed, we advanced in rigid military formation to the bar and took our drinks. Two million dollars was the amount we had chosen as representing the value of Our Interests. In deciding upon this figure we considered ourselves very moderate in refusing to add probable future increment. It might also be added that we equally neglected to deduct present liabilities. Nobody ever guessed what this mysterious performance of ours meant, but every one came to expect it and to be amused by it. In a mild way we and our fool monkeyshines came to be a well-known institution.

Having nothing else to do, we entered heartily into the life and pleasures of the place, and we met many of the leading citizens. Some of them have since become historical personages. Talbot was hand in glove with most of them, and in and out of dozens of their schemes. There was David Broderick, a secretive, dignified, square-cut, bulldog sort of a man, just making his beginning in a career that was to go far. I remember he was then principally engaged in manufacturing gold coins and slugs and buying real estate.¹ His great political rival, Dr. Gwin the Southerner, I also met; and Talbot H. Green, then and for some time later, one of the most liked and respected of men, but whose private scandal followed him from the East and ruined him; and Sam Brannan, of course, the ex-elder of the Mormons; and Jim Reckett, the gambler; and W. T. Coleman, later known as Old Vigilante, and a hundred others. These were strong, forceful men, and their company was always interesting. They had ideas on all current topics, and they did not hesitate to express those ideas. We thus learned something of the community in which we had been living so long.

We heard of the political difficulties attendant on the jumble of military and unauthorized civil rule; of the convention at Monterey in September, with its bitterly contested boundary disputes; of the great and mooted question as to whether California should be “slave” or “free”; of the doubt and uncertainty as to the status of California-made law pending some action by the Federal Congress; of how the Federal Congress, with masterly inactivity and probably some slight skittishness as to mingling in the slavery argument, had adjourned without doing anything at all! So California had to take her choice of remaining under military governorship or going ahead and taking a chance on having her acts ratified later. She chose the latter course. San José was selected as the capital. Nobody wanted to serve in the new legislature; men hadn’t time. There was the greatest difficulty in getting assemblymen. The result was that, with few exceptions, the first legislature of fifty-two members was composed of cheap professional politicians from the South, and useless citizens from elsewhere. This body was then in session. It was invariably referred to as “The Legislature of the Thousand Drinks.” I heard discussed numberless schemes for its control for this or that purpose; many of them, it seemed to me, rather unscrupulous.

These big men of the city talked of other things besides politics. From them I heard of the state of commercial affairs, with its system of consignments and auctions, its rumours of fleet clipper ships, its corners of the market, its gluttings with unforeseen cargoes of unexpected vessels, and all the other complex and delicate adjustments and changes that made business so fascinating and so uncertain. All these men were filled with a great optimism and an abiding enthusiasm for the future. They talked of plank roads, of sewers, of schools, churches, hospitals, pavements, fills, the razing of hills, wharves, public buildings, water systems; and they talked of them so soberly and in such concrete terms of accomplishment that the imagination was tricked into accepting them as solid facts. Often I have gone forth from listening to one of these earnest discussions to look about me on that wind-swept, sandblown, flimsy, dirty, sprawling camp they called a city, with its half dozen “magnificent” brick buildings that any New England village could duplicate, and have laughed wildly until the tears came, over the absurdity of it. I was young. I did not know that a city is not bricks but men, is not fact but the vitality of a living ideal.

There were, of course, many other men than those I have named, and of varied temperaments and beliefs. Some of them were heard of later in the history of the state. Terry, James King of William, Stephen J. Field, General Richardson were some of those whose names I remember. They were, in general, frank and open in manner, ready to offer or take a joke, and on terms of good-natured comradeship with each other; and yet somehow I always felt behind it all a watchful reservation. This was indefinable, but it indubitably existed. The effect on me was an instinct that these men would remain good-natured, laughing, joking, intimate, just as long as nothing happened to make them otherwise. They were a pack, hunting in full cry the same quarry; but were one of them to fall out, the rest would sweep on without a backward glance. As an individual human being no one of them was in reality important to any other. They pursued the same aims, by much the same methods, and they could sometimes make use of each other to the advantage of both. In the meantime, since they as the prominent men of a mixed community must possess qualities in common, they found each other mutually agreeable. Many called themselves friends; but I much doubt if the friendship that would render aid at a sacrifice was very common. Every man played his own game.

In the town outside we made many other acquaintances, of all classes of society. In 1849 no social stigma, or very little, attached to any open association. Gamblers were respectable citizens, provided they ran straight games. The fair and frail sisterhood was well represented. It was nothing against a man, either in the public eye or actually, to be seen talking, walking, or riding with one of these ladies; for every one knew them. There were now a good many decent women in town, living mainly with their husbands and children very quietly among the sandhills on the edges of the town. One saw little of them unless he took the trouble to search them out. We did so, and thus struck up acquaintance with a half dozen very pleasant households, where occasionally my New England heart was gladdened by a genuine homebaked New England pie. These people had children and religious beliefs; and for the one and the other they had organized churches and schools, both of which were well attended. Furthermore, such institutions were contributed to by many of the business men who never entered their doors. This respectable life was stronger than is generally known. It was quiet and in the background, and under the deep shadow cast by the glaring light of downtown, but it was growing in solidity and strength.

Among the others we came across the preacher we had seen holding forth on the wharf. He was engaged, with the assistance of two men of the Methodist persuasion, in building a church. The three had themselves cut and hewed the timbers. Mr. Taylor, for that was his name, explained to me that, having no money, that seemed the the only way to get a church. He showed us his own place, a little shack not unlike the others, but enclosed, and planted with red geraniums, nasturtiums and other bright things.

“As far as I know,” he told us with pride, “that is the first garden in San Francisco.”

In the backyard he had enclosed three chickens–two hens and a cock.

“I paid eighteen dollars for them,” said he.

We looked at each other in startled astonishment. The sum appeared a trifle extravagant considering the just-acknowledged impecuniosity of the church. He caught the glance.

“Boys,” he said quaintly, “San Francisco is a very lonesome place for the godly. The hosts of sin are very strong, and the faithful are very few. Mortal flesh is weak; and mortal spirit is prone to black discouragement. When I bought those chickens I bought eighteen dollars’ worth of hope. Somehow Sunday morning seems more like the Sabbath with them clicking around sleepy and lazy and full of sun.”

We liked him so much that we turned to at odd times and helped him with his carpenter work. While thus engaged he confided to us his intention to preach against the gambling the next Sunday in the Plaza. We stopped hammering to consider this.

“I shouldn’t, if I were you,” said I. “The gamblers own the Plaza; they are respected by the bulk of the community; and they won’t stand any nonsense. They none of them think anything of shooting a man in their places. I don’t think they will stand for it. I am afraid you will be roughly handled.”

“More likely shot,” put in Johnny bluntly.

“Well, well, boys, we’ll see,” said Taylor easily.

Nor could we move him, in spite of the fact that, as we came to see his intention was real, we urged very earnestly against it.

“Well, if you will, you will,” Johnny conceded at last, with a sigh. “We’ll see what we can do to get you a fair show.”

“Now that is just what I don’t want you to do,” begged the old man earnestly. “I want no vain contention and strife. If the Lord desires that I preach to these sinners, He will protect me.”

In the end he extorted from us a reluctant promise not to mingle in the affair.

“He’s just looking for trouble,” muttered Johnny, “and there’s no doubt he’ll find it. The gamblers aren’t going to stand for a man’s cussing ’em outright on their own doorsteps–and I don’t know as I blame them. Gambling isn’t such a terrible, black, unforgivable sin as I see it.”

“That’s because you’re ahead of the game, Johnny,” drawled Yank.

“Just the same the old fool is wrong,” persisted Johnny, “and he’s as obstinate as a mule, and he makes me mad clean through. Nevertheless he’s a good old sort, and I’d hate to see him hurt.”

The news spread abroad, and there was much speculation as to what would happen. In general the sentiment was hostile to the preacher. It was considered an unwarrantable interference with freedom for any man to attempt to dictate the conduct of another. Everybody agreed that religion was all right; but by religion they meant some vague utterance of platitudes. On the appointed Sunday a very large crowd gathered in the Plaza. Nobody knew just what the gamblers intended to do about it. Those competent citizens were as close mouthed as ever. But it was understood that no nonsense was to be permitted, and that this annoying question must be settled at once and fully. As one man expressed it:

“We’ll have these fellows caterwauling all over the place if we don’t shut down on them right sharp off quick.”

Taylor arrived about ten o’clock and proceeded briskly to the pork barrel that had been rolled out to serve as a pulpit. He faced a lowering, hostile mob.

“Gentlemen,” said he, “if some means of communication existed by which the United States could this morning know that street preaching was to be attempted in the streets of San Francisco, the morning papers, badly informed as to the temper and disposition of the people of this new country, would feel themselves fully justified in predicting riot, if not actual bloodshed. Furthermore, I do not doubt that the greater dailies would hold their forms open to report the tragedy when news of it should come in. But we of the West know better than that. We know ourselves rough and ready, but we know ourselves also to be lovers of fair play. We know that, even though we may not agree with a man, we are willing to afford him a fair hearing. And as for rioting or bloodshed, we can afford to smile rather than become angry at such wide misconception of our decency and sense of fair dealing.”

Having in this skilful fashion drawn the venom from the fangs of the mob, he went directly ahead at his sermon, hammering boldly on his major thesis. He finished in a respectful silence, closed his Bible with a snap, and strode away through the lane the crowd opened for him.

Truth to tell, there was much in the sermon. Gambling, although considered one of the respectable amusements, undoubtedly did a great deal of harm. Men dropped their last cents at the tables. I remember one young business man who had sold out his share in his firm for ten thousand dollars in cash and three notes for five thousand each. He had every intention of taking this little fortune back to his family in the East, but he began gambling. First, he lost his ten thousand dollars in cash. This took him just two days. After vacillating another day, he staked one of the notes, at a discount, of course. This he lost. A second note followed the first; and everybody confidently expected that the third would disappear in the same fashion. But Jim Reckett, who was a very good sort, took this man aside, and gave him a good talking-to.

“You confounded fool,” said he, “you’re barred from my tables. My advice to you is to go to your old partners, tell them what an ass you’ve made of yourself, and ask them to let you have a few thousand on that last note. And then you leave on to-day’s Panama steamer. And, say, if they won’t do it, you come to me.”

The young fellow took this advice.

The Panama steamers were crowded to the rail. Indeed, the exodus was almost as brisk as the immigration, just at this time of year. A moderate proportion of those going out had been successful, but the great majority were disappointed. They were tired, and discouraged, and homesick; and their minds were obsessed with the one idea–to get back. We who remained saw them go with considerable envy, and perhaps a good deal of inner satisfaction that soon we were to follow. Of the thousands who were remaining in California, those who had definitely and permanently cast their lot with the country were lost in the crowd. The rest intended to stay another year, two years, perhaps even three; but then each expected to go back.

CHAPTER XLV
THE CATASTROPHE

So things went along for a month. Christmas drew near. Every joint in town was preparing for a big celebration, and we were fully in the mood to take part in it. The Ward Block was finished. From top to bottom it had been swept and cleared. Crowds came every day to admire the varnish, the glass, the fireplaces, the high plastered walls; to sniff the clean new smell of it. Everybody admitted it to be the finest building in the city. Yank, Johnny, and I spent most of our time proudly showing people around, pointing out the offices the various firms intended to occupy. Downstairs Jim Reckett was already installing some of the splendours that were to make the transplanted El Dorado the most gorgeous gambling place in town. Here the public was not admitted. The grand opening, on New Year’s day, was not thus to lose its finest savour.

On Christmas eve we went to bed, strangely enough, very early. All the rest of the town was celebrating, but we had been busy moving furniture and fixtures, had worked late in order to finish the job, and were very tired. By this time we were so hardened that we could sleep through any sort of a racket, so the row going on below and on both sides did not bother us a bit. I, personally, fell immediately into a deep slumber.

The first intimation of trouble came to me in my sleep. I dreamed we were back on the Porcupine, and that the stream was in flood. I could distinctly hear the roar of it, as it swept by; and I remember Johnny and myself were trying desperately to climb a big pine tree in order to get above the encroaching waters. A wind sprang up and shook the pine violently. I came slowly to waking consciousness, the dream fading into reality. Yank was standing by my cot, shaking me by the shoulder. He was fully dressed, and carried his long rifle.

“Get up!” he told me. “There’s a big fire one or two doors away, and it’s headed this way.”

Then I realized that the roar of the flames had induced my dream.

I hastily slipped on my clothes and buckled my gold belt around my waist. The fire was humming away in a steady crescendo, punctuated by confused shouts of many men. Light flickered redly through the cracks of the loosely constructed hotel building. I found Johnny awaiting me at the door.

“It’s a hummer,” he said; “started in Denison’s Exchange. They say three men have been killed.”

The Plaza was black with men, their faces red with the light of the flames. A volunteer crew were busily darting in and out of the adjacent buildings, carrying out all sorts of articles and dumping them in the square.

“There’s no water nearer than the bay,” an acquaintance shouted in our ears. “There ain’t much to do. She’ll burn herself out in a few minutes.”

The three buildings were already gutted. A sheet of fire sucked straight upward in the still air, as steadily as a candle flame, and almost as unwavering. It was a grand and beautiful spectacle. The flimsy structures went like paper. Talbot saw us standing at a little elevation, and forced his way to us.

“It will die down in five minutes,” said he. “What do you bet on Warren’s place? Do you think she’ll go?”

“It’s mighty hot all around there,” said I doubtfully.

“Yes, but the flames are going straight up; and, as you say, it will begin to die down pretty soon,” put in Johnny.

“The walls are smoking a little,” commented a bystander judicially.

“She’s a fine old bonfire, anyway,” said Talbot.

Fifteen or twenty men were trying to help Warren’s place resist the heat. They had blankets and pails of water, and were attempting to interpose these feeble defences at the points most severely attacked. Each man stood it as long as he could, then rushed out to cool his reddened face.

“Reminds me of the way I used to pop corn when I was a kid,” grinned a miner. “I wouldn’t care for that job.”

“Just the same, they’ll save it,” observed Talbot judicially.

Almost coincident with his words a long-drawn a-ah! burst from the crowd. A wandering gust of wind came in from the ocean. For the briefest instant the tall straight column of flame bent gracefully before it, then came upright again as it passed. In that instant it licked across the side wall of Warren’s place, and immediately Warren’s place burst into flame.

“Hard luck!” commented Talbot.

The firefighters swarmed out like bees from a disturbed hive.

“Our hotel next,” said Johnny.

“That’s safe enough; there’s a wide lot between,” I observed.

A fresh crew of firefighters took the place of the others–namely, those personally interested in saving the hotel.

“Lucky the night is so still,” said Talbot.

We watched Warren’s place burn with all the half guilty joy of those who are sorry; but who are glad to be there if it has to happen. Suddenly Talbot threw up his head.

“Feel that breeze?” he cried.

“Suction into the fire,” suggested Johnny.

But Talbot shook his head impatiently, trying to peer through the glare into the sky.

It was a very gentle breeze from the direction of the ocean. I could barely feel it on my cheek, and it was not strong enough as yet to affect in the slightest the upward-roaring column of flame. For a moment I was inclined to agree with Johnny that it was simply a current of air induced by the conflagration. But now an uneasy motion began to take place in the crowd. Men elbowed their way here and there, met, conferred, gathered in knots. In less than a minute Talbot signalled us. We made our way to where he was standing with Sam Brannan, Casey, Green, and a few others.

“Thank God the wind is from the northwest,” Talbot said fervently. “The Ward Block is safely to windward, and we don’t need to worry about that, anyway. But it is a wind, and it’s freshening. We’ve got to do something to stop this fire.”

As though to emphasize the need for some sort of action, a second and stronger puff of wind sent whirling aloft a shower of sparks and brands.

We started at double quick in the direction of the flimsy small structures between the old El Dorado and the Parker House. Some men, after a moment, brought ropes and axes. We began to tear down the shanties.

But before we had been at work five minutes, the fire began to run. The wind from the sea increased. Blazing pieces of wood flew through the air like arrows. Flames stooped in their stride, and licked up their prey, and went on rejoicing. Structures one minute dark and cold and still burst with startling suddenness and completeness into rioting conflagration. Our little beginning of a defence was attacked and captured before we had had time to perfect it. The half dozen shanties we had pulled to the ground merely furnished piled fuel. Somewhat demoralized, we fell back, and tried, rather vaguely, to draw a second line of defence. The smoke and sparks suffocated and overwhelmed us, and the following flames leaped upon us as from behind an ambush. Some few men continued gropingly to try to do something, but the most of us were only too glad to get out where we could catch a breath.

Almost immediately, however, we were hurried back by frantic merchants.

“Save the goods!” was the cry.

We laboured like slaves, carrying merchandise, fixtures, furniture, anything and everything from the darkened interiors of buildings to the open spaces. I worked as I had never worked before, and not once did I know whose property I thus saved. At first I groped in the darkness, seizing what I could; then gradually, like the glow of a red dawn, a strange light grew, showing dimly and ruddily the half-guessed features of the place. It glowed, this light, increasing in power as heating metal slowly turns red. And then the flames licked through; and dripping with sweat, I abandoned that place to its enemy.

All sense of time and all sense of locality were lost. The world was a strange world of deep, concealing shadows and strong, revealing glares, and a mist of smoke, and hurrying, shouting, excited multitudes. Sometimes I found myself in queer little temporary eddies of stillness, where a certain calm and leisure seemed to have been insulated. Then for a brief moment or so I rested. Occasionally I would find myself with some stranger, and we would exchange brief exclamatory remarks.

“Whole city is going!”

“Looks like it.”

“Hear a roof fell in and killed twenty men.”

“Probably exaggerated.”

“Probably. Don’t catch me under no falling roofs! When she gets afire, I get out.”

“Same here.”

“Well, I suppose we ought to try to do something.”

“Suppose so.”

And we would go at it again.

At the end of two or three hours–no man can guess time in such a situation–the fire stopped advancing. I suppose the wind must have changed, though at the time I did not notice it. At any rate, I found myself in the gray dawn looking rather stupidly at a row of the frailest kind of canvas and scantling houses which the fire had sheared cleanly in two, and wondering why in thunder the rest of them hadn’t burned!

A dense pall of smoke hung over the city, and streamed away to the south and east. In the burned district all sense of location had been lost. Where before had been well-known landmarks now lay a flat desert. The fire had burned fiercely and completely, and, in lack of food, had died down to almost nothing. A few wisps of smoke still rose, a few coals glowed, but beside them nothing remained to indicate even the laying out of the former plan. Only over across a dead acreage of ashes rose here and there the remains of isolated brick walls. They looked, through the eddying mists and smoke, like ancient ruins, separated by wide spaces.

I gazed dully across the waste area, taking deep breaths, resting, my mind numb. Then gradually it was borne in on me that the Plaza itself looked rather more empty-sided than it should. A cold hand gripped my heart. I began to skirt the smouldering embers of the shanties and wooden warehouses, trying to follow where the streets had been. Men were prowling about everywhere, blackened by smoke, their clothing torn and burned.

“Can you make out where Higgins’s store was?” one of them hailed me. “I had a little shanty next door, and some gold dust. Figure I might pan it out of the ashes, if I could only find the place.”

I had no time to help him, and left him prowling around seeking for a landmark.

The Plaza was full of people. I made my way to the northerly corner, and, pushing a passage through the bystanders, contemplated three jagged, tottering brick walls, a heap of smouldering débris, and a twisted tangle of iron work. This represented all that remained of the Ward Block. The change of wind that had saved the shanties had destroyed our fortune!