The Golden Dream: Adventures in the Far West, R. M. Ballantyne [to read list .txt] 📗

your fortune over again—nay, don’t shake your head, I know what you would say, you have no money to equip yourself, and you won’t be indebted to strangers, and all that sort of stuff; but that won’t do, my boy. I’m not a stranger; don’t I know all your history from first to last?”

Tom Collins sighed.

“Well, perhaps I don’t know it all, but I know the most of it, and besides, I feel as if I had known you all my life—”

“Ned,” interrupted the other, in an earnest tone of voice, “I feel your kindness very much—no one has spoken to me as you have done since I came to the diggings—but I cannot agree to your proposal to-day. Meet me at the Parker House to-morrow, at this time, and I shall give you a final answer.”

“But why not give it now?”

“Because—because, I want to—to get paid for a job I expect to get—”

“Tom,” said Ned, stopping and laying his hand on the shoulder of his companion, while he looked earnestly into his face, “let us begin our friendship with mutual candour. Do you not intend to make a few dollars, and then try to increase them by another throw at the gaming-table!”

The youth’s brow flushed slightly as he answered, “You are right, I had half an intention of trying my fortune for the last time—”

“Then,” said Ned firmly and emphatically, “you shall do nothing of the sort. Gambling for money is a mean, pitiful, contemptible thing—don’t frown, my dear fellow, I do not apply these terms to you, I apply them to the principle of gambling—a principle which you do not hold, as I know from your admission, made to me not many minutes ago, that you have often striven against the temptation. Many men don’t realise the full extent of the sinfulness of many of their practices, but although that renders them less culpable, it does not render them innocent, much less does it justify the evil practices. Gambling is all that I have styled it, and a great deal worse; and you must give it up—I insist on it. Moreover, Tom, I insist on your coming to dine with me at the Parker House. I shall introduce you to my friend Captain Bunting, whom you already know by sight—so come along.”

“Well, I will,” said Tom, smiling at his friend’s energy, but still hanging back; “but you must permit me to go to my lodgings first. I shall be back immediately.”

“Very good. Remember, we dine in the course of an hour, so be punctual.”

While Tom Collins hurried away to his lodgings, Ned Sinton proceeded towards the shores of the bay in a remarkably happy frame of mind, intending to pass his leisure hour in watching the thousands of interesting and amusing incidents that were perpetually taking place on the crowded quays, where the passengers from a newly-arrived brig were looking in bewildered anxiety after their luggage, and calling for porters; where traffic, by means of boats, between the fleet and the land created constant confusion and hubbub; where men of all nations bargained for the goods of all climes in every known tongue.

While he gazed in silence at the exciting and almost bewildering scene, his attention was attracted to a group of men, among whose vociferating tones he thought he distinguished familiar voices.

“That’s it; here’s your man, sir,” cried one, bursting from the crowd with a huge portmanteau on his shoulder. “Now, then, where’ll I steer to?”

“Right ahead to the best hotel,” answered a slim Yankee, whose black coat, patent-leather boots, and white kids, in such a place, told plainly enough that a superfine dandy had mistaken his calling.

“Ay, ay, sir!” shouted Bill Jones, as he brushed past Ned, in his new capacity of porter.

“Faix, ye’ve cotched a live Yankee!” exclaimed a voice there was no mistaking, as the owner slapped Bill on the shoulder. “He’ll make yer fortin’, av ye only stick by him. He’s just cut out for the diggin’s, av his mother wos here to take care of him.”

Larry O’Neil gave a chuckle, slapped his pockets, and cut an elephantine caper, as he turned from contemplating the retreating figure of his shipmate’s employer, and advanced towards the end of the quay.

“Now, thin, who’s nixt?” cried he, holding out both arms, and looking excited, as if he were ready to carry off any individual bodily in his arms to any place, for mere love, without reference to money. “Don’t all spake at wance. Tshoo dollars a mile for anythin’ onder a ton, an’ yerself on the top of it for four! Horoo, Mister Sinton, darlint, is it yerself? Och, but this is the place intirely—goold and silver for the axin’ a’most! Ah, ye needn’t grin. Look here!”

Larry plunged both hands into the pockets of his trousers, and pulled them forth full of half and quarter dollars, with a few shining little nuggets of gold interspersed among them.

Ned opened his eyes in amazement, and, taking his excited comrade apart from the crowd, asked how he had come by so much money.

“Come by it!” he exclaimed; “ye could come by twice the sum, av ye liked. Sure, didn’t I find that they wos chargin’ tshoo dollars—aiqual to eight shillin’s, I’m towld—for carryin’ a box or portmanter the length o’ me fut; so I turns porter all at wance, an’ faix I made six dollars in less nor an hour. But as I was comin’ back, I says to myself, says I, ‘Larry, ye’ll be the better of a small glass o’ somethin’—eh!’ So in I goes to a grog-shop, and faix I had to pay half-a-dollar for a thimbleful o’ brandy, bad luck to them, as would turn the stomik o’ a pig. I almost had a round wi’ the landlord; but they towld me it wos the same iverywhere. So I wint and had another in the nixt shop I sees, jist to try; and it was thrue. Then a Yankee spies my knife,—the great pig-sticker that Bob Short swopped wi’ me for my junk o’ plum-duff off the Cape. It seems they’ve run out o’ sich articles just at this time, and would give handfuls o’ goold for wan. So says I, ‘Wot’ll ye give?’

“‘Three dollars, I guess,’ says wan.

“‘Four,’ says another; ‘he’s chaitin’ ye.’

“‘Four’s bid,’ says I, mountin’ on a keg o’ baccy, and howldin up the knife; ‘who says more? It’s the rale steel, straight from Manchester or Connaught, I misremimber which. Warranted to cut both ways, av ye only turn the idge round, and shove with a will.’

“I begood in joke; but faix they took me up in arnest, an’ run up the price to twinty dollars—four pounds, as sure as me name’s Larry—before I know’d where I wos. I belave I could ha’ got forty for it, but I hadn’t the heart to ax more, for it wasn’t worth a brass button.”

“You’ve made a most successful beginning, Larry. Have you any more knives like that one?”

“Sorrow a wan—more’s the pity. But that’s only a small bit o’ me speckilations. I found six owld newspapers in the bottom o’ me chist, and, would ye belave it, I sowld ’em, ivery wan, for half-a-dollar the pace; and I don’t rightly know how much clear goold I’ve got by standin’ all mornin’ at the post-office.”

“Standing at the post-office! What do you mean?”

“Nother more or less nor what I say. I suppose ye know the mail’s comed in yisterday morning; so says I to myself this mornin’, ‘Ye’ve got no livin’ sowl in the owld country that’s likely to write to ye, but ye better go, for all that, an’ ax if there’s letters. Maybe there is; who knows?’ So away I wint, and sure enough I found a row o’ men waitin’ for their letters; so I crushes for’ard—och! but I thought they’d ha’ hung me on the spot,—and I found it was a rule that ‘first come first sarved—fair play and no favour.’ They wos all standin’ wan behind another in a line half-a-mile long av it wos a fut, as patient as could be; some readin’ the noosepapers, and some drinkin’ coffee and tay and grog, that wos sowld by men as went up an’ down the line the whole mornin’. So away I goes to the end o’ the line, an’ took my place, detarmined to stand it out; and, in three minutes, I had a tail of a dozen men behind me. ‘Faix, Larry,’ says I, ‘it’s the first time ye iver comminced at the end of a thing in order to git to the beginnin’.’

“Well, when I wos gittin’ pretty near the post-office windy, I hears the chap behind me a-sayin’ to the fellow behind him that he expected no letters, but only took up his place in the line to sell it to them what did. An’ sure enough I found that lots o’ them were there on the same errand. Just then up comes a miner, in big boots and a wide-awake.

“‘Och,’ says he, ‘who’ll sell me a place?’ and with that he offered a lot o’ pure goold lumps.

“‘Guess it’s too little,’ says the man next me.

“‘Ah, ye thievin’ blackguard!’ says I. ‘Here, yer honer, I’ll sell ye my place for half the lot. I can wait for me letter, more be token I’m not sure there is wan.’ For, ye see, I wos riled at the Yankee’s greed. So out I steps, and in steps the miner, and hands me the whole he’d offered at first.

“‘Take them, my man,’ says he; ‘you’re an honest fellow, and it’s a trate to meet wan here.’”

“Capital,” cried Ned, laughing heartily; “and you didn’t try for a letter after all?”

“Porter there?” shouted a voice from the quay.

“That’s me, yer honer. Here ye are,” replied the Irishman, bounding away with a yell, and shouldering a huge leathern trunk, with which he vanished from the scene, leaving Ned to pursue the train of thought evoked by his account of his remarkable experiences.

We deem it necessary here to assure the reader that the account given by Larry O’Neil of his doings was by no means exaggerated. The state of society, and the eccentricities of traffic displayed in San Francisco and other Californian cities during the first years of the gold-fever, beggars all description. Writers on that place and period find difficulty in selecting words and inventing similes in order to convey anything like an adequate idea of their meaning. Even eye-witnesses found it almost impossible to believe the truth of what they heard and saw; and some have described the whole circle of life and manners there to have been more like to the wild, incongruous whirl of a pantomime than to the facts of real life.

Even in the close and abrupt juxtaposition of the ludicrous and the horrible this held good. Ned Sinton had scarcely parted from his hilarious shipmate, when he was attracted by shouts, as if of men quarrelling, in a gaming-house; and, a few moments later, the report of a pistol was heard, followed by a sharp cry of agony. Rushing into the house, and forcing his way through the crowd, he reached the table in time to see the bloody corpse of a man carried out. This unfortunate had repeatedly lost large sums of money, and, growing desperate, staked his all on a final chance. He lost; and, drawing his bowie-knife, in the heat of despair, rushed at the president of the table. A dozen arms arrested him, and rendered his intended assault abortive; nevertheless, the president coolly drew a revolver from under the cloth, and shot him dead. For a few minutes there was some attempt at disturbance, and some condemned, while others justified the act. But the body was removed, and soon the game went on again as if nothing had occurred.

Sickened with the sight, Ned hurried from the house, and walked rapidly towards the shores of the bay, beyond the limits of the canvas town,