Gold Part 55

"Percentage of the profits. They took and sold quite a heap of flour at this rate--sixty thousand barrels to be exact--on which there was a net profit of seven hundred thousand dollars. Then one of those freak things happened that knocked us all silly. Flour just dropped down out of sight. Why? Manipulation. They've got a smart lot out here. The mines had flour enough for the time being; and the only thing that held the price up was the uncertainty of just where the flour was coming from in the future. Well, the other crowd satisfied that uncertainty, and our flour dropped from about twenty-five dollars down to eight. We had sold sixty thousand barrels, and we had ninety thousand to take on our contract, on each one of which we were due to lose six dollars. And the other fellows were sitting back chuckling and waiting for us to unload cheap flour."

"What was there to do?"

Talbot laughed. "I told our crowd that I had always been taught that when a thing was hot, to drop it before I got burned. If each firm paid its forfeit it would cost us four hundred thousand dollars. If we sold all the flour contracted for at the present price, we stood to lose nearer six hundred thousand. So we simply paid our forfeits, threw over the contract, and were three hundred thousand ahead."

"But was that fair to the flour people?" I asked doubtfully.

"Fair?" retorted Talbot. "What in thunder did they put the forfeit clause in for if it wasn't expected we might use it?"

As fast as he acquired a dollar, he invested it in a new chance, until his interests extended from the Presidio to the waterfront of the inner bay. These interests were strange odds and ends. He and a man with his own given name, Talbot H. Green, had t.i.tle in much of what is now Harbour View--that is to say, they would have clear t.i.tle as soon as they had paid heavy mortgages. His shares in the Commercial Wharf lay in the safes of a banking house, and the dollars he had raised on them were valiantly doing duty in holding at bay a pressing debt on precariously held waterfront equities. Talbot mentioned glibly sums that reduced even the most successful mining to a child's game. The richest strike we had heard rumoured never yielded the half of what our friend had tossed into a single deal. Our own pitiful thousands were beggarly by comparison, insignificant, not worth considering.

Of all the varied and far-extending affairs the Ward Block was the flower. Talbot owned options, equities, properties, shares in all the varied and numerous activities of the new city; but each and every one of them he held subject to payments which at the present time he could by no possibility make. Mortgages and loans had sucked every immediately productive dollar; and those dollars that remained were locked tight away from their owner until such time as he might gain possession of a golden key. This did not worry him.

"They are properties that are bound to rise in value," he told us. "In fact, they are going up every minute we sit here talking. They are futures."

Among other pieces, Talbot had been able to buy the lot on the Plaza where now the Ward Block was going up. He paid a percentage down, and gave a mortgage for the rest. Now all the money he could squeeze from all his other interests he was putting into the structure. That is why I rather fancifully alluded to the Ward Block as the flower of all Talbot's activities.

"Building is the one thing you have to pay cash for throughout," said Talbot regretfully. "Labour and materials demand gold. But I see my way clear; and a first-cla.s.s, well-appointed business block in this town right now is worth more than the United States mint. That's cash coming in for you--regularly every month. It will pay from the start four or five times the amount necessary to keep everything else afloat. Jim Reckett has taken the entire lower floor at thirty thousand. The offices upstairs will pay from a thousand a month up and they are every one rented in advance. Once we get our rents coming in, the strain is relieved. I can begin to take up my mortgages and loans, and once that is begun we are on the road to Millionaireville."

Once more he recapitulated his affairs--the land on the Plaza two hundred thousand; the building eighty thousand; the Harbour View lands anything they might rise to, but nearly a quarter million now; ten thousand par value of the wharf stock already paying dividends; real estate here and there and everywhere in the path of the city's growth; shares in a new hotel that must soon touch par; the plank road--as we jotted down the figures, and the magic total grew, such trifling little affairs as gold mines dropped quite below the horizon. We stared at Talbot fascinated.

And then for the first time we learned that the five thousand dollars we had sent down from Hangman's Gulch, and the sum left from the robbery, was not slumbering in some banker's safe, but had been sent dancing with the other dollars at Talbot's command.

"I didn't know just what you fellows intended," said he, "but we were partners up there at the mines, and I concluded it would be all right.

You didn't mean----"

"Sure not!" broke in Johnny heartily. "You're welcome to mine."

"Same here," agreed Yank and I.

And then Talbot let us see that he considered us to that extent partners in the business.

"I have the date it arrived," he told us, "and I know just how much actual capital I had myself at that time. So I'm computing your shares in the venture on that basis. It comes to about one tenth apiece for Yank and Johnny. Frank and I have an agreement already."

Johnny stared at the paper on which the totals had been pencilled.

"Not any!" he protested vehemently. "It isn't fair! You've made this thing by sheer genius, and it isn't fair for me to take a tenth of it on the strength of a measly little consignment of gold dust. You give me your note for a thousand dollars--or whatever the sum is--at interest, if you want to, and that's all that is coming to me."

"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 a.s.sured, 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 a.s.set. 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.

n.o.body 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 inst.i.tution.

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 princ.i.p.ally engaged in manufacturing gold coins and slugs and buying real estate.[A] 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 Jose was selected as the capital. n.o.body wanted to serve in the new legislature; men hadn't time. There was the greatest difficulty in getting a.s.semblymen.

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 cla.s.ses of society. In 1849 no social stigma, or very little, attached to any open a.s.sociation. 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 inst.i.tutions 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 a.s.sistance 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 c.o.c.k.

"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.