Gold. White Stewart Edward

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 СКАЧАТЬ