Gold. White Stewart Edward

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СКАЧАТЬ 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, naïveté, 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 Molière’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 СКАЧАТЬ