Gold. White Stewart Edward

watched the figures of men hurrying by in the spangled darkness.

      Johnny returned very much excited.

      “I’ve been robbed!” he cried.

      “Robbed? Is your money all gone?”

      “No, there’s a little left, but─”

      Talbot laughed quietly.

      “Sit down, Johnny, and cool off,” he advised. “If anybody had robbed you, they’d have taken the whole kit and kaboodle. Did you come out ahead on those monte games?”

      Johnny blushed, and laughed a little.

      “I see what you’re at, but you’re away off there. I just played for small stakes.”

      “And lost a lot of them. I sort of look-out your game. But that’s all right. How much did the ‘robbers’ leave you?”

      “Twelve dollars, besides what I have in my clothes–twenty-one dollars in all,” said Johnny.

      “Well, that’s pretty good. You beat Frank and me to death. There’s our total assets,” said Talbot, and laid a ten-dollar gold piece and a dime on his knee.

      “We’ll call that dime a curiosity,” said he, “for I notice a quarter is the smallest coin they use out here. Now you see that we’ve got to talk business. Frank and I haven’t got enough to live on for one more day.”

      “There’s enough among us─” began Yank.

      “You mean you already have your share of the partnership finances,” corrected Talbot, quickly. “If we’re going to be partners–and that’s desired and understood, I suppose?” We all nodded emphatic agreement. “We must all put in the same amount. I move that said amount be two hundred and twenty dollars apiece. Yank, you can loaf to-morrow; you’ve got your share all made up. You can put in the day finding out all about getting to the mines, and how much it costs, and what we will need.”

      “All right; I’ll do it,” said Yank.

      “As for the rest of us,” cried Talbot, “we’ve got to rustle up two hundred and twenty dollars each before to-morrow evening!”

      “How?” I asked blankly

      “How should I know? Out there” he waved his hand abroad at the flickering lights. “There is the Golden City, challenging every man as he enters her gates. She offers opportunity and fortune. All a man has to do is go and take them! Accept the challenge!”

      “The only way I could take them would be to lift them off some other fellow at the point of a gun,” said Johnny gloomily.

      CHAPTER XI

      I MAKE TWENTY-FIVE DOLLARS

      We talked the situation over thoroughly, and then turned in, having lost our chance to see the sights. Beneath us and in the tent next door went on a tremendous row of talking, laughing, and singing that for a little while prevented me from falling asleep. But the last month had done wonders for me in that way; and shortly I dropped off.

      Hours later I awakened, shivering with cold to find the moonlight pouring into the room, and the bunks all occupied. My blanket had disappeared, which accounted for my dreams of icebergs. Looking carefully over the sleeping forms I discerned several with two blankets, and an equal number with none! At first I felt inclined to raise a row; then thought better of it, by careful manipulation I abstracted two good blankets from the most unprotected of of my neighbours, wrapped them tightly about me, and so slept soundly.

      We went downstairs and out into the sweetest of mornings. The sun was bright, the sky clear and blue, the wind had not yet risen, balmy warmth showered down through every particle of the air. I had felt some May days like this back on our old farm. Somehow they were associated in my mind with Sunday morning and the drawling, lazy clucking of hens. Only here there were no hens, and if it was Sunday morning–which it might have been–nobody knew it.

      The majority of the citizens had not yet appeared, but a handful of the poorer Chinese, and a sprinkling of others, crossed the Plaza. The doors of the gambling places were all wide open to the air. Across the square a number of small boys were throwing dust into the air. Johnny, with his usual sympathy for children, naturally gravitated in their direction. He returned after a few moments, his eyes wide.

      “Do you know what they are doing?” he demanded.

      We said politely that we did not.

      “They are panning for gold.”

      “Well, what of it?” I asked, after a moment’s pause; since Johnny seemed to expect some astonishment. “Boys are imitative little monkeys.”

      “Yes, but they’re getting it,” insisted Johnny.

      “What!” cried Talbot. “You’re crazy. Panning gold–here in the streets. It’s absurd!”

      “It’s not absurd; come and see.”

      We crossed the Plaza. Two small Americans and a Mexican youth were scooping the surface earth into the palms of their hands and blowing it out again in a slantwise stream. When it was all gone, they examined eagerly their hands. Four others working in partnership had spread a small sheet. They threw their handfuls of earth into the air, all the while fanning vigorously with their hats. The breeze thus engendered puffed away the light dust, leaving only the heavier pieces to fall on the canvas. Among these the urchins searched eagerly and carefully, their heads close together. Every moment or so one of them would wet a forefinger to pick up carefully a speck of something which he would then transfer to an old buckskin sack.

      As we approached, they looked up and nodded to Johnny in a friendly fashion. They were eager, alert, precocious gamins, of the street type and how they had come to California I could not tell you. Probably as cabin boys of some of the hundreds of vessels in the harbour.

      “What are you getting, boys?” asked Talbot after a moment.

      “Gold, of course,” answered one of them.

      “Let’s see it.”

      The boy with the buckskin sack held it open for our inspection, but did not relax his grip on it. The bottom of the bag was thickly gilded with light glittering yellow particles.

      “It looks like gold,” said I, incredulously.

      “It is gold,” replied the boy with some impatience. “Anyway, it buys things.”

      We looked at each other.

      “Gold diggings right in the streets of San Francisco,” murmured Yank.

      “I should think you’d find it easier later in the day when the wind came up?” suggested Talbot.

      “Of course; and let some other kids jump our claim while we were waiting,” grunted one of the busy miners.

      “How much do you get out of it?”

      “Good days we make as high as three or four dollars.”

      “I’m afraid the diggings are hardly rich enough to tempt us,” observed Talbot; “but isn’t that the most extraordinary performance! I’d no notion─”

      We returned slowly to the hotel, marvelling. Yesterday we had been laughing at the gullibility of one of our fellow-travellers who had believed the tale of a wily ship’s agent to the effect that it was possible to live aboard the ship and do the mining within reach ashore at odd hours of daylight! Now that tale did not sound so wild; although of course we realized that the gold must occur in very small quantities. Otherwise somebody beside small boys would be at it. As a matter of fact, though we did not find it out until very much later, the soil of San Francisco is not auriferous at all. The boys were engaged in working the morning’s sweepings from the bars and gambling houses which the lavish and reckless handling of gold had liberally impregnated. In some of the mining towns nearer the source of supply I have known of from one hundred to three hundred dollars a month being thus “blown” from the sweepings of a bar.

      We ate a frugal breakfast and separated on the agreed business of the day. Yank started