Jasper County Democrat, Volume 19, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 July 1916 — GOLD [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

GOLD

by STEWART EDWARD WHITE

SYNOPSIS Talbot Ward’s challenge to Frank Munroe to a personal encounter to determine ■whether Munroe Is fit to make a trip to California in search of gold is accepted. Munroe gets a hammerlock on Ward and wins the bout They choose the Panama route. Ward, It develops, is an old campaigner. On board ship they meet Johnny Fairfax and Tank Rogers. The four become partners. CHAPTER 111. The Village by the Lagoon. NEVER before nor since have I looked upon such a variety of equipment as strewed the decks and cabins of that ship. 1 A great majority of the passengers j knew nothing whatever about out of door life and less than nothing as to ) the conditions in California and on the ! way. Consequently they had bought liberally of all sorts of idiotic patent contraptions. India rubber played a i prominent part. And the deck was j cumbered with at least forty sorts of I machines for separating gold from the ' soil, some of them to use water, some ! muscular labor, and oue tremendous ! affair with wings was supposed to fan ! away everything but the gold. Differ- j ing in everything else, they-were alike j In one thing—they had all been devised by men who had never seen any but manufactured gold. I may add that I never saw a machine of the kind actually at in the diggings. j Just n«w{ however, I looked on the owners of these contraptions with envy and thought ourselves at a disadvantage with only our picks, shovels and axes. As we drew southward the days became insufferably warm, but the nights were glorious. Talbot and I liked to sleep on deck and generally camped down*'op near the bitts. The old ship rolled frightfully, for she was light in freight in order to accommodate so many passengers, and the blue

sea appeared to swoop up and down beneath the placid tropic moon. We had many long, quiet there, but in them all I learned nothing, absolutely nothing, of my companion. “If you ,had broken my arm that time I should not have taken you," he remarked suddenly one evening. “Shouldn’t blame you," said I. “No! I wouldn’t have wanted that kind of a man,” he continued, “for I should doubt my control of him. But you gave up.” This nettled me. "“Would you have had me or any man brute enough to go through with it?” I demanded. “Well"—he hesitated—“it was agreed that it was to be fight, you remember. And, after all, if you had broken my arm it would have been my fault and not yours.” Two young fellows used occasionally to join us in our swooping, plunging perch. They were as unlike as two men could be, and yet already they had become firm friends. One was a slow, lank, ague stricken individual from somewhere in the wilds of the great lakes, his face lined and brown as though carved from hard wood, his speed slow, his eyes steady with a Teiled sardonic humor. His companion was scarcely more than a boy, and he came, I_ believe, from Virginia. He

was a dark, eager youth, with a mop of black shiny 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 i the boy by this very quick and unsoi phisticated bubbling of candid youth, I while the boy most evidently worshiped 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, i but was called Johnny and later in California, for reasons that will appear, Diamond Jack. Yank’s distinguishing feature was a long barreled “pea shooter” rifle. He never nxpved ten feet without it. | Johnny usually did most of the talking when we were all gathered toI getber. Yank and I did the listening and Talbot the interpellating. Johnny ; swarmed all over himself like a pickpocket and showed us everything he ; bfl d in the way of history, manners, training, family, pride, naivete, expectations and hopes. He prided himself on being a calm, phlegmatic individual. unemotional juid_ not easily excited.

f 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 $l,lOO 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—“l shall be satisfied’with three hundred a day. Allowing 300 working days to the year, that gives me about $90,000-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 of forty from that section, but Johnny distinguished. He stiffened as though Yank’s gun barrel bad 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 taike it well. Whenever something particular had 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 favor. 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 Moliere’s principled that one gains more popularity by accepting a favor than by bestowing one. 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 humored 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 neighbor. Here the owners of much freight found themselves at a disadvantage. I began t« 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 lie 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, clamoring 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. 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 cloven directions. I tried to prevent this, but could only 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 natlve. fall_ flat and _fuU length in the

mud, to the vast delight of all who beheld. Finally Talbot plowed 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 sls 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 colored hound in the place if I don’t get back my belongings!” “They’ve got our stuff, too.” I added. “Well, keep calm,” advised Talbot. “I don’t know the game down here, but it strikes me they can’t get very far through these swamps, if they do try to steal, and I don’t believe they’re stealing anyway. The whole performance to me bears a strong family resemblance to hotel runners. Here, compadre!” He talked a few moments with his boatman. “That’s right.” he told us then. “Come on!" We walked along the little crescent of beach, looking into each of the boats in the long row drawn up on the shore. They were queer craft, dug out from the trunks of trees, with small decks in bow and stern, and with a low roof of palmetto leaves amidships. By the time we had reached the end of the row we had collected all our effects. Our own boatman stowed them in his craft. Thereupon, our minds at rest, we returned to the landing to enjoy the scene. The second ship’s boat had beached, and the row was going oil, worse than before. In the seething, cursing, shouting mass we caught sight of Yank’s tall figure leaning imperturbably on his rifle muzzle. We made our way to him. “Cot Vour boat yet?” Talbot shouted at him. “Got nothin’ yet but a headache in the ears,” said Yank. “Come with us, then./ Where’s your plunder?” Yank stooped and swung to his shoulder a small bundle tied with ropes. “She’s all thar,” said he. These matters settled, we turned with considerable curiosity to the village itself. It was all exotic, strange. Everything was different, and we saw it through the eyes of youth and romance as epitomizing the storied tropics. Johnny and I wandered about completely fascinated. Talbot and Yank did not seem so impressed. Finally Talbot called a halt “This is all very well If you kids like to look at yellow fever, blackjack and corruption, all right” said ha “But we’ve got to start pretty soon after noon, and In the meantime where do we eat?'’ (To be continued.)

“If you had broken my arm I should not have taken you.”