Jasper County Democrat, Volume 19, Number 83, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 January 1917 — GOLD [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

GOLD

By STEWART EDWARD WHITE

SYNOPSIS Talbot Ward’s challenge to Frank Mun■aoe 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 Arriving at Chagrea, Talbot Ward’s inwiwledfe of Spanish and his firm treatment of the native boatmen help wonderfully. The party enters a tropical forest They react# Gatun, and, after passing through several villages where Ward always diplomatically handles the natives, they in .Panama. Ward puts it up to each man to get 4220 In one day. Munroe makes $25 as a o laborer. Johnny gambles and gets $220; Ward astounds the party by telling bow, by shrewd business deals in one day la the Golden City, he accumulated several thousand dollars. The party dig their first gold. They are aot much encouraged when told that the ealue of their first pan is 12 cents. Don Gaspar, a Spaniard, arid his manwarrant Vasquez join forces with the trio and the gold is divided into five parts. After working like beavers several days the miners decide to take a day off and atteftd a miners’ meeting in town. For sls a week in gold and a drink of whisky twice a day Bagsby promises to toad the party to a rich unexplored mining country. A band of Indians come into the camp to trade. They are thankful for blankets. Dator the Indians attempt an ambuscade,. but are routed by rifle shots Johnny and his express messenger friends arrest two of the Hounds who arp tried for robbery. The lawless element controls' the trial and the Hounds are freed. Robberies grow more frequent as the lawless element holds sway- McNally and Buck Barry are murdered after the lawless element gets control of the city. Danny Randall organizes a vigilance committee.' It is decided to publicly hang the leaders of the lawless element ' The camp buzzes with excitement Outbursts of the friends of the doomed men are checked by the determined attitude of Danny Randall and his committee.

CHAPTER XXVII. San Francisco Again, WE left our backwoods friends reluctantly, and at the top of the hill we stopped our two horses to look back on the valley. It lay, with its brown, freshly upturned earth, its scattered broad oaks, its low wood crowned knolls, as though asleep in the shimmering warm floods of golden sunshine. Through the still air we heard plainly the beat of an ax and the low, drowsy clucking of hens. A peaceful and grateful feeling of settled permanence, to which the restless temporary life of mining camps had long left us strangers, filled us with the vague stirrings of envy, The feeling soon passed. We. marched cheerfully away, our hopes busy with what we would do when we reached New York. Johnny and I had accumulated very fair sums of money, in spite of our Joss at the hands of the robbers, what with the takings at Hangman's Gulch, what was left from the robbery and Italian Bar. These sums did not constitute an enormous fortune, to be sure. There was nothing spectacular in our winnings, but they totaled about five times the amount we could have made at home, and they represented a very fair little stake with which to start life. We were young. • . We found Sacramento under water. A sluggish, brown flood filled the town and spread far abroad over the flat countryside. Men were living in second stories of such buildings as possessed second stories and on the roofs of others. They were paddlhig about in all sorts of improvised boats and rafts. I saw one man keeping a precarious equilibrium in a baker's trough, and another sprawled out face down on an India rubber bed, paddling overslde with his hands. We viewed these things from the thwarts of a boat which we hired for $lO. Our horses we had left outside of town on the highilands. Everywhere we passed men and shouted to them a cheery greeting. Everybody seemed optimistic- and inclined to believe that the flood would soon go down. “Anyway, she’s killed the rats,” one man shouted in answer to our . call. We grinned an appreciation of what we thought merely a facetious reply. Rats had not yet penetrated to the mines,-*so we did .not know anything' about them. Next day in San Francisco we began to apprehend the marfs remark. '7-. . Thus we rowed cheerfully* about, having a good time at the other fellow’s expense. Suddenly Johnny, who was steering, dropped his paddle with an exclamation. Yank and I turned to see what had so struck-, him. Beyond

the trees that marked where the bank of the river ought to be we saw two tall smokestacks belching forth a great volume of black snibke. “A steamer!” cried Yank. “Yes, aud a good big one!” I added. We lay to our oars and soon drew alongside. She proved to be a side .wheeler of fully 700 tons, exactly like the craft we had often seen plying the Hudson. Along toward midnight as I was leaning on the rail forward watching the effect of the moon on the water and the shower of sparks from the twin stacks against the sky I was suddenly startled by the cry of “man overboard” and a rush toward the stern. I followed aS quickly as I was able. The paddle wheels had been instantly reversed, and a half dozen sailors were busily lowering a boat. A crowd of men, alarmed by the trembling of the vessel as her way was checked, poured out from the cabins. The fact that I was already on deck gave me an advantageous post, so that 1‘ found myself near the stern rail. “He was leaning against the rail,” ine was explaining excitedly, “and it-

The Small Boat Immediately Headed In His Direction. give way, and in he went He never came up!” Everybody was watching eagerly the moonlit expanse of the river. “I guess he’s a goner,” said a man after a few moments. - “He ain’t in sight nowhere.” “There he is!” cried a half dozen voices all at once. A head shot into sight a few hundred yards astern, blowing the silvered water aside. The small boat, which was now afloat, immediately headed ift his direction, and a moment later he was hauled aboard amid frantic cheers. The dripping victim of the accident clambered to the deck. It was Johnny! . He was beside himself with excitement, spluttering with s>ge and uttering frantic threats against something or somebody. His eyes were wild, and he fairly frothed at the mouth. I seized him by the arm. He stared at 'me, then became coherent,though he still spluttered. Johnny was

<y so quietly reserved as far as emotions go that his present excitement was at first utterly incomprehensible. It seemed that he had been leaning against the rail, watching the moonlight, when suddenly it had given way

beneath his weight, and he had fallen into the river. “They had no business to have so weak a rail!” he cried bitterly. “Well, you’re here, alt right,” I said eoothlngly. “There’s no great harm done.” . “Oh, isn’t there?” he snarled. , Then we learned how the weight of the gold ground his waist had carried him down like a plummet, and we sensed a little of the desperate horror with which lie had torn and struggled to free himself from that dreadful burden. , “I thought I’d burst!” said he. And then he had tom off the belt and had shot to the surface. “It’s ‘down there,” he said more calmly, “every confounded yellow grain of it.” He laughed a little. “Broke!” said he. “No New York in mine!” The crowd sympathetically. ' “Gol dam it, boys,-it’s rotten hard lilck!” cried a big miner, with somd heat. “Who’ll chip in ?” , At the words Johnny recovered himself, and his customary ease of manner returned: \ “Much obliged, boys,” said he. “but I’ve still got my health. I don’t need charity. Guess I’ve been doing the baby act. But I was clean mad at that rotten old rail. Anyway,” he laughed, “there heed nobody say in the future that there’s, no gold in the lower Sacramento. There is. I put it there myself.” We drew up to San Francesco earlyJ in the afternoon, and we were, to put ■ it mildly, thoroughly astonishel at the ' change in the place. To begin with, •' we now landed at a long wharf pro- i Jecting from the foot of Sacramento 1 / • ■ . --

street Instead* of by lighter. This wharf was crowded by a miscellaneous mob, collected apparently with no other purpose than to view our arrival. Among them we saw many specialized types that had been lacking to the old city of a few months ago—sharp, keen, businesslike clerks whom one could not imagine at the rough work of the mines; loafers whom one could not Imagine at any work at all; dissolute, hard faced characters without the bold freedom of the road agents; young green looking chaps who evidently had much to learn and who were exceedingly likely to pay their little fortunes, lf®not their Hyes, in the learning. On a hogshead at one side a street preacher was declaiming. Johnny had Uy now quite recovered his spirits. I think ho was helped greatly by the discovery that he still possessed his celebrated diamond. “Not broke yet!’’ said he triumphantly, “You see I was a wise boy after all! Wish I had two of them’.” We disembarked, fought our way to one side and discussed our plans. “Hock the diamond first,” said Johnny, who resolutely refused to borrow from me; “then hair cut, shave, bath, buy some more clothes, grub, drink and hunt up Talbot and see what lie’s done with the dust we sent down from Hangman’s.” That program seemed good. _We strolled toward shore, with full Intention of putting It Into .Immediate execution. ’“lmmediate” proved to be a relative term. There was too much to see. ...

At the land end of the wharf we ran into the most extraordinary collection Of vehicles apparently In an Inextricable tangle, that was further complicated by the fact that‘most of the horses were only half broken. They kicked and reared; their drivers lashed and swore; the wagons clashed together. There seemed po possible way out of the mess, and yet somehow the wagons seemed to get loaded and to draw out into the clear. Occasionally the drivers were inclined to abandon their craft and do battle with the loaded ends of their whips’ but always a peacemaker descended upon them in the person of a Uarejr voluble individual. in whom 1 .recognized my former friend and employer, John McGlynn. Evidently John had ho longer a monopoly of the teaming business, but os evidently what he said went with this wild bunch. Most of the wagons were loading goods brought from the Interiors of storehouses alongside the approach to the wharf. In these storehouses we recognized the hulls of ships, but so shored up, and cut Into by doors and stories that of their original appearance only their general shape

n-mainefl. Then; was a great number of these storehouses along the shore, some of them being quite built about by piles and platforms, while two were actually Inland several hundred feet. I read the name Niantic on the stern of one of them and found it to have acquired In the landward side a square false front. It was at that time used ! at a hotel. / /‘Looks as If they’d taken hold of Talbot’s idea hard," observed Yank. (To be continued.)

“They had no business to have so weak a rail!” he cried bitterly.