Читать книгу Raw Gold - James B. Hendryx - Страница 4
ОглавлениеA NIGHT’S SLEEP
For the remainder of the day Matthew Blunt and Jake Valentine circulated among the stores and saloons of San Francisco, which many of the inhabitants still called Yerba Buena, listening to the talk of gold. Hangtown—the Yuba, the American, Sutter’s Mill, the “Emmygrant” Trail up Bear River, American Hill, Caldwell’s store, Gold Run, Johnson’s Ranch—each had its quota of adherents and boosters who brazenly bragged up their own choice of location and defamed all others.
“Hell fire! On the North Fork of the Yuba, Major Downey an’ the Kanaka is whittlin’ three hundred dollars a day in raw gold out of the rock cracks with butcher knives!”
“What’s three hundred dollars a day? Look at Cut Eye Foster, an’ Bullard’s Bar!”
“Hell, that’s fine gold—rockers, an’ long toms! None of that fer me! I seen chunks that run up to sixteen, seventeen hundred dollars apiece that was prized out of the rocks on a side crick!”
And so went the talk. No sooner had the two partners decided upon a location than a rumor would reach their ears of another strike more fabulous by far, and this in turn would give place to another. They saw raw gold weighed over the bars for drinks, and over store counters in return for goods. They ate at a restaurant that charged outrageous prices for mediocre food, and didn’t mind the charge. What were a few dollars when they would soon be prizing gold out of the rocks in chunks?
Now and then a man in a saloon or a store would recognize Jake Valentine as the lad who had put Brock Throgmorton on his back and made him like it, and as a crowning insult, had showed him how to start a load with his own team. By these he was greeted as an equal, especially as his newly purchased clothing disguised the fact that he was of the rawest of the raw “emmygrants.” His opinion was asked on the relative merits of the various diggings, and as he spoke oracularly, if casually, of the North Fork of the Yuba or of American Hill, Matthew Blunt repressed a grin.
Late the two lingered in the barroom above which they had paid in advance for floor space for the night. The desultory trade of the daytime became an orgy of spending as the night wore on. Men lined the bar where three bartenders were kept busy. The elegantly dressed and mustached gentleman, aided by three assistants, only slightly his sartorial inferiors, did a rushing business at the long table of the purring wheel—raking in chips, shoving them out, cashing them for gold. Five poker tables were continuously in action with men eager to sit in whenever a seat was vacated.
Matthew Blunt and Jake Valentine drank sparingly at the bar and looked on in bewildered amazement at the reckless play. At midnight they retrieved their blankets from behind the bar and climbed the ladder to the loft, where in the dim light of a low-turned kerosene lantern they picked their way among sleeping forms and sought an unoccupied corner of the bare room.
“My Gawd, Matt, did you ever see the like?” whispered Jake, as, wrapped in their blankets, with their coats for pillows, they lay side by side.
“I never did—but it’s the life, ain’t it, Jake? I knew it would be like this—I read about it in the Gazette. Just think—I’ve wasted all these years sellin’ lime an’ coal an’ lumber in Pa’s little office!”
“Yeah—an’ me on the farm! We won’t never go back, will we, Matt?”
“No—never! Even when we’re rich. I’ll send fer my wife an’ kids.”
“How many you got, Matt?”
“Two boys—one five, an’ one six. I’ll be sendin’ fer ’em next year, maybe.”
“Gawd—they might die crossin’ that there Is’mus. Wasn’t that hell? I never thought it could git so hot! An’ the fever! How many was it died, Matt?”
“Thirty-seven, countin’ them on the boat. We was lucky.... This damn floor’s hard.”
“You bet, but it’s better’n the ship. Remember how she rolled; an’ how sick we was? That was the time to die. I wouldn’t of give a damn. What we goin’ to do tomorrow?”
“Get us an outfit an’ hit out fer the mountains an’ begin to dig gold. That’s what we come for.”
“Sure—but wher’ we goin’ to go?”
Matthew Blunt chuckled softly. “You ort to know. I heard you tellin’ which was the best diggin’s.”
“Well, they asked me—an’ everyone else was tellin’ other folks where to go. Where do you think?”
“Yuba River sounds good to me.”
“Yeah—or mebbe somewheres else. We’ll find out tomorrow——”
“Shet yer damn traps!” growled a sleepy voice a few feet distant. “What the hell d’ye think this is—a convention?”
The partners subsided into silence, broken by sounds from below—voices raised in argument, snatches of song and loud laughter.
It was well toward morning when both awoke, sitting bolt upright. Bang! Bang! Bang! A sliver flew up from the floor and fell on Matthew’s blanket, and another dropped from a rafter. A loud-shouted command followed the shots:
“Hey, quit that! Shoot in the floor! There’s men asleep upstairs!”
In the dim light the two saw other men sitting up in their blankets.
“What the hell?” growled someone.
Another shifted his position and lay down: “Aw, jest someone shootin’ off his gun. They don’t mean no harm—let ’em go.”
“But—them bullets come up through the floor here!”
“Well, you don’t expect a inch board to stop a forty-five, do ye?”
“No—an’ by God, I ain’t goin’ to stop one, neither!” The speaker, blanket under his arm, was making for the ladder. Several others followed. Some slept on.
“Lay down,” advised the man who had explained that the shooter meant no harm. “If yer goin’ to git it, you’ll git it—an’ if you ain’t, you won’t. I’m sleepy.”
But despite their late hours, neither Matthew Blunt nor Jake Valentine felt need of further sleep. Very promptly they joined those who sought the ladder. Daylight was just breaking as they stepped onto the barroom floor. The bartender was apologetic: “None of you hit, was you? ... Well, that’s good.”
“No, we wasn’t hit,” said Jake, “but a couple of them bullets come up through the floor right between where him an’ me was layin’—an’ we wasn’t more’n a foot apart, neither!”
“Well, a foot’s quite a ways when you come to think about it. Anyway, a miss is good as a mile, as the sayin’ is. You can go on back to sleep if you want to. That was only High Flume Johnson—damn good feller, wouldn’t hurt no one. Just a bit drunk, an’ wantin’ to make a noise. I made him quit shootin’ at the ceilin’. That ort to be put a stop to, as long as fellers is sleepin’ upstairs. Some of ’em’s nervous, like. I’ll paint a sign, when I git around to it. Hell—it’s jest as much fun shootin’ a floor as a ceilin’ if they only know’d it. What’ll you have? I’ll buy a drink to show there’s no hard feelin’s.”
The partners declined the liquor, and caching their blankets behind the bar sought a restaurant. “Gawd, I’m stiff,” complained Jake Valentine, stretching himself in his chair. “I’d give a pretty fer one of Ma’s shuck ticks.”
“You ain’t as stiff as you’d be if one of them bullets would of hit the floor a little over from wher’ it did,” reminded Matthew.
“I’m goin’ to hunt another place to sleep. I don’t like that place. No more upstairs fer me in Californy!”
“We’ll be hittin’ fer the mines today. We’ll be sleepin’ on the ground from now on.”
“Suits me. A rock couldn’t be no harder’n that floor—an’ there can’t no bullets come up through one. Gosh, if Ma an’ Pa know’d what kind of a place I’d got into they’d make me come back home! Anyhow, this is a lot better’n plowin’ an’ sloppin’ the hogs! This here’s livin’!”
“Yeah,” grinned Blunt. “An’ damn near dyin’.”
