Stewart White - Gold

“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.

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 for the water front to make inquiries as to ways of getting to the mines; Talbot set off at a businesslike pace for the hotel as though he knew fully what he was about; Johnny wandered rather aimlessly to the east; and I as aimlessly to the west.

It took me just one hour to discover that I could get all of any kind of work that any dozen men could do, and at wages so high that at first I had to ask over and over again to make sure I had heard aright. Only none of them would bring me in two hundred and twenty dollars by evening. The further I looked into that proposition, the more absurd, of course, I saw it to be. I could earn from twenty to fifty dollars by plain day-labour at some jobs; or I could get fabulous salaries by the month or year; but that was different. After determining this to my satisfaction I came to the sensible conclusion that I would make what I could.

The first thing that caught my eye after I had come to this decision was a wagon drawn by four mules coming down the street at a sucking walk. The sight did not impress me particularly; but every storekeeper came out from his shop and every passerby stopped to look with respect as the outfit wallowed along. It was driven by a very large, grave, blond man with a twinkle in his eye.

“That’s John A. McGlynn,” said a man next my elbow.