“Anyway,” Howard, the old fellow, said, “anyway, gold is a very devilish sort of a thing, believe me, boys. In the first place, it changes your character entirely. When you have it your soul is no longer the same as it was before. No getting away from that. You may have so much piled up that you can’t carry it away; but, bet your blessed paradise, the more you have, the more you want to add, to make it just that much more. Like sitting at roulette. Just one more turn. So it goes on and on and on. You cease to distinguish between right and wrong. You can no longer see clearly what is good and what is bad. You lose your judgment. That’s what it is.”
“I don’t see why,” one of the youngsters broke in.
“Oh yes, you’ll see it. When you go out, you tell yourself: I shall be satisfied with fifty thousand handsome smackers, or the worth of it, so help me, Lord, and cross my heart. Elegant resolution. After sweating the hell out of you, going short of provisions, and seeing nothing and finding nothing, you come down to forty thousand, then to thirty, and you reach five thousand, and you say to yourself: If I only could make five grand, Lord, I sure would be grateful and never want anything, anything more in all my life.”
“Five thousand wouldn’t be so bad, after all,” the same young fellow butted in.
“Oh, be quiet,” said his partner; “can’t you shut up a minute when you see somebody is telling you something worth listening to, you mug?”
“It’s not at all so easy as you fellers think it might be,” Howard went on. “You’d be satisfied with five grand. But I tell you, if you find something then, you couldn’t be dragged away; not even the threat of miserable death could stop you getting just ten thousand more. And if you reach fifty, you want to make it a hundred, to be safe for the rest of your life. When you finally have a hundred and fifty, you want two hundred, to make sure, absolutely sure, that you’ll be really on the safe side, come what may.”
Dobbs had become excited. To show that he had a right to be there and to listen to the wise man he said: “That wouldn’t happen to me. I swear it. I’d take twenty thousand, pack up, and go. I’d do that even if there were still half a million bucks’ worth lying around howling to be picked up. I wouldn’t take it. It’s just twenty grand that I’m after to make me perfectly happy and healthy.”
Howard looked at him, scrutinizing, it seemed, every wrinkle of his face. He did so for quite a while. But he answered indirectly. As though he hadn’t been interrupted he continued: “Whoever has never been out for gold doesn’t know what’s really going on at the spot. I know for a fact it’s easier to leave a gambling-table when you’re winning than to leave a rich claim after you’ve made your good cut. It’s all spread out before you like the treasures of that Arabian mug Aladdin. It’s all yours for the taking. No, sir, you can’t leave it, not even with a wire in your fist that your old mother back home is dying and all alone. See, I’ve dug in Alaska and made a bit; I’ve been in the crowd in British Columbia and made there at least my fair wages. I was down in Australia, where I made the fare back home, with a few hundred left over to cure me of a stomach trouble I caught down there. I’ve dug in Montana and in Colorado and I don’t know where else.”
One of the youngsters asked: “As you say, mister, you’ve dug practically all over the world, then how come you’re sitting here flow in this dirty joint and all broke?”
“Gold, my young man, that’s the gold, that’s what it makes out of us. There was a time when I had a bank account of over a hundred thousand spot cash, and another hundred grand invested. One of the banks went singing the old song: that there wasn’t one cent to the dollar left. Two of the investments failed and left me with the first claim on a melting company. After all was paid out, I had on hand a debt of some sixteen grand. I’ve made here in this port some seventy grand on a gusher. The last fifty, which I kept with the idea that I’d never touch the principal, went into a dry hole. So you see me here now in the Oso Negro, pushing old friends in the streets to get fifty centavos for a cot to sleep on. Sure, I’m an old bone by now. No doubt as to that. But don’t you kids think that the spirit is gone. Not on your life. I’m all set to shoulder pick-ax and shovel again any time you say—any time somebody is willing to share the expenses. I’d like best to go all alone, all by myself. But I haven’t got the funds to do that. Tell you, the best thing is going alone. Of course you must have the guts to stand loneliness. Lots of guys go nutty being alone for a long time. On the other hand, going with a partner or two is dangerous. All the time murder’s lurking about. The cuts are not so good as when you’re all by yourself. Worst of all, hardly a day passes without quarrels, everybody accusing everybody else of all sorts of crimes, and suspecting whatever you do or say or even look at. As long as there’s no find, the noble brotherhood will last. Woe when the piles begin to grow! Then you know your men and what they are worth.”
None of the three fellows interrupted the old prospector. Lying on their cots, they listened to his talk with more eagerness than they would have shown in reading a hot story. Here one of the true regulars was speaking, and such a chance might never come again. The stories told in the puips seemed to them right now just so much rot. Who writes these stories, anyhow? Men sitting in an office in a big city. Men who have never been on the spot themselves. What do they know? The real life is quite different. Here it was, the real life, and the man who had lived the real life and had seen the world, who had been rich, very rich, and who was now so broke that he had to ask a fellow in the street for fifty centavos for a meal with the Chink.
Once started, and seeing around him three fellows who forgot their breathing while he spun his yarns, Howard gave them a story such as they never could have read in a magazine sold at street corners.
Chapter 3
“Ever heard the story—I mean the real true story—of La Mina Agua Verde, the Green Water Mine? I don’t think so. Well, here it is for your benefit. I got it at first hand from Harry Tilton. He was one of those who made their pile in that mine.
“It seems a company of fifteen fellows set out to trace that old mine. You couldn’t say that they went absolutely unprepared. Far from it.
“In that section, right at the international line of Arizona and the Mexican state of Sonora, a rumor about a lost gold mine would never die. The tale had come down for the last four centuries if not more. The old Mexicans, the Aztecs, had worked that mine long before any European knew a thing about America. The gold was carried to old Tenochtitlan, that is today Mexico City, to be worked there into ornaments and dishes for their emperor and for their kings and nobles, and of course for their great temples.
“The Spaniards in their greed for gold tried to locate all the gold and silver mines on seeing the rich treasures of the Aztec and the Tarascan kings. By the most terrible tortures, which only Spaniards grown up under the regime of the Inquisitors could conceive, the old Mexicans and the other Indians were forced to reveal the mines where the gold had come from for the royal treasures. All the gruesome tortures were committed for the love of Christ and the Holy Virgin, because there was never a torture without a monk holding out a crucifix before the victim, and the greater part of the gold was to go partly to the Spanish king and partly to the Holy Father in Rome. As the Indians were not Christians, but wretched heathen, it was no sin to get hold of their gold by robbing them.