“Almost thirty years had passed since Harry had been there, and his memory was no longer accurate. He could rather easily describe certain landmarks that had been near the mine when he had worked there. He drew maps and made sketches which seemed clear to every member of the expedition.
“I was a member of the party,” Howard concluded, “I had staked quite a bit of money on this adventure. But I tell you boys, and it may sound silly, we never did find the spot. We searched and dug like madmen. Twice or oftener each day Harry would say that it must be there; a few hours later he would say that he was mistaken, that it must be two miles yonder. He became more and more confused every day. The men thought finally that he had intentionally misled them. This, of course, was unjust. He was honest. What interest would he have had, old man that he was, in concealing the location of the mine? If he had known it, he would have shown it.
“The party became furious. One night they tortured him in the most cruel way, believing that he would tell, but he couldn’t tell something which he himself didn’t know. Two went so far as to suggest that he should be killed like a rat for having doublecrossed them. Luckily for him, the majority of the party were still sane enough to prevent this injustice. It surely would have been a funny trick of fate had he died near the same spot where all his former partners had lost their lives.
“The second night after the party was back home again, his farm buildings were burned to the ground. He was tough, however—a real pioneer. He did not give in. Right away he began to build again. When he had nearly finished the buildings, they burned down again while he was gone to town.
“Harry had to sell out for half the money the farm was really worth, for he knew that he could no longer live there.
“He left the state. I don’t know what has become of him.
“Well, and here, boys, is the end of another of the stories about the one-man mining companies. I have seen quite a number of men get rich prospecting, but I haven’t yet met one who stayed so. My old friend Harry Tilton was no exception. And he sure was a man who tried very hard to keep what he had made.”
Chapter 4
The next morning Dobbs retold this story to Curtin while they were sitting on the plaza.
Curtin listened eagerly to the yarn. When Dobbs had finished Curtin said: “I figure this story is a true one.”
“Of course it’s true,” Dobbs maintained. “What made you think it might be a weak magazine tale?” He was surprised that anybody could doubt the truthfulness of the story, which Dobbs thought the prettiest he had ever heard.
Yet Curtin’s question with that glimpse of doubt had a strange effect upon the mind of Dobbs. Last night, when Howard had told the story in his slow, convincing tone, Dobbs had felt that he himself was living the story; he could not detect any fault in it. Everything had seemed as clear and simple as if it had been the story of a man who had made good in the shoe business. But the slight doubt of Curtin had raised the apparently plain story to that of high adventure. Dobbs had never before in his life thought that prospecting for gold necessarily must carry some sort of mystery with it. Prospecting for gold was only another Way of looking for a job or working. There was no more mystery about it than about digging out a tank on a cattle ranch or working in a sand mine.
“I haven’t said that the story is not true,” Curtin defended his opinion. “There are a million such stories. Open any magazine and you will find them. But even if part of the story sounds like fiction, there is one incident in the old man’s story which is true as sunlight. It is that incident where the three partners, after having spotted the mine, try to hold out on the rest.”
“You said it.” Dobbs nodded. “That’s exactly what I say. It is that eternal curse on gold which changes the soul of man in a second.” The moment he had said this he knew he had said something that never had been in his mind before. Never before had he had the idea that there was a curse connected with gold. Now he had the feeling that not he himself, but something inside him, the existence of which until now he had had no knowledge of, had spoken for him, using his voice. For a while he was rather uneasy, feeling that inside his mind there was a second person whom he had seen or heard for the first time.
“Curse upon gold?” Curtin seemed entirely unmoved by this suggestion. “I don’t see any curse on gold. Where is it? Old women’s tattle. Nothing to it. There is as much blessing on gold as there is curse. It depends upon who holds it—I mean the gold. In the end the good or the bad character of its owner determines whether gold is blessed or cursed. Give a scoundrel a bag with little stones or a bag with silver coins and he will use either to satisfy his criminal desires if he is left free to do as he pleases. And, by the way, what most people never know is the fact that gold in itself is not needed at all. Suppose I could make people believe that I have mountains of gold, then I could arrive at the same end as if I really had that gold. It isn’t the gold that changes man, it is the power which gold gives to man that changes the soul of man. This power, though, is only imaginary. If not recognized by other men, it does not exist.”
Dobbs, only half listening to what Curtin was saying, leaned back on the bench and looked up at the roofs of houses where men were at work putting up telephone wires. He had watched them the day before and he watched them now, waiting for something to happen to them. They were standing there so unprotected that he wondered how they could work at all. “And all this,” he said, “all this for four pesos and fifty centavos a day, with the possibility of dropping off and breaking their necks. A working-man’s life is a dog’s life, that’s what it is. Oh hell, let’s talk about something more amusing. Getting back once more to that story, I wonder would you betray your pals just to have all the gold for yourself.”
Curtin did not answer right away. “I don’t think that anyone can say what he would do if he had a chance to get all the cuts for himself just by a little trick or a bit of cheating. I’m sure that every man has acted differently from the way he had thought he would when face to face with a heap of money or with the opportunity to pocket a quarter of a million with only the move of one hand.”
“I think I would do as Harry Tilton did,” Dobbs said. “That is the safe thing. Then one wouldn’t have to sweat for others and run around hungry all the time. I sure would be satisfied with a certain sum, take it and go away and settle down in a pretty little town, and let the others quarrel.”
Returning to town in the afternoon after a swim in the river and a walk of three miles back to the city along a dusty road, to save the fifteen centavos street-car fare, the two men began to talk about prospecting again.
It was not exactly the gold alone they desired. They were tired of hanging around waiting for a new job to turn up and of chasing contractors and being forced to smile at them and laugh at their jokes to keep them friendly. A change was what they wanted most. This running after jobs could not go on forever. There must be some way out of this crazy-go-round. It was so silly to stand by the windows of the Banking Company and block the way of everybody who looked as if he might give you a job Somewhere out in the fields.
Half a week went by without even the smell of a job. It looked more than ever as if the whole oil business were going to die, at least in the republic here and for sure in this section of the Country.
By the end of the week Dobbs felt that for the next three months there was practically no chance of any paying job. Many companies were beginning to close up a great number of fields, and others were making preparations to withdraw from the republic altogether. Men who had worked steadily during the last five years were coming back to town and crowding the jobless. Dobbs, in a fit of desperation, said: “Everything is dying now. A lot of boys who have got the money to pay for the tickets are making off for Venezuela, where a boom seems to be on its way. So everything is at an end here now for sure. Tell you, buddy, I’m making off now for gold even if I have to go all by myself. I’m sick of this town and of this life. If I have to eat the dust, I may just as well do it among the Indians in the Sierra Mache as in this dying town. That’s what I think and what I mean.”