Webster—Man's Man. Peter B. KyneЧитать онлайн книгу.
the letter he had just received.
“Read that, old horse, and see if you can't work up a circulation,” he suggested.
Jerome adjusted his spectacles and read:
Calle de Concordia 19, Buenaventura,
Sobrante, C. A.
Dear John:
I would address you as “dear friend John,” did I but possess sufficient courage. In my heart of hearts you are still that, but after three years of silence, due to my stupidity and hardness of heart, it is, perhaps, better to make haste slowly.
To begin, I should like to be forgiven, on the broad general grounds that I am most almighty sorry for what I went and done! Am I forgiven? I seem to see your friendly old face and hear you answer “Aye,” and with this load off my chest at last I believe I feel better already.
I did not know until very recently what had become of you, and that that wretched Cripple Creek business had been cleared up at last. I met a steam-shovel man a month or two ago on the Canal. He used to be a machine-man in the Portland mine, and he told me the whole story.
Jack, you poor, deluded old piece of white meat, do you think for a moment that I held against you your testimony for the operators in Cripple Creek? You will never know how badly it broke me up when that Canal digger sprung his story of how you went the limit for my measly reputation after I had quit the company in disgrace. Still, it was not that which hurt me particularly. I thought you believed the charges and that you testified in a firm belief that I was the guilty man, as all of the circumstantial evidence seemed to indicate. I thought this for three long, meagre years, old friend, and I'm sorry. After that, I suppose there isn't any need for me to say more, except that you are an old fool for not saying you were going to spend your money and your time and reputation trying to put my halo back on straight! I doubt if I was worth it, and you knew that; but let it pass, for we have other fish to fry.
The nubbin of the matter is this: There is only one good gold mine left in this weary world—and I have it. It's the sweetest wildcat lever struck, and we stand the finest show in the world of starving to death if we tackle it without sufficient capital to go through. (You will notice that I am already—and unconsciously—employing the plural pronoun. How rapidly the old habits return with the old friendships rehabilitated!) It will take at least thirty thousand dollars, and we ought to have double that to play safe. I do not know whether you have, or can raise, sixty cents, but at any rate I am going to put the buck up to you and you can take a look.
Here are the specifications. Read them carefully and then see if there is anybody in the U. S. A. whom you can interest to the tune mentioned above. We could probably get by with thirty thousand, but I would not jeopardize anybody's money by tackling it with less.
Jack, I have a mining concession. It is low-grade—a free-milling gold vein—twelve feet of ore between good solid walls on a contact between Andesite and Silurian limestone. The ore is oxidized, and we can save ninety per cent, of the values on amalgamating plates without concentrating or cyaniding machinery. I have had my own portable assay outfit on the ground for a month, and you can take my opinion for what it is worth when I assure you that this concession is a winner, providing the money is forthcoming with which to handle it.
This is a pretty fair country, Jack—if you survive long enough to get used to it. At first you think it's Paradise; then you grow to hate it and know it for hell with the lid off; and finally all your early love for it returns and you become what I am now—a tropical tramp! There is only one social stratum lower than mine, and that's the tropical beachcomber. I am not that—yet; and will not be if my landlady will continue to listen to my blandishments. She is a sweet soul, with a divine disposition, and I am duly grateful.
I would tell you all about the geography, topography, flora and fauna of Sobrante, but you can ascertain that in detail by consulting any standard encyclopedia. Governmentally the country is similar to its sister republics. The poor we have always with us; also a first-class, colorado-maduro despot in the political saddle, and it's a cold day indeed when two patriots, two viva's and a couple of old Long Tom Springfield rifles cannot upset the Sobrante apple cart. We have the usual Governmental extravagance in the matter of statues to countless departed “liberators” in all the public squares, and money is no object. It is depreciated shin-plasters, and I had to use a discarded sugar-barrel to hold mine when I arrived and changed four hundred pesos oro into the national currency. If a waiter brings you a jolt of hooch, you're stingy if you tip him less than a Sobrante dollar.
We have a Malicon along the bay shore and back again, with a municipal bandstand in the middle thereof, upon which the fine city band of Buenaventura plays nightly those languid Spanish melodies that must have descended to us from the Inquisition. If you can spare the cash, send me a bale of the latest New York rags and a banjo, and I'll start something. I have nothing else to do until I hear from you, save shake dice at The Frenchman's with the Présidente, who has nothing else to do except lap up highballs and wait for the next drawing of the lottery. I asked him for a job to tide me over temporarily, and he offered me a portfolia! I could have been Minister of Finance!
I declined, from a constitutional inability, inherent in the Irish, to assimilate a joke from a member of an inferior race.
We haven't had a revolution for nearly six months, but we have hopes.
There are some white men here, neither better nor worse. We tolerate each other.
I am addressing you at the Engineers' Club, in the hope that my letter may reach you there, or perhaps the secretary will know your address and forward it to you. If you are foot-loose and still entertain a lingering regard for your old pal, get busy on this mining concession P. D. Q. Time is the essence of the contract, because I am holding on to the thin edge of nothing, and if we have a change of government I may lose even that. I need you, John Stuart Webster, worse than I need salvation. I enclose you a list of equipment required.
If you receive this letter and can do anything for me, please cable. If you cannot, please cable anyway. It is needless for me to state that the terms of division are as you make them, although I think fifty-fifty would place us both on Easy Street for the rest of our days. Do let me hear from you, Jack, if only to tell me the old entente cordiale still exists. I know now that I was considerable of a heedless pup a few years ago and overlooked my hand quite regularly, but now that I have a good thing I do not know of anybody with whom I care to share it except your own genial self. Please let me hear from you.
Affectionately,
Billy.
Jerome finished reading this remarkable communication; then with infinite amusement he regarded John Stuart Webster over the tops of his glasses as one who examines a new and interesting species of bug.
“So Billy loves that dear Sobrante, eh?” he said with abysmal sarcasm. “Jack Webster, listen to a sane man and be guided accordingly. I was in this same little Buenaventura once. I was there for three days, and I wouldn't have been there three minutes if I could have caught a steamer out sooner. Of all the miserable, squalid, worthless, ornery, stinking holes on the face of God's green footstool, Sobrante is the worst—if one may judge it by its capital city. Jack, there is an old bromide that describes aptly the republic of Sobrante, and it's so trite I hesitate to repeat it—but I will, for your benefit. Sobrante is a country where the flowers are without fragrance, the men without honour, and the women without virtue. It is hot and unhealthy, and the mosquitoes wear breechclouts; and when they bite you, you die. You get mail three times a month, and there isn't a white man in the whole Roman-candle republic that a gentleman would associate with.”
“You forget Billy Geary,” Webster reminded him gently.
“He's a boy. What does his judgment amount to? Are you going to chase off to this God-forsaken fever-hole at the behest of a lad scarcely out of his swaddling clothes? Jack Webster, surely you aren't going to throw yourself away—give up the sure thing I offer you—to join Billy Geary in Sobrante and finance a wildcat prospect without a certificate of title attached. Why, Jack, my dear boy, don't you know that if you develop your mine