“My claim failed!”
“My claim failed!”
And then below them:
“Oh, Susannah! don’t you cry for me!I’m a-living dead in Californi-ee”–
“Oh, Susannah! don’t you cry for me!I’m a-living dead in Californi-ee”–
382which was very bad as doggerel, but probably very accurate as to its author’s state of mind.
One afternoon we turned off on a trail known to Old, and rode a few miles to where the Pine family had made its farm. We found the old man and his tall sons inhabiting a large two-roomed cabin situated on a flat. They had already surrounded a field with a fence made of split pickets and rails, and were working away with the tireless energy of the born axemen at enclosing still more. Their horses had been turned into ploughing; and from somewhere or other they had procured a cock and a dozen hens. Of these they were inordinately proud, and they took great pains to herd them in every night away from wildcats and other beasts. We stayed with them four days, and we had a fine time. Every man of them was keenly interested in the development of the valley and the discovery of its possibilities. We discussed apples, barley, peaches, apricots, ditches, irrigation, beans, hogs, and a hundred kindred topics, to Johnny’s vast disgust. I had been raised on a New England farm; Yank had experienced agricultural vicissitudes in the new country west of the Alleghanies; and the Pines had scratched the surface of the earth in many localities. But this was a new climate and a new soil to all of us; and we had nothing to guide us. The subject was fascinating. Johnny was frankly bored with it all, but managed to have a good time hunting for the game with which the country abounded.
For a brief period Yank and I quite envied the lot of these pioneers who had a settled stake in the country.
“I wish I could go in for this sort of thing,” said Yank.
383“Why don’t you?” urged old man Pine. “There’s a flat just above us.”
“How did you get hold of this land?” I inquired curiously.
“Just took it”.
“Doesn’t it belong to anybody?”
“It’s part of one of these big Greaser ranchos,” said Pine impatiently. “I made a good try to git to the bottom of it. One fellar says he owns it, and will sell; then comes another that saysheowns it and won’t sell. And so on. They don’t nohow use this country, except a few cattle comes through once in a while. I got tired of monkeying with them and I came out here and squatted. If I owe anybody anything, they got to show me who it is. I don’t believe none of them knows themselves who it really belongs to.”
“I’d hate to put a lot of work into a place, and then have to move out,” said I doubtfully.
“I’d like to see anybody move me out!” observed old man Pine grimly.
Farther up in the hills they were putting together the framework of a sawmill, working on it at odd times when the ranch itself did not demand attention. It was built of massive hewn timbers, raised into place with great difficulty. They had no machinery as yet, but would get that later out of their first farming profits.
“There ain’t no hurry about it anyway,” explained Pine, “for as yet there ain’t no demand for lumber yereabouts.”
“I should say not!” exploded Johnny with a derisive shriek of laughter, “unless you’re going to sell it to the elks and coyotes!”
384Pine turned toward him seriously.
“This is all good land yere,” said he, “and they’ll want lumber.”
“It looks mighty good to me,” said Yank.
“Well, why don’t you settle?” urged Pine.
“And me with fifteen hundred good dollars?” replied Yank. “It ain’t such an everlasting fortune; but it’ll git me a place back home; and I’ve had my fun. This country is too far off. I’m going back home.”
To this sentiment Johnny and I heartily agreed. It is a curious fact that not one man in ten thousand even contemplated the possibility of making California his permanent home. It was a place in which to get as rich as he could, and then to leave.
Nevertheless we left our backwoods friends reluctantly; and at the top of the hill we stopped our two horses to look back on the valley. It lay, with its brown, freshly upturned earth, its scattered broad oaks, its low wood-crowned knolls, as though asleep in the shimmering warm floods of golden sunshine. Through the still air we heard plainly the beat of an axe, and the low, drowsy clucking of hens. A peaceful and grateful feeling of settled permanence, to which the restless temporary life of mining camps had long left us strangers, filled us with the vague stirrings of envy.
The feeling soon passed. We marched cheerfully away, our hopes busy with what we would do when we reached New York. Johnny and I had accumulated very fair sums of money, in spite of our loss at the hands of the robbers, what with the takings at Hangman’s Gulch,385what was left from the robbery, and Italian Bar. These sums did not constitute an enormous fortune, to be sure. There was nothing spectacular in our winnings; but they totalled about five times the amount we could have made at home; and they represented a very fair little stake with which to start life. We were young.
We found Sacramento under water. A sluggish, brown flood filled the town and spread far abroad over the flat countryside. Men were living in the second stories of such buildings as possessed second stories, and on the roofs of others. They were paddling about in all sorts of improvised boats and rafts. I saw one man keeping a precarious equilibrium in a baker’s trough; and another sprawled out face down on an India rubber bed paddling overside with his hands.
We viewed these things from the thwarts of a boat which we hired for ten dollars. Our horses we had left outside of town on the highlands. Everywhere we passed men and shouted to them a cheery greeting. Everybody seemed optimistic and inclined to believe that the flood would soon go down.
“Anyway, she’s killed the rats,” one man shouted in answer to our call.
We grinned an appreciation of what we thought merely a facetious reply. Rats had not yet penetrated to the mines, so we did not know anything about them. Next day, in San Francisco, we began to apprehend the man’s remark.
Thus we rowed cheerfully about, having a good time at the other fellow’s expense. Suddenly Johnny, who was386steering, dropped his paddle with an exclamation. Yank and I turned to see what had so struck him. Beyond the trees that marked where the bank of the river ought to be we saw two tall smokestacks belching forth a great volume of black smoke.
“A steamer!” cried Yank.
“Yes, and a good big one!” I added.
We lay to our oars and soon drew alongside. She proved to be a side wheeler, of fully seven hundred tons, exactly like the craft we had often seen plying the Hudson.
“Now how do you suppose they got her out here?” I marvelled.
She was almost completely surrounded by craft of all descriptions; her decks were crowded. We read the nameMcKimon her paddle boxes.
A man with an official cap appeared at the rail.
“Bound for San Francisco?” I called to him.
“Off in two minutes,” he replied.
“What’s the fare?”
“Forty dollars.”
“Come on, boys,” said I to my comrades, at the same time seizing a dangling rope.
“Hold on!” cried Yank. “How about our two horses and our blankets, and this boat?”
I cast my eye around, and discovered a boy of fourteen or fifteen in the stern of a neat fisherman’s dory a few feet away.
“Here!” I called to him. “Do you want two good horses and some blankets?”
“I ain’t got any money.”
387“Don’t need any. These are free. We’re going down on this boat. You’ll find the outfit under the big white oak two miles above the forks on the American. They’re yours if you’ll go get them.”
“What do you want me to do?” he demanded suspiciously.
“Two things: return this boat to its owner–a man named Lilly who lives─”
“I know the boat,” the boy interrupted.
“The other is to be sure to go up to-day after those horses. They’re picketed out.”
“All right,” agreed the boy, whose enthusiasm kindled as his belief in the genuineness of the offer was assured.
I seized a rope, swung myself up to the flat fender, and thence to the deck.
“Come on!” I called to Yank and Johnny, who were hesitating. “It’ll cost more than those horses and blankets are worth to wait.”
Thereupon they followed me. The boy made fast our boat to his own. Five minutes later we were dropping down the river.
“This is what I call real luxury,” said Johnny, returning from an inspection of our craft. “There’s a barroom, and a gambling layout, and velvet carpets and chairs, mirrors, a minstrel show, and all the fixings. Now who’d expect to run against a layout like this on the river?”
“What I’d like to know is how they got her out here,” said I. “Look at her! She’s a river boat. A six-foot wave ought to swamp her!”
We thought of a half dozen solutions, and dismissed388them all. The discussion, however, served its purpose in inflaming our curiosity.
“I’m going to find some one who knows,” I announced at last.
This was not so easy. The captain was of course remote and haughty and inaccessible, and the other officers were too busy handling the ship and the swarming rough crowd to pay any attention to us. The crew were new hands. Finally, however, we found in the engine room a hard bitten individual with a short pipe and some leisure. To him we proffered our question.
“Sailed her,” said he.
“Around the Horn?” I cried.
He looked at me a bitter instant.
“The sailing wasn’t very good across the plains,at that time,” said he.
Little by little we got his story. I am not a seafaring man, but it seems to me one of the most extraordinary feats of which I have ever heard. The lower decks of theMcKimhad been boarded up with heavy planks; some of her frailer gimcracks of superstructure had been dismantled, and then she had been sent under her own power on the long journey around the Horn. Think of it! A smooth-water river boat, light draught, top heavy, frail in construction, sent out to battle with the might of three oceans! However, she made it; and after her her sister ship, theSenator, and they made money for their owners, and I am glad of it. That certainly was a gallant enterprise!
She was on this trip jammed full of people, mostly389those returning from the mines. A trip on theMcKimimplied a certain amount of prosperity, so we were a jolly lot. The weather was fine, and a bright moon illuminated the swollen river. We had drinkers, songsters, debaters, gamblers, jokers, and a few inclined to be quarrelsome, all of which added to the variety of the occasion. I wandered around from one group to another, thoroughly enjoying myself, both out on deck and in the cabins. It might be added that there were no sleepers!
Along toward midnight, as I was leaning on the rail forward watching the effect of the moon on the water and the shower of sparks from the twin stacks against the sky, I was suddenly startled by the cry of “man overboard,” and a rush toward the stern. I followed as quickly as I was able. The paddle wheels had been instantly reversed, and a half dozen sailors were busily lowering a boat. A crowd of men, alarmed by the trembling of the vessel as her way was checked, poured out from the cabins. The fact that I was already on deck gave me an advantageous post; so that I found myself near the stern rail.
“He was leaning against the rail,” one was explaining excitedly, “and it give way, and in he went. He never came up!”
Everybody was watching eagerly the moonlit expanse of the river.
“I guess he’s a goner,” said a man after a few moments. “He ain’t in sight nowhere.”
“There he is!” cried a half dozen voices all at once.
A head shot into sight a few hundred yards astern, blowing the silvered water aside. The small boat, which390was now afloat, immediately headed in his direction, and a moment later he was hauled aboard amid frantic cheers. The dripping victim of the accident clambered to the deck.
It was Johnny!
He was beside himself with excitement, sputtering with rage and uttering frantic threats against something or somebody. His eyes were wild, and he fairly frothed at the mouth. I seized him by the arm. He stared at me, then became coherent, though he still spluttered. Johnny was habitually so quietly reserved as far as emotions go that his present excitement was at first utterly incomprehensible.
It seemed that he had been leaning against the rail, watching the moonlight, when suddenly it had given way beneath his weight and he had fallen into the river.
“They had no business to have so weak a rail!” he cried bitterly.
“Well, you’re here, all right,” I said soothingly. “There’s no great harm done.”
“Oh, isn’t there?” he snarled.
Then we learned how the weight of the gold around his waist had carried him down like a plummet; and we sensed a little of the desperate horror with which he had torn and struggled to free himself from that dreadful burden.
“I thought I’d burst!” said he.
And then he had torn off the belt, and had shot to the surface.
“It’s down there,” he said more calmly, “every confounded yellow grain of it.” He laughed a little. “Broke!” said he. “No New York in mine!”
391The crowd murmured sympathetically.
“Gol darn it, boys, it’s rotten hard luck!” cried a big miner with some heat. “Who’ll chip in?”
At the words Johnny recovered himself, and his customary ease of manner returned.
“Much obliged, boys,” said he, “but I’ve still got my health. I don’t need charity. Guess I’ve been doing the baby act; but I was damn mad at that rotten old rail. Anyway,” he laughed, “there need nobody say in the future that there’s no gold in the lower Sacramento. There is; I put it there myself.”
The tall miner slowly stowed away his buckskin sack, looking keenly in Johnny’s face.
“Well, you’ll have a drink, anyway,” said he.
“Oh, hell, yes!” agreed Johnny, “I’ll have a drink!”
We drew up to San Francisco early in the afternoon, and we were, to put it mildly, thoroughly astonished at the change in the place. To begin with, we now landed at a long wharf projecting from the foot of Sacramento Street instead of by lighter. This wharf was crowded by a miscellaneous mob, collected apparently with no other purpose than to view our arrival. Among them we saw many specialized types that had been lacking to the old city of a few months ago–sharp, keen, businesslike clerks whom one could not imagine at the rough work of the mines; loafers whom one could not imagine at any work at all; dissolute, hard-faced characters without the bold freedom of the road agents; young green-looking chaps who evidently had much to learn and who were exceedingly likely to pay their little fortunes, if not their lives, in the learning. On a hogshead at one side a street preacher was declaiming.
Johnny had by now quite recovered his spirits. I think he was helped greatly by the discovery that he still possessed his celebrated diamond.
“Not broke yet!” said he triumphantly. “You see I was a wise boy after all! Wish I had two of them!”
We disembarked, fought our way to one side, and discussed our plans.
393“Hock the diamond first,” said Johnny, who resolutely refused to borrow from me; “then hair-cut, shave, bath, buy some more clothes, grub, drink, and hunt up Talbot and see what he’s done with the dust we sent down from Hangman’s.”
That program seemed good. We strolled toward shore, with full intention of putting it into immediate execution. “Immediate” proved to be a relative term; there was too much to see.
First we stopped for a moment to hear what the preacher had to say. He was a tall, lank man with fine but rather fanatical features, dressed in a long black coat, his glossy head bare. In spite of the numerous counter-attractions he had a crowd; and he was holding it.
“You’re standing on a whiskey barrel!” called some one; and the crowd yelled with delight.
“True, my friend,” retorted the preacher with undaunted good nature, “and I’ll venture to say this is the first time a whiskey barrel has ever been appropriated to so useful a purpose. The critter in it will do no harm if it is kept underfoot. Never let it get above your feet!”
A boat runner, a squat, humorous-faced negro with flashing teeth and a ready flow of language, evidently a known and appreciated character, mounted the head of a pile at some little distance and began to hold forth in a deep voice on the advantages of some sort of an excursion on the bay. A portion of the preacher’s crowd began to drift in the direction of the new attraction.
“Ho! ho! ho!” cried the preacher suddenly in tremendous volume. “Ho! All ye who want to go to heaven,394now’s your time! A splendid line of celestial steamers will run for a few days from San Francisco to the port of Glory, a country every way superior to California, having in it the richest gold diggings ever discovered, the very streets of the city being paved with gold. In that country are oceans of lager beer and drinks of every kind, all free; pretty women also, and pleasures of endless variety exceeding the dreams of Mohammed as far as the brightness of the meridian sun exceeds the dim twinkle of the glowworm! Program for the voyage: embarkation amid the melody of the best band in the world; that music that so attracted you this morning not to be mentioned in comparison. Appropriate entertainments for each week day, to be announced daily. Each Sunday to be celebrated, first, with a grand feast, closing with a rich profusion of beer, champagne, good old port, whiskey punch, brandy smashes, Tom and Jerry, etc. Second, a game of cards. Third, a grand ball in upper saloon. Fourth, a dog fight. Fifth, a theatrical performance in the evening. If I could truthfully publish such an ad as that I think about two sermons would convert this city.”
The crowd had all turned back to him, laughing good-humouredly. The preacher stretched out his long bony arm, and held forth. His talk was against gambling, and it had, I am afraid, but little real effect. Nevertheless he was listened to; and at the end of his talk everybody contributed something to a collection.
At the land end of the wharf we ran into the most extraordinary collection of vehicles apparently in an inextricable tangle, that was further complicated by the fact395that most of the horses were only half broken. They kicked and reared, their drivers lashed and swore, the wagons clashed together. There seemed no possible way out of the mess; and yet somehow the wagons seemed to get loaded and to draw out into the clear. Occasionally the drivers were inclined to abandon their craft and do battle with the loaded ends of their whips; but always a peacemaker descended upon them in the person of a large voluble individual in whom I recognized my former friend and employer, John McGlynn. Evidently John had no longer a monopoly of the teaming business; but, as evidently, what he said went with this wild bunch.
Most of the wagons were loading goods brought from the interiors of storehouses alongside the approach to the wharf. In these storehouses we recognized the hulls of ships, but so shored up, dismantled, and cut into by doors and stories that of their original appearance only their general shapes remained. There was a great number of these storehouses along the shore, some of them being quite built about by piles and platforms, while two were actually inland several hundred feet. I read the nameNianticon the stern of one of them; and found it to have acquired in the landward side a square false front. It was at that time used as a hotel.
“Looks as if they’d taken hold of Talbot’s idea hard,” observed Yank.
“Say!” cried Johnny, “will one of you drinking men kindly take a look and inform me if I’ve gone wrong?”
This remark was called forth by the discovery, as we neared the shore, of hordes of rats. They were large,396fat, saucy rats; and they strolled about in broad daylight as if they owned the place. They sat upright on sacks of grain; they scampered across the sidewalks; they scuttled from behind boxes; they rustled and squeaked and fought and played in countless droves. The ground seemed alive with them. It was a most astonishing sight.
“And will you look at that dog!” cried Yank disgustedly.
Across an open doorway, blinking in the sun, lay a good-looking fox terrier. His nose was laid between his paws, and within two yards of that nose a large brown rat disported itself with a crust of bread.
“My Lord!” cried Johnny, his sporting blood aboil. “Here, pup, sic ’em! sic ’em!” He indicated the game urgently. The fox terrier rolled up one eye, wagged his stub tail–but did not even raise his nose.
“No use,” observed the dog’s owner, who had appeared in the doorway.
“What’s the matter with him?” demanded Johnny indignantly; “is he sick?”
“No, he ain’t sick,” replied the owner sadly; “but he ain’t got no use for rats. I bought him for damn near his weight in gold dust when thePanamacame in last month. He was the best ratter you ever see. I reckon he must’ve killed a million rats the first week. But, Lord! he got sick of rats. I reckon a rat could go right up and pull his whiskers now, and he’d never mind.”
We condoled with theblasédog, and moved on.
“Same old mud,” observed Yank.
The place was full of new buildings, some of them397quite elaborate two-story structures of brick; and elevated plank sidewalks had taken the place of the old makeshifts. Although the Plaza was still the centre of town, the streets immediately off it had gained considerable dignity and importance. There were many clothing stores, nearly all kept by Jews, and a number of new saloons and gambling houses. As we were picking our way along we ran into an old acquaintance in the person of the captain of thePanama. He recognized us at once, and we drew up for a chat. After we had exchanged first news Johnny asked him if he knew of a place where a fair price could be raised on the diamond.
“Why, the jewellery store is your ticket, of course,” replied the captain.
“So there’s a jewellery store, too!” cried Johnny.
“And a good one,” supplemented the captain. “Come along; I’ll take you to it.”
Itwasa good one, and carried a large stock of rings, chains, pins, clocks, watches, and speaking trumpets. The latter two items were the most prominent, for there were hundreds of watches, and apparently thousands of speaking trumpets. They stood in rows on the shelves, and depended in ranks from hooks and nails. Most of them were of silver or of silver gilt; and they were plain, chased, engraved, hammered, or repousséd, with always an ample space for inscription. After Johnny had concluded a satisfactory arrangement for his diamond, I remarked on the preponderance of speaking trumpets. The man grinned rather maliciously at our captain.
“They are a very favourite article for presentation398by grateful passengers after a successful sea trip,” he said smoothly.
At this our captain exploded.
“Are they?” he boomed. “I should think they were! I’ve got a dozen of the confounded things; and as I’ve just got in from a trip, I’m expecting another any minute. Good Lord!” he cried as a group of men turned in at the door. “Here come some of my passengers now. Come along, let’s get out of this!”
He dragged us out a back door into a very muddy back alley, whence we floundered to dry land with some difficulty.
“That was a narrow escape!” he cried, wiping his brow. “Let’s go get a drink. I know the best place.”
He led us to a very ornate saloon whose chief attraction was the fact that its ceiling was supported on glass pillars! We duly admired this marvel; and then wandered over to the polished mahogany bar, where we were joined by the half dozen loafers who had been lounging around the place. These men did not exactly join us, but they stood expectantly near. Nor were they disappointed.
“Come, let’s all take a drink, boys!” cried the captain heartily.
They named and tossed off their liquor, and then without a word of farewell or thanks shambled back to their roosting places.
“What’s the matter, Billy?” demanded the captain, looking about curiously. “Where’s your usual crowd?”
“They’re all down at the Verandah,” replied the barkeeper, passing a cloth over the satiny wood of the bar. “Dorgan’s got a girl tending bar. Pays her some ungodly399wages; and he’s getting all the crowd. He’d better make the most of it while it lasts. She won’t stay a week.”
“Why not?” I asked curiously.
“Married; sure,” replied the barkeeper briefly.
“And the glass pillars will always be here; eh, Billy?” suggested the captain. “Nevertheless I believe we’ll just wander down and look her over.”
“Sure,” said Billy indifferently; “that’s where all the rest are.”
The Verandah, situated on the Plaza, was crowded to the doors. Behind the bar slaved a half dozen busy drink-mixers. The girl, and a very pretty girl she was, passed the drinks over the counter, and took in the dust.
“She’s straight,” observed the captain sagaciously, after inspection; “if she wasn’t there wouldn’t be such a gang. The other sort is plenty enough.”
We did not try to get near the bar, but after a few moments regained the street. The captain said farewell; and we hunted up, by his direction, the New York Tonsorial Emporium. There we had five dollars’ worth of various things done to us; after which we bought new clothes. The old ones we threw out into the street along with a vast collection of others contributed by our predecessors.
“Now,” said Johnny, “I feel like a new man. And before we go any farther I have a little duty to perform.”
“Which is?”
“Another drink at the sign of the Glass Pillars, or whatever they call the place.”
“We don’t want anything more to drink just now,” I protested.
400“Oblige me in this one treat,” said Johnny in his best manner.
We entered the Arcade, as the bar was called. At once the loafers moved forward. Johnny turned to them with an engaging air of friendliness.
“Come on, boys, let’s all take a drink!” he cried.
The glasses were poured. Johnny raised his. The others followed suit. Then all drained them simultaneously and set down the empty glasses.
“And now,” went on Johnny in the same cheerful, friendly tone, “let’s all pay for them!”
The loafers stared at him a moment. One growled menacingly, but fell silent under his clear glance. One or two others forced a laugh. Under Johnny’s compelling eye they all paid. Billy, behind the bar, watched with sardonic amusement. When Johnny proffered his dust, the barkeeper thrust it back.
“My treat here,” said he briefly.
“But─?” objected Johnny.
“It’s a privilege.”
“If you put it that way, I thank you, sir,” said Johnny in his grandest manner; and we walked out. “Those bums made me tired,” was his only comment to us. “Now let’s go hunt up Talbot. I’ll bet my extinct toothbrush that he’s a well-known citizen around here.”
Johnny’s extinct toothbrush was perfectly safe. The first man of whom we inquired told us where our friend lived, and added the gratuitous information that the Ward Block was nearing completion. We looked up the hotel, a new one on Montgomery Street. The clerk spoke401with respect of Talbot, and told us we would probably find him at one of the several places of business he mentioned, or at the Ward Block. We thanked him, and went direct to the Ward Block first. All of us confessed to a great desire to see that building.
It was to be a three-story brick structure, and was situated at one corner of the Plaza. We gazed upon it with appropriate awe, for we were accustomed to logs and canvas; and to some extent we were able to realize what imported bricks and the laying of them meant. The foreman told us that Talbot had gone out “Mission way” with Sam Brannan and some others to look at some property, and would not be back until late.
Johnny and I spent the rest of the afternoon wandering about. Yank retired to the soft chairs of one of the numerous gambling places. His broken leg would not stand so much tramping.
We had lots of fun, and many interesting minor adventures and encounters, none of which has any particular bearing here. The town had spread. Most of the houses were of the flimsied description. Many people were still living in tents. The latter flopped and tugged in the strong wind. Some men had merely little cot tents, just big enough to cover the bed. An owner of one of these claimed stoutly that they were better than big tents.
“They don’t get blowed away by the wind, and they’re fine to sleep under,” he asserted, “and a man cooks outside, anyway.”
“How about when it rains?” I asked him.
“Then I go down to the Verandah or the Arcade or402Dennison’s Exchange and stay there till she quits,” said he.
In the evening, as Talbot had not yet returned, we wandered from one place of amusement to another. The gambling places were more numerous, more elaborate, more important than ever. Beside the usual rough-looking miners and labourers, who were in the great majority, there were small groups of substantial, grave, important looking men conferring. I noticed again the contrast with the mining-camp gambling halls in the matter of noise; here nothing was heard but the clink of coin or the dull thud of gold dust, a low murmur of conversation, or an occasional full-voiced exclamation.
Johnny, who could never resist the tables, was soon laying very small stakes onmonte. After a time I tired of the close air and heavy smoke, and slipped away. The lower part of the town was impossible on account of the mud, so I made my way out along the edge of the hills. The moon was sailing overhead. The shadows of the hills hung deep in the hollows; and, abroad, a wide landscape slept in the unearthly radiance. A thousand thousand cheerful frogs piped up a chorus against the brooding moon-stillness they could not quite break. After the glare of the Arcade and the feverish hum and bustle of the busy new city, this still peace was almost overpowering. I felt, somehow, that I dared not give way to it all at once, but must admit its influence trickle by trickle until my spirit had become a little accustomed. Thus gradually I dropped into a reverie. The toil, excitement, strain, striving of the past eight or nine months fell swiftly into403the background. I relaxed; and in the calm of the relaxation for the first time old memories found room.
How long I had tramped, lost in this dreaming, I did not know; but at some point I must have turned back, for I came to somewhere near the end of Sacramento Street–if it could be said to have an end–to find the moon far up toward the zenith. A man overtook me, walking rapidly; I caught the gleam of a watch chain, and on a sudden impulse I turned toward him.
“Can you tell me what time it is?” I asked.
The man extended his watch in the moonlight, and silently pointed to its face–with the muzzle of a revolver!
“Half-past twelve,” said he.
“Good Lord!” I cried with a shout of laughter. “Do you take me for a robber, Talbot?”
He thrust away his watch and the pistol and with a shout of joy seized both my hands.
“Well! well! well! well!” he cried over and over again. “But Iamglad to see you! I’d no idea where you were or what you were doing! Why couldn’t you write a man occasionally?”
“I don’t know,” said I, rather blankly. “I don’t believe it ever occurred to us wecouldwrite.”
“Where are the others? Are they with you?”
“We’ll look them up,” said I.
Together we walked away, arm in arm. Talbot had not changed, except that he had discarded his miner’s rig, and was now dressed in a rather quiet cloth suit, a small soft hat, and a blue flannel shirt. The trousers he had tucked into the tops of his boots. I thought the loose, neat costume very becoming to him. After a dozen swift inquiries as to our welfare, he plunged headlong into enthusiasms as to the town.
“It’s the greatest city in the world!” he cried; then catching my expression, he added, “or it’s going to be. Think of it, Frank! A year ago it had less than a thousand people, and now we have at least forty thousand. The new Commercial Wharf is nearly half a mile long and405cost us a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, but we raised the money in ten minutes! We’re going to build two more. And Sam Brannan and a lot of us are talking of putting down plank roads. Think what that will mean! And there’s no limit to what we can do in real estate! Just knock down a few of these hills to the north─”
He stopped, for I was laughing.
“Why not drain the bay?” I suggested. “There’s a plenty of land down there.”
“Well,” said Talbot in a calmer manner, “we won’t quite do that. But we’ll put some of those sand hills into the edge of the bay. You wait and see. If you want to make money, you just buy some of those waterfront lots. You’ll wake up some morning to find you’re a mile inland.”
I laughed again; but just the other day, in this year 1899, I rode in a street car where fifty years ago great ships had lain at anchor.
We discovered Johnny and Yank, and pounded each other’s backs, and had drinks, and generally worked off our high spirits. Then we adjourned to a corner, lit cigars–a tremendous luxury for us miners–and plunged into recital. Talbot listened to us attentively, his eyes bright with interest, occasionally breaking in on the narrator to ask one of the others to supplement some too modestly worded statement.
“Well!” he sighed when we had finished. “You boys have certainly had a time! What an experience! You’ll never forget it!” He brooded a while. “I suppose the world will never see its like again. It was the chance of a406lifetime. I’d like–no I wouldn’t! I’ve lived, too. Well, now for the partnership. As I understand it, for the Hangman’s Gulch end of it, we have, all told, about five thousand dollars–at any rate, that was the amount McClellan sent down to me.”
“That’s it,” said I.
“And the Porcupine Flat venture was a bad loss?”
“The robbers cleaned us out there except for what we sent you,” I agreed regretfully.
“Since which time Yank has been out of it completely?”
“Haven’t made a cent since,” acknowledged Yank cheerfully, “and I owe something to Frank, here, for my keep. Thought I had about fifteen hundred dollars, but I guess I ain’t.”
“At Italian Bar,” went on Talbot, “how much did you make?”
“Doesn’t matter what I made,” interposed Johnny, “for, as Frank told you, it’s all at the bottom of the Sacramento River.”
“I did pretty well,” said I, and pulled out two hundred and sixteen ounces.
“About three thousand dollars,” computed Talbot. “You’re the plutocrat, all right. Well, I’ve done pretty well with this end of the partnership, too. I think–but I guess we’d better take a fresh day to it. It must be ungodly late. Good Lord, yes! Three o’clock!”
Nobody would have thought so. The place seemed nearly as full as ever. We accompanied Talbot to his hotel, where he managed, after some difficulty, to procure us a cot apiece.
407Our sleep was short; and in spite of our youth and the vitality we had stored in the healthy life of the hills we felt dragged out and tired. Five hours’ sleep in two days is not enough. I was up a few minutes before the rest; and I sat in front of the hotel basking in the sun like a lizard. The let-down from the toil and excitement of the past months still held me. I thought with lazy satisfaction of the two thousand-odd dollars which was my share of our partnership. It was a small sum, to be sure; but, then, I had never in my life made more than twelve dollars a week, and this had cost me nothing. Now that definitely I had dropped overboard my hopes of a big strike, I unexpectedly found that I had dropped with them a certain feeling of pride and responsibility as well. As long as I had been in the mining business I had vaguely felt it incumbent on me to do as well as the rest, were that physically possible. I was out of the mining business. As I now looked at it, I had been mighty well paid for an exciting and interesting vacation. I would go back to New York at a cost of two or three hundred dollars, and find some good opening for my capital and ability.
Talbot appeared last, fresh and smiling. Breakfast finished, he took us all with him to the new brick building. After some business we adjourned once more to the Arcade. There Talbot made his report.
I wish I could remember it, and repeat it to you verbatim. It was worth it. But I cannot; and the most I can do is to try to convey to you the sense of that scene–we three tanned, weather-beaten outlanders listening open-mouthed to the keen, competent, self-assured magician408who before our eyes spun his glittering fabric. Talbot Ward had seized upon the varied possibilities of the new city. The earnings on his first scheme–the ship storehouses, and the rental of the brick building on Montgomery Street, you will remember–amounted net, the first month, I believe, to some six thousand dollars. With his share of this money he had laid narrow margins on a dozen options. Day by day, week by week, his operations extended. He was in wharves, sand lots, shore lots, lightering, plank roads, a new hotel. Day after day, week after week, he had turned these things over, and at each turn money had dropped out. Sometimes the plaything proved empty, and then Talbot had promptly thrown it away, apparently without afterthought or regret. I remember some of the details of one deal:
“It looked to me,” said Talbot, “that somebody ought to make a good thing in flour, the way things were going. It all comes from South America just now, so enough capital ought to be able to control the supply. I got together four of the big men here and we agreed with the agents to take not less than a hundred and fifty thousand barrels nor more than two hundred thousand barrels at fourteen dollars. Each firm agreed to take seven hundred thousand dollars’ worth; and each agreed to forfeit one hundred thousand dollars for failure to comply. Flour could be held to twenty-five to thirty dollars a barrel; so there was a good thing.”
“I should think so,” I agreed. “Where did you come in?”
“Percentage of the profits. They took and sold quite a heap of flour at this rate–sixty thousand barrels to be409exact–on which there was a net profit of seven hundred thousand dollars. Then one of those freak things happened that knocked us all silly. Flour just dropped down out of sight. Why? Manipulation. They’ve got a smart lot out here. The mines had flour enough for the time being; and the only thing that held the price up was the uncertainty of just where the flour was coming from in the future. Well, the other crowd satisfied that uncertainty, and our flour dropped from about twenty-five dollars down to eight. We had sold sixty thousand barrels, and we had ninety thousand to take on our contract, on each one of which we were due to lose six dollars. And the other fellows were sitting back chuckling and waiting for us to unload cheap flour.”
“What was there to do?”
Talbot laughed. “I told our crowd that I had always been taught that when a thing was hot, to drop it before I got burned. If each firm paid its forfeit it would cost us four hundred thousand dollars. If we sold all the flour contracted for at the present price, we stood to lose nearer six hundred thousand. So we simply paid our forfeits, threw over the contract, and were three hundred thousand ahead.”
“But was that fair to the flour people?” I asked doubtfully.
“Fair?” retorted Talbot. “What in thunder did they put the forfeit clause in for if it wasn’t expected we might use it?”
As fast as he acquired a dollar, he invested it in a new chance, until his interests extended from the Presidio410to the waterfront of the inner bay. These interests were strange odds and ends. He and a man with his own given name, Talbot H. Green, had title in much of what is now Harbour View–that is to say, they would have clear title as soon as they had paid heavy mortgages. His shares in the Commercial Wharf lay in the safes of a banking house, and the dollars he had raised on them were valiantly doing duty in holding at bay a pressing debt on precariously held waterfront equities. Talbot mentioned glibly sums that reduced even the most successful mining to a child’s game. The richest strike we had heard rumoured never yielded the half of what our friend had tossed into a single deal. Our own pitiful thousands were beggarly by comparison, insignificant, not worth considering.
Of all the varied and far-extending affairs the Ward Block was the flower. Talbot owned options, equities, properties, shares in all the varied and numerous activities of the new city; but each and every one of them he held subject to payments which at the present time he could by no possibility make. Mortgages and loans had sucked every immediately productive dollar; and those dollars that remained were locked tight away from their owner until such time as he might gain possession of a golden key. This did not worry him.
“They are properties that are bound to rise in value,” he told us. “In fact, they are going up every minute we sit here talking. They are futures.”
Among other pieces, Talbot had been able to buy the lot on the Plaza where now the Ward Block was going up. He paid a percentage down, and gave a mortgage for the411rest. Now all the money he could squeeze from all his other interests he was putting into the structure. That is why I rather fancifully alluded to the Ward Block as the flower of all Talbot’s activities.
“Building is the one thing you have to pay cash for throughout,” said Talbot regretfully. “Labour and materials demand gold. But I see my way clear; and a first-class, well-appointed business block in this town right now is worth more than the United States mint. That’s cash coming in for you–regularly every month. It will pay from the start four or five times the amount necessary to keep everything else afloat. Jim Reckett has taken the entire lower floor at thirty thousand. The offices upstairs will pay from a thousand a month up and they are every one rented in advance. Once we get our rents coming in, the strain is relieved. I can begin to take up my mortgages and loans, and once that is begun we are on the road to Millionaireville.”
Once more he recapitulated his affairs–the land on the Plaza two hundred thousand; the building eighty thousand; the Harbour View lands anything they might rise to, but nearly a quarter million now; ten thousand par value of the wharf stock already paying dividends; real estate here and there and everywhere in the path of the city’s growth; shares in a new hotel that must soon touch par; the plank road–as we jotted down the figures, and the magic total grew, such trifling little affairs as gold mines dropped quite below the horizon. We stared at Talbot fascinated.
And then for the first time we learned that the five412thousand dollars we had sent down from Hangman’s Gulch, and the sum left from the robbery, was not slumbering in some banker’s safe, but had been sent dancing with the other dollars at Talbot’s command.
“I didn’t know just what you fellows intended,” said he, “but we were partners up there at the mines, and I concluded it would be all right. You didn’t mean─”
“Sure not!” broke in Johnny heartily. “You’re welcome to mine.”
“Same here,” agreed Yank and I.
And then Talbot let us see that he considered us to that extent partners in the business.
“I have the date it arrived,” he told us, “and I know just how much actual capital I had myself at that time. So I’m computing your shares in the venture on that basis. It comes to about one tenth apiece for Yank and Johnny. Frank and I have an agreement already.”
Johnny stared at the paper on which the totals had been pencilled.
“Not any!” he protested vehemently. “It isn’t fair! You’ve made this thing by sheer genius, and it isn’t fair for me to take a tenth of it on the strength of a measly little consignment of gold dust. You give me your note for a thousand dollars–or whatever the sum is–at interest, if you want to, and that’s all that is coming to me.”
“I feel the same,” said Yank.
“Boys,” argued Talbot earnestly, “that doesn’t go. That five thousand saved me. It came at a time when I had to have money or go down. I had been to every bank, to every firm, to every man in town, and I couldn’t413raise ten cents more. If you refuse this thing, you will be doing something that─”
“Oh, hush up, Tal!” broke in Johnny gruffly; “if that’s how you feel─”
“It is.”
“It is now,” said Johnny firmly, “10:30 A.M., but I’m going to have bubbles. If you fellows don’t want me all drunk and dressed up, you’ve got to help me drink them.”
We felt very elated–and rather small. Talbot had alone and without, so to speak, moving from his tracks, made a fortune, while we, after going through many hardships, adventures, and hard work, had returned almost penniless. One of our first tasks was to convince Talbot of the injustice to himself in giving us shares based on a proportionate money investment. We made him see, after a while, that his own genius counted for something in the matter. He then agreed, but reluctantly, to reduce our shares to a twentieth each, and included me in this, despite our previous agreement. If we had adhered to that, my proportion would have been nearer a fortieth.
This having been decided–after considerable argument–we settled down to wait for the completion of the Ward Block. Once the rents from that structure should begin to come in, it was agreed we should take out ready money enough to return East. The remainder, less Talbot’s expenses, would of course have to go back into releasing all the other interests. The formal opening had been arranged for the first of January.
In the meantime we loafed magnificently, and lived on my money. Now that our futures were all assured, Yank and Johnny condescended to temporary loans. Occasionally415we could help Talbot in some of the details of his varied businesses, but most of the time we idled. I do think we deserved a rest.
Our favourite occupation was that of reviewing our property. To this end we took long tramps over the hills, hunting painstakingly for obscure corner stakes or monuments that marked some one of our numerous lots. On them we would gaze solemnly, although in no manner did they differ from all the other sage-brush hill country about them. In a week we knew accurately every piece of property belonging to Our Interests, and we had listed every other more intangible equity or asset. One of Johnny’s favourite feats was to march Yank and me up to a bar, face us, and interrogate us according to an invariable formula. We must have presented a comical sight–I with my great bulk and round, fresh face alongside the solemn, lank, and leathery Yank; both of us drawn up at attention, and solemn as prairie dogs.
“How much is one twentieth of two thousand thousand?” inquired Johnny.
“One hundred thousand,” Yank and I chorused.
“Is that a plutocrat?” demanded Johnny cryptically.
“It is!” we cried.
Our sense of our own financial importance being thus refreshed, we advanced in rigid military formation to the bar and took our drinks. Two million dollars was the amount we had chosen as representing the value of Our Interests. In deciding upon this figure we considered ourselves very moderate in refusing to add probable future increment. It might also be added that we equally416neglected to deduct present liabilities. Nobody ever guessed what this mysterious performance of ours meant, but every one came to expect it and to be amused by it. In a mild way we and our fool monkeyshines came to be a well-known institution.
Having nothing else to do, we entered heartily into the life and pleasures of the place, and we met many of the leading citizens. Some of them have since become historical personages. Talbot was hand in glove with most of them, and in and out of dozens of their schemes. There was David Broderick, a secretive, dignified, square-cut, bulldog sort of a man, just making his beginning in a career that was to go far. I remember he was then principally engaged in manufacturing gold coins and slugs and buying real estate.[A]His great political rival, Dr. Gwin the Southerner, I also met; and Talbot H. Green, then and for some time later, one of the most liked and respected of men, but whose private scandal followed him from the East and ruined him; and Sam Brannan, of course, the ex-elder of the Mormons; and Jim Reckett, the gambler; and W. T. Coleman, later known as Old Vigilante, and a hundred others. These were strong, forceful men, and their company was always interesting. They had ideas on all current topics, and they did not hesitate to express those ideas. We thus learned something of the community in which we had been living so long.
We heard of the political difficulties attendant on the417jumble of military and unauthorized civil rule; of the convention at Monterey in September, with its bitterly contested boundary disputes; of the great and mooted question as to whether California should be “slave” or “free”; of the doubt and uncertainty as to the status of California-made law pending some action by the Federal Congress; of how the Federal Congress, with masterly inactivity and probably some slight skittishness as to mingling in the slavery argument, had adjourned without doing anything at all! So California had to take her choice of remaining under military governorship or going ahead and taking a chance on having her acts ratified later. She chose the latter course. San José was selected as the capital. Nobody wanted to serve in the new legislature; men hadn’t time. There was the greatest difficulty in getting assemblymen. The result was that, with few exceptions, the first legislature of fifty-two members was composed of cheap professional politicians from the South, and useless citizens from elsewhere. This body was then in session. It was invariably referred to as “The Legislature of the Thousand Drinks.” I heard discussed numberless schemes for its control for this or that purpose; many of them, it seemed to me, rather unscrupulous.
These big men of the city talked of other things besides politics. From them I heard of the state of commercial affairs, with its system of consignments and auctions, its rumours of fleet clipper ships, its corners of the market, its gluttings with unforeseen cargoes of unexpected vessels, and all the other complex and delicate adjustments and418changes that made business so fascinating and so uncertain. All these men were filled with a great optimism and an abiding enthusiasm for the future. They talked of plank roads, of sewers, of schools, churches, hospitals, pavements, fills, the razing of hills, wharves, public buildings, water systems; and they talked of them so soberly and in such concrete terms of accomplishment that the imagination was tricked into accepting them as solid facts. Often I have gone forth from listening to one of these earnest discussions to look about me on that wind-swept, sandblown, flimsy, dirty, sprawling camp they called a city, with its half dozen “magnificent” brick buildings that any New England village could duplicate, and have laughed wildly until the tears came, over the absurdity of it. I was young. I did not know that a city is not bricks but men, is not fact but the vitality of a living ideal.
There were, of course, many other men than those I have named, and of varied temperaments and beliefs. Some of them were heard of later in the history of the state. Terry, James King of William, Stephen J. Field, General Richardson were some of those whose names I remember. They were, in general, frank and open in manner, ready to offer or take a joke, and on terms of good-natured comradeship with each other; and yet somehow I always felt behind it all a watchful reservation. This was indefinable, but it indubitably existed. The effect on me was an instinct that these men would remain good-natured, laughing, joking, intimate, just as long as nothing happened to make them otherwise. They were a pack, hunting in419full cry the same quarry; but were one of them to fall out, the rest would sweep on without a backward glance. As an individual human being no one of them was in reality important to any other. They pursued the same aims, by much the same methods, and they could sometimes make use of each other to the advantage of both. In the meantime, since they as the prominent men of a mixed community must possess qualities in common, they found each other mutually agreeable. Many called themselves friends; but I much doubt if the friendship that would render aid at a sacrifice was very common. Every man played his own game.
In the town outside we made many other acquaintances, of all classes of society. In 1849 no social stigma, or very little, attached to any open association. Gamblers were respectable citizens, provided they ran straight games. The fair and frail sisterhood was well represented. It was nothing against a man, either in the public eye or actually, to be seen talking, walking, or riding with one of these ladies; for every one knew them. There were now a good many decent women in town, living mainly with their husbands and children very quietly among the sandhills on the edges of the town. One saw little of them unless he took the trouble to search them out. We did so, and thus struck up acquaintance with a half dozen very pleasant households, where occasionally my New England heart was gladdened by a genuine homebaked New England pie. These people had children and religious beliefs; and for the one and the other they had organized churches and schools, both of which were well attended. Furthermore, such420institutions were contributed to by many of the business men who never entered their doors. This respectable life was stronger than is generally known. It was quiet and in the background, and under the deep shadow cast by the glaring light of downtown, but it was growing in solidity and strength.
Among the others we came across the preacher we had seen holding forth on the wharf. He was engaged, with the assistance of two men of the Methodist persuasion, in building a church. The three had themselves cut and hewed the timbers. Mr. Taylor, for that was his name, explained to me that, having no money, that seemed the the only way to get a church. He showed us his own place, a little shack not unlike the others, but enclosed, and planted with red geraniums, nasturtiums and other bright things.
“As far as I know,” he told us with pride, “that is the first garden in San Francisco.”
In the backyard he had enclosed three chickens–two hens and a cock.
“I paid eighteen dollars for them,” said he.
We looked at each other in startled astonishment. The sum appeared a trifle extravagant considering the just-acknowledged impecuniosity of the church. He caught the glance.
“Boys,” he said quaintly, “San Francisco is a very lonesome place for the godly. The hosts of sin are very strong, and the faithful are very few. Mortal flesh is weak; and mortal spirit is prone to black discouragement. When I bought those chickens I bought eighteen dollars’421worth of hope. Somehow Sunday morning seems more like the Sabbath with them clicking around sleepy and lazy and full of sun.”
We liked him so much that we turned to at odd times and helped him with his carpenter work. While thus engaged he confided to us his intention to preach against the gambling the next Sunday in the Plaza. We stopped hammering to consider this.
“I shouldn’t, if I were you,” said I. “The gamblers own the Plaza; they are respected by the bulk of the community; and they won’t stand any nonsense. They none of them think anything of shooting a man in their places. I don’t think they will stand for it. I am afraid you will be roughly handled.”
“More likely shot,” put in Johnny bluntly.
“Well, well, boys, we’ll see,” said Taylor easily.
Nor could we move him, in spite of the fact that, as we came to see his intention was real, we urged very earnestly against it.
“Well, if you will, you will,” Johnny conceded at last, with a sigh. “We’ll see what we can do to get you a fair show.”
“Now that is just what I don’t want you to do,” begged the old man earnestly. “I want no vain contention and strife. If the Lord desires that I preach to these sinners, He will protect me.”
In the end he extorted from us a reluctant promise not to mingle in the affair.
“He’s justlookingfor trouble,” muttered Johnny, “and there’s no doubt he’ll find it. The gamblers aren’t422going to stand for a man’s cussing ’em outright on their own doorsteps–and I don’t know as I blame them. Gambling isn’t such a terrible, black, unforgivable sin as I see it.”
“That’s because you’re ahead of the game, Johnny,” drawled Yank.
“Just the same the old fool is wrong,” persisted Johnny, “and he’s as obstinate as a mule, and he makes me mad clean through. Nevertheless he’s a good old sort, and I’d hate to see him hurt.”
The news spread abroad, and there was much speculation as to what would happen. In general the sentiment was hostile to the preacher. It was considered an unwarrantable interference with freedom for any man to attempt to dictate the conduct of another. Everybody agreed that religion was all right; but by religion they meant some vague utterance of platitudes. On the appointed Sunday a very large crowd gathered in the Plaza. Nobody knew just what the gamblers intended to do about it. Those competent citizens were as close mouthed as ever. But it was understood that no nonsense was to be permitted, and that this annoying question must be settled at once and fully. As one man expressed it:
“We’ll have these fellows caterwauling all over the place if we don’t shut down on them right sharp off quick.”
Taylor arrived about ten o’clock and proceeded briskly to the pork barrel that had been rolled out to serve as a pulpit. He faced a lowering, hostile mob.
“Gentlemen,” said he, “if some means of communication existed by which the United States could this morning423know that street preaching was to be attempted in the streets of San Francisco, the morning papers, badly informed as to the temper and disposition of the people of this new country, would feel themselves fully justified in predicting riot, if not actual bloodshed. Furthermore, I do not doubt that the greater dailies would hold their forms open to report the tragedy when news of it should come in. But we of the West know better than that. We know ourselves rough and ready, but we know ourselves also to be lovers of fair play. We know that, even though we may not agree with a man, we are willing to afford him a fair hearing. And as for rioting or bloodshed, we can afford to smile rather than become angry at such wide misconception of our decency and sense of fair dealing.”
Having in this skilful fashion drawn the venom from the fangs of the mob, he went directly ahead at his sermon, hammering boldly on his major thesis. He finished in a respectful silence, closed his Bible with a snap, and strode away through the lane the crowd opened for him.
Truth to tell, there was much in the sermon. Gambling, although considered one of the respectable amusements, undoubtedly did a great deal of harm. Men dropped their last cents at the tables. I remember one young business man who had sold out his share in his firm for ten thousand dollars in cash and three notes for five thousand each. He had every intention of taking this little fortune back to his family in the East, but he began gambling. First, he lost his ten thousand dollars in cash. This took him just two days. After vacillating another day, he staked one of the notes, at a discount, of course. This he lost.424A second note followed the first; and everybody confidently expected that the third would disappear in the same fashion. But Jim Reckett, who was a very good sort, took this man aside, and gave him a good talking-to.
“You confounded fool,” said he, “you’re barred from my tables. My advice to you is to go to your old partners, tell them what an ass you’ve made of yourself, and ask them to let you have a few thousand on that last note. And then you leave on to-day’s Panama steamer. And, say, if they won’t do it, you come to me.”
The young fellow took this advice.
The Panama steamers were crowded to the rail. Indeed, the exodus was almost as brisk as the immigration, just at this time of year. A moderate proportion of those going out had been successful, but the great majority were disappointed. They were tired, and discouraged, and homesick; and their minds were obsessed with the one idea–to get back. We who remained saw them go with considerable envy, and perhaps a good deal of inner satisfaction that soon we were to follow. Of the thousands who were remaining in California, those who had definitely and permanently cast their lot with the country were lost in the crowd. The rest intended to stay another year, two years, perhaps even three; but then each expected to go back.