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They looked and longed, but he so concealed his timidity that he
had all the seeming of moving boldly among them. Nor was it his
wealth alone that attracted them. He was too much a man, and too
much an unusual type of man. Young yet, barely thirty-six,
eminently handsome, magnificently strong, almost bursting with a
splendid virility, his free trail-stride, never learned on
pavements, and his black eyes, hinting of great spaces and
unwearied with the close perspective of the city dwellers, drew
many a curious and wayward feminine glance. He saw, grinned
knowingly to himself, and faced them as so many dangers, with a
cool demeanor that was a far greater personal achievement than
had they been famine, frost, or flood.
He had come down to the States to play the man's game, not the
woman's game; and the men he had not yet learned. They struck
him as soft--soft physically; yet he divined them hard in their
dealings, but hard under an exterior of supple softness. It
struck him that there was something cat-like about them. He met
them in the clubs, and wondered how real was the good-fellowship
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84
they displayed and how quickly they would unsheathe their claws
and gouge and rend. "That's the proposition," he repeated to
himself; "what will they-all do when the play is close and down
to brass tacks?" He felt unwarrantably suspicious of them.
"They're sure slick," was his secret judgment; and from bits of
gossip dropped now and again he felt his judgment well
buttressed. On the other hand, they radiated an atmosphere of
manliness and the fair play that goes with manliness. They might
gouge and rend in a fight--which was no more than natural; but he
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felt, somehow, that they would gouge and rend according to rule.
This was the impression he got of them--a generalization tempered
by knowledge that there was bound to be a certain percentage of
scoundrels among them.
Several months passed in San Francisco during which time he
studied the game and its rules, and prepared himself to take a
hand. He even took private instruction in English, and succeeded
in eliminating his worst faults, though in moments of excitement
he was prone to lapse into "you-all," "knowed," "sure," and
similar solecisms. He learned to eat and dress and generally
comport himself after the manner of civilized man; but through it
all he remained himself, not unduly reverential nor
considerative, and never hesitating to stride rough-shod over any
soft-faced convention if it got in his way and the provocation
were great enough. Also, and unlike the average run of weaker
men coming from back countries and far places, he failed to
reverence the particular tin gods worshipped variously by the
civilized tribes of men. He had seen totems before, and knew
them for what they were.
Tiring of being merely an onlooker, he ran up to Nevada, where
the new gold-mining boom was fairly started--"just to try a
flutter," as he phrased it to himself. The flutter on the
Tonopah Stock Exchange lasted just ten days, during which time
his smashing, wild-bull game played ducks and drakes with the
more stereotyped gamblers, and at the end of which time, having
gambled Floridel into his fist, he let go for a net profit of
half a million. Whereupon, smacking his lips, he departed for
San Francisco and the St. Francis Hotel. It tasted good, and
his hunger for the game became more acute.
And once more the papers sensationalized him. BURNING DAYLIGHT
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was a big-letter headline again. Interviewers flocked about him.
Old files of magazines and newspapers were searched through, and
the romantic and historic Elam Harnish, Adventurer of the Frost,
King of the Klondike, and father of the Sourdoughs, strode upon
the breakfast table of a million homes along with the toast and
breakfast foods. Even before his elected time, he was forcibly
launched into the game. Financiers and promoters, and all the
flotsam and jetsam of the sea of speculation surged upon the
shores of his eleven millions. In self-defence he was
compelled to open offices. He had made them sit up and take
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85
notice, and now, willy-nilly, they were dealing him hands and
clamoring for him to play. Well, play he would; he'd show 'em;
even despite the elated prophesies made of how swiftly he would
be trimmed--prophesies coupled with descriptions of the bucolic
game he would play and of his wild and woolly appearance.
He dabbled in little things at first--"stalling for time," as he
explained it to Holdsworthy, a friend he had made at the
Alta-Pacific Club. Daylight himself was a member of the club,
and Holdsworthy had proposed him. And it was well that Daylight
played closely at first, for he was astounded by the multitudes
of sharks--"ground-sharks," he called them--that flocked about
him.
He saw through their schemes readily enough, and even marveled
that such numbers of them could find sufficient prey to keep them
going. Their rascality and general dubiousness was so
transparent that he could not understand how any one could be
taken in by them.
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And then he found that there were sharks and sharks. Holdsworthy
treated him more like a brother than a mere fellow-clubman, [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]