Of course Wingate did not reply, but looked at the “Fool,” who, with a troubled face, was rubbing his legs softly. After a pause, he turned deprecatingly toward his visitors.
“Ye didn't enny of ye ever hev a sort of tremblin' in your legs, a kind o' shakiness from the knee down? Suthin',” he continued, slightly brightening with his topic,—“suthin' that begins like chills, and yet ain't chills? A kind o' sensation of goneness here, and a kind o' feelin' as it you might die suddint?—when Wright's Pills don't somehow reach the spot, and quinine don't fetch you?”
“No!” said Wingate with a curt directness, and the air of authoritatively responding for his friends,—“no, never had. You was speakin' of this yer investment.”
“And your bowels all the time irregular?” continued Hawkins, blushing under Wingate's eye, and yet clinging despairingly to his theme, like a shipwrecked mariner to his plank.
Wingate did not reply, but glanced significantly at the rest. Hawkins evidently saw this recognition of his mental deficiency, and said apologetically, “You was saying suthin' about my investment?”
“Yes,” said Wingate, so rapidly as to almost take Hawkins's breath away,—“the investment you made in”—
“Rafferty's Ditch,” said the “Fool” timidly.
For a moment, the visitors could only stare blankly at each other. “Rafferty's Ditch,” the one notorious failure of Five Forks!—Rafferty's Ditch, the impracticable scheme of an utterly unpractical man!—Rafferty's Ditch, a ridiculous plan for taking water that could not be got to a place where it wasn't wanted!—Rafferty's Ditch, that had buried the fortunes of Rafferty and twenty wretched stockholders in its muddy depths!
“And thet's it, is it?” said Wingate, after a gloomy pause. “Thet's it! I see it all now, boys. That's how ragged Pat Rafferty went down to San Francisco yesterday in store-clothes, and his wife and four children went off in a kerridge to Sacramento. Thet's why them ten workmen of his, ez hadn't a cent to bless themselves with, was playin' billiards last night, and eatin' isters. Thet's whar that money kum frum,—one hundred dollars to pay for the long advertisement of the new issue of ditch stock in the 'Times' yesterday. Thet's why them six strangers were booked at the Magnolia hotel yesterday. Don't you see? It's thet money—and that 'Fool'!”
The “Fool” sat silent. The visitors rose without a word.