"Which reminds me, our last scrap as children was over that very thing."
Then the door closed behind her and Winston was alone.
CHAPTER FIVE
A country that has yielded a billion and a half of gold is, perforce, well and favorably known to the uttermost parts of the earth. Though the stream of yellow wealth diminishes, or even ceases to flow, yet the channel is carved through which the thoughts of men longingly roll. Upon such a land no limit of impossibility is placed. Upon what has been, the faith of man lays the foundations of nobler structures yet to be. The structures may rise and fall, but the foundation yet remains. It matters not to the builders of golden castles that, between the gold fields of California and the line that marked another nation, the whole of New England could lie, like an island in a sea of desert sand; California was yet California, and the Pactolean sands of the Cascades and the Sierras spread their yellow sheen over the whole vast expanse of mountain, and valley, and desert.
Winston was right. The gold that had flowed to the Eastward was now returning in heavy waves. From the pockets of idle tourists, it was scattered with lavish hand. From the pockets of gamblers, it came also; gamblers who, with trembling fingers, placed their gold on checkered town-lots, and waited for the spinning wheel to return it with usury, and went out white and haggard when the croupier declared against them. It came in the pockets of shrewd-eyed men who parted with it for a proper consideration, or not at all.
Into this stream of wealth, Winston was planning to build his dam. His efforts were rewarded more abundantly and sooner than either he or the more sanguine Elijah had expected.
Elijah had suggested a movement on the speculators in Ysleta lots, but against this Winston had set his hand.
"We don't want floaters; we want stayers. I met a man in the crowd yesterday who's a stayer all right. I think he'll come in. If he does, it will make me feel good in more ways than one. He's got money and he's got a head that tells him where there's more."
"What's his name?"