The other smoked in silence for two or three minutes.
'Twenty-five hundred dollars,' he said at last, 'is a tidy sum, but it would not go far here. Besides, if you are thinking of doing anything with the cards you would have to move about. It wouldn't do to bide too long anywhere. They are up to most tricks, I can tell you, and they would think here no more of shooting a man they had a suspicion of playing false than you would of eating your dinner. Stores are paying well here, because there is a crowd of people going through to the West, and most of them lay in their stock for the journey here, but twenty-five hundred dollars would go no way towards a store. If I were to sell out, I could with what I could get for this place and what I have got by me put as much more in. Still, five thousand dollars would be no use for a store that would make anything of a show. I have thought a good deal about going West myself.'
'West?' the other repeated doubtfully.
'Yes, to California; there is big money to be made out there; I don't mean in digging for gold. In a place like that it don't want a deal of capital. A big tent and a few casks of spirits and a stock of cheap wines and some tables and benches is about all; but that would be too much for me by the time I had made the journey across. With your money and mine I don't know that we mightn't manage it, and if we could it ought to pay big money. I could run the saloon, you could work the card rig in a room behind, and if the girl is as good-looking as you say she is, she would fetch them in crowds if she looked after the bar. There are no end of mining camps, I hear, and the miners just chuck their gold about, and one could move off from one to another when we found the game playing out.'
'It sounds a good thing,' Warbles said, 'but it is a long journey, isn't it?'
'Well, yes, it's a long journey, there's no denying that, but there are hundreds of people starting every week. Most of them go by the Southern route, but I am told it is a much better way to go up the river by steamer to a place called Omaha, which is growing into a big town, and strike across from there.'
'It is not the difficulty but the time I am thinking of. I only intended to stop for a few months.'
'What difference will that make? You want to get money, I suppose? Well, you would get as much in a week there as you would in a month by your scheme, which might be cut short any day, and you might find yourself with your hair cropped and in for five years. Why, from what I have heard, there are men coining money out there at drinking-saloons, and after two or three years of it we might cut it and go home, and keep race-horses of our own if we liked.'
'Well, I will think it over, Joe. It is a biggish thing to decide on, but there ought certainly to be money in it. As you say there is no chance of getting five years, but it seems to me from what I have heard of it there is a goodish chance of a pistol-bullet or a stab from a bowie-knife.'
'I expect all that there is exaggerated; besides the rows are between the men that drink, and not between them and those that sell drink; as to the cards there is no occasion to do any hanky panky with them, unless you see you have got a greenhorn to deal with and the chances are good. The cards pay anyhow: they bring men into the place and they help to sell the drink.'