“No,” said the old man; “I hear she’s one of the Vere de Veres. And I can remember her, a little freckled-faced kid with her hair in her eyes, hanging round the tunnel of the Little Bertha, waiting to give her father his dinner.”
“Do you know the younger McCormick girls, Miss Reed? Lady Courtley was before your time,” said Gault, in an attempt to draw Viola into the conversation.
She looked surprised, and then gave a little laugh and shook her head.
“I’ve never even seen them,” she answered.
“Oh, they don’t know Viola,” said the colonel—not with bitterness, but as one who states a simple and natural fact; “the old woman’s educated them out of all that. But, as I was saying, I made their father. He’d managed to scrape together a little pile, put it all in a small prospect, and lost every nickel. He was just about dead broke, and came to me crying—yes, crying—and said, ‘Colonel Reed, there’s only one man in California whose advice I’d follow and whose opinion I’d trust.’ ‘Who’s that?’ said I, intending to help the poor devil to the best of my ability. ‘It’s Ramsay Reed,’ said he. ‘Well,’ said I, ‘if you’ll just put yourself in my hands, and do what I tell you, I’ll set you on your feet.’ ‘Colonel,’ said he, ‘say the word, and whatever it is, it goes. You’ve got more financial ability in your little finger than all the rest of ’em have in their whole bodies.’ So I took him in hand.”
The colonel paused, a reflective smile wrinkling the skin at the corners of his eyes.
“You certainly seem to have made a success of his case,” said Gault, feeling that some comment was expected of him.
“Yes, yes,” said the colonel; “I may say a great success. The poor fellow’s confidence in me made me determined to do my best. I used to give him points—those were the days when I could give points. Told him if he would follow the lead west of the Little Bertha—people had hardly heard of the Little Bertha then—he’d strike it. He was broke, and I gave him the money. Three months later he’d struck pay dirt. That was the beginning of the Alcade Mine, but he didn’t have sense enough to hold on to it, and sold out for a few thousands. I saw then that I’d have to do more than give him an occasional boost, and stood behind him, off and on, for years. Even when we ran into the Virginia City boom he never bought without my advice. He hadn’t any discrimination. I’d just say to him, ‘Save your money and buy five feet next to the Best and Belcher,’ and he’d do what I said every time. Without me he’d have been working in the mines in Tuolumne yet.”
In the absorption of his recollections the colonel crossed his knees, bringing one foot, with a torn slipper dropping from the heel, into a position of prominence.
“Oh, those were days worth living in!” he said, running a long, spare hand through his hair—“great days! Men that weren’t grown then don’t know what life is. I meet Jerry sometimes, but we don’t talk much about old times. He knows that he owes everything to me, and it goes against the grain for him to acknowledge it. I hear his daughters are handsome girls.”