I assured him that I would, and I settled back in bed with great joy in my heart.
He gave me the most wonderful story I ever read or ever listened to—wonderful because it concerned myself, my friends, my hopes, and my fortune; wonderful, because I was in it, acted in it, and now for the first time was hearing what I had done. He droned out the hair-raising narrative without showing special interest in it, confident that I knew the happenings as well as he; at the most interesting point, in order to collect his thoughts in regard to Marcena Keedy, he stopped and pared and munched an apple; I was saving my own face in the matter and I did not dare to prod him.
I am not minded to make much account of the details of that story. In this yarn I have been telling what I do know—not what I have heard from another man’s lips. Let this much suffice: I recovered the rest of the Golden Gate treasure, so far as human knowledge of it went, the jettisoned gold was dragged for and raised, and then mutiny, which had been secretly organized by Keedy and the Finn, developed into a bloody battle which had been won against numbers by the rifles of the lawful guards. Keedy would not fight—he had prodded the other poor devils to do that—and the San Francisco men took the law into their hands when the Zizania was on the high seas and hung Keedy from the derrick boom. So, there’s enough in a nutshell to make quite a book by itself!
And then while Captain Rask meditatively wagged his jaws on another apple I lay and gnawed my nervous lips and wondered how much money I had in the world! I did not dare to ask questions. I felt as bitterly fearful as a straitened merchant who has lost all run of his bank credits and is afraid to ask his bank how he stands; the fear of giving one’s self away becomes terror pretty vital!
“However, I’m going to pass the rest of my days without worrying about their troubles,” declared the captain, again clacking shut his knife blade. “They brought it on themselves, though I shall swear on the stand that Keedy toled them into the scrape. You and I did right by the faithful ones—especially you, for you could give out a better line of talk—when we pulled that hundred thousand out of the underwriters and added it to the hundred thousand of our own. They’re satisfied, even the Snohomish Glutton in his new restaurant, and Ingot Ike, who has gone to board with him. Clear consciences—that’s what we’ve got, Ross!”
But how much clear profit? The fact that we had handed out one hundred thousand dollars was a consoling bit of information. There naturally must be plenty more where that came from!
“Do all the folks here—do the people in Levant know how well we’re fixed?” I faltered.
“Sure! I ain’t ashamed of it. Are you? I haven’t let the yarn lose anything by the way I have told it. It has been a good way of killing time.”
So everybody else in Levant, except myself, knew how rich I was!
And then that infernal old tiddlywhoop yawned, got up, and stamped out of the room, saying that he was going to stretch his legs. I didn’t have spirit enough to stop him and ask the great question.