Modest and brave men have looked on low-bosomed women in the glitter of dissipative lights with the same feeling.
The old man gazed, silent—doubtless with the same awe which Keats gave to Cortez, when he first looked on the Pacific and stood
“Silent, upon a peak in Darien.”
The outlaw lifted another bucket and took off the lid. It also was full. “There are five mo',” he said—“that last one is silver an' this one—” He lifted the lid of a small cedar box. In it was a large package, wrapped in water-proof. Unravelling it, he shoved out packages of bank bills of such number and denomination as fairly made the old preacher wonder.
“How much in all, Jack?”
“A little the rise of one hundred thousand dollars.”
He pushed them back and put the buckets under their ledge of rocks. “I'd give it all just to have little Jack here agin—an'—an'—start out—a new man. This has cost me ten years of outlawry an' fo'teen bullets. Now I've got all this an'—well—a hole in the groun' an' little Jack in the hole. If you wanter preach a sermon on the folly of pilin' up money,” he went on half ironically, “here is yo' tex'. All me an' little Jack needed or cu'd use, was a few clothes, some bac'n an' coffee an' flour. Often I'd fill my pockets an' say: 'Well, I'll buy somethin' I want, an' that little Jack will want.' I'd go to town an' see it all, an' think an' puzzle an' wonder—then I'd come home with a few toys, maybe, an' bac'n an' flour an' coffee.”
“With all our money we can't buy higher than our source, an' when we go we leave even that behind,” he added.
“The world,” said the old man quaintly, “is full of folks who have got a big pocket-book an' a bac'n pedigree.”
“Do you know who this money belongs to?” he asked the outlaw.