In my heart I blessed him for his words, and pressed on him a fifty-cent cigar.
Again I wandered up and down the now familiar street, but the keen edge of my impression had been blunted. I no longer took the same interest in its sights. More populous it was, noisier, livelier than ever. In the gambling-annex of the Paystreak Saloon was Mr. Mosher shuffling and dealing methodically. Everywhere I saw flushed and excited miners, each with his substantial poke of dust. It was usually as big as a pork-sausage, yet it was only his spending-poke. Safely in the bank he had cached half a dozen of them ten times as big.
These were the halcyon days. Success was in the air. Men were drunk with it; carried off their feet, delirious. Money! It had lost its value. Every one you met was "lousy" with it; threw it away with both hands, and fast as they emptied one pocket it filled up the others. Little wonder a mad elation, a semi-frenzy of prodigality prevailed, for every day the golden valley was pouring into the city a seemingly exhaustless stream of treasure.
I saw big Alec, one of the leading operators, coming down the street with his men. He carried a Winchester, and he had a pack-train of burros, each laden down with gold. At the bank flushed and eager mobs were clamouring to have their pokes weighed. In buckets, coal-oil cans, every kind of receptacle, lay the precious dust. Sweating clerks were handling it as carelessly as a grocer handles sugar. Goldsmiths were making it into wonders of barbaric jewellery. There seemed no limit to the camp's wealth. Every one was mad, and the demi-mondaine was queen of all.
I saw Hewson and Mervin. They had struck it rich on a property they had bought on Hunker. Fortune was theirs.
"Come and have a drink," said Hewson. Already he had had many. His face was relaxed, flushed, already showing signs of a flabby degeneration. In this man of iron sudden success was insidiously at work, enervating his powers.
Mervin, too. I caught a glimpse of him, in the doorway of the Green Bay Tree. The Maccaroni Kid had him in tow, and he was buying wine.
I looked in vain for Locasto. He was on a big debauch, they told me. Viola Lennoir had "got him going."
At midnight, at the door of the Paragon, I was waiting in a fever of impatience when Berna came out.
"I'm living up at the cabin," she said; "you can walk with me as far as that. That is, if you want to," she added coquettishly.