I laughed again; but just the other day, in this year 1899, I rode in a street car where fifty years ago great ships had lain at anchor.
We discovered Johnny and Yank, and pounded each other’s backs, and had drinks, and generally worked off our high spirits. Then we adjourned to a corner, lit cigars–a tremendous luxury for us miners–and plunged into recital. Talbot listened to us attentively, his eyes bright with interest, occasionally breaking in on the narrator to ask one of the others to supplement some too modestly worded statement.
“Well!” he sighed when we had finished. “You boys have certainly had a time! What an experience! You’ll never forget it!” He brooded a while. “I suppose the world will never see its like again. It was the chance of a 406 lifetime. I’d like–no I wouldn’t! I’ve lived, too. Well, now for the partnership. As I understand it, for the Hangman’s Gulch end of it, we have, all told, about five thousand dollars–at any rate, that was the amount McClellan sent down to me.”
“That’s it,” said I.
“And the Porcupine Flat venture was a bad loss?”
“The robbers cleaned us out there except for what we sent you,” I agreed regretfully.
“Since which time Yank has been out of it completely?”
“Haven’t made a cent since,” acknowledged Yank cheerfully, “and I owe something to Frank, here, for my keep. Thought I had about fifteen hundred dollars, but I guess I ain’t.”
“At Italian Bar,” went on Talbot, “how much did you make?”
“Doesn’t matter what I made,” interposed Johnny, “for, as Frank told you, it’s all at the bottom of the Sacramento River.”