________________________________________________
_ In no blaze of glory did Burning Daylight descend upon San
Francisco. Not only had he been forgotten, but the Klondike
along with him. The world was interested in other things, and
the
Alaskan adventure, like the Spanish War, was an old story. Many
things had happened since then. Exciting things were happening
every day, and the sensation-space of newspapers was limited.
The
effect of being ignored, however, was an exhilaration. Big man
as
he had been in the Arctic game, it merely showed how much bigger
was this new game, when a man worth eleven millions, and with a
history such as his, passed unnoticed.
He settled down in St. Francis Hotel, was interviewed by the
cub-reporters on the hotel-run, and received brief paragraphs of
notice for twenty-four hours. He grinned to himself, and began
to look around and get acquainted with the new order of beings
and things. He was very awkward and very self-possessed. In
addition to the stiffening afforded his backbone by the conscious
ownership of eleven millions, he possessed an enormous certitude.
Nothing abashed him, nor was he appalled by the display and
culture and power around him. It was another kind of wilderness,
that was all; and it was for him to learn the ways of it, the
signs and trails and water-holes where good hunting lay, and the
bad stretches of field and flood to be avoided. As usual, he
fought shy of the women. He was still too badly scared to come
to close quarters with the dazzling and resplendent creatures his
own millions made accessible.
They looked and longed, but he so concealed his timidity that he
had all the seeming of moving boldly among them. Nor was it his
wealth alone that attracted them. He was too much a man, and too
much an unusual type of man. Young yet, barely thirty-six,
eminently handsome, magnificently strong, almost bursting with a
splendid virility, his free trail-stride, never learned on
pavements, and his black eyes, hinting of great spaces and
unwearied with the close perspective of the city dwellers, drew
many a curious and wayward feminine glance. He saw, grinned
knowingly to himself, and faced them as so many dangers, with a
cool demeanor that was a far greater personal achievement than
had they been famine, frost, or flood.
He had come down to the States to play the man's game, not the
woman's game; and the men he had not yet learned. They struck
him as soft--soft physically; yet he divined them hard in their
dealings, but hard under an exterior of supple softness. It
struck him that there was something cat-like about them. He met
them in the clubs, and wondered how real was the good-fellowship
they displayed and how quickly they would unsheathe their claws
and gouge and rend. "That's the proposition," he repeated to
himself; "what will they-all do when the play is close and down
to brass tacks?" He felt unwarrantably suspicious of them.
"They're sure slick," was his secret judgment; and from bits of
gossip dropped now and again he felt his judgment well
buttressed. On the other hand, they radiated an atmosphere of
manliness and the fair play that goes with manliness. They might
gouge and rend in a fight--which was no more than natural; but he
felt, somehow, that they would gouge and rend according to rule.
This was the impression he got of them--a generalization tempered
by knowledge that there was bound to be a certain percentage of
scoundrels among them.
Several months passed in San Francisco during which time he
studied the game and its rules, and prepared himself to take a
hand. He even took private instruction in English, and succeeded
in eliminating his worst faults, though in moments of excitement
he was prone to lapse into "you-all," "knowed," "sure," and
similar solecisms. He learned to eat and dress and generally
comport himself after the manner of civilized man; but through it
all he remained himself, not unduly reverential nor
considerative, and never hesitating to stride rough-shod over any
soft-faced convention if it got in his way and the provocation
were great enough. Also, and unlike the average run of weaker
men coming from back countries and far places, he failed to
reverence the particular tin gods worshipped variously by the
civilized tribes of men. He had seen totems before, and knew
them for what they were.
Tiring of being merely an onlooker, he ran up to Nevada, where
the new gold-mining boom was fairly started--"just to try a
flutter," as he phrased it to himself. The flutter on the
Tonopah Stock Exchange lasted just ten days, during which time
his smashing, wild-bull game played ducks and drakes with the
more stereotyped gamblers, and at the end of which time, having
gambled Floridel into his fist, he let go for a net profit of
half a million. Whereupon, smacking his lips, he departed for
San Francisco and the St. Francis Hotel. It tasted good, and
his hunger for the game became more acute.
And once more the papers sensationalized him. BURNING DAYLIGHT
was a big-letter headline again. Interviewers flocked about him.
Old files of magazines and newspapers were searched through, and
the romantic and historic Elam Harnish, Adventurer of the Frost,
King of the Klondike, and father of the Sourdoughs, strode upon
the breakfast table of a million homes along with the toast and
breakfast foods. Even before his elected time, he was forcibly
launched into the game. Financiers and promoters, and all the
flotsam and jetsam of the sea of speculation surged upon the
shores of his eleven millions. In self-defence he was
compelled to open offices. He had made them sit up and take
notice, and now, willy-nilly, they were dealing him hands and
clamoring for him to play. Well, play he would; he'd show 'em;
even despite the elated prophesies made of how swiftly he would
be trimmed--prophesies coupled with descriptions of the bucolic
game he would play and of his wild and woolly appearance.
He dabbled in little things at first--"stalling for time," as he
explained it to Holdsworthy, a friend he had made at the
Alta-Pacific Club. Daylight himself was a member of the club,
and Holdsworthy had proposed him. And it was well that Daylight
played closely at first, for he was astounded by the multitudes
of sharks--"ground-sharks," he called them--that flocked about
him.
He saw through their schemes readily enough, and even marveled
that such numbers of them could find sufficient prey to keep them
going. Their rascality and general dubiousness was so
transparent that he could not understand how any one could be
taken in by them.
And then he found that there were sharks and sharks. Holdsworthy
treated him more like a brother than a mere fellow-clubman,
watching over him, advising him, and introducing him to the
magnates of the local financial world. Holdsworthy's family
lived in a delightful bungalow near Menlo Park, and here Daylight
spent a number of weekends, seeing a fineness and kindness of
home life of which he had never dreamed. Holdsworthy was an
enthusiast over flowers, and a half lunatic over raising prize
poultry; and these engrossing madnesses were a source of
perpetual joy to Daylight, who looked on in tolerant good humor.
Such amiable weaknesses tokened the healthfulness of the man, and
drew Daylight closer to him. A prosperous, successful business
man without great ambition, was Daylight's estimate of him--a man
too easily satisfied with the small stakes of the game ever to
launch out in big play.
On one such week-end visit, Holdsworthy let him in on a good
thing, a good little thing, a brickyard at Glen Ellen. Daylight
listened closely to the other's description of the situation. It
was a most reasonable venture, and Daylight's one objection was
that it was so small a matter and so far out of his line; and he
went into it only as a matter of friendship, Holdsworthy
explaining that he was himself already in a bit, and that while
it was a good thing, he would be compelled to make sacrifices in
other directions in order to develop it. Daylight advanced the
capital, fifty thousand dollars, and, as he laughingly explained
afterward, "I was stung, all right, but it wasn't Holdsworthy
that did it half as much as those blamed chickens and fruit-trees
of his."
It was a good lesson, however, for he learned that there were few
faiths in the business world, and that even the simple, homely
faith of breaking bread and eating salt counted for little in the
face of a worthless brickyard and fifty thousand dollars in cash.
But the sharks and sharks of various orders and degrees, he
concluded, were on the surface. Deep down, he divined, were the
integrities and the stabilities. These big captains of industry
and masters of finance, he decided, were the men to work with.
By the very nature of their huge deals and enterprises they had
to play fair. No room there for little sharpers' tricks and
bunco games. It was to be expected that little men should salt
gold-mines with a shotgun and work off worthless brick-yards on
their friends, but in high finance such methods were not worth
while. There the men were engaged in developing the country,
organizing its railroads, opening up its mines, making accessible
its vast natural resources. Their play was bound to be big and
stable. "They sure can't afford tin-horn tactics," was his
summing up.
So it was that he resolved to leave the little men, the
Holdsworthys, alone; and, while he met them in good-fellowship,
he chummed with none, and formed no deep friendships. He did not
dislike the little men, the men of the Alta-Pacific, for
instance. He merely did not elect to choose them for partners in
the big game in which he intended to play. What that big game
was, even he did not know. He was waiting to find it. And in
the meantime he played small hands, investing in several
arid-lands reclamation projects and keeping his eyes open for the
big chance when it should come along.
And then he met John Dowsett, the great John Dowsett. The whole
thing was fortuitous. This cannot be doubted, as Daylight
himself knew, it was by the merest chance, when in Los Angeles,
that he heard the tuna were running strong at Santa Catalina,
and went over to the island instead of returning directly to San
Francisco as he had planned. There he met John Dowsett, resting
off for several days in the middle of a flying western trip.
Dowsett had of course heard of the spectacular Klondike King and
his rumored thirty millions, and he certainly found himself
interested by the man in the acquaintance that was formed.
Somewhere along in this acquaintanceship the idea must have
popped into his brain. But he did not broach it, preferring to
mature it carefully. So he talked in large general ways, and did
his best to be agreeable and win Daylight's friendship.
It was the first big magnate Daylight had met face to face, and
he was pleased and charmed. There was such a kindly humanness
about the man, such a genial democraticness, that Daylight found
it hard to realize that this was THE John Dowsett, president of
a string of banks, insurance manipulator, reputed ally of the
lieutenants of Standard Oil, and known ally of the Guggenhammers.
Nor did his looks belie his reputation and his manner.
Physically, he guaranteed all that Daylight knew of him. Despite
his sixty years and snow-white hair, his hand-shake was firmly
hearty, and he showed no signs of decrepitude, walking with a
quick, snappy step, making all movements definitely and
decisively. His skin was a healthy pink, and his thin, clean
lips knew the way to writhe heartily over a joke. He had honest
blue eyes of palest blue; they looked out at one keenly and
frankly from under shaggy gray brows. His mind showed itself
disciplined and orderly, and its workings struck Daylight as
having all the certitude of a steel trap. He was a man who
KNEW and who never decorated his knowledge with foolish frills
of sentiment or emotion. That he was accustomed to command was
patent, and every word and gesture tingled with power. Combined
with this was his sympathy and tact, and Daylight could note
easily enough all the earmarks that distinguished him from a
little man of the Holdsworthy caliber. Daylight knew also his
history, the prime old American stock from which he had
descended, his own war record, the John Dowsett before him who
had been one of the banking buttresses of the Cause of the Union,
the Commodore Dowsett of the War of 1812 the General Dowsett of
Revolutionary fame, and that first far Dowsett, owner of lands
and slaves in early New England.
"He's sure the real thing," he told one of his fellow-clubmen
afterwards, in the smoking-room of the Alta-Pacific. "I tell
you, Gallon, he was a genuine surprise to me. I knew the big
ones had to be like that, but I had to see him to really know it.
He's one of the fellows that does things. You can see it
sticking out all over him. He's one in a thousand, that's
straight, a man to tie to. There's no limit to any game he
plays, and you can stack on it that he plays right up to the
handle. I bet he can lose or win half a dozen million without
batting an eye."
Gallon puffed at his cigar, and at the conclusion of the
panegyric regarded the other curiously; but Daylight, ordering
cocktails, failed to note this curious stare.
"Going in with him on some deal, I suppose," Gallon remarked.
"Nope, not the slightest idea. Here's kindness. I was just
explaining that I'd come to understand how these big fellows do
big things. Why, dye know, he gave me such a feeling that he
knew everything, that I was plumb ashamed of myself."
"I guess I could give him cards and spades when it comes to
driving a dog-team, though," Daylight observed, after a
meditative pause. "And I really believe I could put him on to a
few wrinkles in poker and placer mining, and maybe in paddling a
birch canoe. And maybe I stand a better chance to learn the game
he's been playing all his life than he would stand of learning
the game I played up North." _
Read next: PART II: CHAPTER II
Read previous: PART I: CHAPTER XIII
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