The Gringos | Page 5

Bill
could not name all the flags, but he could name two of the bonds that
bind all nations into one common humanity. He could produce one of
them, and he was each night gaining more of the other; for, be they
white men or brown, spoke they his language or one he had never heard
until they passed through the Golden Gate, they would give good gold
for very bad whisky.
Even the Digger Indians, squatting in the sun beside his door and
gazing stolidly at the town and the bay beyond, would sell their
souls--for which the gray-gowned padres prayed ineffectively in the
chapel at Dolores--their wives or their other, dearer possessions for a
very little bottle of the stuff that was fast undoing the civilizing work of
the Mission. The padres had come long before the hunting cry was
raised, and they had labored earnestly; but their prayers and their
preaching were like reeds beneath the tread of elephants, when gold
came down from the mountains, and whisky came in through the
Golden Gate.
Jack Allen, coming lazily down through the long, deserted room, edged
past Bill in the doorway.
"Hello," Bill greeted with a carefully casual manner, as if he had been

waiting for the meeting, but did not want Jack to suspect the fact. "Up
for all day? Where you headed for?"
"Breakfast--or dinner, whichever you want to call it. Then I'm going to
take a walk and get the kinks out of my legs. Say, old man, I'm going to
knock a board off the foot of that bunk, to-night, or else sleep on the
floor. Was wood scarce, Bill, when you built that bed?"
"Carpenter was a little feller," chuckled Bill, "and I guess he measured
it by himself. Charged a full length price, though, I remember! I meant
to tell you when you hired that room, Jack, that you better take the axe
to bed with you. Sure, knock a board off; two boards, if you like. Take
all the boards off!" urged Bill, in a burst of generosity. "You might
better be making that bunk over, m'son, than trying to take the whole
blamed town apart and put it together again, like you was doing last
night." In this way Bill tactfully swung to the subject that lay heavy on
his mind.
Jack borrowed a match, cupped his fingers around his lips that wanted
to part in a smile, and lighted his before-breakfast cigarette--though the
sun hung almost straight overhead.
"So that's it," he observed, when the smoke took on the sweet aroma of
a very mild tobacco. "I saw by the back of your neck that you had
something on your mind. What's the matter, Bill? Don't you think the
old town needs taking apart?"
"Oh, it needs it, all right. But it's too big a job for one man to tackle.
You leave that to Daddy Time; he's the only reformer--"
"Say, Bill, I never attempted to reform anybody or anything in my life;
I'd hate to begin with a job the size of this." He waved his cigarette
toward the shifting crowd. "But I do think--"
"And right there's where you make a big mistake. You don't want to
think! Or if you do, don't think out loud; not where such men as Swift
and Rawhide and the Captain can hear you. That's what I mean, Jack."

Jack eyed him with a smile in his eyes. "Some men might think you
were afraid of that bunch," he observed with characteristic bluntness. "I
know you aren't, and so I don't see why you want me to be. You know,
and I know, that the Vigilance Committee has turned rotten to the core;
every decent man in San Francisco knows it. You know that Sandy
killed that Spaniard in self-defense--or if you didn't see the fracas, I tell
you now that he did; I saw the whole thing. You know, at any rate, that
the Vigilantes took him out and hung him because they wanted to get
rid of him, and that came the nearest to an excuse they could find. You
know--"
"Oh, I know!" Bill's voice was sardonic. "I know they'll be going
around with a spy-glass looking for an excuse to hang you, too, if you
don't quit talking about 'em."
Jack smiled and so let a thin ribbon of smoke float up and away from
his lips.
Bill saw the smile and flushed a little; but he was not to be laughed
down, once he was fairly started. He laid two well-kept fingers upon
the other's arm and spoke soberly, refusing to treat the thing as lightly
as the other was minded to do.
"Oh, you'll laugh, but it's a fact, and you know it. Why, ain't Sandy's