The Californians | Page 4

you. If you'll stand by me, I'll stand by you.

I mean to make money, and I don't much care how I do make it; this is
a new place, anyhow. But there's one thing I never do, and that is to go
back on a friend. You'll need me, and my Yankee sharpness may be the
greatest godsend that ever came your way. I've seen more or less of this
country. It's simply magnificent. Americans will be swarming over the
place in less than no time. They've begun already. Then you'll be just
nowhere. Is it a bargain?"
"It is!" exclaimed Don Roberto, with enthusiasm; and when Polk had
explained his ominations more fully, he wrung the American's hand
again.
Polk, after much difficulty, but through personal influence which he
was fortunate enough to possess, obtained his discharge. He
immediately became the guest of Don Roberto, who lived with his
younger sister on a ranch covering three hundred thousand acres, and,
his first intention being to take up land, was initiated into the mysteries
of horse-raising, tanning hides, and making tallow; the two last-named
industries being pursued for purposes of barter with the Boston
skippers. But farming was not to Polk's taste; he hated waiting on the
slow processes of Nature. He married Magdaléna Yorba, and borrowed
from Don Roberto enough money to open a store in Monterey stocked
with such necessities and luxuries as could be imported from Boston.
When the facile Californians had no ready money to pay for their
wholesale purchases, he took a mortgage on the next hide yield, or on a
small ranch. His rate of interest was twelve per cent; and as the
Californians were never prepared to pay when the day of reckoning
came, he foreclosed with a promptitude which both horrified Don
Roberto and made imperious demands upon his admiration.
"My dear Don," Polk would say, "if it isn't I, it will be some one else.
I'm not the only one--and look at the squatters. I'm becoming a rich
man, and if I were not, I'd be a fool. You had your day, but you were
never made to last. Your boots are a comfortable fit, and I propose to
wear them. I don't mean yours, by the way. I'm going to look after you.
Better think it over and come into partnership."
To this Don Roberto would not hearken; but when the rush to the gold

mines began he was persuaded by Polk to take a trip into the San
Joaquin valley to "see the circus," as the Yankee phrased it. There, in
community with his brother-in-law, he staked off a claim, and there the
lust for gold entered his veins and never left it. He returned to
Monterey a rich man in something besides land. After that there was
little conversation between himself and Polk on any subject but money
and the manner of its multiplication; and, as the years passed, and
Polk's prophecy was fulfilled, he gave the devotion of a fanatic to the
retention of his vast inheritance and to the development of his grafted
financial faculty.
Between the mines, his store, and his various enterprises in San
Francisco, Polk rapidly became a wealthy man. Even in those days he
was accounted an unscrupulous one, but he was powerful enough to
hold the opinion of men in contempt and too shrewd to elbow such law
as there was. And his gratitude and friendship for Don Roberto never
flickered. He advised him to invest his gold in city lots, and as himself
bought adjoining ones, Don Roberto invested without hesitation. Polk
had acquired a taste for Spanish cooking, cigaritos, and life on
horseback; his influences on the Californian were far more subtle and
revolutionising. Don Roberto was still hospitable, because it became a
grandee so to be; but he had a Yankee major-domo who kept an
account of every cent that was expended. He had no miserly love of
gold in the concrete, but he had an abiding sense of its illimitable
power, all of his brother-in-law's determination to become one of the
wealthiest and most influential men in the country, and a ferocious
hatred of poverty. He saw his old friends fall about him: advice did
them no good, and any permanent alliance with their interests would
have meant his own ruin; so he shrugged his shoulders and forgot them.
The American flag always floated above his rooms. In time he and Polk
opened a bank, and he sat in its parlour for five hours of the day; it was
the passion of his maturity and decline. When Polk's sister, some
eleven years after the Occupation of California by the United States,
came out to visit the brother who had left her teaching a small school in
Boston, he