THE HUSSY
THERE are some stories that have to be true—the sort that cannot befabricated by a ready fiction-reckoner. And by the same token there aresome men with stories to tell who cannot be doubted. Such a man wasJulian Jones. Although I doubt if the average reader of this willbelieve the story Julian Jones told me. Nevertheless I believe it. Sothoroughly am I convinced of its verity that I am willing, nay, eager, toinvest capital in the enterprise and embark personally on the adventureto a far land.
It was in the Australian Building at the Panama Pacific Exposition that Imet him. I was standing before an exhibit of facsimiles of the recordnuggets which had been discovered in the goldfields of the Antipodes.Knobbed, misshapen and massive, it was as difficult to believe that theywere not real gold as it was to believe the accompanying statistics oftheir weights and values.
“That’s what those kangaroo-hunters call a nugget,” boomed over myshoulder directly at the largest of the specimens.
I turned and looked up into the dim blue eyes of Julian Jones. I lookedup, for he stood something like six feet four inches in height. Hishair, a wispy, sandy yellow, seemed as dimmed and faded as his eyes. Itmay have been the sun which had washed out his colouring; at least hisface bore the evidence of a prodigious and ardent sun-burn which had longsince faded to yellow. As his eyes turned from the exhibit and focussedon mine I noted a queer look in them as of one who vainly tries to recallsome fact of supreme importance.
“What’s the matter with it as a nugget?” I demanded.
The remote, indwelling expression went out of his eyes as he boomed
“Why, its size.”
“It does seem large,” I admitted. “But there’s no doubt it’s authentic.The Australian Government would scarcely dare—”
“Large!” he interrupted, with a sniff and a sneer.
“Largest ever discovered—” I started on.
“Ever discovered!” His dim eyes smouldered hotly as he proceeded. “Doyou think that every lump of gold ever discovered has got into thenewspapers and encyclopedias?”
“Well,” I replied judicially, “if there’s one that hasn’t, I don’t seehow we’re to know about it. If a really big nugget, or nugget-finder,elects to blush unseen—”
“But it didn’t,” he broke in quickly. “I saw it with my own eyes, and,besides, I’m too tanned to blush anyway. I’m a railroad man and I’vebeen in the tropics a lot. Why, I used to be the colour of mahogany—realold mahogany, and have been taken for a blue-eyed Spaniard more thanonce—”
It was my turn to interrupt, and I did.
“Was that nugget bigger than those in there, Mr.—er—?”
“Jones, Julian Jones is my name.”
He dug into an inner pocket and produced an envelope addressed to such aperson, care of General Delivery, San Francisco; and I, in turn,presented him with my card.
“Pleased to know you, sir,” he said, extending his hand, his voicebooming as if accustomed to loud noises or wide spaces. “Of course I’veheard of you, seen your picture in the papers, and all that, and, thoughI say it that shouldn’t, I want to say that I didn’t care a rap aboutthose articles you wrote on Mexico. You’re wrong, all wrong. You makethe mistake of all Gringos in thinking a Mexican is a white man. Heain’t. None of them ain’t—Greasers, Spiggoties, Latin-Americans and allthe rest of the cattle. Why, sir, they don’t think like we think, orreason, or act. Even their multiplication table is different. You thinkseven times seven is forty-nine; but not them. They work it outdifferent. And white isn’t white to them, either. Let me give you anexample. Buying coffee retail for house-keeping in one-pound orten-pound lots—”
“How big was that nugget you referred to?” I queried firmly. “As big asthe biggest of those?”
“Bigger,” he said quietly. “Bigger than the whole blamed exhibit of themput together, and then some.” He paused and regarded me with a steadfastgaze. “I don’t see no reason why I shouldn’t go into the matter withyou. You’ve got a reputation a man ought to be able to trust, and I’veread you’ve done some tall skylarking yourself in out-of-the-way places.I’ve been browsing around with an eye open for some one to go in with meon the proposition.”
“You can trust me,” I said.
And here I am, blazing out into print with the whole story just as hetold it to me as we sat on a bench by the lagoon before the Palace ofFine Arts with the cries of the sea gulls in our ears. Well, he shouldhave kept his appointment with me. But I anticipate.
As we started to leave the building and hunt for a seat, a small woman,possibly thirty years of age, with a washed-out complexion of thefarmer’s wife sort, darted up to him in a bird-like way, for all theworld like the darting veering gulls over our heads and fastened herselfto his arm with the accuracy and dispatch and inevitableness of a pieceof machinery.
“There you go!” she shrilled. “A-trottin’ right off and never givin’ mea thought.”
I was formally introduced to her. It was patent that she had never heardof me, and she surveyed me bleakly with shrewd black eyes, set closetogether and as beady and restless as a bird’s.
“You ain’t goin’ to tell him about that hussy?” she complained.
“Well, now, Sarah, this is business, you see,” he argued plaintively.“I’ve been lookin’ for a likely man this long while, and now that he’sshown up it seems to me I got a right to give him the hang of whathappened.”
The small woman made no reply, but set her thin lips in a needle-likeline. She gazed straight before her at the Tower of Jewels with soaustere an expression that no glint of refracted sunlight could softenit. We proceeded slowly to the lagoon, managed to obtain an unoccupiedseat, and sat down with mutual sighs of relief as we released our weightsfrom our tortured sightseeing feet.
“One does get so mortal weary,” asserted the small woman, almostdefiantly.
Two swans waddled up from the mirroring water and investigated us. Whentheir suspicions of our niggardliness or lack of peanuts had beenconfirmed, Jones half-turned his back on his life-partner and gave me hisstory.
“Ever been in Ecuador? Then take my advice—and don’t. Though I takethat back, for you and me might be hitting it for there together if youcan rustle up the faith in me and the backbone in yourself for the trip.Well, anyway, it ain’t so many years ago that I came ambling in there ona rusty, foul-bottomed, tramp collier from Australia, forty-three daysfrom land to land. Seven knots was her speed when everything favoured,and we’d had a two weeks’ gale to the north’ard of New Zealand, and brokeour engines down for two days off Pitcairn Island.
“I was no sailor on her. I’m a locomotive engineer. But I’d madefriends with the skipper at Newcastle an’ come along as his guest for asfar as Guayaquil. You see, I’d heard wages was ’way up on the Americanrailroad runnin’ from that place over the Andes to Quito. NowGuayaquil—”
“Is a fever-hole,” I interpolated.
Julian Jones nodded.
“Thomas Nast died there of it within a month after he landed.—He was ourgreat American cartoonist,” I added.
“Don’t know him,” Julian Jones said shortly. “But I do know he wasn’tthe first to pass out by a long shot. Why, look you the way I found it.The pilot grounds is sixty miles down the river. ‘How’s the fever?’ saidI to the pilot who came aboard in the early morning. ‘See that Hamburgbarque,’ said he, pointing to a sizable ship at anchor. ‘Captain andfourteen men dead of it already, and the cook and two men dying rightnow, and they’re the last left of her.’
“And by jinks he told the truth. And right then they were dying forty aday in Guayaquil of Yellow Jack. But that was nothing, as I was to findout. Bubonic plague and small-pox were raging, while dysentery andpneumonia were reducing the population, and the railroad was raging worstof all. I mean that. For them that insisted in riding on it, it wasmore dangerous than all the other diseases put together.
“When we dropped anchor o
ff Guayaquil half a dozen skippers from othersteamers came on board to warn our skipper not to let any of his crew orofficers go ashore except the ones he wanted to lose. A launch came offfor me from Duran, which is on the other side of the river and is theterminal of the railroad. And it brought off a man that soared up thegangway three jumps at a time he was that eager to get aboard. When hehit the deck he hadn’t time to speak to any of us. He just leaned outover the rail and shook his fist at Duran and shouted: ‘I beat you to it!I beat you to it!’
“‘Who’d you beat to it, friend?’ I asked. ‘The railroad,’ he said, as heunbuckled the straps and took off a big ’44 Colt’s automatic from wherehe wore it handy on his left side under his coat, ‘I staved as long as Iagreed—three months—and it didn’t get me. I was a conductor.’
“And that was the railroad I was to work for. All of which was nothingto what he told me in the next few minutes. The road ran from sea levelat Duran up to twelve thousand feet on Chimborazo and down to tenthousand at Quito on the other side the range. And it was so dangerousthat the trains didn’t run nights. The through passengers had to