year
ago it had less than a thousand people, and now we have at least forty
thousand. The new Commercial Wharf is nearly half a mile long and cost
us a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, but we raised the money in ten
minutes! We're going to build two more. And Sam Brannan and a lot of us
are talking of putting down plank roads. Think what that will mean! And
there's no limit to what we can do in real estate! Just knock down a few
of these hills to the north----"

He stopped, for I was laughing.

"Why not drain the bay?" I suggested. "There's a plenty of land down
there."

"Well," said Talbot in a calmer manner, "we won't quite do that. But
we'll put some of those sand hills into the edge of the bay. You wait
and see. If you want to make money, you just buy some of those
waterfront lots. You'll wake up some morning to find you're a mile
inland."

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 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."