Page:Hard-pan; a story of bonanza fortunes (IA hardpanbonanza00bonnrich).pdf/52

40 "Well, not quite as bad as that," said Gault, laughing in spite of himself.

"How should you be able to judge?" retorted the colonel. "You were n't thought of when we old fellows were laying out the town. There was more life here in a minute then than there is now in a week. Then Portsmouth Square was the plaza and the center of the city, with a line of French boot-blacks along the lower side. We used to try our French on 'em every time we got a shine. And Lord! what smart fellows they were, and how much money they made!"

"So I 've heard," murmured Gault.

"And when I think of this street later on, this street alone, in, say, '70—how it boiled and bubbled and sizzled with life! Those were the days to live in!"

"Undoubtedly," acquiesced the listener. He was afraid the colonel had only come to continue the reminiscences on the historic ground of his early gains and losses, and he ran over in his mind the excuses he could use to politely and speedily get rid of the old man.

But the colonel, it appeared, had another end in view.

"I don't find, however," he continued, "that my full-jumping pays very well. I 've got the energy and the savvy, but the luck is n't with me. And I 'm too old a Californian not to