The Killer Part 26

At length they came upon one of the new millionaires created by the bonanzas of Virginia City.

"I don't know a d.a.m.n thing about your timber, byes," said he, "but I like your looks. I'll go in wid ye. Have a seegar; they cost me a dollar apiece."

The sum invested was absurdly, inadequately small.

"It'll have to spread as thin as it can," said Cathcart.

They spent the entire season camping in the mountains. By the end of the summer they knew what they wanted; and immediately took steps to acquire it. Under the homestead laws each was ent.i.tled to but a small tract of Government land. However, they hired men to exercise their privileges in this respect, to take up each his allotted portion, and then to convey his rights to Cathcart and Gates. It was slow business, for the show of compliance with Government regulations had to be made. But in this manner the sum of money at their disposal was indeed spread out very thin.

For many years the small, nibbling lumbering operations their limited capital permitted supplied only a little more than a bare living and the taxes. But every available cent went back into the business. It grew.

Band saws replaced the old circulars; the new mills delivered their product into flumes that carried it forty miles to the railroad. The construction of this flume was a tremendous undertaking, but by now the firm could borrow on its timber. To get the water necessary to keep the flume in operation the partners--again by means of "dummies"--filed on the water rights of certain streams. To take up the water directly was without the law; but a show of mineral stain was held to justify a "mineral claim," so patents were obtained under that ruling. Then Charley had a bright idea.

"Look here, Cliff," he said to Cathcart. "I know something about farming; I was brought up on a farm. This country will grow anything anywhere if it has water. That lower country they call a desert, but that's only because it hasn't any rainfall. We're going to have a lot of water at the end of that flume----"

They bought the desert land at fifty cents an acre; sc.r.a.ped ditches and checks; planted a model orchard, and went into the real estate business.

In time a community grew up. When hydro-electric power came into its own Cathcart & Gates from their various water rights furnished light for themselves, and gradually for the towns and villages round-about. Thus their affairs spread and became complicated. Before they knew it they were wealthy, very wealthy. Their wives--for in due course each had his romance--began to talk of San Francisco.

All this had not come about easily. At first they had to fight tooth and nail. The conditions of the times were crude, the code merciless. As soon as the firm showed its head above the financial horizon, it was swooped upon. Business was predatory. They had to fight for what they got; had to fight harder to hold it. Cathcart was involved continually in a maze of intricate banking transactions; Gates resisted aggression within and without, often with his own two fists. They learned to trust no man, but they learned also to hate no man. It was all part of the game. More sensitive temperaments would have failed; these succeeded.

Cathcart became shrewd, incisive, direct, cold, a little hard; Charley Gates was burly, hearty, a trifle bullying. Both were in all circ.u.mstances quite unruffled; and in some circ.u.mstances ruthless.

About 1900 the entire holdings of the Company were capitalized, and a stock company was formed. The actual management of the lumbering, the conduct of the farms and ranches, the running of the hydro-electric systems of light and transportation, were placed in the hands of active young men. Charley Gates and his partner exercised over these activities only the slightest supervision; auditing accounts, making an occasional trip of inspection. Affairs would quite well have gone on without them; though they would have disbelieved and resented that statement.

The great central offices in San Francisco were very busy--all but the inner rooms where stood the partners' desks. One day Cathcart lit a fresh cigar, and slowly wheeled his chair.

"Look here, Charley," he proposed, "we've got a big surplus. There's no reason why we shouldn't make a killing on the side."

"As how?" asked Gates.

Cathcart outlined his plan. It was simply stock manipulation on a big scale; although the naked import was somewhat obscured by the complications of the scheme. After he had finished Gates smoked for some time in silence.

"All right, Cliff," said he, "let's do it."

And so by a sentence, as his father before him, he marked the farthest throw of the wave that had borne him blindly toward the sh.o.r.e. In the next ten years Cathcart and Gates made forty million dollars. Charley seemed to himself to be doing a tremendous business, but his real work, his contribution to the episode in the life of the commonwealth, ceased there. Again the wave receded.

CHAPTER III

The third generation of the Gates family consisted of two girls and a boy. They were brought up as to their early childhood in what may be called moderate circ.u.mstances. A small home near the little mill town, a single Chinese servant, a setter dog, and plenty of horses formed their entourage. When Charles, Jr., was eleven, and his sisters six and eight, however, the family moved to a pretentious "mansion" on n.o.b Hill in San Francisco. The environment of childhood became a memory: the reality of life was comprised in the super-luxurious existence on n.o.b Hill.

It was not a particularly wise existence. Whims were too easily realized, consequences too lightly avoided, discipline too capricious.

The children were sent to private schools where they met only their own kind; they were specifically forbidden to mingle with the "hoodlums" in the next street; they became accustomed to being sent here and there in carriages with two servants, or later, in motor cars; they had always spending money for the asking.

"I know what it is like to scrimp and save, and my children are going to be spared that!" was Mrs. Gates's creed in the matter.

The little girls were always dressed alike in elaborately simple clothes, with frilly, starched underpinnies, silk stockings, high boots b.u.t.toned up slim legs; and across their shoulders, from beneath wonderful lingerie hats, hung s.h.i.+ning curls. The latter were not natural, but had each day to be elaborately constructed. They made a dainty and charming picture.

"Did you ever see anything so sweet in all your life!" was the invariable feminine exclamation.

Clara and Ethel-May always heard these remarks. They conducted themselves with the poise and _savoir faire_ of grown women. Before they were twelve they could "handle" servants, conduct polite conversations in a correctly artificial accent, and adapt their manners to another's station in life.

Charley Junior's development was sharply divided into two periods, with the second of which alone we have to do. The first, briefly, was repressive. He was not allowed to play with certain boys, he was not permitted to stray beyond certain bounds, he was kept clean and dressed-up, he was taught his manners. In short, Mrs. Gates tried--without knowing what she was doing--to use the same formula on him as she had on Ethel-May and Clara.

In the second period, he was a grief to his family. Roughly speaking, this period commenced about the time he began to be known as "Chuck"

instead of Charley.

There was no real harm in the boy. He was high spirited, full of life, strong as a horse, and curious. Possessed of the patrician haughty good looks we breed so easily from s.h.i.+rtsleeves, free with his money, known as the son of his powerful father, a good boxer, knowing no fear, he speedily became a familiar popular figure around town. It delighted him to play the prince, either incognito or in person; to "blow off the crowd," to battle joyously with longsh.o.r.emen; to "rough house" the semi-respectable restaurants. The Barbary Coast knew him, Taits, Zinkands, the Poodle Dog, the Cliff House, Franks, and many other resorts not to be spoken of so openly. He even got into the police courts once or twice; and nonchalantly paid a fine, with a joke at the judge and a tip to the policeman who had arrested him. There was too much drinking, too much gambling, too loose a companions.h.i.+p, altogether too much spending; but in this case the life was redeemed from its usual significance by a fantastic spirit of play, a generosity of soul, a regard for the unfortunate, a courtliness toward all the world, a refusal to believe in meanness or sordidness or cruelty. Chuck Gates was inbred with the spirit of _n.o.blesse oblige_.

As soon as motor cars came in Chuck had the raciest possible. With it he managed to frighten a good many people half out of their wits. He had no accidents, partly because he was a very good heady driver, and partly because those whom he encountered were quick witted. One day while touring in the south he came down grade around a bend squarely upon a car ascending. Chuck's car was going too fast to be stopped. He tried desperately to wrench it from the road, but perceived at once that this was impossible without a fatal skid. Fortunately the only turnout for a half mile happened to be just at that spot. The other man managed to jump his car out on this little side ledge and to jam on his brakes at the very brink, just as Chuck flashed by. His mud guards slipped under those at the rear of the other car.

"Close," observed Chuck to Joe Merrill his companion, "I was going a little too fast," and thought no more of it.

But the other man, being angry, turned around and followed him into town. At the garage he sought Chuck out.

"Didn't you pa.s.s me on the grade five miles back?" he inquired.

"I may have done so," replied Chuck, courteously.

"Don't you realize that you were going altogether too fast for a mountain grade? that you were completely out of control?"

"I'm afraid I'll have to admit that that is so."

"Well," said the other man, with difficulty suppressing his anger. "What do you suppose would have happened if I hadn't just been able to pull out?"

"Why," replied Chuck, blandly, "I suppose I'd have had to pay heavily; that's all."

"Pay!" cried the man, then checked himself with an effort, "so you imagine you are privileged to the road, do whatever damage you please--and _pay!_ I'll just take your number."

"That is unnecessary. My name is Charles Gates," replied Chuck, "of San Francisco."

The man appeared never to have heard of this potent cognomen. A month later the trial came off. It was most inconvenient. Chuck was in Oregon, hunting. He had to travel many hundreds of miles, to pay an expensive lawyer. In the end he was fined. The whole affair disgusted him, but he went through with it well, testified without attempt at evasion. It was a pity; but evidently the other man was no gentleman.

"I acknowledged I was wrong," he told Joe Merrill. He honestly felt that this would have been sufficient had the cases been reversed. In answer to a question as to whether he considered it fair to place the burden of safety on the other man, he replied:

"Among motorists it is customary to exchange the courtesies of the road--and sometimes the discourtesies," he added with a faint scorn.

The earthquake and fire of 1906 caught him in town. During three days and nights he ran his car for the benefit of the sufferers; going practically without food or sleep, exercising the utmost audacity and ingenuity in getting supplies, running fearlessly many dangers.

For the rest he played polo well, shot excellently at the traps, was good at tennis, golf, bridge. Naturally he belonged to the best clubs both city and country. He sailed a yacht expertly, was a keen fisherman, hunted. Also he played poker a good deal and was noted for his accurate taste in dress.

His mother firmly believed that he caused her much sorrow; his sisters looked up to him with a little awe; his father down on him with a fiercely tolerant contempt.

For Chuck had had his turn in the offices. His mind was a good one; his education both formal and informal, had trained it fairly well; yet he could not quite make good. Energetic, ambitious, keen young men, clambering upward from the ruck, gave him points at the game and then beat him. It was humiliating to the old man. He could not see the perfectly normal reason. These young men were striving keenly for what they had never had. Chuck was asked merely to add to what he already had more than enough of by means of a game that itself did not interest him.

Late one evening Chuck and some friends were dining at the Cliff House.

They had been cruising up toward Tomales Bay, and had had themselves put ash.o.r.e here. No one knew of their whereabouts. Thus it was that Chuck first learned of his father's death from apoplexy in the scareheads of an evening paper handed him by the majordomo. He read the article through carefully, then went alone to the beach below. It had been the usual sensational article; and but two sentences clung to Chuck's memory: "This fortunate young man's income will actually amount to about ten dollars a minute. What a significance have now his days--and nights!"