California Gold Read Online Free PDF Page B

sisters to swallow her fairy tales, but I was ten years younger. I guess she was tired out, or I was smart, because I saw it for what it was. A Barnum show. A fucking humbug, you know?”
    Just then some deep-throated bird, a horned owl perhaps, made its presence known. The night smelled of sweet grass and the pine forests to the east.
    “I’m telling you, my mother was a strange woman,” Wyatt went on. “She never served red meat in our house. She said it liberated the base instincts of males. She believed in hydropathy—the water cure. I was a sickly kid, so for a long time I had to sit wrapped up in sheets she soaked in cold water and wrung out. One hour a day, even in winter. You don’t know the crazy ideas I grew up with.…”
    Mack sat silently. Wyatt added, “I came out here to get away from them, and all the rules in our house. Don’t drink, don’t curse, don’t fornicate, and you’ll get your reward. Where? Not in Osage, Kansas, that’s for goddamn sure. But California—now that’s a different story.”
    More cheerful and animated now, Wyatt hunched forward. “Let me explain what this place means to me. My old man had one big opportunity in his life. His brother from Topeka died and left him forty-five acres of prime land at the edge of town. My old man platted it, laid out a nice little section of houses, and then found out that some of the local ordinances wouldn’t allow him to do certain things he planned. Being devout, he couldn’t break the law. So he prayed about it all night one night, and next day he sold the whole parcel. And of course the smart bastard who bought it just walked in and bribed the Topeka officials and even a state senator, and developed the section and sold it out at a profit.”
    Wyatt’s sudden smile fooled Mack into expecting easiness, even forgiveness, but Wyatt’s words turned bitter again. “You see what kind of fucking fools raised me? Fools hemmed in by the Bible, a conscience—laws. I’ll not repeat their mistakes.”
    “So what do you want to do here?” Mack asked gingerly.
    “Buy and develop some land. It was the one sensible thing my old man tried. He just did it wrong.”
    “And you’re going down to Los Angeles?”
    “For a start. Big land boom down there. Fewer people, too.” He studied Mack. “What’s your plan?”
    “The same as yours. To make money.”
    “How much?”
    “A fortune.”
    Wyatt tossed his head back and laughed. “We’re alike, Chance. A lot alike. Two gents with high ambitions. It’s no wonder we met on the road to California. This state’s pretty near brand new. Some parts are still frontier, they say. Not so many rules and laws to bind a man—”
    “That’s what you think of California? Being free to do whatever you want?” It was an odd new thought.
    Wyatt obviously believed it, though, because he responded heatedly. “Damn right. California is Kansas forty years ago. Maybe with those mountains standing up there, keeping out most of the weaklings, it’ll stay that way. At least I hope it stays that way till I make my pile. That won’t be long.”
    “You’re pretty confident.”
    Wyatt took the compliment with another toss of his dark head, as if it were routine, nothing but obvious truth.
    With the occasionally foolish enthusiasm and naïveté of young men, they continued exchanging information and philosophies for another half hour. They were arguing the merits of California above and below the Tehachapi Mountains, the state’s mythical dividing line, when Mack suddenly stopped and yanked at the dirt-splotched cuff of his trousers. There was some mite of an insect burrowing under his layers of socks, and he killed it between his fingernails. “God, what I’d give for a bar of soap and some hot coffee.”
    “I can take care of that first thing in the morning,” Wyatt said.
    “How?”
    “Didn’t you see that sign we passed at the crossroads—‘Good Luck, two miles’? Bet it’s an old mining town.