Gold mines and mining -- Fiction; Nevada -- Fiction; Western stories
"That accounts for your legs not being tanned." Baker Cole hauled
himself out of the surf like a big, good-looking seal, and lay puffing
and looking Bill over. "Wish I had muscles like yours," he remarked,
crooking his finger toward a young man who immediately hurried up with
cigarettes and matches. Bill accepted a smoke, and the two began to
talk.
An hour later, they went toeing deep in the fine, loose sand to where
a huge, striped umbrella hid all but a shapely, canvas-shod foot. Bill
helped Doris to her feet and introduced Baker Cole, who appraised her
shrewdly with one glance and decided that his wife would like her.
That began the acquaintance. In a week, the Baker Coles and the
William Gordon Dales (Doris had quietly insisted upon full names from
the first hotel register,--and had put it over with complete success)
were pairing off together quite naturally and without deliberate
intent; which is the test of congeniality the world over.
From a surreptitiously acquired paid teacher, Doris had learned
bridge. She succeeded in teaching Bill, chiefly because he couldn't
bear to disappoint her and because it gave him an opportunity to
watch her hands without betraying a fatuous admiration. He had learned
that Doris considered open love-making bad form, and was acquiring a
more restrained manner of worship in accordance with her expressed
wish. Wherefore, Bill willingly learned bridge after hours in their
rooms, when he was dead tired, and watched unobtrusively for some sign
of weariness in the sweet face opposite him. The reward for that was a
more complete intimacy between the Baker Coles and the William Gordon
Dales.
Bill could not remember afterwards just when or how Doris first found
her pleasures apart from him. He saw that "nice" women were becoming
her friends, and of course there were little parties and purely
feminine gatherings to which Doris went with avid enjoyment. She would
sit and tell Bill all about them afterwards, and Bill would listen
bewilderingly to detailed descriptions of gowns and refreshments and
scores and prizes, and to gossip not quite so harmless.
Sometimes his thoughts would wander to certain experiences of his
own,--innocent experiences, though he did not tell her about them
always. Baker Cole was at present amused with the spectacle of money
flowing out of crude oil pumped from the ground. It amazed even him
to see how fast the oil could turn into money. He called Bill's
attention to the phenomenon, and Bill was immediately interested, and
for reasons which he kept to himself.
Through Baker Cole's shrewd acquaintance with the game of directing
and augmenting the flow of money, Bill turned tiny trickles toward his
own bank account, and was amazed at the speed with which they became
swift-moving streams.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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