The Klearbrook Gold Rush.^*

AMES WILKIN'S was disconsolate and puzzled. By all the rules of the real estate booster, Klearbrook lots should have been owned, at least incipiently, by hundreds of residents of the city to which it aspired to be a suburb. The advertising was the very best possible, and the entire city was now familiar with the alluring poster:

	UM TO
	LEARBROOK	AND
	EEP A
	OW

       Then, too, the terms were decidedly seductive. "You pay a little now, and the rest once in a while" they promised. But no one seemed to yearn for bucolic life in the suburbs, where "buying your home is like paying rent to yourself," only a mile from the nearest trolley line, and, best of all, with a beautiful stream rippling by the door.

       The aforesaid beautiful stream was not what could be called perniciously active, except in the rainy season, when its ripples used to tear huge gouges in the banks; but, geographically speaking, it was present, and gave an excuse for the name, Klearbrook, although it was known as "Mud Crick" before the advent of Wilkins.

       The real estate man had disposed of several tracts that had seemed to him even less promising, in the course of his career of promotion and speculation, and, as he sat in his little square shack, located at a corner where he decided the business centre of the future community would converge, he wondered if the crop of instalment purchasers had finally been all harvested. He had spent a considerable amount of money on the project, mostly in advertising and staking out quarter-acre homes for a city-weary populace, and he simply had to get it back somehow. Then there was the come-on house.

       To those who still remain in heathen darkness, be it known that a come-on house is a near-residence, built upon an ambitious subdivision, as if it would say to those trembling on the verge of investment:

       "Welcome to our fair city. If I can stand it, you can."

       People have been known to live in these houses, even, but usually they are intended merely as a spot on the landscape for the agent to point at carelessly, with the remark:

       "Mr. Sukah expects to move in next week."

       Wilkins's come-on house had cost him nearly two hundred dollars, and still it was as unfruitful as a china egg under a setting hen. The public had failed to wreck his office in a frenzied clamor for Klearbrook realty, and something must be done at once. So Wilkins cogitated for a long time, and then gave it up as a bad job.

       Finally he locked up the office, and started for his horse and buggy which he had left tied to a tree - or rather the tree. This misplaced piece of vegetable life had once caused Wilkins considerable mental perturbation. It took him nearly a week to decide that it was scarcely sufficient justification for advertising Klearbrook as a "thickly wooded district."

       On his way to the rig, he half stumbled over a loose piece of crumbling, decomposed granite. He turned and looked at it profanely, and suddenly an illumination enveloped his mind. He whistled softly and meditatively. He smiled. He turned toward his buggy and his movement became purposeful. And he drove back to the city.

       The next morning Wilkins went to the down-town office of the Klearbrook tract very early. This "office" was a desk inside a railing, seemingly elbowed off to one side by a crowd of other similar "offices." These were all products of the city's annual real estate boom, which opened regularly with the Vernal Equinox and continued intermittently until about the twentieth of the following March.

       The respective denizens told each other that the reason they occupied these inconveniently small quarters was because it was necessary for the real estate men to stand together, and show united strength, and all the rest of that Board of Trade talk, and then they would go out and lie about each other with clear consciences. They called it the United Realty Exchange, but the principal commodity exchanged with any degree of regularity, was stories about how somebody had once traded for a spavined horse the corner upon which the First National Bank now stood, and how they remembered that there used to be a blacksmith shop on the present city hall site. For it was one of these swiftly built western cities, which, like the Nile, overflows itself every year, and leaves prosperity simply oozing around the streets. Wilkins hovered near the door of this institution with battle in his eye. He was determined to take a victim to Klearbrook that day, if he had to turn kidnaper. But luck was with him and desperate means were avoided. A stranger stopped at the entrance to the Exchange, and studied the array of signs un certainly. Wilkins started for the street like a man in a hurry to go some place. As he passed the stranger he stopped and said:

       "Looking for some one?"

       "Not exactly. I was kind of thinking of buying a lot a little out of town, and —"

       "All right. Come with, me," said Wilkins. "I've got an appointment to meet some buyers out at Klearbrook, and you can come along and look the place over. I'll show you some other good tracts on the way. We real estate dealers help each other out that way."

       So the Lamb started willingly for the slaughter.

       As they drove along, the Lamb — he said his name was Henry Phillips — was regaled with glowing descriptions of Klearbrook. or at least of what Klearbrook was to be in the future. Never was the taint of commercialism to mar the sylvan simplicity of this rustic spot. No factories would be allowed to thrust their ugly smoke-stacks into its pure atmosphere. Free from the dangers of street traffic, children could make the whole neighborhood their playground.

       What were Mr. Phillips's views on the liquor question? Mr. Phillips's lips moved suggestively and he murmured something about "moderation." That was well, for there would be but one saloon in Klearbrook, and it would be conducted under the most severe restrictions.

       Finally the last human habitation was passed and the tale not nearly finished. They began to draw near Klearbrook. Suddenly Wilkins sat back with a jerk that stopped the horse, gazed ahead, and ejaculated:

       "Well, what do you think of that?"

       The Lamb failed to discern anything disquieting in the prospect. In fact the scene seemed singularly devoid of excitement, so he held his peace.

       "Giddap," yelled Wilkins, and whipped up the horse. As he stared ahead he gave vent to such expressions as, "Well, I'll be blowed," "Of all the nerve," "If that isn't the limit," etc., ad lib.

       The Lamb found it necessary to concentrate all his energies upon maintaining his seat in the buggy, as it careened along the road in its wild career, and Wilkins seemed so absorbed in indignation that he contented himself with awaiting developments. Soon they reached the big sign that enlightened those who wandered so far afield that this was the boundary of Klearbrook, and Wilkins drove across lots to a little round tent.

       "Hello in there," he called.

       A heavy set man, with whiskers to match, appeared with a shotgun in his hand.

       "Keep off this claim," he called, "or I'll blow ye into the next county."

       "Claim?" Wilkins roared back at him. "Who do you think you are talking to?"

       "I don't know and don't care. All I got to say is, keep off."

       Wilkins was growing purple in his rage, and the Lamb began to tremble lest shooting should begin. He was an Eastern Lamb and had no desire to be even a close spectator in such deeds of Western violence as he had read about.

       "I'd have you know," yelled Wilkins, "that I'm the agent of this tract."

       "Well, I'm a prospector," replied the man with the whiskers, "and I've found colors in this 'ere rock, and if you own the hull darn township you can't make me move. I've got the statoots of Califrado on my side, and they say that a man has the right to protect an unfiled claim with violence. I ain't got my papers ready yet, and until then visitors is strictly barred."

       Wilkins sat back and stared at the man open-mouthed.

       "Gold!" he gasped, "In Klearbrook?"

       "Yep. You been asleep, stranger. She goes twenty-five to the ton or I'm a tenderfoot."

       "Any more of it besides what you located?"

       "Can't say. One claim's all I can handle. I stumbled on this yesterday, and you bet I didn't lose any time chasin' more. Just got my outfit up before you come along."

       By this time the Lamb's eyes were so wide open that he could have worn a monocle.

       "I don't believe there's any law going to let you grab my lots for a gold mine," said Wilkins.

       "Don't you worry," replied the prospector. "You'll get well paid for what lots I take."

       "Well, I'll see the District Attorney and find out about this," and Wilkins turned the horse toward the city.

       Pregnant silence reigned in the buggy for a considerable time, as the real estate man and the Lamb drove back. Then the Lamb said:

       "I suppose you will take Klearbrook off the market now."

       "No, I hardly think so," replied Wilkins, slowly. "If that fellow has struck gold it's probably the only streak in the neighborhood, and there's so few lots left we might as well sell 'em and get them off our hands."

       Then, apropos of nothing at all, Wilkins began to tell of how gold strikes had been made on town sites in other places, and how real estate had quadrupled in value in astonishingly short time as a consequence. The result of it all was that the Lamb was so fortunate as to obtain two lots near those preempted by the prospector.

       Wilkins then insisted that the Lamb should accompany him, as a witness, to the District Attorney's office. That official listened to the story, and informed the real estate man that the prospector was entirely within his rights according to an old law of the Califrado legislature, passed for protection against claim jumping in the pioneer days. So Wilkins left, raging volubly.

       Now, the District Attorney was a friend of the editor of the Daily Blade, so he rang up the newspaper and told of the incident. The newspaper sent two reporters and a photographer to the scene of hostilities, and they received much the same sort of reception that had been accorded Wilkins and the Lamb. Then they went to see Wilkins, and found him mysteriously reticent. Being very clever reporters, they knew that this could mean nothing but that Wilkins was concealing still more sensational news. So the next morning the Blade had headlines on the front page reading:

       A glowing article followed, illustrated with pictures of the prospector standing in front of his tent with a gun in his hand, of Wilkins, and of the Lamb, the latter being described as "Mr. Henry Phillips," who was so fortunate as to be early on the ground and obtain several valuable pieces of property."

       There is just one vital point behind the work of all promoters — you can sell anything in the world, or out of it, if you find some one who knows absolutely nothing about your proposition. Hence it was that those who were versed in mineral lore simply smiled when they read the article in the Blade, knowing that there was no gold formation within a hundred miles of Klearbrook; but out at the scene of the discovery, early in the morning, there gathered a motley crowd of men who would not have known gold ore from coral reef.

       The carnage that followed is too terrible to describe. Wilkins took money with each hand, and wrote receipts when he had time. Buyers jammed themselves into his little shack of an office, and the more determined ones handed their payments in through the window. And Wilkins, protesting that there were hardly any lots left, always managed to find just one more for the latest arrival, until five o'clock, when he finally declared that further Klearbrook purchases would have to be made from private parties, as the company had disposed of every inch of its holdings, except the lot the prospector had grabbed, and no one seemed to want to take a chance with the shotgun.

       The crowds still lingered, however, and compared locations, discussing mining methods, of which they knew nothing whatever, and wealth in general, until nearly dark. Wilkins was busy behind the locked door of his office, counting his money and trying to make a coherent record of the day's business.

       Finally the last speculator disappeared cityward, and then a strange thing happened.

       "All clear, Jim," called a cheery voice through the darkness.

       "Yep," answered Wilkins.

       And the prospector sauntered in, pulled down the blind, removed his bushy whiskers, with a sigh of relief, tilted a chair back against the wall, and grinned.

       "Well?" he said.

       "Great. Sold every lot — every — darned — lot. And got at least ten per cent on every one, and sometimes more."

       "There'll be a hell of a row."

       "Why? Klearbrook lots are easily worth what we charged for them. We never raised the price a dollar. If they jumped at the conclusion they were getting gold mines for town lot prices, that's their mistake. But after their first spasm of disappointment, when you tell them that you were mistaken, and quietly disappear, they will begin to build houses out here, and in a year Klearbrook will be the nucleus of a thriving community."

       And his prediction proved correct.

(THE END)