Читать книгу Buffalo Bill, Peacemaker; Or, On a Troublesome Trail онлайн

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This sort of extravagance, therefore, took the cattle country by the throat, and shook a golden stream out of its pockets. Now and then a cigar was lighted with a ten-dollar bill—whenever a baron wished to be particularly spectacular. It may not have proved that the ranchers had money to burn, yet it proved that they did burn it nevertheless.

Many of the ranchers burned their money in “sparks,” otherwise diamonds, paying three or four times what the stones were worth per karat. There was much rivalry in the possession of these gems. If a baron’s neighbor flashed a gem as big as a Mexican bean on his little finger, then the other baron made haste to get one as big as a lima bean and display it ostentatiously.

A class of peddlers was brought into being, by this desire of the barons for jewels, whose like had never been known before and probably will never be known again. Hebrews with satchels traveled the cow country, each satchel containing a king’s ransom in diamonds. These stones were peddled from ranch to ranch. The idea of a man toting from one hundred thousand to two hundred thousand dollars’ worth of diamonds through the range lands, alone and unattended and yet without molestation, formed rather a strange commentary on those wild and troublous times. Yet this was one angle of the situation in the flush days.