excitements of their risks. Krutzmacht, it seemed to him, must have been such a one as these. He was on the point of asking the old miner, who was the principal talker, if he had ever heard of Krutzmacht, when his ears caught the words:

p. 40

“I see by to-day’s San Francisco paper that a receivership has been asked for the Shasta companies. That means they’ve got Krutzmacht, don’t it?”

“I expect so—he’s been on the edge some time from what I hear,” the younger man replied.

“So they got him. . . . I thought Herb would make good—he was a nervy Dutchman, if there p. 41ever was one! But he couldn’t go up against that crowd.”

p. 41

“When he began building his road through the mountains to the Bay, the S. P. crowd went for him and shut off his credit. You’ve got to get permission to do some things in California.”

“I’m told he’d built up a big property.”

“That’s right—if he’d been able to hold on, there would have been millions, what with the power company, the timber, the railroad, and the land. That’s why the S. P. people wanted it! They waited, and when the panic came on, they began squeezing him. I saw him in New York a few days ago. I suppose he was trying to get money from some of those big Jew bankers where he’d got it before. But it isn’t the right time to pass the hat in Wall Street just now.”

The talk ran on desultorily about “the S. P. crowd,” who it seemed were the financial dictators of the Pacific Coast and “the nerve of the Dutchman who went up against that bunch.” Brainard listened closely to every word, but refrained from asking questions for fear of betraying an undue interest in Krutzmacht. As far as he could make out, with his inexperience in business affairs, Krutzmacht’s companies were valuable and solvent, but he himself was embarrassed, as many men of large enterprises were at this time, and his p. 42enemies had taken this opportune moment to get possession of his properties, using for that purpose the courts of which they seemed to have control as they had of the legislature and the governor.

p. 42

“It’s a shame,” the younger stranger remarked frankly; “I expect they’ll put him through the mill and take every dollar he owns.”

“They’ll eat the hide off him all 

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