The next morning it was still snowing furiously when we got away with

our new stock of saddles and accoutrements. We mounted and started. The

snow lay so deep on the ground that there was no sign of a road

perceptible, and the snow-fall was so thick that we could not see more

than a hundred yards ahead, else we could have guided our course by the

mountain ranges. The case looked dubious, but Ollendorff said his

instinct was as sensitive as any compass, and that he could “strike a

bee-line” for Carson city and never diverge from it. He said that if he

were to straggle a single point out of the true line his instinct would

assail him like an outraged conscience. Consequently we dropped into his

wake happy and content. For half an hour we poked along warily enough,

but at the end of that time we came upon a fresh trail, and Ollendorff

shouted proudly:

“I knew I was as dead certain as a compass, boys! Here we are, right in

somebody’s tracks that will hunt the way for us without any trouble.

Let’s hurry up and join company with the party.”

So we put the horses into as much of a trot as the deep snow would

allow, and before long it was evident that we were gaining on our

predecessors, for the tracks grew more distinct. We hurried along, and

at the end of an hour the tracks looked still newer and fresher—but what

surprised us was, that the _number_ of travelers in advance of us seemed

to steadily increase. We wondered how so large a party came to be

traveling at such a time and in such a solitude. Somebody suggested that

it must be a company of soldiers from the fort, and so we accepted that

solution and jogged along a little faster still, for they could not be

far off now. But the tracks still multiplied, and we began to think the

platoon of soldiers was miraculously expanding into a regiment—Ballou

said they had already increased to five hundred! Presently he stopped

his horse and said:

“Boys, these are our own tracks, and we’ve actually been circussing

round and round in a circle for more than two hours, out here in this

blind desert! By George this is perfectly hydraulic!”

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Then the old man waxed wroth and abusive. He called Ollendorff all

manner of hard names—said he never saw such a lurid fool as he was, and

ended with the peculiarly venomous opinion that he “did not know as much

as a logarythm!”

We certainly had been following our own tracks. Ollendorff and his

“mental compass” were in disgrace from that moment.

After all our hard travel, here we were on the bank of the stream again,

with the inn beyond dimly outlined through the driving snow-fall. While

we were considering what to do, the young Swede landed from the canoe

and took his pedestrian way Carson-wards, singing his same tiresome song

about his “sister and his brother” and “the child in the grave with its

mother,” and in a short minute faded and disappeared in the white

oblivion. He was never heard of again. He no doubt got bewildered and

lost, and Fatigue delivered him over to Sleep and Sleep betrayed him to

Death. Possibly he followed our treacherous tracks till he became

exhausted and dropped.

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Presently the Overland stage forded the now fast receding stream and

started toward Carson on its first trip since the flood came. We

hesitated no longer, now, but took up our march in its wake, and trotted

merrily along, for we had good confidence in the driver’s bump of

locality. But our horses were no match for the fresh stage team. We were

soon left out of sight; but it was no matter, for we had the deep ruts

the wheels made for a guide. By this time it was three in the afternoon,

and consequently it was not very long before night came—and not with a

lingering twilight, but with a sudden shutting down like a cellar door,

as is its habit in that country. The snowfall was still as thick as

ever, and of course we could not see fifteen steps before us; but all

about us the white glare of the snow-bed enabled us to discern the

smooth sugar-loaf mounds made by the covered sage-bushes, and just in

front of us the two faint grooves which we knew were the steadily

filling and slowly disappearing wheel-tracks.

Now those sage-bushes were all about the same height—three or four feet;

they stood just about seven feet apart, all over the vast desert; each

of them was a mere snow-mound, now; in _any_ direction that you

proceeded (the same as in a well laid out orchard) you would find

yourself moving down a distinctly defined avenue, with a row of these

snow-mounds an either side of it—an avenue the customary width of a

road, nice and level in its breadth, and rising at the sides in the most

natural way, by reason of the mounds. But we had not thought of this.

Then imagine the chilly thrill that shot through us when it finally

occurred to us, far in the night, that since the last faint trace of the

wheel-tracks had long ago been buried from sight, we might now be

wandering down a mere sage-brush avenue, miles away from the road and

diverging further and further away from it all the time. Having a cake

of ice slipped down one’s back is placid comfort compared to it. There

was a sudden leap and stir of blood that had been asleep for an hour,

and as sudden a rousing of all the drowsing activities in our minds and

bodies. We were alive and awake at once—and shaking and quaking with

consternation, too. There was an instant halting and dismounting, a

bending low and an anxious scanning of the road-bed. Useless, of course;

for if a faint depression could not be discerned from an altitude of

four or five feet above it, it certainly could not with one’s nose

nearly against it.

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CHAPTER XXXII.

We seemed to be in a road, but that was no proof. We tested this by

walking off in various directions—the regular snow-mounds and the

regular avenues between them convinced each man that _he_ had found the

true road, and that the others had found only false ones. Plainly the

situation was desperate. We were cold and stiff and the horses were

tired. We decided to build a sage-brush fire and camp out till morning.

This was wise, because if we were wandering from the right road and the

snow-storm continued another day our case would be the next thing to

hopeless if we kept on.

All agreed that a camp fire was what would come nearest to saving us,

now, and so we set about building it. We could find no matches, and so

we tried to make shift with the pistols. Not a man in the party had ever

tried to do such a thing before, but not a man in the party doubted that

it _could_ be done, and without any trouble—because every man in the

party had read about it in books many a time and had naturally come to

believe it, with trusting simplicity, just as he had long ago accepted

and believed that _other_ common book-fraud about Indians and lost

hunters making a fire by rubbing two dry sticks together.

We huddled together on our knees in the deep snow, and the horses put

their noses together and bowed their patient heads over us; and while

the feathery flakes eddied down and turned us into a group of white

statuary, we proceeded with the momentous experiment. We broke twigs

from a sage bush and piled them on a little cleared place in the shelter

of our bodies. In the course of ten or fifteen minutes all was ready,

and then, while conversation ceased and our pulses beat low with anxious

suspense, Ollendorff applied his revolver, pulled the trigger and blew

the pile clear out of the county! It was the flattest failure that ever

was.

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This was distressing, but it paled before a greater horror—the horses

were gone! I had been appointed to hold the bridles, but in my absorbing

anxiety over the pistol experiment I had unconsciously dropped them and

the released animals had walked off in the storm. It was useless to try

to follow them, for their footfalls could make no sound, and one could

pass within two yards of the creatures and never see them. We gave them

up without an effort at recovering them, and cursed the lying books that

said horses would stay by their masters for protection and companionship

in a distressful time like ours.

We were miserable enough, before; we felt still more forlorn, now.

Patiently, but with blighted hope, we broke more sticks and piled them,

and once more the Prussian shot them into annihilation. Plainly, to

light a fire with a pistol was an art requiring practice and experience,

and the middle of a desert at midnight in a snow-storm was not a good

place or time for the acquiring of the accomplishment. We gave it up and

tried the other. Each man took a couple of sticks and fell to chafing

them together. At the end of half an hour we were thoroughly chilled,

and so were the sticks. We bitterly execrated the Indians, the hunters

and the books that had betrayed us with the silly device, and wondered

dismally what was next to be done. At this critical moment Mr. Ballou

fished out four matches from the rubbish of an overlooked pocket. To

have found four gold bars would have seemed poor and cheap good luck

compared to this.

One cannot think how good a match looks under such circumstances—or how

lovable and precious, and sacredly beautiful to the eye. This time we

gathered sticks with high hopes; and when Mr. Ballou prepared to light

the first match, there was an amount of interest centred upon him that

pages of writing could not describe. The match burned hopefully a

moment, and then went out. It could not have carried more regret with it

if it had been a human life. The next match simply flashed and died. The

wind puffed the third one out just as it was on the imminent verge of

success. We gathered together closer than ever, and developed a

solicitude that was rapt and painful, as Mr. Ballou scratched our last

hope on his leg. It lit, burned blue and sickly, and then budded into a

robust flame. Shading it with his hands, the old gentleman bent

gradually down and every heart went with him—everybody, too, for that

matter—and blood and breath stood still. The flame touched the sticks at

last, took gradual hold upon them—hesitated—took a stronger

hold—hesitated again—held its breath five heart-breaking seconds, then

gave a sort of human gasp and went out.

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Nobody said a word for several minutes. It was a solemn sort of silence;

even the wind put on a stealthy, sinister quiet, and made no more noise

than the falling flakes of snow. Finally a sad-voiced conversation

began, and it was soon apparent that in each of our hearts lay the

conviction that this was our last night with the living. I had so hoped

that I was the only one who felt so. When the others calmly acknowledged

their conviction, it sounded like the summons itself. Ollendorff said:

“Brothers, let us die together. And let us go without one hard feeling

towards each other. Let us forget and forgive bygones. I know that you

have felt hard towards me for turning over the canoe, and for knowing

too much and leading you round and round in the snow—but I meant well;

forgive me. I acknowledge freely that I have had hard feelings against

Mr. Ballou for abusing me and calling me a logarythm, which is a thing I

do not know what, but no doubt a thing considered disgraceful and

unbecoming in America, and it has scarcely been out of my mind and has

hurt me a great deal—but let it go; I forgive Mr. Ballou with all my

heart, and—”

Poor Ollendorff broke down and the tears came. He was not alone, for I

was crying too, and so was Mr. Ballou. Ollendorff got his voice again

and forgave me for things I had done and said. Then he got out his

bottle of whisky and said that whether he lived or died he would never

touch another drop. He said he had given up all hope of life, and

although ill-prepared, was ready to submit humbly to his fate; that he

wished he could be spared a little longer, not for any selfish reason,

but to make a thorough reform in his character, and by devoting himself

to helping the poor, nursing the sick, and pleading with the people to

guard themselves against the evils of intemperance, make his life a

beneficent example to the young, and lay it down at last with the

precious reflection that it had not been lived in vain. He ended by

saying that his reform should begin at this moment, even here in the

presence of death, since no longer time was to be vouchsafed wherein to

prosecute it to men’s help and benefit—and with that he threw away the

bottle of whisky.

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Mr. Ballou made remarks of similar purport, and began the reform he

could not live to continue, by throwing away the ancient pack of cards

that had solaced our captivity during the flood and made it bearable.

He said he never gambled, but still was satisfied that the meddling with

cards in any way was immoral and injurious, and no man could be wholly

pure and blemishless without eschewing them. “And therefore,” continued

he, “in doing this act I already feel more in sympathy with that

spiritual saturnalia necessary to entire and obsolete reform.” These

rolling syllables touched him as no intelligible eloquence could have

done, and the old man sobbed with a mournfulness not unmingled with

satisfaction.

My own remarks were of the same tenor as those of my comrades, and I

know that the feelings that prompted them were heartfelt and sincere. We

were all sincere, and all deeply moved and earnest, for we were in the

presence of death and without hope. I threw away my pipe, and in doing

it felt that at last I was free of a hated vice and one that had ridden

me like a tyrant all my days. While I yet talked, the thought of the

good I might have done in the world and the still greater good I might

_now_ do, with these new incentives and higher and better aims to guide

me if I could only be spared a few years longer, overcame me and the

tears came again. We put our arms about each other’s necks and awaited

the warning drowsiness that precedes death by freezing.

It came stealing over us presently, and then we bade each other a last

farewell. A delicious dreaminess wrought its web about my yielding

senses, while the snow-flakes wove a winding sheet about my conquered

body. Oblivion came. The battle of life was done.

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CHAPTER XXXIII.

I do not know how long I was in a state of forgetfulness, but it seemed

an age. A vague consciousness grew upon me by degrees, and then came a

gathering anguish of pain in my limbs and through all my body. I

shuddered. The thought flitted through my brain, “this is death—this is

the hereafter.”

Then came a white upheaval at my side, and a voice said, with

bitterness:

“Will some gentleman be so good as to kick me behind?”

It was Ballou—at least it was a towzled snow image in a sitting posture,

with Ballou’s voice.

I rose up, and there in the gray dawn, not fifteen steps from us, were

the frame buildings of a stage station, and under a shed stood our still

saddled and bridled horses!

An arched snow-drift broke up, now, and Ollendorff emerged from it, and

the three of us sat and stared at the houses without speaking a word. We

really had nothing to say. We were like the profane man who could not

“do the subject justice,” the whole situation was so painfully

ridiculous and humiliating that words were tame and we did not know

where to commence anyhow.

The joy in our hearts at our deliverance was poisoned; well-nigh

dissipated, indeed. We presently began to grow pettish by degrees, and

sullen; and then, angry at each other, angry at ourselves, angry at

everything in general, we moodily dusted the snow from our clothing and

in unsociable single file plowed our way to the horses, unsaddled them,

and sought shelter in the station.

I have scarcely exaggerated a detail of this curious and absurd

adventure. It occurred almost exactly as I have stated it. We actually

went into camp in a snow-drift in a desert, at midnight in a storm,

forlorn and hopeless, within fifteen steps of a comfortable inn.

For two hours we sat apart in the station and ruminated in disgust. The

mystery was gone, now, and it was plain enough why the horses had

deserted us. Without a doubt they were under that shed a quarter of a

minute after they had left us, and they must have overheard and enjoyed

all our confessions and lamentations.

After breakfast we felt better, and the zest of life soon came back. The

world looked bright again, and existence was as dear to us as ever.

Presently an uneasiness came over me—grew upon me—assailed me without

ceasing. Alas, my regeneration was not complete—I wanted to smoke! I

resisted with all my strength, but the flesh was weak. I wandered away

alone and wrestled with myself an hour. I recalled my promises of reform

and preached to myself persuasively, upbraidingly, exhaustively. But it

was all vain, I shortly found myself sneaking among the snow-drifts

hunting for my pipe. I discovered it after a considerable search, and

crept away to hide myself and enjoy it. I remained behind the barn a

good while, asking myself how I would feel if my braver, stronger, truer

comrades should catch me in my degradation. At last I lit the pipe, and

no human being can feel meaner and baser than I did then. I was ashamed

of being in my own pitiful company. Still dreading discovery, I felt

that perhaps the further side of the barn would be somewhat safer, and

so I turned the corner. As I turned the one corner, smoking, Ollendorff

turned the other with his bottle to his lips, and between us sat

unconscious Ballou deep in a game of “solitaire” with the old greasy

cards!

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Absurdity could go no farther. We shook hands and agreed to say no more

about “reform” and “examples to the rising generation.”

The station we were at was at the verge of the Twenty-six-Mile Desert.

If we had approached it half an hour earlier the night before, we must

have heard men shouting there and firing pistols; for they were

expecting some sheep drovers and their flocks and knew that they would

infallibly get lost and wander out of reach of help unless guided by

sounds.

While we remained at the station, three of the drovers arrived, nearly

exhausted with their wanderings, but two others of their party were

never heard of afterward.

We reached Carson in due time, and took a rest. This rest, together with

preparations for the journey to Esmeralda, kept us there a week, and the

delay gave us the opportunity to be present at the trial of the great

land-slide case of Hyde _vs_. Morgan—an episode which is famous in

Nevada to this day. After a word or two of necessary explanation, I will

set down the history of this singular affair just as it transpired.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

The mountains are very high and steep about Carson, Eagle and Washoe

Valleys—very high and very steep, and so when the snow gets to melting

off fast in the Spring and the warm surface-earth begins to moisten and

soften, the disastrous land-slides commence. The reader cannot know what

a land-slide is, unless he has lived in that country and seen the whole

side of a mountain taken off some fine morning and deposited down in the

valley, leaving a vast, treeless, unsightly scar upon the mountain’s

front to keep the circumstance fresh in his memory all the years that he

may go on living within seventy miles of that place.

General Buncombe was shipped out to Nevada in the invoice of Territorial

officers, to be United States Attorney. He considered himself a lawyer

of parts, and he very much wanted an opportunity to manifest it—partly

for the pure gratification of it and partly because his salary was

Territorially meagre (which is a strong expression). Now the older

citizens of a new territory look down upon the rest of the world with a

calm, benevolent compassion, as long as it keeps out of the way—when it

gets in the way they snub it. Sometimes this latter takes the shape of a

practical joke.

One morning Dick Hyde rode furiously up to General Buncombe’s door in

Carson city and rushed into his presence without stopping to tie his

horse. He seemed much excited. He told the General that he wanted him to

conduct a suit for him and would pay him five hundred dollars if he

achieved a victory. And then, with violent gestures and a world of

profanity, he poured out his grief. He said it was pretty well known

that for some years he had been farming (or ranching as the more

customary term is) in Washoe District, and making a successful thing of

it, and furthermore it was known that his ranch was situated just in the

edge of the valley, and that Tom Morgan owned a ranch immediately above

it on the mountain side.

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And now the trouble was, that one of those hated and dreaded land-slides

had come and slid Morgan’s ranch, fences, cabins, cattle, barns and

everything down on top of _his_ ranch and exactly covered up every

single vestige of his property, to a depth of about thirty-eight feet.

Morgan was in possession and refused to vacate the premises—said he was

occupying his own cabin and not interfering with anybody else’s—and said

the cabin was standing on the same dirt and same ranch it had always

stood on, and he would like to see anybody make him vacate.

“And when I reminded him,” said Hyde, weeping, “that it was on top of my

ranch and that he was trespassing, he had the infernal meanness to ask

me why didn’t I _stay_ on my ranch and hold possession when I see him a-

coming! Why didn’t I _stay_ on it, the blathering lunatic—by George,

when I heard that racket and looked up that hill it was just like the

whole world was a-ripping and a-tearing down that mountain

side—splinters, and cord-wood, thunder and lightning, hail and snow,

odds and ends of hay stacks, and awful clouds of dust!—trees going end

over end in the air, rocks as big as a house jumping ’bout a thousand

feet high and busting into ten million pieces, cattle turned inside out

and a-coming head on with their tails hanging out between their

teeth!—and in the midst of all that wrack and destruction sot that

cussed Morgan on his gate-post, a-wondering why _I_ didn’t _stay_ and

hold possession! Laws bless me, I just took one glimpse, General, and

lit out’n the county in three jumps exactly.

“But what grinds me is that that Morgan hangs on there and won’t move

off’n that ranch—says it’s his’n and he’s going to keep it—likes it

better’n he did when it was higher up the hill. Mad! Well, I’ve been so

mad for two days I couldn’t find my way to town—been wandering around in

the brush in a starving condition—got anything here to drink, General?

But I’m here _now_, and I’m a-going to law. You hear _me_!”

Never in all the world, perhaps, were a man’s feelings so outraged as

were the General’s. He said he had never heard of such high-handed

conduct in all his life as this Morgan’s. And he said there was no use

in going to law—Morgan had no shadow of right to remain where he

was—nobody in the wide world would uphold him in it, and no lawyer would

take his case and no judge listen to it. Hyde said that right there was

where he was mistaken—everybody in town sustained Morgan; Hal Brayton, a

very smart lawyer, had taken his case; the courts being in vacation, it

was to be tried before a referee, and ex-Governor Roop had already been

appointed to that office and would open his court in a large public hall

near the hotel at two that afternoon.

The General was amazed. He said he had suspected before that the people

of that Territory were fools, and now he knew it. But he said rest easy,

rest easy and collect the witnesses, for the victory was just as certain

as if the conflict were already over. Hyde wiped away his tears and

left.

At two in the afternoon referee Roop’s Court opened and Roop appeared

throned among his sheriffs, the witnesses, and spectators, and wearing

upon his face a solemnity so awe-inspiring that some of his fellow-

conspirators had misgivings that maybe he had not comprehended, after

all, that this was merely a joke. An unearthly stillness prevailed, for

at the slightest noise the judge uttered sternly the command:

“Order in the Court!”

And the sheriffs promptly echoed it. Presently the General elbowed his

way through the crowd of spectators, with his arms full of law-books,

and on his ears fell an order from the judge which was the first

respectful recognition of his high official dignity that had ever

saluted them, and it trickled pleasantly through his whole system:

“Way for the United States Attorney!”

The witnesses were called—legislators, high government officers,

ranchmen, miners, Indians, Chinamen, negroes. Three fourths of them were

called by the defendant Morgan, but no matter, their testimony

invariably went in favor of the plaintiff Hyde. Each new witness only

added new testimony to the absurdity of a man’s claiming to own another

man’s property because his farm had slid down on top of it. Then the

Morgan lawyers made their speeches, and seemed to make singularly weak

ones—they did really nothing to help the Morgan cause. And now the

General, with exultation in his face, got up and made an impassioned

effort; he pounded the table, he banged the law-books, he shouted, and

roared, and howled, he quoted from everything and everybody, poetry,

sarcasm, statistics, history, pathos, bathos, blasphemy, and wound up

with a grand war-whoop for free speech, freedom of the press, free

schools, the Glorious Bird of America and the principles of eternal

justice! [Applause.]

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When the General sat down, he did it with the conviction that if there

was anything in good strong testimony, a great speech and believing and

admiring countenances all around, Mr. Morgan’s case was killed. Ex-

Governor Roop leant his head upon his hand for some minutes, thinking,

and the still audience waited for his decision. Then he got up and stood

erect, with bended head, and thought again. Then he walked the floor

with long, deliberate strides, his chin in his hand, and still the

audience waited. At last he returned to his throne, seated himself, and

began impressively:

“Gentlemen, I feel the great responsibility that rests upon me this day.

This is no ordinary case. On the contrary it is plain that it is the

most solemn and awful that ever man was called upon to decide.

Gentlemen, I have listened attentively to the evidence, and have

perceived that the weight of it, the overwhelming weight of it, is in

favor of the plaintiff Hyde. I have listened also to the remarks of

counsel, with high interest—and especially will I commend the masterly

and irrefutable logic of the distinguished gentleman who represents the

plaintiff. But gentlemen, let us beware how we allow mere human

testimony, human ingenuity in argument and human ideas of equity, to

influence us at a moment so solemn as this. Gentlemen, it ill becomes

us, worms as we are, to meddle with the decrees of Heaven. It is plain

to me that Heaven, in its inscrutable wisdom, has seen fit to move this

defendant’s ranch for a purpose. We are but creatures, and we must

submit. If Heaven has chosen to favor the defendant Morgan in this

marked and wonderful manner; and if Heaven, dissatisfied with the

position of the Morgan ranch upon the mountain side, has chosen to

remove it to a position more eligible and more advantageous for its

owner, it ill becomes us, insects as we are, to question the legality of

the act or inquire into the reasons that prompted it. No—Heaven created

the ranches and it is Heaven’s prerogative to rearrange them, to

experiment with them around at its pleasure. It is for us to submit,

without repining.

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“I warn you that this thing which has happened is a thing with which the

sacrilegious hands and brains and tongues of men must not meddle.

Gentlemen, it is the verdict of this court that the plaintiff, Richard

Hyde, has been deprived of his ranch by the visitation of God! And from

this decision there is no appeal.”

Buncombe seized his cargo of law-books and plunged out of the court-room

frantic with indignation. He pronounced Roop to be a miraculous fool, an

inspired idiot. In all good faith he returned at night and remonstrated

with Roop upon his extravagant decision, and implored him to walk the

floor and think for half an hour, and see if he could not figure out

some sort of modification of the verdict. Roop yielded at last and got

up to walk. He walked two hours and a half, and at last his face lit up

happily and he told Buncombe it had occurred to him that the ranch

underneath the new Morgan ranch still belonged to Hyde, that his title

to the ground was just as good as it had ever been, and therefore he was

of opinion that Hyde had a right to dig it out from under there and—

The General never waited to hear the end of it. He was always an

impatient and irascible man, that way. At the end of two months the fact

that he had been played upon with a joke had managed to bore itself,

like another Hoosac Tunnel, through the solid adamant of his

understanding.

CHAPTER XXXV.

When we finally left for Esmeralda, horseback, we had an addition to the

company in the person of Capt. John Nye, the Governor’s brother. He had

a good memory, and a tongue hung in the middle. This is a combination

which gives immortality to conversation. Capt. John never suffered the

talk to flag or falter once during the hundred and twenty miles of the

journey. In addition to his conversational powers, he had one or two

other endowments of a marked character. One was a singular “handiness”

about doing anything and everything, from laying out a railroad or

organizing a political party, down to sewing on buttons, shoeing a

horse, or setting a broken leg, or a hen. Another was a spirit of

accommodation that prompted him to take the needs, difficulties and

perplexities of anybody and everybody upon his own shoulders at any and

all times, and dispose of them with admirable facility and

alacrity—hence he always managed to find vacant beds in crowded inns,

and plenty to eat in the emptiest larders. And finally, wherever he met

a man, woman or child, in camp, inn or desert, he either knew such

parties personally or had been acquainted with a relative of the same.

Such another traveling comrade was never seen before. I cannot forbear

giving a specimen of the way in which he overcame difficulties. On the

second day out, we arrived, very tired and hungry, at a poor little inn

in the desert, and were told that the house was full, no provisions on

hand, and neither hay nor barley to spare for the horses—must move on.

The rest of us wanted to hurry on while it was yet light, but Capt. John

insisted on stopping awhile. We dismounted and entered. There was no

welcome for us on any face. Capt. John began his blandishments, and

within twenty minutes he had accomplished the following things, viz.:

found old acquaintances in three teamsters; discovered that he used to

go to school with the landlord’s mother; recognized his wife as a lady

whose life he had saved once in California, by stopping her runaway

horse; mended a child’s broken toy and won the favor of its mother, a

guest of the inn; helped the hostler bleed a horse, and prescribed for

another horse that had the “heaves”; treated the entire party three

times at the landlord’s bar; produced a later paper than anybody had

seen for a week and sat himself down to read the news to a deeply

interested audience. The result, summed up, was as follows: The hostler

found plenty of feed for our horses; we had a trout supper, an

exceedingly sociable time after it, good beds to sleep in, and a

surprising breakfast in the morning—and when we left, we left lamented

by all! Capt. John had some bad traits, but he had some uncommonly

valuable ones to offset them with.

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Esmeralda was in many respects another Humboldt, but in a little more

forward state. The claims we had been paying assessments on were

entirely worthless, and we threw them away. The principal one cropped

out of the top of a knoll that was fourteen feet high, and the inspired

Board of Directors were running a tunnel under that knoll to strike the

ledge. The tunnel would have to be seventy feet long, and would then

strike the ledge at the same dept that a _shaft_ twelve feet deep would

have reached! The Board were living on the “assessments.” [N.B.—This

hint comes too late for the enlightenment of New York silver miners;

they have already learned all about this neat trick by experience.] The

Board had no desire to strike the ledge, knowing that it was as barren

of silver as a curbstone. This reminiscence calls to mind Jim Townsend’s

tunnel. He had paid assessments on a mine called the “Daley” till he was

well-nigh penniless. Finally an assessment was levied to run a tunnel

two hundred and fifty feet on the Daley, and Townsend went up on the

hill to look into matters.

He found the Daley cropping out of the apex of an exceedingly sharp-

pointed peak, and a couple of men up there “facing” the proposed tunnel.

Townsend made a calculation. Then he said to the men:

“So you have taken a contract to run a tunnel into this hill two hundred

and fifty feet to strike this ledge?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, do you know that you have got one of the most expensive and

arduous undertakings before you that was ever conceived by man?”

“Why no—how is that?”

“Because this hill is only twenty-five feet through from side to side;

and so you have got to build two hundred and twenty-five feet of your

tunnel on trestle-work!”

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The ways of silver mining Boards are exceedingly dark and sinuous.

We took up various claims, and _commenced_ shafts and tunnels on them,

but never finished any of them. We had to do a certain amount of work on

each to “hold” it, else other parties could seize our property after the

expiration of ten days. We were always hunting up new claims and doing a

little work on them and then waiting for a buyer—who never came. We

never found any ore that would yield more than fifty dollars a ton; and

as the mills charged fifty dollars a ton for _working_ ore and

extracting the silver, our pocket-money melted steadily away and none

returned to take its place. We lived in a little cabin and cooked for

ourselves; and altogether it was a hard life, though a hopeful one—for

we never ceased to expect fortune and a customer to burst upon us some

day.

At last, when flour reached a dollar a pound, and money could not be

borrowed on the best security at less than _eight per cent a month_ (I

being without the security, too), I abandoned mining and went to

milling. That is to say, I went to work as a common laborer in a quartz

mill, at ten dollars a week and board.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

I had already learned how hard and long and dismal a task it is to

burrow down into the bowels of the earth and get out the coveted ore;

and now I learned that the burrowing was only half the work; and that to

get the silver out of the ore was the dreary and laborious other half of

it. We had to turn out at six in the morning and keep at it till dark.

This mill was a six-stamp affair, driven by steam. Six tall, upright

rods of iron, as large as a man’s ankle, and heavily shod with a mass of

iron and steel at their lower ends, were framed together like a gate,

and these rose and fell, one after the other, in a ponderous dance, in

an iron box called a “battery.” Each of these rods or stamps weighed six

hundred pounds. One of us stood by the battery all day long, breaking up

masses of silver-bearing rock with a sledge and shoveling it into the

battery. The ceaseless dance of the stamps pulverized the rock to

powder, and a stream of water that trickled into the battery turned it

to a creamy paste. The minutest particles were driven through a fine

wire screen which fitted close around the battery, and were washed into

great tubs warmed by super-heated steam—amalgamating pans, they are

called. The mass of pulp in the pans was kept constantly stirred up by

revolving “mullers.” A quantity of quicksilver was kept always in the

battery, and this seized some of the liberated gold and silver particles

and held on to them; quicksilver was shaken in a fine shower into the

pans, also, about every half hour, through a buckskin sack. Quantities

of coarse salt and sulphate of copper were added, from time to time to

assist the amalgamation by destroying base metals which coated the gold

and silver and would not let it unite with the quicksilver.

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All these tiresome things we had to attend to constantly. Streams of

dirty water flowed always from the pans and were carried off in broad

wooden troughs to the ravine. One would not suppose that atoms of gold

and silver would float on top of six inches of water, but they did; and

in order to catch them, coarse blankets were laid in the troughs, and

little obstructing “riffles” charged with quicksilver were placed here

and there across the troughs also. These riffles had to be cleaned and

the blankets washed out every evening, to get their precious

accumulations—and after all this eternity of trouble one third of the

silver and gold in a ton of rock would find its way to the end of the

troughs in the ravine at last and have to be worked over again some day.

There is nothing so aggravating as silver milling. There never was any

idle time in that mill. There was always something to do. It is a pity

that Adam could not have gone straight out of Eden into a quartz mill,

in order to understand the full force of his doom to “earn his bread by

the sweat of his brow.” Every now and then, during the day, we had to

scoop some pulp out of the pans, and tediously “wash” it in a horn

spoon—wash it little by little over the edge till at last nothing was

left but some little dull globules of quicksilver in the bottom. If they

were soft and yielding, the pan needed some salt or some sulphate of

copper or some other chemical rubbish to assist digestion; if they were

crisp to the touch and would retain a dint, they were freighted with all

the silver and gold they could seize and hold, and consequently the pan

needed a fresh charge of quicksilver. When there was nothing else to do,

one could always “screen tailings.” That is to say, he could shovel up

the dried sand that had washed down to the ravine through the troughs

and dash it against an upright wire screen to free it from pebbles and

prepare it for working over.

The process of amalgamation differed in the various mills, and this

included changes in style of pans and other machinery, and a great

diversity of opinion existed as to the best in use, but none of the

methods employed, involved the principle of milling ore without

“screening the tailings.” Of all recreations in the world, screening

tailings on a hot day, with a long-handled shovel, is the most

undesirable.

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At the end of the week the machinery was stopped and we “cleaned up.”

That is to say, we got the pulp out of the pans and batteries, and

washed the mud patiently away till nothing was left but the long

accumulating mass of quicksilver, with its imprisoned treasures. This we

made into heavy, compact snow-balls, and piled them up in a bright,

luxurious heap for inspection. Making these snow-balls cost me a fine

gold ring—that and ignorance together; for the quicksilver invaded the

ring with the same facility with which water saturates a

sponge—separated its particles and the ring crumbled to pieces.

We put our pile of quicksilver balls into an iron retort that had a pipe

leading from it to a pail of water, and then applied a roasting heat.

The quicksilver turned to vapor, escaped through the pipe into the pail,

and the water turned it into good wholesome quicksilver again.

Quicksilver is very costly, and they never waste it. On opening the

retort, there was our week’s work—a lump of pure white, frosty looking

silver, twice as large as a man’s head. Perhaps a fifth of the mass was

gold, but the color of it did not show—would not have shown if two

thirds of it had been gold. We melted it up and made a solid brick of it

by pouring it into an iron brick-mould.

By such a tedious and laborious process were silver bricks obtained.

This mill was but one of many others in operation at the time. The first

one in Nevada was built at Egan Canyon and was a small insignificant

affair and compared most unfavorably with some of the immense

establishments afterwards located at Virginia City and elsewhere.

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From our bricks a little corner was chipped off for the “fire-assay”—a

method used to determine the proportions of gold, silver and base metals

in the mass. This is an interesting process. The chip is hammered out as

thin as paper and weighed on scales so fine and sensitive that if you

weigh a two-inch scrap of paper on them and then write your name on the

paper with a course, soft pencil and weigh it again, the scales will

take marked notice of the addition.

Then a little lead (also weighed) is rolled up with the flake of silver

and the two are melted at a great heat in a small vessel called a cupel,

made by compressing bone ashes into a cup-shape in a steel mold. The

base metals oxydize and are absorbed with the lead into the pores of the

cupel. A button or globule of perfectly pure gold and silver is left

behind, and by weighing it and noting the loss, the assayer knows the

proportion of base metal the brick contains. He has to separate the gold

from the silver now. The button is hammered out flat and thin, put in

the furnace and kept some time at a red heat; after cooling it off it is

rolled up like a quill and heated in a glass vessel containing nitric

acid; the acid dissolves the silver and leaves the gold pure and ready

to be weighed on its own merits. Then salt water is poured into the

vessel containing the dissolved silver and the silver returns to

palpable form again and sinks to the bottom. Nothing now remains but to

weigh it; then the proportions of the several metals contained in the

brick are known, and the assayer stamps the value of the brick upon its

surface.

The sagacious reader will know now, without being told, that the

speculative miner, in getting a “fire-assay” made of a piece of rock

from his mine (to help him sell the same), was not in the habit of

picking out the least valuable fragment of rock on his dump-pile, but

quite the contrary. I have seen men hunt over a pile of nearly worthless

quartz for an hour, and at last find a little piece as large as a

filbert, which was rich in gold and silver—and this was reserved for a

fire-assay! Of course the fire-assay would demonstrate that a ton of

such rock would yield hundreds of dollars—and on such assays many an

utterly worthless mine was sold.

Assaying was a good business, and so some men engaged in it,

occasionally, who were not strictly scientific and capable. One assayer

got such rich results out of all specimens brought to him that in time

he acquired almost a monopoly of the business. But like all men who

achieve success, he became an object of envy and suspicion. The other

assayers entered into a conspiracy against him, and let some prominent

citizens into the secret in order to show that they meant fairly. Then

they broke a little fragment off a carpenter’s grindstone and got a

stranger to take it to the popular scientist and get it assayed. In the

course of an hour the result came—whereby it appeared that a ton of that

rock would yield $1,184.40 in silver and $366.36 in gold!

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Due publication of the whole matter was made in the paper, and the

popular assayer left town “between two days.”

I will remark, in passing, that I only remained in the milling business

one week. I told my employer I could not stay longer without an advance

in my wages; that I liked quartz milling, indeed was infatuated with it;

that I had never before grown so tenderly attached to an occupation in

so short a time; that nothing, it seemed to me, gave such scope to

intellectual activity as feeding a battery and screening tailings, and

nothing so stimulated the moral attributes as retorting bullion and

washing blankets—still, I felt constrained to ask an increase of salary.

He said he was paying me ten dollars a week, and thought it a good round

sum. How much did I want?

I said about _four hundred thousand_ dollars a month, and board, was

about all I could reasonably ask, considering the hard times.

I was ordered off the premises! And yet, when I look back to those days

and call to mind the exceeding hardness of the labor I performed in that

mill, I only regret that I did not ask him seven hundred thousand.

Shortly after this I began to grow crazy, along with the rest of the

population, about the mysterious and wonderful “cement mine,” and to

make preparations to take advantage of any opportunity that might offer

to go and help hunt for it.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

It was somewhere in the neighborhood of Mono Lake that the marvellous

Whiteman cement mine was supposed to lie. Every now and then it would be

reported that Mr. W. had passed stealthily through Esmeralda at dead of

night, in disguise, and then we would have a wild excitement—because he

must be steering for his secret mine, and now was the time to follow

him. In less than three hours after daylight all the horses and mules

and donkeys in the vicinity would be bought, hired or stolen, and half

the community would be off for the mountains, following in the wake of

Whiteman. But W. would drift about through the mountain gorges for days

together, in a purposeless sort of way, until the provisions of the

miners ran out, and they would have to go back home. I have known it

reported at eleven at night, in a large mining camp, that Whiteman had

just passed through, and in two hours the streets, so quiet before,

would be swarming with men and animals. Every individual would be trying

to be very secret, but yet venturing to whisper to just one neighbor

that W. had passed through. And long before daylight—this in the dead of

Winter—the stampede would be complete, the camp deserted, and the whole

population gone chasing after W.

The tradition was that in the early immigration, more than twenty years

ago, three young Germans, brothers, who had survived an Indian massacre

on the Plains, wandered on foot through the deserts, avoiding all trails

and roads, and simply holding a westerly direction and hoping to find

California before they starved, or died of fatigue. And in a gorge in

the mountains they sat down to rest one day, when one of them noticed a

curious vein of cement running along the ground, shot full of lumps of

dull yellow metal. They saw that it was gold, and that here was a

fortune to be acquired in a single day. The vein was about as wide as a

curbstone, and fully two thirds of it was pure gold. Every pound of the

wonderful cement was worth well-nigh $200.

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Each of the brothers loaded himself with about twenty-five pounds of it,

and then they covered up all traces of the vein, made a rude drawing of

the locality and the principal landmarks in the vicinity, and started

westward again. But troubles thickened about them. In their wanderings

one brother fell and broke his leg, and the others were obliged to go on

and leave him to die in the wilderness. Another, worn out and starving,

gave up by and by, and laid down to die, but after two or three weeks of

incredible hardships, the third reached the settlements of California

exhausted, sick, and his mind deranged by his sufferings. He had thrown

away all his cement but a few fragments, but these were sufficient to

set everybody wild with excitement. However, he had had enough of the

cement country, and nothing could induce him to lead a party thither. He

was entirely content to work on a farm for wages. But he gave Whiteman

his map, and described the cement region as well as he could and thus

transferred the curse to that gentleman—for when I had my one accidental

glimpse of Mr. W. in Esmeralda he had been hunting for the lost mine, in

hunger and thirst, poverty and sickness, for twelve or thirteen years.

Some people believed he had found it, but most people believed he had

not. I saw a piece of cement as large as my fist which was said to have

been given to Whiteman by the young German, and it was of a seductive

nature. Lumps of virgin gold were as thick in it as raisins in a slice

of fruit cake. The privilege of working such a mine one week would be

sufficient for a man of reasonable desires.

A new partner of ours, a Mr. Higbie, knew Whiteman well by sight, and a

friend of ours, a Mr. Van Dorn, was well acquainted with him, and not

only that, but had Whiteman’s promise that he should have a private hint

in time to enable him to join the next cement expedition. Van Dorn had

promised to extend the hint to us. One evening Higbie came in greatly

excited, and said he felt certain he had recognized Whiteman, up town,

disguised and in a pretended state of intoxication. In a little while

Van Dorn arrived and confirmed the news; and so we gathered in our cabin

and with heads close together arranged our plans in impressive whispers.

We were to leave town quietly, after midnight, in two or three small

parties, so as not to attract attention, and meet at dawn on the

“divide” overlooking Mono Lake, eight or nine miles distant. We were to

make no noise after starting, and not speak above a whisper under any

circumstances. It was believed that for once Whiteman’s presence was

unknown in the town and his expedition unsuspected. Our conclave broke

up at nine o’clock, and we set about our preparation diligently and with

profound secrecy. At eleven o’clock we saddled our horses, hitched them

with their long _riatas_ (or lassos), and then brought out a side of

bacon, a sack of beans, a small sack of coffee, some sugar, a hundred

pounds of flour in sacks, some tin cups and a coffee pot, frying pan and

some few other necessary articles. All these things were “packed” on the

back of a led horse—and whoever has not been taught, by a Spanish adept,

to pack an animal, let him never hope to do the thing by natural

smartness. That is impossible. Higbie had had some experience, but was

not perfect. He put on the pack saddle (a thing like a saw-buck), piled

the property on it and then wound a rope all over and about it and under

it, “every which way,” taking a hitch in it every now and then, and

occasionally surging back on it till the horse’s sides sunk in and he

gasped for breath—but every time the lashings grew tight in one place

they loosened in another. We never did get the load tight all over, but

we got it so that it would do, after a fashion, and then we started, in

single file, close order, and without a word. It was a dark night. We

kept the middle of the road, and proceeded in a slow walk past the rows

of cabins, and whenever a miner came to his door I trembled for fear the

light would shine on us and excite curiosity. But nothing happened. We

began the long winding ascent of the canyon, toward the “divide,” and

presently the cabins began to grow infrequent, and the intervals between

them wider and wider, and then I began to breathe tolerably freely and

feel less like a thief and a murderer. I was in the rear, leading the

pack horse. As the ascent grew steeper he grew proportionately less

satisfied with his cargo, and began to pull back on his _riata_

occasionally and delay progress. My comrades were passing out of sight

in the gloom. I was getting anxious. I coaxed and bullied the pack horse

till I presently got him into a trot, and then the tin cups and pans

strung about his person frightened him and he ran. His _riata_ was wound

around the pummel of my saddle, and so, as he went by he dragged me from

my horse and the two animals traveled briskly on without me. But I was

not alone—the loosened cargo tumbled overboard from the pack horse and

fell close to me. It was abreast of almost the last cabin.

A miner came out and said:

“Hello!”

I was thirty steps from him, and knew he could not see me, it was so

very dark in the shadow of the mountain. So I lay still. Another head

appeared in the light of the cabin door, and presently the two men

walked toward me. They stopped within ten steps of me, and one said:

“St! Listen.”

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I could not have been in a more distressed state if I had been escaping

justice with a price on my head. Then the miners appeared to sit down on

a boulder, though I could not see them distinctly enough to be very sure

what they did. One said:

“I heard a noise, as plain as I ever heard anything. It seemed to be

about there—”

A stone whizzed by my head. I flattened myself out in the dust like a

postage stamp, and thought to myself if he mended his aim ever so little

he would probably hear another noise. In my heart, now, I execrated

secret expeditions. I promised myself that this should be my last,

though the Sierras were ribbed with cement veins. Then one of the men

said:

“I’ll tell you what! Welch knew what he was talking about when he said

he saw Whiteman to-day. I heard horses—that was the noise. I am going

down to Welch’s, right away.”

They left and I was glad. I did not care whither they went, so they

went. I was willing they should visit Welch, and the sooner the better.

As soon as they closed their cabin door my comrades emerged from the

gloom; they had caught the horses and were waiting for a clear coast

again. We remounted the cargo on the pack horse and got under way, and

as day broke we reached the “divide” and joined Van Dorn. Then we

journeyed down into the valley of the Lake, and feeling secure, we

halted to cook breakfast, for we were tired and sleepy and hungry. Three

hours later the rest of the population filed over the “divide” in a long

procession, and drifted off out of sight around the borders of the Lake!

Whether or not my accident had produced this result we never knew, but

at least one thing was certain—the secret was out and Whiteman would not

enter upon a search for the cement mine this time. We were filled with

chagrin.

We held a council and decided to make the best of our misfortune and

enjoy a week’s holiday on the borders of the curious Lake. Mono, it is

sometimes called, and sometimes the “Dead Sea of California.” It is one

of the strangest freaks of Nature to be found in any land, but it is

hardly ever mentioned in print and very seldom visited, because it lies

away off the usual routes of travel and besides is so difficult to get

at that only men content to endure the roughest life will consent to

take upon themselves the discomforts of such a trip. On the morning of

our second day, we traveled around to a remote and particularly wild

spot on the borders of the Lake, where a stream of fresh, ice-cold water

entered it from the mountain side, and then we went regularly into camp.

We hired a large boat and two shot-guns from a lonely ranchman who lived

some ten miles further on, and made ready for comfort and recreation. We

soon got thoroughly acquainted with the Lake and all its peculiarities.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

Mono Lake lies in a lifeless, treeless, hideous desert, eight thousand

feet above the level of the sea, and is guarded by mountains two

thousand feet higher, whose summits are always clothed in clouds. This

solemn, silent, sailless sea—this lonely tenant of the loneliest spot on

earth—is little graced with the picturesque. It is an unpretending

expanse of grayish water, about a hundred miles in circumference, with

two islands in its centre, mere upheavals of rent and scorched and

blistered lava, snowed over with gray banks and drifts of pumice-stone

and ashes, the winding sheet of the dead volcano, whose vast crater the

lake has seized upon and occupied.

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The lake is two hundred feet deep, and its sluggish waters are so strong

with alkali that if you only dip the most hopelessly soiled garment into

them once or twice, and wring it out, it will be found as clean as if it

had been through the ablest of washerwomen’s hands. While we camped

there our laundry work was easy. We tied the week’s washing astern of

our boat, and sailed a quarter of a mile, and the job was complete, all

to the wringing out. If we threw the water on our heads and gave them a

rub or so, the white lather would pile up three inches high. This water

is not good for bruised places and abrasions of the skin. We had a

valuable dog. He had raw places on him. He had more raw places on him

than sound ones. He was the rawest dog I almost ever saw. He jumped

overboard one day to get away from the flies. But it was bad judgment.

In his condition, it would have been just as comfortable to jump into

the fire.

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The alkali water nipped him in all the raw places simultaneously, and he

struck out for the shore with considerable interest. He yelped and

barked and howled as he went—and by the time he got to the shore there

was no bark to him—for he had barked the bark all out of his inside, and

the alkali water had cleaned the bark all off his outside, and he

probably wished he had never embarked in any such enterprise. He ran

round and round in a circle, and pawed the earth and clawed the air, and

threw double somersaults, sometimes backward and sometimes forward, in

the most extraordinary manner. He was not a demonstrative dog, as a

general thing, but rather of a grave and serious turn of mind, and I

never saw him take so much interest in anything before. He finally

struck out over the mountains, at a gait which we estimated at about two

hundred and fifty miles an hour, and he is going yet. This was about

nine years ago. We look for what is left of him along here every day.

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A white man cannot drink the water of Mono Lake, for it is nearly pure

lye. It is said that the Indians in the vicinity drink it sometimes,

though. It is not improbable, for they are among the purest liars I ever

saw. [There will be no additional charge for this joke, except to

parties requiring an explanation of it. This joke has received high

commendation from some of the ablest minds of the age.]

There are no fish in Mono Lake—no frogs, no snakes, no

polliwigs—nothing, in fact, that goes to make life desirable. Millions

of wild ducks and sea-gulls swim about the surface, but no living thing

exists _under_ the surface, except a white feathery sort of worm, one

half an inch long, which looks like a bit of white thread frayed out at

the sides. If you dip up a gallon of water, you will get about fifteen

thousand of these. They give to the water a sort of grayish-white

appearance. Then there is a fly, which looks something like our house

fly. These settle on the beach to eat the worms that wash ashore—and any

time, you can see there a belt of flies an inch deep and six feet wide,

and this belt extends clear around the lake—a belt of flies one hundred

miles long. If you throw a stone among them, they swarm up so thick that

they look dense, like a cloud. You can hold them under water as long as

you please—they do not mind it—they are only proud of it. When you let

them go, they pop up to the surface as dry as a patent office report,

and walk off as unconcernedly as if they had been educated especially

with a view to affording instructive entertainment to man in that

particular way. Providence leaves nothing to go by chance. All things

have their uses and their part and proper place in Nature’s economy: the

ducks eat the flies—the flies eat the worms—the Indians eat all

three—the wild cats eat the Indians—the white folks eat the wild

cats—and thus all things are lovely.

Mono Lake is a hundred miles in a straight line from the ocean—and

between it and the ocean are one or two ranges of mountains—yet

thousands of sea-gulls go there every season to lay their eggs and rear

their young. One would as soon expect to find sea-gulls in Kansas. And

in this connection let us observe another instance of Nature’s wisdom.

The islands in the lake being merely huge masses of lava, coated over

with ashes and pumice-stone, and utterly innocent of vegetation or

anything that would burn; and sea-gull’s eggs being entirely useless to

anybody unless they be cooked, Nature has provided an unfailing spring

of boiling water on the largest island, and you can put your eggs in

there, and in four minutes you can boil them as hard as any statement I

have made during the past fifteen years. Within ten feet of the boiling

spring is a spring of pure cold water, sweet and wholesome.

So, in that island you get your board and washing free of charge—and if

nature had gone further and furnished a nice American hotel clerk who

was crusty and disobliging, and didn’t know anything about the time

tables, or the railroad routes—or—anything—and was proud of it—I would

not wish for a more desirable boarding-house.

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Half a dozen little mountain brooks flow into Mono Lake, but not a

stream of any kind flows out of it. It neither rises nor falls,

apparently, and what it does with its surplus water is a dark and bloody

mystery.

There are only two seasons in the region round about Mono Lake—and these

are, the breaking up of one Winter and the beginning of the next. More

than once (in Esmeralda) I have seen a perfectly blistering morning open

up with the thermometer at ninety degrees at eight o’clock, and seen the

snow fall fourteen inches deep and that same identical thermometer go

down to forty-four degrees under shelter, before nine o’clock at night.

Under favorable circumstances it snows at least once in every single

month in the year, in the little town of Mono. So uncertain is the

climate in Summer that a lady who goes out visiting cannot hope to be

prepared for all emergencies unless she takes her fan under one arm and

her snow shoes under the other. When they have a Fourth of July

procession it generally snows on them, and they do say that as a general

thing when a man calls for a brandy toddy there, the bar keeper chops it

off with a hatchet and wraps it up in a paper, like maple sugar. And it

is further reported that the old soakers haven’t any teeth—wore them out

eating gin cocktails and brandy punches. I do not endorse that

statement—I simply give it for what it is worth—and it is worth—well, I

should say, millions, to any man who can believe it without straining

himself. But I do endorse the snow on the Fourth of July—because I know

that to be true.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

About seven o’clock one blistering hot morning—for it was now dead

summer time—Higbie and I took the boat and started on a voyage of

discovery to the two islands. We had often longed to do this, but had

been deterred by the fear of storms; for they were frequent, and severe

enough to capsize an ordinary row-boat like ours without great

difficulty—and once capsized, death would ensue in spite of the bravest

swimming, for that venomous water would eat a man’s eyes out like fire,

and burn him out inside, too, if he shipped a sea. It was called twelve

miles, straight out to the islands—a long pull and a warm one—but the

morning was so quiet and sunny, and the lake so smooth and glassy and

dead, that we could not resist the temptation. So we filled two large

tin canteens with water (since we were not acquainted with the locality

of the spring said to exist on the large island), and started. Higbie’s

brawny muscles gave the boat good speed, but by the time we reached our

destination we judged that we had pulled nearer fifteen miles than

twelve.

We landed on the big island and went ashore. We tried the water in the

canteens, now, and found that the sun had spoiled it; it was so brackish

that we could not drink it; so we poured it out and began a search for

the spring—for thirst augments fast as soon as it is apparent that one

has no means at hand of quenching it. The island was a long, moderately

high hill of ashes—nothing but gray ashes and pumice-stone, in which we

sunk to our knees at every step—and all around the top was a forbidding

wall of scorched and blasted rocks. When we reached the top and got

within the wall, we found simply a shallow, far-reaching basin, carpeted

with ashes, and here and there a patch of fine sand. In places,

picturesque jets of steam shot up out of crevices, giving evidence that

although this ancient crater had gone out of active business, there was

still some fire left in its furnaces. Close to one of these jets of

steam stood the only tree on the island—a small pine of most graceful

shape and most faultless symmetry; its color was a brilliant green, for

the steam drifted unceasingly through its branches and kept them always

moist. It contrasted strangely enough, did this vigorous and beautiful

outcast, with its dead and dismal surroundings. It was like a cheerful

spirit in a mourning household.

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We hunted for the spring everywhere, traversing the full length of the

island (two or three miles), and crossing it twice—climbing ash-hills

patiently, and then sliding down the other side in a sitting posture,

plowing up smothering volumes of gray dust. But we found nothing but

solitude, ashes and a heart-breaking silence. Finally we noticed that

the wind had risen, and we forgot our thirst in a solicitude of greater

importance; for, the lake being quiet, we had not taken pains about

securing the boat. We hurried back to a point overlooking our landing

place, and then—but mere words cannot describe our dismay—the boat was

gone! The chances were that there was not another boat on the entire

lake. The situation was not comfortable—in truth, to speak plainly, it

was frightful. We were prisoners on a desolate island, in aggravating

proximity to friends who were for the present helpless to aid us; and

what was still more uncomfortable was the reflection that we had neither

food nor water. But presently we sighted the boat. It was drifting

along, leisurely, about fifty yards from shore, tossing in a foamy sea.

It drifted, and continued to drift, but at the same safe distance from

land, and we walked along abreast it and waited for fortune to favor us.

At the end of an hour it approached a jutting cape, and Higbie ran ahead

and posted himself on the utmost verge and prepared for the assault. If

we failed there, there was no hope for us. It was driving gradually

shoreward all the time, now; but whether it was driving fast enough to

make the connection or not was the momentous question. When it got

within thirty steps of Higbie I was so excited that I fancied I could

hear my own heart beat. When, a little later, it dragged slowly along

and seemed about to go by, only one little yard out of reach, it seemed

as if my heart stood still; and when it was exactly abreast him and

began to widen away, and he still standing like a watching statue, I

knew my heart did stop. But when he gave a great spring, the next

instant, and lit fairly in the stern, I discharged a war-whoop that woke

the solitudes!

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But it dulled my enthusiasm, presently, when he told me he had not been

caring whether the boat came within jumping distance or not, so that it

passed within eight or ten yards of him, for he had made up his mind to

shut his eyes and mouth and swim that trifling distance. Imbecile that I

was, I had not thought of that. It was only a long swim that could be

fatal.

The sea was running high and the storm increasing. It was growing late,

too—three or four in the afternoon. Whether to venture toward the

mainland or not, was a question of some moment. But we were so

distressed by thirst that we decide to try it, and so Higbie fell to

work and I took the steering-oar. When we had pulled a mile,

laboriously, we were evidently in serious peril, for the storm had

greatly augmented; the billows ran very high and were capped with

foaming crests, the heavens were hung with black, and the wind blew with

great fury. We would have gone back, now, but we did not dare to turn

the boat around, because as soon as she got in the trough of the sea she

would upset, of course. Our only hope lay in keeping her head-on to the

seas. It was hard work to do this, she plunged so, and so beat and

belabored the billows with her rising and falling bows. Now and then one

of Higbie’s oars would trip on the top of a wave, and the other one

would snatch the boat half around in spite of my cumbersome steering

apparatus. We were drenched by the sprays constantly, and the boat

occasionally shipped water. By and by, powerful as my comrade was, his

great exertions began to tell on him, and he was anxious that I should

change places with him till he could rest a little. But I told him this

was impossible; for if the steering oar were dropped a moment while we

changed, the boat would slue around into the trough of the sea, capsize,

and in less than five minutes we would have a hundred gallons of soap-

suds in us and be eaten up so quickly that we could not even be present

at our own inquest.

But things cannot last always. Just as the darkness shut down we came

booming into port, head on. Higbie dropped his oars to hurrah—I dropped

mine to help—the sea gave the boat a twist, and over she went!

The agony that alkali water inflicts on bruises, chafes and blistered

hands, is unspeakable, and nothing but greasing all over will modify

it—but we ate, drank and slept well, that night, notwithstanding.

In speaking of the peculiarities of Mono Lake, I ought to have mentioned

that at intervals all around its shores stand picturesque turret-looking

masses and clusters of a whitish, coarse-grained rock that resembles

inferior mortar dried hard; and if one breaks off fragments of this rock

he will find perfectly shaped and thoroughly petrified gulls’ eggs

deeply imbedded in the mass. How did they get there? I simply state the

fact—for it is a fact—and leave the geological reader to crack the nut

at his leisure and solve the problem after his own fashion.

At the end of a week we adjourned to the Sierras on a fishing excursion,

and spent several days in camp under snowy Castle Peak, and fished

successfully for trout in a bright, miniature lake whose surface was

between ten and eleven thousand feet above the level of the sea; cooling

ourselves during the hot August noons by sitting on snow banks ten feet

deep, under whose sheltering edges fine grass and dainty flowers

flourished luxuriously; and at night entertaining ourselves by almost

freezing to death. Then we returned to Mono Lake, and finding that the

cement excitement was over for the present, packed up and went back to

Esmeralda. Mr. Ballou reconnoitred awhile, and not liking the prospect,

set out alone for Humboldt.

About this time occurred a little incident which has always had a sort

of interest to me, from the fact that it came so near “instigating” my

funeral. At a time when an Indian attack had been expected, the citizens

hid their gunpowder where it would be safe and yet convenient to hand

when wanted. A neighbor of ours hid six cans of rifle powder in the

bake-oven of an old discarded cooking stove which stood on the open

ground near a frame out-house or shed, and from and after that day never

thought of it again. We hired a half-tamed Indian to do some washing for

us, and he took up quarters under the shed with his tub. The ancient

stove reposed within six feet of him, and before his face. Finally it

occurred to him that hot water would be better than cold, and he went

out and fired up under that forgotten powder magazine and set on a

kettle of water. Then he returned to his tub.

I entered the shed presently and threw down some more clothes, and was

about to speak to him when the stove blew up with a prodigious crash,

and disappeared, leaving not a splinter behind. Fragments of it fell in

the streets full two hundred yards away. Nearly a third of the shed roof

over our heads was destroyed, and one of the stove lids, after cutting a

small stanchion half in two in front of the Indian, whizzed between us

and drove partly through the weather-boarding beyond. I was as white as

a sheet and as weak as a kitten and speechless. But the Indian betrayed

no trepidation, no distress, not even discomfort. He simply stopped

washing, leaned forward and surveyed the clean, blank ground a moment,

and then remarked:

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“Mph! Dam stove heap gone!”—and resumed his scrubbing as placidly as if

it were an entirely customary thing for a stove to do. I will explain,

that “heap” is “Injun-English” for “very much.” The reader will perceive

the exhaustive expressiveness of it in the present instance.

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CHAPTER XL.

I now come to a curious episode—the most curious, I think, that had yet

accented my slothful, valueless, heedless career. Out of a hillside

toward the upper end of the town, projected a wall of reddish looking

quartz-croppings, the exposed comb of a silver-bearing ledge that

extended deep down into the earth, of course. It was owned by a company

entitled the “Wide West.” There was a shaft sixty or seventy feet deep

on the under side of the croppings, and everybody was acquainted with

the rock that came from it—and tolerably rich rock it was, too, but

nothing extraordinary. I will remark here, that although to the

inexperienced stranger all the quartz of a particular “district” looks

about alike, an old resident of the camp can take a glance at a mixed

pile of rock, separate the fragments and tell you which mine each came

from, as easily as a confectioner can separate and classify the various

kinds and qualities of candy in a mixed heap of the article.

All at once the town was thrown into a state of extraordinary

excitement. In mining parlance the Wide West had “struck it rich!”

Everybody went to see the new developments, and for some days there was

such a crowd of people about the Wide West shaft that a stranger would

have supposed there was a mass meeting in session there. No other topic

was discussed but the rich strike, and nobody thought or dreamed about

anything else. Every man brought away a specimen, ground it up in a hand

mortar, washed it out in his horn spoon, and glared speechless upon the

marvelous result. It was not hard rock, but black, decomposed stuff

which could be crumbled in the hand like a baked potato, and when spread

out on a paper exhibited a thick sprinkling of gold and particles of

“native” silver. Higbie brought a handful to the cabin, and when he had

washed it out his amazement was beyond description. Wide West stock

soared skywards. It was said that repeated offers had been made for it

at a thousand dollars a foot, and promptly refused. We have all had the

“blues”—the mere sky-blues—but mine were indigo, now—because I did not

own in the Wide West. The world seemed hollow to me, and existence a

grief. I lost my appetite, and ceased to take an interest in anything.

Still I had to stay, and listen to other people’s rejoicings, because I

had no money to get out of the camp with.

The Wide West company put a stop to the carrying away of “specimens,”

and well they might, for every handful of the ore was worth a sum of

some consequence. To show the exceeding value of the ore, I will remark

that a sixteen-hundred-pounds parcel of it was sold, just as it lay, at

the mouth of the shaft, at _one dollar a pound_; and the man who bought

it “packed” it on mules a hundred and fifty or two hundred miles, over

the mountains, to San Francisco, satisfied that it would yield at a rate

that would richly compensate him for his trouble. The Wide West people

also commanded their foreman to refuse any but their own operatives

permission to enter the mine at any time or for any purpose. I kept up

my “blue” meditations and Higbie kept up a deal of thinking, too, but of

a different sort. He puzzled over the “rock,” examined it with a glass,

inspected it in different lights and from different points of view, and

after each experiment delivered himself, in soliloquy, of one and the

same unvarying opinion in the same unvarying formula:

“It is _not_ Wide West rock!”

He said once or twice that he meant to have a look into the Wide West

shaft if he got shot for it. I was wretched, and did not care whether he

got a look into it or not. He failed that day, and tried again at night;

failed again; got up at dawn and tried, and failed again. Then he lay in

ambush in the sage brush hour after hour, waiting for the two or three

hands to adjourn to the shade of a boulder for dinner; made a start

once, but was premature—one of the men came back for something; tried it

again, but when almost at the mouth of the shaft, another of the men

rose up from behind the boulder as if to reconnoitre, and he dropped on

the ground and lay quiet; presently he crawled on his hands and knees to

the mouth of the shaft, gave a quick glance around, then seized the rope

and slid down the shaft.

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He disappeared in the gloom of a “side drift” just as a head appeared in

the mouth of the shaft and somebody shouted “Hello!”—which he did not

answer. He was not disturbed any more. An hour later he entered the

cabin, hot, red, and ready to burst with smothered excitement, and

exclaimed in a stage whisper:

“I knew it! We are rich! IT’S A BLIND LEAD!”

I thought the very earth reeled under me. Doubt—conviction—doubt

again—exultation—hope, amazement, belief, unbelief—every emotion

imaginable swept in wild procession through my heart and brain, and I

could not speak a word. After a moment or two of this mental fury, I

shook myself to rights, and said:

“Say it again!”

“It’s blind lead!”

“Cal. let’s—let’s burn the house—or kill somebody! Let’s get out where

there’s room to hurrah! But what is the use? It is a hundred times too

good to be true.”

“It’s a blind lead, for a million!—hanging wall—foot wall—clay

casings—everything complete!” He swung his hat and gave three cheers,

and I cast doubt to the winds and chimed in with a will. For I was worth

a million dollars, and did not care “whether school kept or not!”

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But perhaps I ought to explain. A “blind lead” is a lead or ledge that

does not “crop out” above the surface. A miner does not know where to

look for such leads, but they are often stumbled upon by accident in the

course of driving a tunnel or sinking a shaft. Higbie knew the Wide West

rock perfectly well, and the more he had examined the new developments

the more he was satisfied that the ore could not have come from the Wide

West vein. And so had it occurred to him alone, of all the camp, that

there was a blind lead down in the shaft, and that even the Wide West

people themselves did not suspect it. He was right. When he went down

the shaft, he found that the blind lead held its independent way through

the Wide West vein, cutting it diagonally, and that it was enclosed in

its own well-defined casing-rocks and clay. Hence it was public

property. Both leads being perfectly well defined, it was easy for any

miner to see which one belonged to the Wide West and which did not.

We thought it well to have a strong friend, and therefore we brought the

foreman of the Wide West to our cabin that night and revealed the great

surprise to him. Higbie said:

“We are going to take possession of this blind lead, record it and

establish ownership, and then forbid the Wide West company to take out

any more of the rock. You cannot help your company in this matter—nobody

can help them. I will go into the shaft with you and prove to your

entire satisfaction that it _is_ a blind lead. Now we propose to take

you in with us, and claim the blind lead in our three names. What do you

say?”

What could a man say who had an opportunity to simply stretch forth his

hand and take possession of a fortune without risk of any kind and

without wronging any one or attaching the least taint of dishonor to his

name? He could only say, “Agreed.”

The notice was put up that night, and duly spread upon the recorder’s

books before ten o’clock. We claimed two hundred feet each—six hundred

feet in all—the smallest and compactest organization in the district,

and the easiest to manage.

No one can be so thoughtless as to suppose that we slept, that night.

Higbie and I went to bed at midnight, but it was only to lie broad awake

and think, dream, scheme. The floorless, tumble-down cabin was a palace,

the ragged gray blankets silk, the furniture rosewood and mahogany. Each

new splendor that burst out of my visions of the future whirled me

bodily over in bed or jerked me to a sitting posture just as if an

electric battery had been applied to me. We shot fragments of

conversation back and forth at each other. Once Higbie said:

“When are you going home—to the States?”

“To-morrow!”—with an evolution or two, ending with a sitting position.

“Well—no—but next month, at furthest.”

“We’ll go in the same steamer.”

“Agreed.”

A pause.

“Steamer of the 10th?”

“Yes. No, the 1st.”

“All right.”

Another pause.

“Where are you going to live?” said Higbie.

“San Francisco.”

“That’s me!”

Pause.

“Too high—too much climbing”—from Higbie.

“What is?”

“I was thinking of Russian Hill—building a house up there.”

“Too much climbing? Shan’t you keep a carriage?”

“Of course. I forgot that.”

Pause.

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“Cal., what kind of a house are you going to build?”

“I was thinking about that. Three-story and an attic.”

“But what _kind_?”

“Well, I don’t hardly know. Brick, I suppose.”

“Brick—bosh.”

“Why? What is your idea?”

“Brown stone front—French plate glass—billiard-room off the dining-

room—statuary and paintings—shrubbery and two-acre grass

plat—greenhouse—iron dog on the front stoop—gray horses—landau, and a

coachman with a bug on his hat!”

“By George!”

A long pause.

“Cal., when are you going to Europe?”

“Well—I hadn’t thought of that. When are you?”

“In the Spring.”

“Going to be gone all summer?”

“All summer! I shall remain there three years.”

“No—but are you in earnest?”

“Indeed I am.”

“I will go along too.”

“Why of course you will.”

“What part of Europe shall you go to?”

“All parts. France, England, Germany—Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Syria,

Greece, Palestine, Arabia, Persia, Egypt—all over—everywhere.”

“I’m agreed.”

“All right.”

“Won’t it be a swell trip!”

“We’ll spend forty or fifty thousand dollars trying to make it one,

anyway.”

Another long pause.

“Higbie, we owe the butcher six dollars, and he has been threatening to

stop our—”

“Hang the butcher!”

“Amen.”

And so it went on. By three o’clock we found it was no use, and so we

got up and played cribbage and smoked pipes till sunrise. It was my week

to cook. I always hated cooking—now, I abhorred it.

The news was all over town. The former excitement was great—this one was

greater still. I walked the streets serene and happy. Higbie said the

foreman had been offered two hundred thousand dollars for his third of

the mine. I said I would like to see myself selling for any such price.

My ideas were lofty. My figure was a million. Still, I honestly believe

that if I had been offered it, it would have had no other effect than to

make me hold off for more.

I found abundant enjoyment in being rich. A man offered me a three-

hundred-dollar horse, and wanted to take my simple, unendorsed note for

it. That brought the most realizing sense I had yet had that I was

actually rich, beyond shadow of doubt. It was followed by numerous other

evidences of a similar nature—among which I may mention the fact of the

butcher leaving us a double supply of meat and saying nothing about

money.

By the laws of the district, the “locators” or claimants of a ledge were

obliged to do a fair and reasonable amount of work on their new property

within ten days after the date of the location, or the property was

forfeited, and anybody could go and seize it that chose. So we

determined to go to work the next day. About the middle of the

afternoon, as I was coming out of the post office, I met a Mr. Gardiner,

who told me that Capt. John Nye was lying dangerously ill at his place

(the “Nine-Mile Ranch”), and that he and his wife were not able to give

him nearly as much care and attention as his case demanded. I said if he

would wait for me a moment, I would go down and help in the sick room. I

ran to the cabin to tell Higbie. He was not there, but I left a note on

the table for him, and a few minutes later I left town in Gardiner’s

wagon.

CHAPTER XLI.

Captain Nye was very ill indeed, with spasmodic rheumatism. But the old

gentleman was himself—which is to say, he was kind-hearted and agreeable

when comfortable, but a singularly violent wild-cat when things did not

go well. He would be smiling along pleasantly enough, when a sudden

spasm of his disease would take him and he would go out of his smile

into a perfect fury. He would groan and wail and howl with the anguish,

and fill up the odd chinks with the most elaborate profanity that strong

convictions and a fine fancy could contrive. With fair opportunity he

could swear very well and handle his adjectives with considerable

judgment; but when the spasm was on him it was painful to listen to him,

he was so awkward. However, I had seen him nurse a sick man himself and

put up patiently with the inconveniences of the situation, and

consequently I was willing that he should have full license now that his

own turn had come. He could not disturb me, with all his raving and

ranting, for my mind had work on hand, and it labored on diligently,

night and day, whether my hands were idle or employed. I was altering

and amending the plans for my house, and thinking over the propriety of

having the billard-room in the attic, instead of on the same floor with

the dining-room; also, I was trying to decide between green and blue for

the upholstery of the drawing-room, for, although my preference was blue

I feared it was a color that would be too easily damaged by dust and

sunlight; likewise while I was content to put the coachman in a modest

livery, I was uncertain about a footman—I needed one, and was even

resolved to have one, but wished he could properly appear and perform

his functions out of livery, for I somewhat dreaded so much show; and

yet, inasmuch as my late grandfather had had a coachman and such things,

but no liveries, I felt rather drawn to beat him;—or beat his ghost, at

any rate; I was also systematizing the European trip, and managed to get

it all laid out, as to route and length of time to be devoted to

it—everything, with one exception—namely, whether to cross the desert

from Cairo to Jerusalem per camel, or go by sea to Beirut, and thence

down through the country per caravan. Meantime I was writing to the

friends at home every day, instructing them concerning all my plans and

intentions, and directing them to look up a handsome homestead for my

mother and agree upon a price for it against my coming, and also

directing them to sell my share of the Tennessee land and tender the

proceeds to the widows’ and orphans’ fund of the typographical union of

which I had long been a member in good standing. [This Tennessee land

had been in the possession of the family many years, and promised to

confer high fortune upon us some day; it still promises it, but in a

less violent way.]

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When I had been nursing the Captain nine days he was somewhat better,

but very feeble. During the afternoon we lifted him into a chair and

gave him an alcoholic vapor bath, and then set about putting him on the

bed again. We had to be exceedingly careful, for the least jar produced

pain. Gardiner had his shoulders and I his legs; in an unfortunate

moment I stumbled and the patient fell heavily on the bed in an agony of

torture. I never heard a man swear so in my life. He raved like a

maniac, and tried to snatch a revolver from the table—but I got it. He

ordered me out of the house, and swore a world of oaths that he would

kill me wherever he caught me when he got on his feet again. It was

simply a passing fury, and meant nothing. I knew he would forget it in

an hour, and maybe be sorry for it, too; but it angered me a little, at

the moment. So much so, indeed, that I determined to go back to

Esmeralda. I thought he was able to get along alone, now, since he was

on the war path. I took supper, and as soon as the moon rose, began my

nine-mile journey, on foot.

Even millionaires needed no horses, in those days, for a mere nine-mile

jaunt without baggage.

As I “raised the hill” overlooking the town, it lacked fifteen minutes

of twelve. I glanced at the hill over beyond the canyon, and in the

bright moonlight saw what appeared to be about half the population of

the village massed on and around the Wide West croppings. My heart gave

an exulting bound, and I said to myself, “They have made a new strike

to-night—and struck it richer than ever, no doubt.” I started over

there, but gave it up. I said the “strick” would keep, and I had climbed

hill enough for one night. I went on down through the town, and as I was

passing a little German bakery, a woman ran out and begged me to come in

and help her. She said her husband had a fit. I went in, and judged she

was right—he appeared to have a hundred of them, compressed into one.

Two Germans were there, trying to hold him, and not making much of a

success of it. I ran up the street half a block or so and routed out a

sleeping doctor, brought him down half dressed, and we four wrestled

with the maniac, and doctored, drenched and bled him, for more than an

hour, and the poor German woman did the crying. He grew quiet, now, and

the doctor and I withdrew and left him to his friends.

It was a little after one o’clock. As I entered the cabin door, tired

but jolly, the dingy light of a tallow candle revealed Higbie, sitting

by the pine table gazing stupidly at my note, which he held in his

fingers, and looking pale, old, and haggard. I halted, and looked at

him. He looked at me, stolidly. I said:

“Higbie, what—what is it?”

“We’re ruined—we didn’t do the work—THE BLIND LEAD’S RELOCATED!”

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It was enough. I sat down sick, grieved—broken-hearted, indeed. A minute

before, I was rich and brimful of vanity; I was a pauper now, and very

meek. We sat still an hour, busy with thought, busy with vain and

useless self-upbraidings, busy with “Why _didn’t_ I do this, and why

_didn’t_ I do that,” but neither spoke a word. Then we dropped into

mutual explanations, and the mystery was cleared away. It came out that

Higbie had depended on me, as I had on him, and as both of us had on the

foreman. The folly of it! It was the first time that ever staid and

steadfast Higbie had left an important matter to chance or failed to be

true to his full share of a responsibility.

But he had never seen my note till this moment, and this moment was the

first time he had been in the cabin since the day he had seen me last.

He, also, had left a note for me, on that same fatal afternoon—had

ridden up on horseback, and looked through the window, and being in a

hurry and not seeing me, had tossed the note into the cabin through a

broken pane. Here it was, on the floor, where it had remained

undisturbed for nine days:

“Don’t fail to do the work before the ten days expire. W. has passed

through and given me notice. I am to join him at Mono Lake, and we shall

go on from there to-night. He says he will find it this time, sure.

CAL.”

“W.” meant Whiteman, of course. That thrice accursed “cement!”

That was the way of it. An old miner, like Higbie, could no more

withstand the fascination of a mysterious mining excitement like this

“cement” foolishness, than he could refrain from eating when he was

famishing. Higbie had been dreaming about the marvelous cement for

months; and now, against his better judgment, he had gone off and “taken

the chances” on my keeping secure a mine worth a million undiscovered

cement veins. They had not been followed this time. His riding out of

town in broad daylight was such a common-place thing to do that it had

not attracted any attention. He said they prosecuted their search in the

fastnesses of the mountains during nine days, without success; they

could not find the cement. Then a ghastly fear came over him that

something might have happened to prevent the doing of the necessary work

to hold the blind lead (though indeed he thought such a thing hardly

possible), and forthwith he started home with all speed. He would have

reached Esmeralda in time, but his horse broke down and he had to walk a

great part of the distance. And so it happened that as he came into

Esmeralda by one road, I entered it by another. His was the superior

energy, however, for he went straight to the Wide West, instead of

turning aside as I had done—and he arrived there about five or ten

minutes too late! The “notice” was already up, the “relocation” of our

mine completed beyond recall, and the crowd rapidly dispersing. He

learned some facts before he left the ground. The foreman had not been

seen about the streets since the night we had located the mine—a

telegram had called him to California on a matter of life and death, it

was said. At any rate he had done no work and the watchful eyes of the

community were taking note of the fact. At midnight of this woful tenth

day, the ledge would be “relocatable,” and by eleven o’clock the hill

was black with men prepared to do the relocating. That was the crowd I

had seen when I fancied a new “strike” had been made—idiot that I was.

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[We three had the same right to relocate the lead that other people had,

provided we were quick enough.] As midnight was announced, fourteen men,

duly armed and ready to back their proceedings, put up their “notice”

and proclaimed their ownership of the blind lead, under the new name of

the “Johnson.” But A. D. Allen our partner (the foreman) put in a sudden

appearance about that time, with a cocked revolver in his hand, and said

his name must be added to the list, or he would “thin out the Johnson

company some.” He was a manly, splendid, determined fellow, and known to

be as good as his word, and therefore a compromise was effected. They

put in his name for a hundred feet, reserving to themselves the

customary two hundred feet each. Such was the history of the night’s

events, as Higbie gathered from a friend on the way home.

Higbie and I cleared out on a new mining excitement the next morning,

glad to get away from the scene of our sufferings, and after a month or

two of hardship and disappointment, returned to Esmeralda once more.

Then we learned that the Wide West and the Johnson companies had

consolidated; that the stock, thus united, comprised five thousand feet,

or shares; that the foreman, apprehending tiresome litigation, and

considering such a huge concern unwieldy, had sold his hundred feet for

ninety thousand dollars in gold and gone home to the States to enjoy it.

If the stock was worth such a gallant figure, with five thousand shares

in the corporation, it makes me dizzy to think what it would have been

worth with only our original six hundred in it. It was the difference

between six hundred men owning a house and five thousand owning it. We

would have been millionaires if we had only worked with pick and spade

one little day on our property and so secured our ownership!

It reads like a wild fancy sketch, but the evidence of many witnesses,

and likewise that of the official records of Esmeralda District, is

easily obtainable in proof that it is a true history. I can always have

it to say that I was absolutely and unquestionably worth a million

dollars, once, for ten days.

A year ago my esteemed and in every way estimable old millionaire

partner, Higbie, wrote me from an obscure little mining camp in

California that after nine or ten years of buffetings and hard striving,

he was at last in a position where he could command twenty-five hundred

dollars, and said he meant to go into the fruit business in a modest

way. How such a thought would have insulted him the night we lay in our

cabin planning European trips and brown stone houses on Russian Hill!

CHAPTER XLII.

What to do next?

It was a momentous question. I had gone out into the world to shift for

myself, at the age of thirteen (for my father had endorsed for friends;

and although he left us a sumptuous legacy of pride in his fine

Virginian stock and its national distinction, I presently found that I

could not live on that alone without occasional bread to wash it down

with). I had gained a livelihood in various vocations, but had not

dazzled anybody with my successes; still the list was before me, and the

amplest liberty in the matter of choosing, provided I wanted to

work—which I did not, after being so wealthy. I had once been a grocery

clerk, for one day, but had consumed so much sugar in that time that I

was relieved from further duty by the proprietor; said he wanted me

outside, so that he could have my custom. I had studied law an entire

week, and then given it up because it was so prosy and tiresome. I had

engaged briefly in the study of blacksmithing, but wasted so much time

trying to fix the bellows so that it would blow itself, that the master

turned me adrift in disgrace, and told me I would come to no good. I had

been a bookseller’s clerk for awhile, but the customers bothered me so

much I could not read with any comfort, and so the proprietor gave me a

furlough and forgot to put a limit to it. I had clerked in a drug store

part of a summer, but my prescriptions were unlucky, and we appeared to

sell more stomach pumps than soda water. So I had to go.

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I had made of myself a tolerable printer, under the impression that I

would be another Franklin some day, but somehow had missed the

connection thus far. There was no berth open in the Esmeralda _Union_,

and besides I had always been such a slow compositor that I looked with

envy upon the achievements of apprentices of two years’ standing; and

when I took a “take,” foremen were in the habit of suggesting that it

would be wanted “some time during the year.”

I was a good average St. Louis and New Orleans pilot and by no means

ashamed of my abilities in that line; wages were two hundred and fifty

dollars a month and no board to pay, and I did long to stand behind a

wheel again and never roam any more—but I had been making such an ass of

myself lately in grandiloquent letters home about my blind lead and my

European excursion that I did what many and many a poor disappointed

miner had done before; said “It is all over with me now, and I will

never go back home to be pitied—and snubbed.” I had been a private

secretary, a silver miner and a silver mill operative, and amounted to

less than nothing in each, and now—

What to do next?

I yielded to Higbie’s appeals and consented to try the mining once more.

We climbed far up on the mountain side and went to work on a little

rubbishy claim of ours that had a shaft on it eight feet deep. Higbie

descended into it and worked bravely with his pick till he had loosened

up a deal of rock and dirt and then I went down with a long-handled

shovel (the most awkward invention yet contrived by man) to throw it

out. You must brace the shovel forward with the side of your knee till

it is full, and then, with a skilful toss, throw it backward over your

left shoulder. I made the toss, and landed the mess just on the edge of

the shaft and it all came back on my head and down the back of my neck.

I never said a word, but climbed out and walked home. I inwardly

resolved that I would starve before I would make a target of myself and

shoot rubbish at it with a long-handled shovel.

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I sat down, in the cabin, and gave myself up to solid misery—so to

speak. Now in pleasanter days I had amused myself with writing letters

to the chief paper of the Territory, the Virginia Daily Territorial

Enterprise, and had always been surprised when they appeared in print.

My good opinion of the editors had steadily declined; for it seemed to

me that they might have found something better to fill up with than my

literature. I had found a letter in the post office as I came home from

the hill side, and finally I opened it. Eureka! [I never did know what

Eureka meant, but it seems to be as proper a word to heave in as any

when no other that sounds pretty offers.] It was a deliberate offer to

me of Twenty-Five Dollars a week to come up to Virginia and be city

editor of the Enterprise.

I would have challenged the publisher in the “blind lead” days—I wanted

to fall down and worship him, now. Twenty-Five Dollars a week—it looked

like bloated luxury—a fortune a sinful and lavish waste of money. But my

transports cooled when I thought of my inexperience and consequent

unfitness for the position—and straightway, on top of this, my long

array of failures rose up before me. Yet if I refused this place I must

presently become dependent upon somebody for my bread, a thing

necessarily distasteful to a man who had never experienced such a

humiliation since he was thirteen years old. Not much to _be_ proud of,

since it is so common—but then it was all I had to _be_ proud of. So I

was scared into being a city editor. I would have declined, otherwise.

Necessity is the mother of “taking chances.” I do not doubt that if, at

that time, I had been offered a salary to translate the Talmud from the

original Hebrew, I would have accepted—albeit with diffidence and some

misgivings—and thrown as much variety into it as I could for the money.

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I went up to Virginia and entered upon my new vocation. I was a rusty

looking city editor, I am free to confess—coatless, slouch hat, blue

woolen shirt, pantaloons stuffed into boot-tops, whiskered half down to

the waist, and the universal navy revolver slung to my belt. But I

secured a more Christian costume and discarded the revolver.

I had never had occasion to kill anybody, nor ever felt a desire to do

so, but had worn the thing in deference to popular sentiment, and in

order that I might not, by its absence, be offensively conspicuous, and

a subject of remark. But the other editors, and all the printers,

carried revolvers. I asked the chief editor and proprietor (Mr. Goodman,

I will call him, since it describes him as well as any name could do)

for some instructions with regard to my duties, and he told me to go all

over town and ask all sorts of people all sorts of questions, make notes

of the information gained, and write them out for publication. And he

added:

“Never say ‘We learn’ so-and-so, or ‘It is reported,’ or ‘It is

rumored,’ or ‘We understand’ so-and-so, but go to headquarters and get

the absolute facts, and then speak out and say ‘It _is_ so-and-so.’

Otherwise, people will not put confidence in your news. Unassailable

certainty is the thing that gives a newspaper the firmest and most

valuable reputation.”

It was the whole thing in a nut-shell; and to this day when I find a

reporter commencing his article with “We understand,” I gather a

suspicion that he has not taken as much pains to inform himself as he

ought to have done. I moralize well, but I did not always practise well

when I was a city editor; I let fancy get the upper hand of fact too

often when there was a dearth of news. I can never forget my first day’s

experience as a reporter. I wandered about town questioning everybody,

boring everybody, and finding out that nobody knew anything. At the end

of five hours my notebook was still barren. I spoke to Mr. Goodman. He

said:

“Dan used to make a good thing out of the hay wagons in a dry time when

there were no fires or inquests. Are there no hay wagons in from the

Truckee? If there are, you might speak of the renewed activity and all

that sort of thing, in the hay business, you know.

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“It isn’t sensational or exciting, but it fills up and looks business

like.”

I canvassed the city again and found one wretched old hay truck dragging

in from the country. But I made affluent use of it. I multiplied it by

sixteen, brought it into town from sixteen different directions, made

sixteen separate items out of it, and got up such another sweat about

hay as Virginia City had never seen in the world before.

This was encouraging. Two nonpareil columns had to be filled, and I was

getting along. Presently, when things began to look dismal again, a

desperado killed a man in a saloon and joy returned once more. I never

was so glad over any mere trifle before in my life. I said to the

murderer:

“Sir, you are a stranger to me, but you have done me a kindness this day

which I can never forget. If whole years of gratitude can be to you any

slight compensation, they shall be yours. I was in trouble and you have

relieved me nobly and at a time when all seemed dark and drear. Count me

your friend from this time forth, for I am not a man to forget a favor.”

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If I did not really say that to him I at least felt a sort of itching

desire to do it. I wrote up the murder with a hungry attention to

details, and when it was finished experienced but one regret—namely,

that they had not hanged my benefactor on the spot, so that I could work

him up too.

Next I discovered some emigrant wagons going into camp on the plaza and

found that they had lately come through the hostile Indian country and

had fared rather roughly. I made the best of the item that the

circumstances permitted, and felt that if I were not confined within

rigid limits by the presence of the reporters of the other papers I

could add particulars that would make the article much more interesting.

However, I found one wagon that was going on to California, and made

some judicious inquiries of the proprietor. When I learned, through his

short and surly answers to my cross-questioning, that he was certainly

going on and would not be in the city next day to make trouble, I got

ahead of the other papers, for I took down his list of names and added

his party to the killed and wounded. Having more scope here, I put this

wagon through an Indian fight that to this day has no parallel in

history.

My two columns were filled. When I read them over in the morning I felt

that I had found my legitimate occupation at last. I reasoned within

myself that news, and stirring news, too, was what a paper needed, and I

felt that I was peculiarly endowed with the ability to furnish it. Mr.

Goodman said that I was as good a reporter as Dan. I desired no higher

commendation. With encouragement like that, I felt that I could take my

pen and murder all the immigrants on the plains if need be and the

interests of the paper demanded it.

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CHAPTER XLIII.

However, as I grew better acquainted with the business and learned the

run of the sources of information I ceased to require the aid of fancy

to any large extent, and became able to fill my columns without

diverging noticeably from the domain of fact.

I struck up friendships with the reporters of the other journals, and we

swapped “regulars” with each other and thus economized work. “Regulars”

are permanent sources of news, like courts, bullion returns, “clean-ups”

at the quartz mills, and inquests. Inasmuch as everybody went armed, we

had an inquest about every day, and so this department was naturally set

down among the “regulars.” We had lively papers in those days. My great

competitor among the reporters was Boggs of the _Union_. He was an

excellent reporter. Once in three or four months he would get a little

intoxicated, but as a general thing he was a wary and cautious drinker

although always ready to tamper a little with the enemy. He had the

advantage of me in one thing; he could get the monthly public school

report and I could not, because the principal hated the _Enterprise_.

One snowy night when the report was due, I started out sadly wondering

how I was going to get it. Presently, a few steps up the almost deserted

street I stumbled on Boggs and asked him where he was going.

“After the school report.”

“I’ll go along with you.”

“No, _sir_. I’ll excuse you.”

“Just as you say.”

A saloon-keeper’s boy passed by with a steaming pitcher of hot punch,

and Boggs snuffed the fragrance gratefully. He gazed fondly after the

boy and saw him start up the _Enterprise_ stairs. I said:

“I wish you could help me get that school business, but since you can’t,

I must run up to the _Union_ office and see if I can get them to let me

have a proof of it after they have set it up, though I don’t begin to

suppose they will. Good night.”

“Hold on a minute. I don’t mind getting the report and sitting around

with the boys a little, while you copy it, if you’re willing to drop

down to the principal’s with me.”

“Now you talk like a rational being. Come along.”

We plowed a couple of blocks through the snow, got the report and

returned to our office. It was a short document and soon copied.

Meantime Boggs helped himself to the punch. I gave the manuscript back

to him and we started out to get an inquest, for we heard pistol shots

near by. We got the particulars with little loss of time, for it was

only an inferior sort of bar-room murder, and of little interest to the

public, and then we separated. Away at three o’clock in the morning,

when we had gone to press and were having a relaxing concert as

usual—for some of the printers were good singers and others good

performers on the guitar and on that atrocity the accordion—the

proprietor of the _Union_ strode in and desired to know if anybody had

heard anything of Boggs or the school report. We stated the case, and

all turned out to help hunt for the delinquent. We found him standing on

a table in a saloon, with an old tin lantern in one hand and the school

report in the other, haranguing a gang of intoxicated Cornish miners on

the iniquity of squandering the public moneys on education “when

hundreds and hundreds of honest hard-working men are literally starving

for whiskey.” [Riotous applause.] He had been assisting in a regal spree

with those parties for hours. We dragged him away and put him to bed.

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Of course there was no school report in the _Union_, and Boggs held me

accountable, though I was innocent of any intention or desire to compass

its absence from that paper and was as sorry as any one that the

misfortune had occurred.

But we were perfectly friendly. The day that the school report was next

due, the proprietor of the “Genessee” mine furnished us a buggy and

asked us to go down and write something about the property—a very common

request and one always gladly acceded to when people furnished buggies,

for we were as fond of pleasure excursions as other people. In due time

we arrived at the “mine”—nothing but a hole in the ground ninety feet

deep, and no way of getting down into it but by holding on to a rope and

being lowered with a windlass. The workmen had just gone off somewhere

to dinner. I was not strong enough to lower Boggs’s bulk; so I took an

unlighted candle in my teeth, made a loop for my foot in the end of the

rope, implored Boggs not to go to sleep or let the windlass get the

start of him, and then swung out over the shaft. I reached the bottom

muddy and bruised about the elbows, but safe. I lit the candle, made an

examination of the rock, selected some specimens and shouted to Boggs to

hoist away. No answer. Presently a head appeared in the circle of

daylight away aloft, and a voice came down:

“Are you all set?”

“All set—hoist away.”

“Are you comfortable?”

“Perfectly.”

“Could you wait a little?”

“Oh certainly—no particular hurry.”

“Well—good by.”

“Why? Where are you going?”

“After the school report!”

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And he did. I staid down there an hour, and surprised the workmen when

they hauled up and found a man on the rope instead of a bucket of rock.

I walked home, too—five miles—up hill. We had no school report next

morning; but the _Union_ had.

Six months after my entry into journalism the grand “flush times” of

Silverland began, and they continued with unabated splendor for three

years. All difficulty about filling up the “local department” ceased,

and the only trouble now was how to make the lengthened columns hold the

world of incidents and happenings that came to our literary net every

day. Virginia had grown to be the “livest” town, for its age and

population, that America had ever produced. The sidewalks swarmed with

people—to such an extent, indeed, that it was generally no easy matter

to stem the human tide. The streets themselves were just as crowded with

quartz wagons, freight teams and other vehicles. The procession was

endless. So great was the pack, that buggies frequently had to wait half

an hour for an opportunity to cross the principal street. Joy sat on

every countenance, and there was a glad, almost fierce, intensity in

every eye, that told of the money-getting schemes that were seething in

every brain and the high hope that held sway in every heart. Money was

as plenty as dust; every individual considered himself wealthy, and a

melancholy countenance was nowhere to be seen. There were military

companies, fire companies, brass bands, banks, hotels, theatres, “hurdy-

gurdy houses,” wide-open gambling palaces, political pow-wows, civic

processions, street fights, murders, inquests, riots, a whiskey mill

every fifteen steps, a Board of Aldermen, a Mayor, a City Surveyor, a

City Engineer, a Chief of the Fire Department, with First, Second and

Third Assistants, a Chief of Police, City Marshal and a large police

force, two Boards of Mining Brokers, a dozen breweries and half a dozen

jails and station-houses in full operation, and some talk of building a

church. The “flush times” were in magnificent flower! Large fire-proof

brick buildings were going up in the principal streets, and the wooden

suburbs were spreading out in all directions. Town lots soared up to

prices that were amazing.

The great “Comstock lode” stretched its opulent length straight through

the town from north to south, and every mine on it was in diligent

process of development. One of these mines alone employed six hundred

and seventy-five men, and in the matter of elections the adage was, “as

the ‘Gould and Curry’ goes, so goes the city.” Laboring men’s wages were

four and six dollars a day, and they worked in three “shifts” or gangs,

and the blasting and picking and shoveling went on without ceasing,

night and day.

The “city” of Virginia roosted royally midway up the steep side of Mount

Davidson, seven thousand two hundred feet above the level of the sea,

and in the clear Nevada atmosphere was visible from a distance of fifty

miles! It claimed a population of fifteen thousand to eighteen thousand,

and all day long half of this little army swarmed the streets like bees

and the other half swarmed among the drifts and tunnels of the

“Comstock,” hundreds of feet down in the earth directly under those same

streets. Often we felt our chairs jar, and heard the faint boom of a

blast down in the bowels of the earth under the office.