HUGH SITS IN
From every state and many nations the pioneers of California came,
young, ardent, hopeful, strong. Round the Horn in clipper ships, across
the fever-swept Isthmus, by way of the long Overland Trail, they poured
into the Golden West. They laughed at hardship. They wrote songs of
defiance to bad luck and sang them while they worked and starved and
died. Self-contained and confident, they gutted mountains, made deserts
leafy green, built cities that were the marvel of their generation. To
these sunset shores came the pick of the world’s adventurous youth.
Nevada absorbed the best and the worst of California’s seasoned
veterans. Gay, reckless, debonair, the gold-seekers went their turbulent
way. Every man was a law to himself, carried in his holster the redress
for wrongs. The wildest excesses prevailed. The most brutal crimes went
unpunished. For years there was no night at Virginia, at Austin, or at
Eureka. The flare from dance halls, hurdy-gurdys, and gambling houses
flung splashes of light on masses of roughly dressed men engaged in
continual revelry.
But it would be unjust to condemn Washoe because it did not measure up
to the standards of Philadelphia. At its worst no good woman was ever
more revered than here, no child’s innocence more zealously guarded.
And, as it proved, the strength of the bad man lacked the endurance of
the one who was good. Law and order came to Nevada, brought by stalwarts
who took their lives in their hands to punish desperadoes.
The dominance of law came slowly, because Washoe was under the
jurisdiction of Utah, so far away across the desert that its authority
was only a shadow. Until this handicap was taken away, no real civil
authority was possible.
The earliest mining at Virginia was done from the grass roots, which
fact accounts largely for the character of its population. Six-Mile
Cañon heads on the north side of Mt. Davidson, Gold Cañon about a mile
distant on its south slope. Placer miners, working among the decomposed
rock and gravel of the ravines, moved up toward the mother lode without
knowing it. The clay in which they dug was so tough it had to be
“puddled” in water with shovels.
But the formation of the strata had convinced the astute that the Washoe
diggings were a quartz proposition. The rocker and the long tom had had
their day. Into the Ophir and the Gould & Curry, steam hoists had been
put. The shafts were going deeper every hour. Much litigation developed,
due in part to defective location work and disputes as to veins. This
brought to the territory the ablest bar on the Pacific Coast. Among the
newspaper reporters who worked a few months later on the _Territorial
Enterprise_ was Mark Twain. He was one of a dozen brilliant writers who
later were known from coast to coast, all of whom were associated with
the Goodwins on this paper.
No other such mining camp ever existed. Side by side with lawlessness
and the roughest makeshifts there existed a high civilization which was
satisfied with nothing less than the best. In the days to come, after
the town had found its feet, McCullough, Booth, Barrett, and Modjeska
played at Piper’s Opera House within a stone’s throw of the raucous
uproar of the hurdy-gurdy houses. One lucky miner expressed himself in a
mansion equipped with door stops of gold and door knobs of silver;
another lifted his eyes to the stars and wrote his soul out with
fire-tipped pen.
In this heterogeneous society there was at first no class consciousness.
The professional gambler had a special standing. He was accepted as
necessary to the community, much as a doctor or a merchant was. He set
the standard of dress and of manners. If he was a “square sport” he
played a fair game. The most distinguished men in the camp were glad to
sit down at poker with such a gambler as Scot McClintock.
So long as the road from California was open Virginia City lived on the
best that could be imported. But during the heavy winter just ending the
trail had been closed for months. Food was dangerously short. The supply
of potatoes and onions, the staple vegetables, had become completely
exhausted. There was very little fresh meat, though jackrabbits were
fortunately plentiful. To make conditions worse, soft heavy spring snows
blocked the passes and made transportation impossible. At Placerville
and at Strawberry Flat great trains of supplies waited for the opening
of the trail.
On a sunny windswept afternoon Scot McClintock made his way from the
International Hotel to the Crystal Palace, where he dealt faro to a
high-priced clientele. He was pleasantly at peace with the world. If he
carried a derringer in his pocket it was as a concession to the custom
of a country where every man went armed. His progress along B Street and
through the Crystal Palace to his seat was in the nature of a reception.
For everybody knew Scot and wanted to claim acquaintance with him.
He nodded to the players, slid into his chair, and began to deal. His
face took on the gambler’s mask of impassivity. This mask did not lift
when a heavy-set huge man slouched into the Crystal Palace and to the
corner where McClintock presided. Someone hastily moved aside to give
the newcomer a place. Nobody in Virginia City disputed any question of
precedence with Sam Dutch.
The desperado had been drinking. It was apparent to all that he was in
an ugly humour. Gradually, inconspicuously, the players at that end of
the hall cashed in their chips and departed from the immediate vicinity.
Scot continued to deal with a wooden face, but behind his expressionless
eyes was a wary intentness. Dutch meant trouble. He had come with the
deliberate intention of making it.
Friends had brought to McClintock the word that he had better look out
for Dutch. The bad man was jealous of his popularity, his influence in
the camp, and above all of the fearlessness that would not accept
intimidation. Shrewdly, with that instinct for safety common to all
killers, the fellow had chosen his moment well. All the advantage would
lie with him. The hands of the dealer must be above the table sliding
out cards. His own could be on the butts of his six-shooters before he
called for a showdown. What Dutch proposed was not a duel but deliberate
cold-blooded murder.
Scot knew this. He knew, too, that if either of his hands lifted for an
instant from the cards the ruffian opposite would fling slug after slug
into his body. Nor could he expect any help from the lookout for the
game. Dutch was too sure on the shoot to tempt interference.
The roulette wheel continued to turn. The stud and draw poker games went
on. Automatically men made their bets, but the interest was gone from
their play. The atmosphere had grown electric. The furtive attention of
everybody focussed on two men, the killer and the victim he had
selected. When would Dutch find his excuse to strike? In the tenseness
of the suspense throats parched and nerves grew taut.
The contrast between the two men was striking. The one dealing the cards
was clean-cut, graceful, and lithe as a tiger. From head to foot he was
trim and well-groomed. Even the fingernails were polished pink in the
latest San Francisco fashion. The huge man in front of him was dirty,
his hair and beard unkempt, his figure slouchy. The long army overcoat
he wore was splashed with mud. He looked the incarnation of brute force
dominated by craft instead of intelligence.
Into the Crystal Palace a lean sun-and-wind browned man walked. He was
about to start back to take his run on the pony express and he had come
in to say good-bye to his brother. With one clear-eyed steady look he
realized the situation. The gunman had not yet called for a showdown. He
meant to choose his own time for fastening the quarrel on Scot. His rage
might still be diverted into another channel.
Hugh did his thinking as he moved lightly forward. There was not a break
in his stride as he walked straight to the faro table. Carelessly, it
appeared, but really by cool design, he chose the place next to Dutch,
close to him and on his right.
“Don’t crowd, young fella,” warned the bully heavily. “Me, when I play,
I want room a-plenty.”
The pony express rider tossed a twenty-dollar gold piece on the table.
“Chips,” he said, without even looking at Dutch.
The eyes of the McClintocks met. Hugh was no gambler. He was sitting in,
Scot knew, to share and lessen the risk. If he could draw the gunman’s
attention for even an instant at the critical moment it might save the
dealer’s life. A stack of chips slid across to the boy.
The big ruffian slammed down a fist like a ham, so that the chips
jumped. “Didja hear me speak, kid? Know who I am?” he blustered.
The sun streamed full on the boy’s fair curly head from the window
above. It brought out the faint golden down on his lean cheek and
emphasized a certain cherubic innocence of gaze that still lingered from
his childhood.
“Why, no, I don’t reckon I do.”
“I’m Sam Dutch.”
Hugh coppered two of the big man’s bets and played the jack to win.
“Knew a fellow called Dutch once—hanged for stealing sheep from the
Mormons. No kin, maybe,” he said cheerfully.
The lookout stirred uneasily, then stepped from the place where he sat
and disappeared through a side door. The cards slid out of the box. Hugh
won both bets he had coppered. Scot sized up chips to match the bets,
and the boy drew them in with his left hand.
Dutch turned to him a face distorted as a gargoyle. “Play yore own game
and keep off’n the cards I play. An’ don’t get heavy with me,” he
snarled with an oath.
“Sure not,” Hugh promised amiably. “It was down on the Humboldt Sink
they hanged him, I recollect.”
The bad man thrust his unkempt head closer. “Get outa here. You’re
crowdin’ me. I don’t want my private graveyard to hold no kid-size
coffins.”
“Room for both of us,” said Hugh coolly, and he did not give a fraction
of an inch. Instead, he coppered another of the camp bully’s bets,
playing the ace to lose.
“Not room for me an’ you here both. I tell you I’m Sam Dutch.”
Scot slid out the cards. The ace lost.
“Yes, I heard you—no need to shout,” Hugh said tranquilly, reaching for
his winnings.
Dutch brushed his arm aside roughly. He raked in the chips. “I’ll
collect on that ace,” he announced.
“You played it to win and it lost,” Hugh told him.
“Did I?” The killer was dangerously near explosion point. “Don’t forget,
young fella, that I’m chief in this town.”
Hugh looked straight at him, his blue eyes narrowed ever so little. “So?
Who elected you?”
This cool defiance from an unknown smooth-cheeked boy put the match to
the ruffian’s rage. He snatched from his head the Peruvian hat and
stamped it under his feet. His teeth ground savagely. He stooped as
though to leap, and as he did so his fingers closed on the horn handle
of the bowie projecting from his boot leg. The long blade flashed in the
sunlight.
Almost simultaneously a derringer and a navy revolver flamed.
A stupid puzzled expression gathered on the face of the man in the army
overcoat. He seemed to be groping for the meaning of what had happened.
The huge body swayed and the bowie clattered to the floor.
Both brothers watched the killer intently. Neither fired a second shot,
though every sense, nerve, and muscle waited in readiness for instant
action.
Dutch clutched at the faro table with both hands, then unexpectedly
pitched forward upon it, scattering chips and cards in all directions.
From behind the bar, from back of chairs and tables, men cautiously
emerged. Others gathered themselves from the floor where they had been
lying low. The lookout stuck a head carefully through the side doorway.
There would be no more shooting.
Scot spoke quietly. “I take you-all to witness, gentlemen, that he came
here looking for trouble. My brother and I fired in self-defence.”
Someone thrust a hand under the big body and pushed aside the blue coat.
“Heart’s still beating,” he announced.
“Then send for a doctor and have him looked after. I’ll pay the bill,”
Scot said, still in an even expressionless voice.
“Hadn’t you better finish the job?” a voice whispered in Hugh’s ear.
Hugh turned, dizzy with nausea. “God, no!” he answered.
“If he lives he’ll get you sure—both of you.”
“We’re not murderers,” the boy said.
He groped his way to a chair and sat down quickly. Was he going to
faint?
A hand fell on his shoulder. Through a haze Scot’s voice came warm and
low: “Good old Hugh. Saved my life sure. You were that cool—and game.
Every move you made counted. If you hadn’t devilled him till he lost his
head he’d likely have got one of us. Boy, I’m proud of you.”
Hugh was ashamed of his weakness. “I didn’t play the baby this away when
I got that Piute at the pass,” he said apologetically.
“Nothing to it, boy. You came through fine. Except for you—well, I
would have cashed in. Come. Let’s get out of here.”
The owner of the Crystal Palace was standing near.
“Can you get someone else to finish my shift?” Scot asked.
“Sure.” The proprietor did a little legitimate grumbling. “There’s
sixty-five saloons in this town, an’ I’ll be doggoned if everybody
doesn’t come here to do their gun stuff. Seems like a man will walk
clear up from Gold Hill so’s to pull off his fireworks at the Crystal.
It don’t do business no good, lemme tell you.”
“You’re out of luck,” his dealer smiled. “But we couldn’t really help it
this time.”
“I don’t say you could, Scot. I won’t mourn for Sam Dutch if you’ve got
him. All I say is I try to run a quiet, respectable place an’ looks like
I never get a chance.”
The brothers walked out to the street. Patrons of the place fell back to
let them pass and followed with their eyes the two straight,
light-stepping men. Hugh was still a little stringy in build, but even
in his immaturity it would have been hard to find a more
promising-looking youngster. As for Scot, he was acknowledged to be the
handsomest man in the diggings. No woman ever saw him pass without
wanting to look at him twice.
The news had swept through town already, and as the brothers walked down
the street a hundred men stopped to shake hands with and congratulate
them. But even now they whispered their approval. It was possible Dutch
might survive his wounds, in which case they were prepared to resume
ostensible neutrality. The killer’s name was one that sent the chills
down the backs of even courageous men. He was more deadly than a
rattlesnake because he usually did not give warning before he struck.