LEADVILLE.
At the time when America was celebrating the centennial of her
independence at Philadelphia the present site of Leadville was an
elevated sage brush valley skirting the headwaters of the Arkansas
at an altitude of many thousand feet above the sea level. The whole
population of the valley would not exceed a score or so of souls, but
in three years from that time a city of twenty-five thousand souls had
sprung up.
This is a summary of my knowledge of the place for which I was bound,
bent on making my fortune. In a little over forty-eight hours after
leaving my native city I alighted on the platform of the Leadville
station. I doubt if anything in the annals of the famous forty-niners
in California, could equal this seething chaotic mass of humanity or
rival the wildly grotesque appearance of this city of instantaneous
growth.
Pandemonium let loose was the only comparison that seemed adequate to
the situation. Houses there were none. Of sheds, shanties, tents,
covered wagons and dens in the earth there were legions. The movements
of the inhabitants of this outlandish city bore no resemblance to
the earnest hurry and life of my native city, but resembled rather a
universal desire on their part to catch a vanishing train or the wild
effort to escape an avalanche or such a conflagration as had visited
Chicago a few years before, some of the scenes of which were stamped
ineffaceably on my mind.
I could scarcely keep my feet, much less any stable position where I
might pause to view the ludicrous scene, but was borne irresistibly on
toward the principal street of the city. I was, I protest, in no such
hurry as the dog trot I was compelled to adopt would seem to indicate.
Every one of the presumptuous builders of Babel were represented
there and the scene struck me as being in a marked degree like the
one my imagination had always pictured as immediately following the
confusion of tongues. Men of different nationalities were endeavoring
to make themselves intelligible to each other, gabbling, gesticulating,
able often only to comprehend the choice store of profanity poured
out on their stolid neighbor’s head because he could not interpret
this jargon. Assay offices whose walls could not wholly exclude the
daylight; stores whose shelves could be reached almost equally well
from the outer as the inner side; saloons in endless reach, some of
them consisting simply of a barrel and a few glasses in the open air
with a board announcing its character nailed upon a post, beside the
barrel--were everywhere in evidence. Passing along this street in the
human current, I find residence buildings taking the place of the
business block or board, as the case may be, and boarding houses taking
the place of saloons. To one of the more respectable looking of these
I applied for board and lodging, and found that for the modest sum of
forty dollars a week I could be sumptuously boarded and luxuriously
lodged. The proprietor, a big, red-faced fellow, in top boots and
cowboy hat, assured me that their accommodations were strictly
first-class, and conducted me to the sleeping apartment in the rear,
which was a big lean-to shed, walled and roofed with a single course
of unplaned boards, leaving little lines of daylight where the lumber
purported to join. Bunks wide enough for two ran around the walls tier
on tier; each pair of occupants were supplied with a pair of blankets,
which, he assured me, was a luxury that no other place afforded,
and which, later, I found to be correct, most of the lodgings being
simply a spot of earth enclosed, where the lodger had the privilege
of spreading his blankets on the ground, where saint and sinner, Yale
College graduate and Mexican greaser lay down together to shiver the
night away, having--as incongruous as were their former lives--one
opinion in common, namely, that never before in their lives would they
have considered it a fit enclosure for swine.
But the all-leveling mania for gold reconciled them to any kind of
fare, and any or no shelter, just as circumstances might direct. The
class of boarders at mine host’s inn was mainly of those who were
engaged in ordinary business pursuits in the rickety, ridiculous
segregation and exaggeration of the “wharf-rat” district of
Chicago, called the city; merchants bent on doing business on the
buy-for-a-dollar-and-sell-for-five-plan, lawyers scenting the battle
of contending claimants from afar, assayers, surveyors, wet goodsmen,
proprietors of faro banks and roulette wheels--a striking mass of
humanity, representing every nation and affecting a style of dress
that was a hybrid of the Spanish bull-fighters and Western cowboy
cross--all were here. The supper hour, which was not far off when I
arrived, brought all this motley group with a rush like the stampede
of a Texas herd to feed voraciously on a meal of plain substantial
mountain fare. Bread and butter, black coffee, fat bacon, and fried
potatoes constituted the _menu_, which was regarded, I was told, as a
great modern improvement on the rations provided before the railroad
was completed, when provisions were freighted a long distance.
The landlord, disposed to be friendly and talkative, informed me that
in those good old days flour had sold in camp as high as a dollar per
pound, potatoes fifty cents per pound, eggs five dollars per dozen,
meat five dollars per pound, and hay five hundred dollars per ton.
Board was to be had at the low rate of ten to twenty-five dollars per
meal, or three hundred and fifty to five hundred dollars per week.
But the fabulous yield of silver on the Mosquito Range, he said,
“wuz payin’ the fiddler,” when the New Discovery, the Vulture, and
Carboniferous were yielding ore that ran two thousand and sometimes
upward of three thousand ounces of silver to the ton, and there were a
dozen mines in the camp that were putting out ore day after day, and
week after week, estimated to be worth five dollars per shovelful. “How
do they hold out at present?” I inquired, feeling my way toward a more
vital question.
“Oh, purty fair, purty fair,” he said. “The Long Hannah and the
Mosquito Belle, and the Vulture air all runnin’ smelters of thear own
an’ cleanin’ up two or three thousand a day apiece. But,” he added,
with a tremendous sigh, “we’ll never see sich rattlin’ times agin’.”
I then ventured to ask him if he happened to know anything of The
Little Pittsburg Mine.
“To be sure, to be sure, up on Prayer Hill, must be ten thousand feet
above the sea. Air up thar thinner ’n a snipe, mine no good, started
in purtier ’n a picter, clean petered out, now, hardly raise the color
any more. On the assessment list for some time, still workin’ her
feeble-like. Any interest in her? Sorry. One of the bluest on the range
at present. Belong in Chicago, did you say? Great place.”
So he rattled on in accompaniment to my supper, till a man who sat next
me, attracted by the name of Chicago, began to pay his addresses to me.
“Mabbe you think I’m lyin’, young feller, but I see Chicago when there
was only three stores, one blacksmith shop and one drug store there.
I’m seventy year old last February, but I can remember like it was
yesterday how she looked squatten there in the mud, and the shakes in
the air so thick you could cut um with a knife. I was workin’ for Widdy
Simpson on her claim that run up chuck to the town. I didn’t like the
style of atmosphere they furnished there, so I began to get ready to go
West. The widdy was anxious fur me to stay an’ work fur her, fur hands
was mighty skeerce thar, and she showed me another government claim
that was vacant and laid in the same delightful, stagnatin’ condition
as hern, and mighty nigh as close to town. She advised me to stop an’
work fur her an’ build a shanty on the claim an’ hold it down, but I
couldn’t see no policy in shakin’ my sides when I wuzn’t tickled, and
had no faith in that bloomin’ pollywog pond no way, so I sloped; but it
was a great mistake, for the widdy lived to see herself a millionaire
an’ I might a’ bin a close second, but sich is life. Here I’ve bin a
prospectin’ all my life and haven’t made enough to take me beck to
Chicago. But,” he added, turning toward me, “I’m goin’ to strike her
rich one of these days and don’t you furgit it.”
And he proceeded forthwith to inform me with a mysterious shake of
his head that he knew where lay a ledge of gold-bearing quartz that
was rich enough to make up for all the disappointment of missing his
fortune at Chicago. A sheep herder, he said, whom he encountered in
one of his prospecting trips in the Gunnison country, had showed him
a block of quartz that he had picked up in a gulch while seeking to
quench his thirst from a spring that burst out from its head. As he
stooped over to drink he noticed the peculiar shape of the rock first,
and picking it up, he found it still more peculiar in formation. So he
had carried it with him to camp and produced it in evidence. The old
prospector’s eyes had no sooner fallen upon the sample than he knew
that it was fabulously rich in the yellow metal, and at once proposed
to go halvers and look up the vein, if his herder-friend would conduct
him to the spot where he had picked up the quartz. The proposition
was accepted and my new acquaintance entertained me during the evening
with a minute description of his search for the lead, luring him to
the top of a high range, densely covered with fallen and standing
trees and rocks, in such wild confusion that he could scarcely make
his way through them. Sometimes he was just on the verge of success;
then the trail would grow indistinct and be lost again. So he climbed
the highest neighboring peaks looking for the lost trail, and invaded
deep and almost inaccessible gorges to view the place from which he
had started so hopefully in quest of the parent ledge, from which had
been wrenched this potent declaration of its surpassing richness. But
the ledge was so cunningly hidden that it eluded his keen scent day
after day and throughout lengthening weeks, as he pursued the phantom
through mountain fastnesses and lonely defiles, till his supplies were
all gone, and he was forced to return to camp and seek employment. He
was at present working out an assessment for The Little Pittsburg Mine.
He said, “And just as soon as I can make a little raise I’ll strike
her again, I’m bound to find her, that chunk of the yallar didn’t get
there by no accident. Its just as certain to be there as the sun is
to rise to-morrow, and I am just as certain to find her as soon as I
can get the dust. Say boss,” he suddenly asked in a confidential tone,
“you don’t want to grub-stake me for the half do you?” I looked at
him in blank amazement; that was a term entirely new to me, and might
mean anything from staking a game of cards for him, to burning with him
at the stake as an offering to the gold divinity. “Don’t ketch on to
minin’ camp lingo, hey? Well, you are a precious tenderfoot to be sure.”
Then he explained that in many cases prospectors spent nearly their
whole time in remote mountain regions searching for gold and, of
course, when they were unsuccessful, their means would soon become
exhausted and then, returning to the nearest camp, they would propose
to some merchant or mining expert that if provisions were furnished
them to enable them to go on without interruption, they would give a
half interest in any mine which they might find while the store of
provisions lasted. There was something strikingly pathetic to me in
the spectacle of an old man such as he, still lured on by the hope of
suddenly amassing unlimited wealth. All the discouragements of a long
life of failure were powerless to keep down the elastic hopes which
inspired him; all the failures counted for nothing, all the privations
and exposure were forgotten as he talked of the wealth almost in
sight for both of us, if he could but spend a few weeks more in the
Gunnison country. I was more interested at present, however, in gaining
what information I could regarding my own forlorn hope, The Little
Pittsburg, especially as he had mentioned that he was working upon it.
I have since learned by experience and observation that few people
come within the seductive influence of the mining camp without sooner
or later absorbing the fever to discover the richest and most famous
mine yet known, and during the progress of that hallucination he is
as literally stark mad as a victim of mountain fever in his wildest
ravings.
I felt the thrill of the old man’s words, but did not then know that
it was the characteristic first symptoms of the disease, and till near
the hour of midnight I listened as he discoursed of mines and mining
operations, of life in Leadville, the crudest and wildest stages of
life in the mountains, for months with no other companion than his
pack mule, of narrow escapes from Indians, of not less blood-curdling
accounts of losing his way in the mountains when provisions were almost
exhausted, and the winter closing in on the higher altitudes; of winter
life in Leadville, and other camps among the most motley, the most
reckless, and withal, the most generous class of people on the face of
the earth. He now indicated that it was his bedtime, and, as I had all
the experience that one day could well utilize, our landlord filed us
away by number on the shelves of his human mercantile establishment
like legal documents, and left us to wink and blink at the stars that
twinkled through the roof at us. But the first keen delight of inhaling
the pure mountain air of the Rockies at such an elevation compensates
for all minor inconveniences, and every breath was a new delight, and
sleep was a repetition of boyhood’s perfect rest undisturbed by ugly
dreams. Morning opens anew at each awakening; the bounding pulse and
rosy hopes of a new world, the weariness, the discouragements, are
all gone, and I can now understand something of the source of that
wonderful buoyancy that keeps the poor prospector from despair.
After breakfasting on hot biscuit, fat bacon and coffee, I accompanied
my venerable friend to inspect our valuable possessions, The Little
Pittsburg. The old gentleman, to whom I will now, indulgent reader,
if you will pardon the rudeness of delay, present you, my friend of a
night, Abner Callaway, prospector and practical miner; by nativity a
child of Illinois; by circumstances and training a cosmopolitan; in
thought and intent, simple as a child; by creed, a follower of the
golden rule. Short of stature, sturdy of build, limbs encased in the
picturesque blue overalls tucked into high-top boots, supported by
buckskin suspenders, flaming red flannel shirt with sleeves habitually
rolled up to the elbows, and folded back from his burly chest at the
neck in the shape of a V, showing a bosom hairy as Esau’s; cowboy hat
with leathern band sheltering a good-natured, rubicund countenance in
which you could but believe, the venerable expression heightened by a
long white beard and locks of the same hue, falling to the shoulders,
complete the picture of the man with whose destiny mine was to be
wonderfully blended. But hold! I have given you his picture as he
appears at rest. To prepare himself for action he produces a clay
pipe, fills and lights it, and then the little human engine puffs away
in active motion toward the theater of action for the day. Between
puffs, he informs me, as we climb up and up till a queer feeling as
if a heavy weight were attached to each foot begins to be noticed,
and you realize that you are getting beyond the natural habitation of
the animal known as man, that he had a few days’ work yet to perform
on this claim, when he would be at liberty to pursue his own projects
once more, the only hindrance being the want of sufficient means to
make an extended prospecting trip, and as it was already June and the
summer-time of opportunity, but brief in those elevated regions, he
felt great anxiety to be at his labor of love again. You felt as he
talked that he spoke with all the earnestness of strong conviction
and persuaded you because he himself felt strongly, and not because
of any element of the shark in his arguments. He might himself be
deluded, but he was not seeking to delude you, but to convert you
to the truth. He explained that his golden field of quest lay to the
southward, well toward the mouth of the Gunnison in the Elk Mountains
where the severities of the climate were not so great, nor the winters
of enforced idleness so long. He waived all my efforts to turn the
conversation upon our mine as a subject of not a moment’s importance
compared with the one which dominated his life by day, and gave the
text for glorious treasure-haunted dreams by night, so that by the
time we reached our superb property in the region of the clouds, my
mind was beginning to yield to the reasonings with which he besieged
it, and I began to regard The Pittsburg as being, after all, of rather
secondary importance. It is well that my mind had been thus prepared
for the utter revulsion of feeling which took possession of it when I
beheld what had been represented as valuable property, lacking only
development. But it still lacked a good deal of that subtle fancy that
enables one to see in a possession like ours anything more than an
unsightly hole in the ground, upon which so much excavating must be
done from time to time, to fulfill the law. I stood upon the brink of
the pit and looked down into its unpromising depths with much the same
feelings, I imagine, with which I should inspect the work of digging my
own grave.
The old man cut off my bitter reflections by observing impressively,
“Look ’e here, pard, I’m an old man an’ you’re but a kid. Let me take
an old man’s privilege an’ advise you never again while you have
breath in you, never put a dollar into a paper mine.” He showed me
some specimens taken out the day before, and declared they were all
right, way up ore in fact, but not enough of them. “Pinched right out;
if she’d held out as she started you would be a millionaire now. Of
course, there’s a ghost of a chance that she’ll come in agin’ all OK,
but not likely.”
So I left him at his work, and went in search of the resident owners of
the concern, whose whereabouts he pointed out. They were two brothers,
Wilson by name, and they were at present working another claim of the
same group on Prayer Hill. When I had introduced myself, and satisfied
them, by recommendations which I carried, of my identity, and of the
fact of my interest in the property, I was received very kindly.
They had struck a rich vein in the claim they were working and were
sanguine that The Little Pittsburg would yet come out all right. I
paid my assessments to date, and got all the information possible in
regard to the mine, which, when summed up, was that, if it failed to
pan out, it would be the first and only one of that particular group
that had done so. That the depth to which the shaft had reached was
not yet sufficient for a final opinion on its value, and that in their
judgment I would do well not to be in a hurry about disposing of my
shares. This somewhat restored my spirits, and I began to consider
what I should do pending a final test on our property, and I set about
getting practical information to supplement my theoretical stock,
which I found was a rather useless commodity without the ability to
turn it to successful account. I had a wholesome horror of the task of
looking for a job in the light of past experiences, but I had already
learned enough of matters here to show me that conditions here were
somewhat different from those I had encountered. Men stood but little
on the formality of introductions or references, but accepted with easy
philosophy the people and conditions that surrounded them. I had been
encouraged by hearing, every working hour since my arrival, inquiries
for help in various lines, and on returning to my boarding house at
noon, my landlord said he had just had an inquiry for a clerk in one
of the assay offices, and that he would introduce me at dinner to the
proprietor, which he did, with the result that I obtained the position
which was much to my present mind as it afforded the opportunities I
desired for reducing my knowledge of minerals to practice.
Next morning I assumed my new duties, which I found interesting and
agreeable, for they brought me in contact with the best mining ability,
both practical and theoretical, that the world afforded, and I was
eager to improve them and impatient to make my fortune, and return to
my Mecca, toward which I worshiped day and night. Doubtless I committed
the usual lover-like weakness of “sighing like a furnace,” but never
the kindred one of writing a ballad to my mistress’ eyebrow, owing to
the fact that in spite of my yearning passion I found it impossible
to be poetical, and never in my life had been known to turn a single
rhyme. I made but few acquaintances among the conglomerate population,
where ex-ministers of the gospel lay down to rest, side by side, with
blacklegs and professional gamblers, and that still more degraded
specimen in his line of business, the “sure thing” man. He it was who
blackened the fair fame of the professional in the latter’s opinion,
and brought his honorable(?) profession into disrepute, and himself
into unsavory prominence because an undiscriminating public insisted
upon writing them down in the same category. His protest to me had much
the same ring as that which the keepers of apothecary shops in Western
States send forth, because some thoughtless and illogical persons
insist on thinking of them when saloonists are mentioned, not because
they ever stoop to the degrading business of selling a glass of liquor
over the bar or counter--begging his pardon--but because they as good
and law-abiding citizens choose to enjoy the legal right to sell it by
the quart, gallon and jugful. While my city training had not made me
over nice in moral distinctions, yet I confess to a somewhat creeping
sensation when I saw a prominent druggist in Leadville kneeling at the
altar in a prominent evangelical church to receive the solemn rites of
ordination as an elder in said church, on a Sabbath morning, rise and
hurry through with his noonday meal and away to his place of business
to prepare several demijohns of whiskey for the outgoing stage bound
for some mining camp beyond the railroad facilities.
But I have already stated that my researches into human nature since
leaving the genial, exhilarating atmosphere of the schoolroom had
tended to make me somewhat cynical; so I beg my readers not to mind
me in the least, to merely regard this spleeny digression as another
evidence that my mind has become soured by want of success, and that my
present position on morals is owing rather to an abnormal condition of
the liver than to firm principles.
Speaking of acquaintances, however, there was one whose influence had
grown upon me, day by day, and who had seemed as assiduously bent on
cultivating my friendship as I was flattered by his; for I had from
the first hour I met him placed implicit confidence in our old friend
of the flaming garment, nor have I to this hour found the smallest
reason to change my opinion. Neither is this intended as a tribute to
my acumen in reading human nature, but rather as a tribute to his open
nature that presented no difficulties to the dullest reader. Of course,
I inquired regularly as to the prospects of our mine, as he penetrated
into the ledge, but the answers were rather unsatisfactory though on
the whole he said the prospects were a little more cheering than when I
first viewed my Golconda.
So the month of June had almost slipped away, and he would complete
his job in two days more, when, one evening, he said the ledge was
opening up again in fine shape and if she kept on as she promised now
she would yet be a hummer. The next evening the reports were still more
favorable, and The Little Pittsburg began again to become one of the
themes among the knowing ones.
One day now remained of his allotted test work, and I waited in
feverish anxiety for the old miner’s final report. As soon as office
hours were over I hastened to our hotel to learn the results. Abner had
not yet returned, but I did not have long to wait in suspense, and when
he came he assured me with fatherly pleasure that I had struck it rich!
But my faith had been too rudely shattered once to soar very high on
the subject of the strike. I began to have some offers for my interest
that night, and the next morning I was waited upon by the Wilson
brothers, who offered me ten thousand dollars for the shares owned by
myself and uncle. I had been clothed with full power to negotiate and
transfer his stock with mine in case I saw fit to sell, and, without
waiting to seek the advice of my old friend, or hesitating a moment,
I accepted the offer of what appeared to me quite a fortune. When I
advised my old friend of my deal he rated me roundly, and called me
some rather uncomplimentary names; said I needed a guardian, and that I
could just as well have pocketed a cool hundred thousand as the paltry
ten thousand. I tried to feel badly over my foolish transaction, but
failed to feel any compunction at parting with a possession that had
been from the first somewhat of a white elephant on my hands.