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CLEMXNS.) ^ '] FULLY ILLUSTRATED BY EMINENT ARTISTS. m i M r TORONTO: BELFORP & Co., PUBLISHERS, 1880. ?s IS*** I » calvht b. EzaszE, Of C luonli, la BoBMi Xu, % OnU Cemndi, ud » StMl&rt lUmA, TEZS BOOZ ZS nTSCBZBED B7 th« Atttitor, b XiBoiy of thi Cuiou Urn* Wk« Wa Two wm iiiuj;)iiiBi8 ra tin sato. This book is merely a personal narrative, and not a preteij tious liistory or a philosophical dissertation. It is a record several years of variegated vagabondizing, and its object is ratW to help the resting reader while away an idle hour than affliJ him with metaphysics, or goad him with science. Still, there! information in the volume; information concerning an int^ esting episode in the history of the Far West, about which books have been written by persons who were on the ground i person, and saw the happenings of the time with their own eyej I allude to the rise, growth and culmination of the silver-miiiiij fever in Nevada— a curious episode, in some respects; the.ou one, of its peculiar kind, that has occurred in the land ; and i only one, indeed, that is likely to occut in it. Yes, take it all around, there is quite a good deal of inforn tion in the book. I regret this very much ; but really it coij not be helped : information appears to stew out of me natui like the precious ottar of roses out of the otter. Sometime has seemed to me that I would "give worlds if I could retain i facts ; but it cannot be. The more I calk up the sources, and tighter I get, the more I leak wisdom. Therefore, I can oj claim indulgence at the hands of the reader, not justificatij THE AUTHUl ROUGHING IT. CHAPTER I. "Y brother had just been appointed Secretary of Nevada Territory— an office of such mnjesty that it concentrated itself the duties and dignities of Treasurer, Comptroller, ^cretary of State, and Acting Governor in the Governor's ^sence. A salary of eighteen hundred dollars a year and the title " Mr. Secretary," gave to the great position an air of wild and ^posing grandeur. I was young and ignorant, and I envied my >ther. I coveted his distinction and his financial splendor, it particularly and especially the long, strange journey he was ling to make, and the curious new worM he was going to explore. was going to travel I I never had been away from home, and it word "travel" had a seductive charm for me. Pretty soon would be hundreds and hundreds of miles away on the great tins and deserts, and among the mountains of the Far West, would see buffaloes and Indians, and pniirie dogs, and ante- jies, and have all kinds of adventures, and may be get hanged [scalped, and have ever such r« fine time, and write home and us all about it, and be a hei c . And he would see the gold les and the silver mines, and maybe go about of an afternoon )n his work was done, and pick up two or three pailfuls of jning slugs, and nuggets of gold and silver on the hillside. by and by he would become very rich, and return home by |, and be able to talk as calmly about San Francisco and the jan, and '* the isthmus" as if it was nothing of any conse- (nee to have seen those marvels face to face. What I suffered |:ontemplating his happiness, pen cannot describe. And so, m he offered me, in cold blood, the sublime position of private retary under him, it appeared to me that the heavens and earth passed away, and the firmament was rolled together ■i I t.:,! 6 ROUOHINO IT. as a scroll t I had nothing more to desire. My contentment was complete. At the end of an hour or two I was ready for the journey. Not much packing up was necessary, because we were going in the overland stage from the Missouri frontier to Nevada, and passengers were only allowed a small quantity of baggage apiece. There was no Pacific railroad in those fine times of ten or twelve years ago— not a single rail of it. I only proposed' to stay in Nevada three months — I had no thought of staying longer than that. I meant to see all I could that was new and strange, and then hurry home to business. I ' little thought that I would not see the end of that three-month pleasure excursion for six or seven uncommonly long years I I dreamed all night about Indians, deserts, and silver bars, and in due time, next day, we took shipping at the St. Louis { wharf on board a steamboat bound up the Missouri River. We were six days going from St. Louis to '* St. Jo." — a trip that I was so dull, and sleepy, and eventless that it has left no more impression on my memory than if its duration had been six minutes instead of that many days. No record is left in my mind, now, concerning it, but a confused jumble of savage-looking snags, which we deliberately walked over with one wheel or the other ; and of reefs which we butted and butted, and then retired from and climbed over in some softer place ; and of sand-bars which we roosted on occasionally, and rested, and then got out our crutches and sparred over. In fact, the boat might almost as well have gone to St. Jo. by land, for she was walking most of the time, anyhow — climbing over reefs and clambering over snags patiently and laboriously all day long. The captain said she was I a " bully" boat, and all she wanted was more " shear" and a biggerl wheel. I thought she wanted a pair of stilts, but I had the deep| sagacity not to say so. BOUOHXKO XT. CHAPTER II. THE first thing we did on that glad evening that landed us at I St. Joseph was to hunt up the stage-offloe, and pav a hundred ind fifty dollars apiece for tickets per overland coach to Carson /ity, Nevada. The next morning, bright and early, we took a hnsty breakfast, land hurried to the starting place. Then an inconvenience pre* jsented itself which we had not properly appreciated before, Innmely, that one cannot make a heavy traveling trunk stand for Itwenty-five pounds of baggage — because it weighs a good deal Imore. But that was all we could take— twenty-five pounds each. So we had to snatch our trunks open, and make a selection in a [good deal of a hurry. We put our lawful twenty 'five pounds apiece lall in one valise, and shipped the trunks back to St. Louis again, jit was a sad parting, for now we had no swallow tail coats and ■white kid gloves to wear at Pawnee receptions in the Rocky ■Mountains, and no stove pipe hats nor patent-leather boots, nor [anything else necessary to make life calm and peaceful. We ■were reduced to a war-footing. Each of us put on a rough, heavy [suit of clothing, woolen army shirt and " stogy" boots included ; land into the valise we crowded a few white shirts, some under [clothing and such things. My brother, the Secretary, took along ibout four pounds of United States statutes and six pounds of [Unabridged Dictionary ; for we did not know — poor innocents— (that such things could be bought in San Francisco on one day ind received in Carson City the next. I was armed to the teeth rith a pitiful little Smith & Wesson's seven-shooter, which carried ball like a homoeopathic pill, and it took the whole seven to* lake a dose for an adult. But I thought it was grand. It ap )eared to me to be a dangerous weapon. It only had one fault— ^ou could not hit anything with it. One of our " conductor" )racticed awhile on a cow with it, and as long as she stood still md behaved herself she was safe ; but as soon as she went to loving about, and he got to shooting at other things, she camj to Erief. The Secretary bad a snlall-Bized Colt's revolver strapped 8 RQUORIMO IT. around him for protection against the Indians, and to guard against accidents he carried it uncapped. Mr. George Bemis was dismally formidable. George Bemis was our fellow-traveler. We had never seen him before. He wore in his belt an old original '* Allen" revolver, such as irreverent people called a " pepper- box." Simply drawing t" *« trigger back, cocked and fired the pistol. As the trigger cam back, the hammer would begin to rise and the barrel lo turn over, and presently down would drop the hammer, and away would speed the ball. To aim along the turning barrel and hit tho thing aimed at was a feat which was probably never done with an " Allen" in the world. But George's was a reliable weapon, nevertheless, because, as one of the stage- drivers afterward said, " If she didn't get what she went after, she would fetch something else." And so she did. She went after a deuce of spades nailed against a tree, once, and fetched a mule standing about thirty yards to the left of it. Bemis did not want the mule ; but the owner came out with a double-barreled shotgun and persuaded him to buy it, anyhow. It was a cheerful weapon — the " Allen." Sometimes all its six barrels would go off at once, and then there was no safe place in all the region round about, but behind it. We took two or three blankets for protection against frosty weather in the mountains. In the matter of luxuries we were modest — we took none along but some pipes and five pounds of smoking tobacco. We had two large canteens to carry water 4fr, between stations on the Plains, and we also took with us a little shot-bag of silver coin for daily expenses in the way of breakfasts and dinners. By eight o'clock everything was ready, and we were on the other side of the river. We jumped into the stage, the driver oracked his whip, and we bowled awny and left " the States" behind us. It was a superb summer morning, and all the land- scape was brilliant with sunshine. There was a freshness and breeziness, too, and an exhilarating sense of emancipation from all sorts of cares and responsibilities, that almost made us feel that the years we had spent in the close, hot city, toiling and slaving, had been wasted and thrown away. We were spinning along through Kansas, and in the course of an hour and a half we were fairly abroad on the great Plains. Just here the land was rolling — a grand sweep of regular elevations and depressions BOUOHINO IT. 9 M far M the eye could reach — like the stately heave and swell of the ocean's bosom after a storm. And everywhere were corn- fields, accenting with squares of deeper green, this limitless expanse of grassy land. But presently this se.- upon dry ground was to lose its " rolling" character and stretch away for seven hundred miles as level as a floor I Our coach was a great swinging and swaying str.gp, of the most sumptuous description- -an imposing cradle on wheels. It was drawn by six handsome horses, and by the side of the driver sat the " conductor," the legitimate captam of the craft ; for it was his business to take charge and care of the mails, baggage, express matter, and passengers. We three were the only passen- gers, this trip. We sat on the back seat, inside. About all the rest of the coach was full of mail bags — for we had three days' delayed mails with us. Almost touching our knees, a perpendi- cular wall of mail matter rose up to the roof. There was a greut pile of it strapped on top of the stage, ..rid both the fore and hind boots were full. We had twenty-seven hundred pounds of it aboard, the driver said — " a little for Brigham, and Carson, and 'Frisco, but the heft of it for the Injuns, which is powerful troublesome 'thout they get plenty of truck to read." But as he just then got up a fearful convulsion of his countenance which was suggestive of a wink being swallowed by an earth- quake, we guessed that his remark was intended to be facetious, aAd to mean that we would unload the most of our mail matter somewhere on the Plains and leave it to the Indians, or whoso- i ever wanted it. We changed horses every ten miles, all day long, and fairly I flew over the hard, level road. We jumped out and stretched our legs every time the coach stopped, and so the night found I us still vivacious and unfatigued. After supper a woman got in, who lived about fifty miles I further on, and we three had to take turns at sitting outside with the driver and conductor. Apparently she was not a talka- tive woman. She would sit there in the gathering twilight and fasten her steadfast eyes on a mosquito rooting into her arm, and slowly she would raise her other hand till she had got his range, and then she would launch a slap at him that would have jolted a cow ; and after that she would sit and contemplate the corpse 10 BOUaHINO IT. with tranquil Batisfaction — for she never missed her mosquito ; she was a dead shot at short range. She never removed a car- case, but left them there for bait. I sat by this grim Sphynz and watched her kill thirty or forty mosquitoes — watched her, and waited for her io say something, but she never did. So I finally opened the conversation myself. I said : " The mosquitoes are pretty bad about here, madam." "You betl" " What did I understand you to say, madam 7" " You BUT I" Then she cheered up, and faced around and said : " Danged if I didn't begin to think you fellers was deef and dumb. I did, b' gosh. Here I've sot, and sot, and sot, abust'n muskeeters and wonderin' what was ailin' ye. Fust I thot you was deef and dumb, then I thot you was s'.ck or crazy, or suthin', and then by anstick every spring he makes, and scatters miles behind him with an easy in- ditt'erence that is enchanting. Our party made this specimen " hump himself," as the con- ductor said. The Secretary started him with a shot from the Colt ; I commenced spitting at him with my weapon ; and all in the same instant the old " Allen's ' whole broadside let go with a rattling crash, and it is not putting it too strong to say that the rabbit was frantic I He dropped his ears, set up his tail, and left for San Francisco at a speed which can only be described as a flash and a vanish 1 Long after he was out of sight we could hear him whiz. I do not remember where we first came across " sage-brush," but as I have been speaking of it I may as well describe it. This is easily done, for if the reader can imagine a gnarled and ven* erable live oak-tree reduced to a little shrub two (eet high, with its rough bark, its foliage, its twisted boughs, all complete, he can picture the " s ige-brush" exactly. Often, on lazy afternoons in the mountains, J have lain on the ground with my face under a sage-brush, and entertained myself with fancying that the gnats among its foliage were liliputian birds, and that the ants march- ing and countermarching about its base were liliputian flocks and herds, and myself some vast loafer from Brobdignag waiting to catch a little citizen and eat him. It is an imposing monarch of the forest in exquisite miniature, is the " sage-brush." Its foliage is a grayish grsen, and gives that tint to desert and mountain. It smells like our domestic sage, and " sage-tea" made from it tastes like the sage-tea which all boys are so well acquainted with. The sage-brush is a singularly hardy plant, and grows right in the midst of deep sand, and BOTTOHING IT. 15 among barren rocltB, where nothing else in the vegetable world would trv to grow, except "bunch grass."* The sage-bushes grow from three to six or seven feet apart, all over the mountains and deserts of the Far West, clear to the borders of California. There is not it tree of any kind in the deserts, for hundreds of miles— there is no vegetation at all in a regular desert, except the sage brush and its cousin the " grease wood," which is so much like the sage-brush that the ditference amounts to little. Camp fires and hot suppers in the deserts would be impossible but for the friendly sage brush. Its trunk is as large as a boy's wrist and from that up to a man's arm), and its crooked branches are half as large as its trunk — all good, sound, hard wood, very like oak. When a party camps, the first thing to be done is to cut sage- j brush ; and in a few minutes there is an opulent pile of it ready I for use. A hole a foot wide, two feet deep, and two feet long, is dug, and sage-brush chopped up and burned in it till it is full to the brim with glowing coals. Then the cooking begins, and there i is no smoke, and consequently no swearing. Such a fire will I keep all night, with very little replenishing ; and it makes a very sociable camp-fire, and one around which the most impossi- ble reminiscences sound plausible, instructive, and profoundly I entertaining. Sage-brush is very fair fuel, but as a vegetable it is a distin- Iguished failure. !Nothmg can abide the taste of it but the jackass and his illegitimate child the mule. But their testimony to its nutritiousness is worth nothing, for they will eat pine knots, or anthracite coal, or brass filings, or lead pipe, or old bottles, or anything that comes handy, and then go oti' looking as grateful las if they had had oysters for dinner. Mules and donkeys and Icamels have appetites that anything will relieve temporarily, but Inothing satisfy. In Syria, once, at the head waters of the Jordan, la camel took charge of my overcoat while the tents were being Ipitched, and examined it with a critical eye, all over, with as « " Bunoh-grut** growa on the bleak monntoin-sides of Nevada and neighboring j territories, and offers excellent feed for stock, even in the dead of winter, wherever jthesnow is blown aside and exposes it; notwithstanding its unpromising home, Ibunch-grass is a better and more nattitioos diet for cattle md honw (bw almoit lany other hagr or grata that is known^-ao atook-men aay, It 16 ROUOHINO IT. liil' much interest as if he had an idea of getting one made like it ; and then, after he was done figuring on it as an article of apparel, he began to contemplate it as an article of diet. He put his foot on it, and lifted one of the sleeves out with his teeth, and chewed and chewed at it, gradually taking it in, and all the while opening and closing his eyes in a kind of religious ecstasy, as if he had never tasted anything as good as an overcoat before, in his life. Then he smacked his lips once or twice, and reached after the other sleeve. Next he tried the velvet collar, and smiled a smile of such contentment that it was plain to see that he regf.rded that as the daintiest thing about an overcoat. The tails went next, along with some percussion caps and cough candy, and! some fig-paste from Constantinople. And then my newspaperl correspondence dropped out, and he took a chance in that— I manuscript letters written for the home papers. But he wasl treading on dangerous ground, now. He began to come acrossj solid wisdom in those documents that was rather weighty on I stomach ; and occasionally he would take a joke that would! shake him up till it loosened his teeth ; it was getting to be! perilous times with him, but he held his grip with good courage! and hopefully, till at last he began to stumble on statements! that not even a camel could swallow with impunity. He began! to gag and gasp, and his eyes to stand out, and his forelegs tol spread, and in alxiut a quarter of a minute he fell over as stiffl as a carpenter's work bench, and died a death of indescribablef agony. I went and pulled the manuscript out of his mouth, and! found that the sensitive creature had choked to death on one ofl the mildest and gentlest statements of fact that I ever laid| before a trusting public. 1 was about to say, when diverted from my subject, that occa-l sionally one finds sage-bushes five or six feet high, and with al spread of branch and foliage in proportion, but two or two andl a half feet is the usual height. |i!!i!i III: BOUOHINO IT. 17 CHAPTER IV. S the sun went down and the evening chill came on, we made preparation for bed. We stirred up the hard leather itter-sacks, and the knotty canvas bags of printed matter motty and uneven because of projecting ends and corners of lagazines, boxes and books). We stirred them up and redis* ^osed them in such a way as to make our bed as level as possible. Lnd we did improve it, too, though after all our work it had an Upheaved and billowy look about it, like a little piece of a stormy }a. Next we hunted up our boots from odd nooks among the lail-bags where they had settled, and put them on. Then we ^ot down our coats, vests, pantaloons and heavy woolen shirts, rom the arm-loops where they had been swinging all day, and |lothed ourselves in thbm — for, their being no ladies either at le stations or in the coach, and the weather being hot, we had )oked to our comfort by stripping to our underclothing, at nine 'clock in the morning. All things being now ready, we stowed le uneasy Dictionary where it would lie as quiet as possible, and flaced the water-canteens and pistols where we could find them the dark. Then we smoked a final pipe, and swapped a final [am ) after which, we put the pipes, tobacco and a bag of coin snug holes and caves among the mail-bags, and then fastened [own the coach curtains all around, and made the place as " dark the inside of a cow," as the conductor phrased it in his pictu* isque way. It was certainly as dark as any place could be— |othing was even dimly visible in it. And finally, we rolled our- slves up like silk-worms, each person in his own blanket, and mk peacefully to sleep. Whenever the stage stopped to change horses, we would wake |p, and try to recollect where we were — and succeed — and in a linute or two the stage would be off again, and we likewise. We legan to get into country, now, threaded here and there with 18 ItOVOHINO IT. ill! little streams. These had high, steep banks on each side, and every time we flew down one bank and scrambled up the other, our party inside got mixed somewhat. First we would all be down in a pile at the forward end of the stage, nearly in a sitting posture, and in a second we would shoot to the other end, and stand on our heads. And we would sprawl and kick, too, and ward otf ends and corners of mail-bags thai came lumbering over us and about us ; and as the dust rose from the tumult, we would all sneeze in chorus, and the majority of us would grumble, and probably say some hasty thing, like: "Take your elbow out of | my ribs I— can't you quit crowding ? " Every time we avalanched from one end of the stage to the other, the Unabridged Dictionary would come too ; and every time it came it damaged somebody. One trip it '* barked " the Secretary's elbow ; the next trip it hurt me in the stomach, and the third it tilted Bemis's nose up till he could look down his nostrils — he said. The pistols and coin soon settled to the bot- tom, but the pipes, pipe-stems, tobacco and canteens clattered and floundered after the Dictionary every time it made an assault on us, and aided and abetted the book by spilling tobacco in our eyes, and water down our backs. Still, all things considered, it was a very comfortable night. It wore gra(jually away, and when at last a cold gray light was visi- ble through the puckers and chinks in the curtains, we yawned and stretched with satisfaction, shed our cocoons, and felt that we had slept as much as was necessary. By and by, as the sun rose up and warmed the world, we pulled off our clothes and got ready for breakfast. We were just pleasantly in time, for five minutes afterward the driver sent the weird music of his bugle winding over the grassy solitudes, and presently we detected a low hut or two in the distance. Then the rattling of the coach, the clatter of our six horses' hoofs, and the driver's crisp com- mands, awoke to a louder and stronger emphasis, and we went | sweeping down on the station at our smartest speed. It wa^ fascinating — that old overland stage coaching. We jumped out in undress uniform. The driver tossed his gathered reins out on the ground, gaped and stretched compia- ROUOHINO IT. 19 so la our santly, drew off his heavy buckskin gloves with great deliberation and insufferable dignity — taking not the slightest notice of a dozen solicitous inquiries after his health, and humbly facetious and flattering accostings, and obsequious tenders of service, from five or six hairy and half-civilized station-keepers and hostlers who were nimbly unhitching our steeds and bringing the fresh team out of the stables — for in the eyes of the stage-driver of that day, station-keepers and hostlers were a sort of good enough low creatures, useful in their place, and helping to make up a world, but not the kind of beings which a person of distinction could aflford to concern himself with ; while, on the contrary, in the eyes of the station-keeper and the hostler, the stage-driver was a hero — a great and shining dignitary, the world's favorite son, the envy of the people, the observed of the nations. When they spoke to him they received his insolent silence meekly, and as being the natural and proper conduct of so great a man ; when he opened his lips they all hung on his words with admira- tion (he never honored a particular individual with a remark, but addressed it with a broad generality to the horses, the stables, the surrounding country and the human underlings) ; when he discharged a facetious insulting personality at a hostler, that hostler was happy for the day j when he uttered his one jest — old as the hills, coarse, profane, witless, and inflicied on the same audience, in the same language, every time his coach drove up there —the varlets roared, and slapped their thighs, and swore it was the best thing they'd ever heard in all their lives. And how they would fly around when he wanted a basin of water, a gourd of the same, or a light for his pipe!— but thfy would instantly insult a passenger if he so far forgot himself as to crave a favor at their hands. They could do that sort of insolence as well as the driver they copied it from— for, let it be borne in mind, the overland driver had but little less contempt for his passengers than he had for his hostlers. The hostlers and station keepers treated the really powerful conductor of the coach merely with the best of what was their idea of civility, but the driver was the only being they bowed down to and worshiped. How admiringly they would gaze up at him in his high seat as he gloved himsttlf with lingerixig dellb' B^ I' II 20 Rouaimco it. ii eration, while some happy hostler held the bunch of reins aloft, and waited patiently for him to take it I And how they would bombard him with glorifying ejaculations as he cracked his long whip and went careering away. The station buildings were long, low huts, made of sun-dried, mud colored bricks, laid up without mortar (adi»bes, the Spaniarns call these bricks, and Americans shorten it to ^dobies). The root's, which had no slant to them worth speaking of, were thatched and then sodded or covered with a thick layer of earth, and from this sprung a pretty rank growth of weeds and grass. It was the first time we had ever seen a man's front yard on top of his house. The buildings consisted of barns, stable room for twelve or fifteen horses, and a hut for an eating- room for passen- gers. This latter had bunks in it for the station-keeper and a hostler or two. You could rest your elbows on its eaves, and you had to bend in order to get in at the door. In place of a window there was a square hole about large enough for a man to crawl through, but this had no glass in it. There was no flooring, but the ground was packed hard. There* was no stove, but the fire- place served all needful purposes. There were no shelve:?, no cupboards, no closets. In a corner stood an open sack of flour, and nestling against its base were a couple of black and venerable coffeepots, a tin tea pot, a little bag of salt, and a side of bacon. By the door of the station keeper's den, outside, was a tin wash-basin, on the ground. Near it was a pail of water and a piece of yellow bar soap, and from the eaves hung a hoary blue woolen shirt, significantly — but this latter was the station- keeper's private towel, and only two persons in all the party might venture to use it — the stage driver and the conductor. The latter would not, from a sense of decency ; the former would not, because he did not choose to encourage the advances of a station-keeper. We had towels — in the valise ; they might as well been in Sodom and Gomorrah. We (and the conductor) used our handkerchiefs, and the driver his pantaloons and sleeves. By the door, inside, was fastened a small old fashioned looking- glass, with two little fragments of the original mirror lodged in one corner of it. This arrangement afforded a pleasant double- barreled portrait of you when you looked into it, with one half of I ROUOHmO IT. 21 your head set up a couple of inches above the other half. From the glass frame hung the half of a comb by a string— but if 1 hud to describe that patriarch or die, I believe I would order some sample coffins. It had come down from Esau and Samson, and had been accumulating hair ev- an heir loom. er since— along with cer- tain impurities. In one corner of the room stood three or four rifles and muskets, together with horns and pouches of ammunition. The station men wore pantaloons of coarse, country-woven stuff and into the seat and inside of the legs were sewed ample addi- tions of buckskin, to do duty in place of leggings, when the man rode horseback— so the pants were half dull blue and half yellow, and unspeakably picturesque. The pants were stuffed into the tops of high boots, the heels whereof were armed with great Sjianish spurs, whose little iron clogs and chains jingled with every step. The man wore a huge beard and mustachois, an old slouch hat, a blue woolen shirt, no suspenders, no vest, no coat- in a leathern sheath in his belt, agreat long "navy" revolver (slung on right side, hammer to the front), and projecting from his boot a horn-handled bow ie knife. The furniture of the hut was neither gorgeous or much in the way. The rocking-chairs and sofas were not present, and never had been, but they were represented by two three-legged stools, a pine-board bench four feet long, and two empty candle-boxes. The table was a greasy board on stilts, and the table cloth and napkins had not come — and they were not looking for them, either. A battered tin platter, a knife and fork, and a tin pint cup, were at each man's place, and the driver had a queensware saucer that had seen better days. Of course I this duke sat at the head of the table. There was one isolated piece of table furniture that bore about it a touching air of gran- deur in misfortune. This was the caster. It was German silver, I and crippled and rusty, but it was so preposterously out of place there that it was suggestive of a tattered exiled king among I barbarians, and the majesty of its native position compelled respect even in its degradation. There was only one cruet left, . I 22 ROUOHINO IT. 1- and that was a stopporlcss fly-specked, broken-necked thing, with two inches of vinegai- in it, and a dozen preserved flic .ilh their heels up and looking sorry they had invested there. The station-keeper upended a disk of la.t week's bread, of the shape and size of an old-time cheese, and carved some slabs from it which were as good as Nicholbon pavement, and tenderer. lie sliced off a piece of bacon for each man, but only the ex- perienced old hands made out to eat it, for it was condemned army bacon which the United States would not feed to its fc< 'Idters in the forts, and the sttige company had bought it \ ' f w the sustenance of their passengers and employe'^. Wo maj have found this condemned army bacon further mit on tbo plains than the section I am locating it in, but we found it — theru is no gain- saying that. Then he poured for us a beverage which ho called '♦ Slumgtd- lion," and it is hard to think hevas not inspired when he named it. It really pretended to be tea, but there was too much dinh- rag, and sand, and old bacon-rind in it to deceive the intelligent! traveler. He had no sugar and no milk — not eve^ a spoon to stir | the ingredients with. We could not eat the bread or the meat, nor drink the " slum- guUion.' And when I looked at that melanclioly vinegar-cruet, I thought of the anecdote (a very, very old one, even at that day) ot the traveler who sat down to a table which had nothing on it but a mackerel and a pot of mustard. He asked the landlord if this was all. The landlord said : "All! Why, thunder and lightning, I should think there was mackerel enough there for six." " But 1 don't like mackerel." " Oh — then help yourself to the mustard." In other days 1 had c^m id( retl it a good, a very good, anecdote, j but tlure was a dismal »)!ausl' Hi ):y about > here, that took all the humor out of it. ^ Our breakfast was before us, but our teeth were idle. I tasted and smelt, and said I would take cofl'ee, I believed. | The station-boss stopped dead still, and glared at me speechless. At last, when he came to, he turned away and said, as one who communes with himself upon a matter too vast to grasp : m':! ROUOHINO IT, 28 " Coffee I Well, if that don't go clean ahead of me, I'm d— d I" Wo could not (»ac, and there was no oonversution amottg tl># bOHtlers urvd h^rdatnen -w« all Hut at the same board. Al It^ast there wan no conVt^rHation furthur than u single liunied Truest, now and th( n, from n employe to another. It wa^ Always in the same form, and always gruffly fiLendly. Its western freshness and novelty startled me, at Kri^t, and interested i «« ; but it pre* sently grew monotonous, and lout its charm. It was : " Pass the bread, you son of a skunk!" N'>, 1 forget — skunit ;Ta8 not the word ; it seems to me it was s ill stronger than that^ I know it was, in fact, but it is gone from rnv memory, apparen ily. However, it is no matter— probably it «as loo strong for pn 4, any.vay. It is the landmark in my memory which tells me wher^ I first encountered the vigorous new veruacular of the uer'denta plains and mountains. We gave up the breakfast, and paid our dollar apiece and went back to our mail-bag bed in the coach, ; id i'ound comfort in our pipes. Right here we suffered the first uiminution of our princely state. We left our six fine horses and took six mules in their place. But these wore wild Mexican fellows, and a man had to stand at the head of each of them and hold him fast while the driver gloved and got himself ready. And when at last he grasped the reins and gave the word, the men sprung suddenly away from the mules' heads and the coach shot from the station as if it had issued from a cannon. How the frantic animals did scamper I It was a fierce and furious gallop — and the g lit never altered for a moment till we reeled off ten or twelve miles and swept up to the next collection of little station huts and s rabies. So we flew along all day. At 2 p, m. the belt of timber that fringes the North Platte and marks its windings through the vast level floor of the Plains came in sight. At 4 p. m. we crossed a branch of the river, and at 5 p. m. we crossed the Platte itself, and landed at Fort Kearney, fifty-six hours ou t from St. Jue — THREE HUNPREP MILES | Now that was stage-coaching on the great overland, ten or twelve years ago, when perhaps not more than ten men in Ame- rica, all told, expected to live to see a railroad follow that route to the Pacific. But the railroad is there, now, and it pictures a 24 ROUGHING IT. 'M \ thousand odd comparisons and contrasts in my mind to read the following sketch, in the New York TimeSf of a recent trip over | almost the very ground I have been describing. I can scarcely comprehend the new state of things : "ACROSS THE CONTINENT. "At 4.20 P.M., Sunday, we rolled out of the station at Omaha, and started westward on our long jaunt. A couple of hours out, dinner wm announced — an ' event' to those of us who had yet to experience whtt FULHAN CAR DINING-SALOOX. ROUGHING IT. |t is to eat in one of Pullman's hotels on wheels ; so, stepping into the %r next forward of our sleeping palace, we found ourselves in the din- 3g-car. It was a revelation to us, that first dinner on Sunday. And though we continued to dine for four days, and had as many breakfasts Ind suppers, our whole party never ceased to admire the perfection of le arrangements, and the marvelous results achieved. Upon tables Covered with snowy linen, and garnished with services of solid silver, Cthiop waiters, flitting about in spotless white, placed as by magic a epast at which Delmonico himself could have had no occasion to blush ; id, indeed, in some respects it would be hard for that distinguished l^^to match our menu ; for, in addition to all that ordinarily makes up first-chop dinner, had we not our antelope steak (the gormand who ^as not experienced this — bah ! what does he know of the feast of fat lings?) our delicious mountain-brook trout, and choice fruits and terries, and (sauce piquant and unpurchasable !) our sweet-scented, Ippetite-compelling air of the prairies ? You may depend upon it, we 111 die. justice to the good things, and as we washed them down with jumpers of sparkling Krug, whilst we sped along at the rate of thirty liles an hour, agreed it was the fastest living we had ever experienced. |\Ve beat that, however, two days afterward when we made twenty- \ven miles in twenty-seven minutes, while our Champagne glasses filled the brim spilled not a drop !) After dinner we repaired to our draw- |ig-room car, and, as it was Sabbath eve, intoned some of the grand old lymns—" Praise God from whom," etc. ; "Shining Shore," "Corona- ion," etc. — the voices of the men singers and of the women singers [lending sweetly in the evening air, while our train, with its great, [laring Polyphemus eye, lighting up long vistas of prairie, rushed into le night and the Wild. Then to bed in lus^urious couches, where we kept the sleep of the jus^' and only awoke the next morning (Monday) eight o'clock, to fiT.i ourselves at the crossing of the North Platte, iiree hundred miles from Omaha.— J{fteen hours and forty minutes out." 26 BOUOHING IT. CHAPTER V. A NOTHER night of alternate tranquility and turmoil. But -^^ morning came, by and by. It was another glad awakening to fresh breezes, vast expanses of level greensward, bright sun- light, an impressive solitude utterly without visible human beingg or human habitations, and an atmosphere of such amazing mag- nifying properties that trees that seemed close at hand were more than three miles away. We resumed undress uniform, climbed a-top of the dying coach, dangled our legs over the side, shouted occasionally at our frantic mules, merely to see them lay their ears back and scamper faster, tied our hats on to keep our hair from blowing away, and levelld an outlook over the world- wide carpet about us for things new and strange to gaze at. Even at this day it thrills me through and through to think of the life, the gladness and the wild sense of freedom that used to make the blood dance in my veins on those fine overland mornings I Along about an hour after breakfast we saw the first prairie-dog villages, the first antelope, and the first wolf. If I remember rightly, this latter was the regular cayote (pronounced ky-o-te of the farther deserts. And if it waa, he was not a pretty creature or respectable either, for 1 got well acquainted with his race afterward, and can speak with confidence. The cayote is a long, slim sick and sorry-looking skeleton, with a gray wolf-skin stretched over it, a tolerably bushy tail that forever sags down with a despairing expression of forsakenness and misery, a furtive and evil eye, and a long, sharp face, with slightly lifted lip and exposed teeth. He has a general slinking expression all over. The cayote is a living, breathing allegory of Want. He is always hungry. He is always poor, out of luck and friendless. The meanest creatures despise him, and even the fleas would desert him for a velocipede. He is so spiritless and cowardly that even while his exposed teeth are pretending a threat, the rest of his face is apologizing for it. And he is so homely ! — so scrawny, and ribby, and coarse«haired, and pitiful. When he sees you -he lifts ROUGHING IT. his lip and lets a flash of his teeth out, and then turns a little out of the course he was pursuing, depresses his head a bit, and 'strikes a long, soft- footed trot through the sage-brush, glancing over his shoulder at you, from time to time, till he is about out of easy pistol range, and then he stops and takes a deliberate survey of you ; he will trot fifty yards and stop again— another filty and stop again; and finally the gray of his gliding body blends with the gray of the sage-brush, and he disappears. All this is when you make no demonstration against him ; but if you do, he develops a livelier interest in his journey, and instantly electrifies his heels and puts such a deal of real estate between himself and your weapon, that by the time you have raised the hammer you see that you need a minie rifle, and by the time you have got him in line you need a rifled cannon, and by the time you have " drawn a bead" on him you see well enough that noth- ing but an unusually long-winded steak of lightning could reach him where he is now. But if you start a swift footed dog after him, you will enjoy it ever so much — especially if it is a dog that has a good opinion of himself, and has been brought up to think he knows something about speed. The cayote will go swinging gently off" on that deceitful trot of his, and every little while he will smile a fraudful smile over his shoulder that will fill that dog entirely full of. encouragement and worldly ambition, and make him lay his hea:igs and dug wells. He at- tended to the paying of the station-keepers, hostlers, drivers and blacksmiths, and discharged them whenever he chose. He was a very, very great man in his "division" — a kind of Grand Mogul, a Sultan of the Indies, in whose presence common men were modest of speech and manner, and in the glare of whose greatness even the dazzling stage-driver dwindled to a penny dip. There were about eight of these kings, all told, on the overland route. Next in rank and importance to the division agent came the " conductor." His beat was the same length as the agent's — two hundred and fifty miles. He sat with the driver, and (when necessary) rode that fearful distance, night and day, without other rest or sleep than what he could get perched thus on top of the flying vehicle. Think of it I He had absolute charge of the mails, express mattter, passengers and stage-coach, until he delivered them to the next conductor, and got his receipt for ROUOHINO IT. 31 them. Consequently he had to be a man of intelligence, deci- sion and considerable executive ability. He was usually a quiet, pleasant man, who attended closely to his duties, and was a good deal of a gentleman. It was not absolutely necessary that the division agent should be a gentleman, and occasionally he wasn't. But he was always a general in administrative ability, and a bull- dog in courage and determination — otherwise the chieftainship over the lawless underlings of the overland service would never in any instance have been to him anything but an equivalent for a month of insolence and distres3 and a bullet and a coffin at the end of it. There were about sixteen or eighteen conductors on the overland, for there was a daily stage each way, and a con- ductor oa every stage. Next in real and official rank and importance, after the con- ductor, came my delight, the driver — next in real but not in ap- parent importance— for we have seen that in the eyes of the common herd the driver was to the conductor as an admiral is to the captain of the flag-ship. The driver's beat was pretty long, and his sleeping-time at the stations pretty short, sometimes ; and so, but for the grandeur of his position his would have been a sorry life, as well as a hard and a wearing one. We took a new driver every day or every night (.for they drove backward and forward over the same piece of road all the time), and therefore we never got as well acquainted with them as we did with the conductors; and besides, they would have been above being familiar with such rubbish as passengers, anyhow, as a general thing. Still, we were always eager to get a sight of each and every now driver as soon as the watch changed, for each and every day we were either anxious to get rid of an unpleasant one, or loath to part with a driver we had learned to like and had come to be sociable and friendly with. And so the tirst question we asked the conductor whenever we got to where we were to exchange drivers, was always, '♦ AVhich is him ? " The grammar was faulty, maybe, but we could not know, then, that it would go into a book some day. As long as everything went smoothly, the overland driver was well enough situated, but if a fellow driver got sick suddenly it made trouble, for the coach must go on, and so the potentate who was about to climb down II I H ROUGHING IT. and take a luxurious rest after his lon^ night's siege in the midst of wind and rain and darkness, had tu stay where he was and do the sick man's work. Once, in the Rocky Mountains, when I found a driver sound asleep on the box, and the mules going at the usual break-neck pace, the conductor said never mind him, there was no danger, and he was doing double duty — had driven seventy five miles on one coach, and was now going back over it on this without rest or sleep. A hundred and fifty miles of hold- ing back of six vindictive mules and keeping them from climb- ing the trees I It sounds incredible, but I remember the state- ment well enough. The station-keepers, hostlers, etc., were low, rough characters, as already described ; and from Western Nebraska to Nevada a considerable sprinkling of them might be fairly set down as out- laws—fugitives from justice, criminals whose best security was a section of country which was without law and without even the pretence of it. When the " division agent " issued an order to one of these parties he did it with the full understanding that he might have to enforce it with a navy six-shooter, and so he always went " fixed " to make things go along smoothly. Now and then a division-agent was really obliged to shoot a hostler through the head to teach him some simple matter that he could have taught him with a club if his circumstances and sur- roundings had been different. But they were snappy, able men, those division-agents, and when they tried to teach a subordinate anything, that subordinate generally "got it through his head." A great portion of this vast machinery — these hundreds of men and coaches, and thousands of mules and horses — was in the hands of Mr. Ben Holiday. All the western half of the busi- ness was in his hands. This reminds me of an incident of Pales- tine travel which is pertinent here, and so I will transfer it just in the language in which 1 find it set down in my Holy Land note-book : learned in the ' Moses who i No doubt everybody has heard of Ben Holiday — a man of prodigious energy, who used to send mails and passengers flying across the con- tinent in his overland stage-coaches like a very whirlwind — two thou- sand long miles in fifteen days and a half, by the watch ! But this fragment of history is not about Ben Holiday, but about a young New ROUQHINO IT. York boy by the name of Jack, who traveled with our small party of pilgrims in the Holy Land (and who had traveled to Califo. i in Mr. Holiday's overland coaches three years before, and had by no means forgotten it or lost his gushing admiration of Mr. H.) Aged nineteen. Jack was a good boy — a good-hearted and always well-meaning boy, who had been reared in the city of New York, and although he was bright and knew a great many useful things, his Scriptural education had been a good deal neglected — to such a degree, indeed, that all Holy Land history was fresh and new to him, and all Bible names mysteries that had never disturbed his virgin ear. Also in our party was an elderly pilgrim who was the reverse of Jack, in that he was learned in the Scriptures and an enthusiast concerning them. He was our encyclopedia, and we were never tired of listening to his speeches, nor he of making them. He never passed a celebrated locality, from Bashan to Bethlehem, without illuminating it with an oration. One day, when camped near the ruins of Jericho, he burst forth with some- thing like this : " Jack, do you see that range of mountains over yonder that bounds the Jordan valley ? The mountains of Moab, Jack ! Think of it, my boy— the actual mountains of Moab— renowned in Scripture history ! We are actually standing face to face with those illustrious crags and peaks — and for all we know " [dropping his voice impressively], "our eyes may be resting at this very moment upon the spot WBXJis LI£S THX MYSTERIOUS GRAVE OF MosES ! Think of it. Jack ! " " Moses who ? " (falling inflection). "Moses who! Jack, you ought to be ashamed of yourself — you ought to be ashamed of such criminal ignorance. Why, Moses, the great guide, soldier, poet, lawgiver of ancient Israel ! Jack, from this spot where we stand, to Egypt, stretches a fearful «Iesert three hundred miles in extent — and across that desert that wonderful man brought the children of Israel ! — ^guiding them with unfailing sagacity for forty years over the sandy desolation and among the obstructing rocks and hills, and landed them at last, safe and sound, within sight of this very spot ; and where we now stand they entered the Promised Land with anthems of rejoicing! It was a wonderful, wonderful thing to do, Jack ! Think of it ! " ^' Forty years ? Only three hundred miles? Humph! Ben Holiday would have fetched them through in thirty-six hours ! " The boy meant no harm. He did not know that he had said any* thing that was wrong or irreverent. And so no one scolded him or t ii 84 BOUOHINO IT. felt offended with him — and nobo<1y couUl but some ungenerous spirit incapable of excusing the heedless blunders of a boy. At noon on the fifth day out, we arrived at the '' Crossing of the South Platte," alias " Julesburg," aita» "Overland City," four hundred and seventy miles from St. Joseph — the strangest, quaintest, funniest frontier town that our untraveled eyes had ever stared at and been astonished with. BouomMa IT. CHAPTEB VII. IT did seem strange enough to see a town again after what ap- peared to us such a long acquaintance with deep, still, almost lifeless and houseless solitude I We tumbled out into the busy street feeling like meteoric people crumbled off the corner of some other world, and wakened up suddenly in this. For an hour we took as much interest in Overland City as if we had never seen a town before. The reason we had an hour to spare was because we had to change our stage (for a less sump' tuous affair, called a " mud-wagon ") and transfer our freight of mails. Presently we got under way again. We came to the shallow, yellow, muddy South Platte, with its low banks and its scatter* ing flat sand-bars and l^igmy islands — a melancholy stream strag- gling through the centre of the enormous flat plain, and only saved from being iir.possible to find with the naked eye by its sentinel rank of scattering trees standing on either bank. The Platte was " up," they said — which made me wish I could see it when it was down, if it could look any sicker or sorrier. They said it was a dangerous stream to cross, now, because its quick- sands were liable to swallow up horses, coach and passengers if an attempt was made to ford it. But the mails had to go, and we made the attempt. Once or twice in midstream the wheels sunk into the yielding sands so threateningly that we half be- lieved we had dreaded and avoided the sea all our lives to be shipwrecked in a " mud-wagon " in the middle of a desert at last. But we dragged through and sped away toward the seting sun. Next morning, just before dawn, when about five hundred and fifty miles from St. Joseph, our mud-wagon broke down. We were to be delayed five or six hours, and therefore we took horses, by invitation, and joined a party who were just starting on a buffalo hunt. It was noble sport galloping over the plain in the dewy freshness of the morning, but our part of the hunt ended 86 BOUOBINO IT. in disaster and disgrace, for a wounded buffalo bull chased tho passenger Bemis nearly two miles, and then he forsook his horso and took a lone tree. He was very sullen about the matter for some twenty-four hours, but at last he began to soften little by little, then finally he said : " Well, it was not funny, and there was no sense in those gawks making themselves so facetious over it. I tell you I was angry in earnest for awhile. I should have shot that long gangly lubber they called Hank, if I could have done it without crippling six or seven other people— but of course I couldn't, the old 'Allen's ' so confounded comprohensive. I wish those loafers had been up in the tree ; they wouldn't have wanted to laugh so. If I had had a horse worth a cent— but no, the moment he saw that buffalo bull wheel on him he gave a bellow, he raised straight up in the air and stood on his heels. The saddle began to slip, and I took him round the neck and laid close to him, and began to pray. Then he came down and stood up on the other end awhile, and the bull actually stopped pawing sand and bellowingtocontemplate the inhumar spectacle. Then the bull made a pass at him and uttered a bellow that sounded perfectly frightful, it was so close to me, that it seemed to literally prostrate my horse's reason, and make a raving distracted maniac of him, and I wish I may die if he didn't stand on his head for a quarter of a minute and shed tears. He was absolutely out of his mind — he was, as sure as truth itself, and he really didn't know what he was doing. Then the bull came charging at us, and my horse -dropped down on all fours and took a fresh start — and then for the next ten minutes he would actually throw one hand-spring after another so fast that the bull began to get unsettled, too, and didn't know where to start in — and so he stood there sneezing, and shoveling dust over his back, and bellowing every now and then, and thinking he had got a fifteen hundred dollar circus horse for breakfast, certain. Well, 1 was first out on his neck — the horse's, not the bull's — and then underneath, and next on his rump, and some- times head up, and sometimes heels-^but I tell you it seemed solemn and awful to be ripping and tearing and carrying on so in the presence of death, as you might say. Pretty soon the bull made a snatch for us and brought away some of my horse's tail I now, if he did ROUOHINQ IT. 87 (I suppose, but do not know, being pretty busy at the time), but somethinij inado him hungry for solitude and suggested to him to get up and hunt for it. And then you ought to have seen that 8pi(lor-l(>^'ged old skeleton go ! and you ought to have seen the bull cut after him, too — head down, tongue out, tail up, bellowing like ovory thing, and actually mowing down the weeds, and tear- ing up the earth, and boosting up the sand like a whirl-wind I fiy George, it was a hot race I I and the saddle were back on the rump, and I had the bridle in my teeth and holding on to the pommol with both hands. First we left the dogs behind ; then we passed a jackass rabit ; then we overtook a cayote, and were gaining on un antelope when the rotten girth let go and threw me about thirty yards off to the left, and as the saddle went down over the horse's rump he gave it a lift with his heels that sent it more than four hundred yards u]> in the air, I wish I may die in a minute if he didn't. I fell at the foot of the only solitary tree there was in nine counties adjacent (as any creature could see with the naked eye), and the next second * had hold of the bark with four sets of nails and my teeth, and the next second after that I was astraddle of the main limb and blaspheming my luck in a way that made my breath smell of brimstone. I had the bull, now, if he did not think of one thing. But that one thing I dreaded. I dreaded it very seriously. There was a possibility that the bull might not think of it, but there were greater chances tliat he would. I made up my mind what I would do in case he did. It was a little over forty feet from the ground to where I sat. I cautiously unwound the lariat from the pommel of my saddle—" " Your saddle f Did you take your saddle up the tree with you ? " " Take it up the tree with me ? Why, how you talk. Of course I didn't. No man could do that. It fell in the tree when it came down." "Oh— exactly." " Certainly. I unwound the lariat, and fastened one end of it to the limb. It was the very best green raw-hide, and capable of sustaining tons. I made a slip-nose in the other end, and then ^ '1 !J 88 BOUGHINO IT. hung it down to see the length. It reached down twenty-two feet — half way to the ground. I then loaded every barrel of the Allen with a double charge. I felt satisfied. I said to myself, if he never thinks of that one thing I dread, all right — but if he does, all right anyhow — I am fixed for him. But don't you know that the very thing a man dreads is the thing that always hap- pens? Indeed it is so. I watched the bull, now, with anxiety- anxiety which no one can conceive of who has not been in such a situation and felt that at any moment death might come. Pres- ently a thought came into the bull's eye. I knew it ! said I— if my nerve fails now, I am lost. Sure enough it was just as I had dreaded, he started to climb the tree — " "What, the bull?" "Of course — who else?" " But a bull can't climb a tree." " He can't, can't he ? Since you know so much about it, did you ever see a bull try ?" " No ? I never dreamt of such a thing." "Well, then, what is the use of your talking that way, then? Because you never saw a thing done, is that any reason why it can't be done ?" " Well, all righi^go on. What did you do ?" " The bull started up, and got along well for about ten feet, then slipped and slid back. I breathed easier. He tried it again- got up a little higher — slipped again. But he came at it once more, and this time he was careful. He got gradually higher and higher, and my spirits went down more and more. Up he came — an inch at a time — with his eyes hot, and his tongue hanging out. Higher and higher — hitched'his foot over the stump of a limb, and looked up, as much as to say, ' You are my meat friend.' Up again — higher and higher, and getting more excited the closer he got. He was within ten feet of me I I took a long breath — and then said I, < It is now or never.' I had the coil of the lariat all ready ; I paid it out slowly, till it hung right over h^s head ; all of a sudden I let go of the slack, and the slip-noose fell fairly round his neck I Quicker than lightning I out with the ROUGHING IT. 89 Allen and let him have it in the face. It was an awful roar, and must have scared the bull out of his senses. When the smoke cleared away, there he was, dangling in the air, twenty foot from the ground, and going out of one convulsion into another faster than you could count 1 I didn't stop to count, anyhow — I shinned down the tree and shot for home." " Bemis, is all that true, just as you have stated it ?" " I wish I may rot in my tracks and die the death of a dog if it isn't." " Well, we can't refuse to believe it, and we don't. But if there were some proofs — " "Proofs I Did I bring back my lariat ?" "No." " Did I bring back my horse ?" "No." ■ " Did you ever see the bull again ?" ■ "No." " Well, then, what more do you want ? I never saw anybody as particular as you are about a little thing like that." I made up my mind that if this man was not a liar he only missed it by the skin of his teeth. This episode reminds me of an incident of my brief sojourn in Siam, years afterward. The European citizens of a town in the neighborhood of Bangkok had a prodigy among them by the name of Eckert, an Englishman — a person famous for the number, ingenuity and imposing magnitude of his lies. They were always repeating his most celebrated false- hoods, and always trying to " draw him out" before strangers ; but they seldom succeeded. Twice he was invited to the house where I was visiting, but nothing could seduce him into a speci- men lie. One day a planter named Bascom, an influential man, and a proud and sometimes irascible one, invited me to ride over with him and call on Eckert. As we jogged along, said he : " Now, do you know where the fault lies ? It lies in putting Eckert on his guard. The minute the boys go to pumping at Eckert he knows perfectly well what they are after, and of course he shuts up his shell. Anybody might know he would. But •f '^ 40 ROUGHING IT. ii I when we get there, we must play him finer than that. Let him shape the conversation to suit himself — let him drop it or change it whenever he wants to. Let him see that nobody is trying to draw him out. Just let him have his own way. He will soon forget himself and begin to grind out lies like a mill. Don't get impatient— just keep quiet, and let me play him. I will make him lie. It does seem to me that the boys must be blind to overlook such an obvious and simple trick as that." Eckert received us heartily — a pleasant-spoken, gentle-man- nered creature. We sat in the veranda an hour, sipping English ale, and talking about the king, and the sacred white elephant, the Sleeping Idol, and all manner of things ; and I noticed that my comrade never led the conversation himself or shaped it, but simply followed Eckert's lead, and betrayed no solicitude and no anxiety about anything. The effect was shortly perceptible. Eckert began to grow communicative ; he grew more and more at his ease, and more and more talkative and sociable. Another hour passed in the same way, and then all of a sudden Eckert said : " Oh, by the way 1 I came near forgetting. I have got a thing here to astonish you. Such a thing as neither you nor any other man ever heard of — I've got a cat that will eat cocoanut ! Com- mon green cocoanut — and not only eat the meat, but drink the milk. It is 80 — I'll swear to it." A quick glance from Bascom — a glance that I understood— then: " Why, bless my soul, I never heard of such a thing. Man, it is impossible." " I knew you would say it. I'll fetch the cat." He Went in the house. Bascom said : " There — what did I tell you ? Now, that is the way to handle Eckert. You see, I have petted him along patiently, and put his suspicious to sleep. I am glad we came. You tell the boys about it when you go back. Cat eat a cocoanut — oh, my I Now, that is just his way, exactly — he will tell the absurdest lie, and trust to luck to get out of it again. Cat eat a cocoanut — the inno- cent fool I" Eckert approached with his cat, sure enough. ROUGHING IT. 41 Bascom smiled. Said he : " I'll hold the cat — you bring a cocoanut." Eckert split one open, and chopped up some pieces. Bascom smuggled a wink to me, and proffered a slice of the fruit to puss. She snatched it, swallowed it ravenously, and asked for more ! We rode our two miles in silence, and wide apart. At least I was silent, though Bascom cuffed his horse and cursed him a good deal, notwithstanding the horse was behaving well enough. When I branched off homeward, Bascom said : "Keep the horse till morning. And — you need not speak of this — foolishness to the boys." 'f 42 ROUGHING IT. CHAPTEE VIII. TN a little while all interest was taken up in stretching our -*• necks and watching for the " pony rider " — the fleet mes- senger who sped across the continent from St. Joe to Sacramento, carrying letters nineteen hundred miles in eight days ! Think of that for perishable horse and human flesh and blood to do I The pony-rider was usually a little bit of a man, brimful of spirit and endurance. No matter what part of the day or night his watch came on, and no matter whether it was winter summer, or raining, snowing, hailing, or sleeting, or whether his " beat " was a level straight road or a crazy trail over mountain crags and precipices, or whether it led through peaceful regions or regions that swarmed with hostile Indians, he must be always ready to leap into the saddle and be oflf like the wind I There was no idling time for a pony-rider on duty. He rode fifty miles without stopping, by daylight, moonlight, starlight, or through the black- ness of darknesss— just as it happened. He rode a splendid horse that was born for a racer and fed and lodged like a gentle- man ) kept him at his utmost speed for ten miles, and then, as he came crashing up to the station where stood two men holding fast a fresh, impatient steed, the transifer of rider and mail-bag was made in the twinkling of an eye, and away flew the eager pair and were out of sight before the spectator could get hardly the ghost of a look. Both rider and horse went " flying light." The rider's dress was thin, and fitted close ; he wore a " round- about," and a skull-cap, and tucked his pantaloons into his boot- tops like a race-rider. He carried no arms — he carried nothing that was not absolutely necessary, for even the postage on his literary freight was worth ^rc doZZars a letter. He got but little frivolous correspondence to carry — his bag had business letters in it, mostly. His horse was stripped of all unnecessary weight, too. He wore a little wafer of a racing-saddle, and no visible blanket. He wore light shoes, or none at all. The little flat mail-pockets strapped under the rider's thighs would each hold ROUGHINO IT. 43 about the bulk of a child's primer. They held many and many an important business chapter and newspaper letter, but these were written on paper as airy and thin as gold-leaf, nearly, and thus bulk and weight were economized. The stage- coach travel- ed about a hundred to a hundred and twenty-five miles a day (twenty-four hours), the pony-rider about two hundred and fifty. There were about eighty pony-riders in the saddle all the time night and day, stretching a long, scattered procession from Mis- / "here he comes." souri to California, forty flying eastward, and forty toward the west, and among them making four hundred gallant horses earn a stirring livelihood and see a deal of scenery every single day in the year. "We had had a consuming desire, from the beginning, to see a pony-rider, but somehow or other all that passed us and all that met us managed to streak by in the night, so we heard only a ^ t ! li: 1 ■ j 1 ) i ; f ; t ■ . ' *;■ 44 ROUGHING IT. I'f whiz and a hail, and the swift phantom of the desert was gone before we could get our heads out of the windows. But now we were expecting one along every moment, and would see him in broad daylight. Presently the driver exclaims : " Here he comes ! " Every neck is stretched further, and every eye strained wider. Away across the endless dead level of the prairie a black speck appears against the sky, and it is plain that it moves. Well, I should think so I In a second or two it becomes a horse and rider, rising and falling — sweeping toward us nearer and nearer — growing more and more distinct, more and more sharply de- fined — nearer and still nearer, and the flutter of the hoofs comes faintly to the ear — another instant a whoop and a hurrah from our upper deck, a wave of the rider's hand, but no reply, and man and horse burst past our excited faces, and go winging away like a belated fragment of a storm I So sudden is it all, and so like a flash of unreal fancy, that but for the flake of white foam left quivering and perishing on a mail-sack a*'*'='i' the vision had flashed by and disappeared, we might have do^ v,*-ed whether we had seen any actual horse and man at all, maybe. We rattled through Scott's Bluffs Pass, by and by. It was along here somewhere that we first came across genuine and unmistakable alkali water in the road, and we cordially hailed it as a first-class curiosity, and a thing to be mentioned with eclat in letters to the ignorant at home. This water gave the road a soapy appearance, and in many places the ground looked as if it had been whitewashed. I think the strange alkali water excited us as much as any wonder we had come upon yet, and I know we felt very complacent and conceited, and better satisfied with life after we had added it to our list of things which we had seen and some other people had not. In a small way we were the same sort of simpletons as those who climb unnecessarily the perilous peaks of Mont Blanc and the Matterhom, and derive no pleasure from it except the reflection that it isn't a common experience. But once in a while one of those parties trips and comes darting down the long mountain crags in a 'fitting posture, making the crusted snow smoke behind him, flitting from bench to bench. ROUGHING IT. 45 and from terrace to terrace, jarring the earth where he strikes, still glancing and flitting on again, sticking an iceberg into him- self every now and then, and tearing his clothes, snatching at things to save himself, taking hold of trees and fetching them along with him, roots and ull, starting little rocks now and then, then big boulders, then acres of ice and snow and patches of forest, gathering and still gathering he goes, adding and still adding to his massed and sweeping grandeur as he nears a three thousand-foot precipice, till at last he waves his hat magnificently and rides into eternity on the back of a raging and tossing avalanche 1 This is all very fine, but let us not be carried away by excite- ment, but ask calmly, how does this person feel about it in his cooler moments next day, with six or seven thousand feet of snow and stuff on top of him ? We crossed the sand hills near the scene of the Indian mail robbery and massacre of 1856, wherein the driver and conductor perished, and also all the passengers but one, it was supposed ; but this must have been a mistake, for at different times after- ward on the Pacific coast I was personally acquainted with a hundred and thirty-three or four people who were wounded dur- ing that massacre, and barely escaped with their lives. There was no doubt of the truth of it — I had it from their own lips. One of these parties told me that he kept coming across arrow- heads in his sj stem for nearly seven years after the massacre ; and another of them told me that he was stuck so literally full of arrows that after the Indians were gone and he could raise up and examine himself, he could not restrain his tears, for his clothes were completely ruined. The most trustworthy tradition avers, however, that only one man, a person named Babbitt, survived the massacre, and he was desperately wounded. He dragged himself on his hands and knee (for one leg was broken) to a station several miles away. He did it during portions of two nights, lying concealed one day and part of another, and for more than forty hours suf- fering unimaginable anguish from hunger, thirst and bodily pain. The Indians robbed the coach of everything it contained, includ- ing quite an amount of treasure. 1 i i S 46 ROUOHINO IT. CHAPTER IX. TXTE passed Fort Laramie in the night, and on the seventh * " morning out we found ourselves in the Black Hills, with Laramie Peak at our elbow (apparently) looming vast and soli- tary — a deep, dark, rich indigo blue in hue, so portentously did the old colossus frown under his beetling brows of storm-cloud. He was thirty or forty miles away, in reality, but he only seemed removed a little beyond the low ridge at our right. We break- fasted at Horse-Shoe Station, six hundred and seventy-six miles out from St. Joseph. We had now reached a. hostile Indian country, and during the afternoon we passed Laparelle Station, and enjoyed great discomfort all the time we were in the neigh- borhood, being aware that many of the trees we dashed by at arm'9 length concealed a lurking Indian or two. During the preceding night an ambushed savage had sent a bullet through the pony-riders jacket, but he had ridden on, just the same, be- cause pony-riders were not allowed to stop and inquire into such things except when killed. As long as they had life enough left in them they had to stick to the horse and ride, even if the In- dians had been waiting for them a week, and were entirely out of patience. About two hours and a half before we arrived at Laparelle Station, the keeper in charge of it had fired four times at an Indian, but he said with an injured air that the Indian had "skipped around so's to spile everything — and ammunition's blamed skurse, too." The most natural inference conveyed by his manner of speaking was, that in '< skipping around," the In- dian had taken an unfair advantage. The coach we were in had a neat hole through its front — a reminiscence of its last trip through this region. The bullet that made it wounded the driver slightly, but he did not mind it much. He said the place to keep a man " huflfy " was down on the Southern Overland, among the Apaches, before the company moved the stage line up on the northern route. He said the Apaches used to annoy him all the time down there, and that he came as near as anything to starv- ROUGHING IT. 47 ing to death in the midst of abundance, because they kept him 80 leaky with bullet holes that he ''couldn't hold his vittles." Ihis person's statements were not generally believed. We shut the blinc^ .iown very tightly that first night in the hostile Indian country, and lay on our arms. We slept on them some, but most of the time we only lay on them. We did not talk much, but kept quiet and listened. It was an inky-black night, and occasionally rainy. We were among woods and rocks, bills and gorges — so shut in, in fact, that when we peeped through a chink in a curtain, we could discern nothing. The driver and conductor on top were still, too, or only spoke at long intervals, in low tones, as is the way of men in the m'dst of in- visible dangers. We listened to rain-drops pattering on the roof; and the grinding of the wheels through the muddy gravel ; and the low wailing of the wind ; and all the time we had that absurd sense upon us, inseparable from travel at night in a close- curtained vehicle, the sense of remaining perfectly still in one place, notwithstanding the jolting and swaying of the vehicle, the trampling of the horses, and the grinding of the wheels. We listened a long time, with intent faculties and bated breath ; every time one of us would relax, and draw a long sigh of relief and start to say something, a comrade would be sure to utter a sudden " Hark I " and instantly the experimenter was rigid and listening again. So the tiresome minutes and decades of minutes dragged away, until at last our tense forms filmed over with a dulled consciousness, and we slept, if one might call such a con- dition by so strong a name — for it was a sleep set with a hair- trigger. It was a sleep seething and teeming with a weird and distressful confusion of shreds and fag-ends of dreams — a sleep that was a chaos'. Presently, dreams and sleep and the sullen hush of the night were startled by a ringing report, and cloven by such a long, wild, agonizing shriek I Then we heard — ten steps from the stage — " Help I help I help I" [It was our driver's voice.] « Kill him 1 Kill him like a dog I" " I'm being murdered ! Will no man lend me a pistol ?" " Look out 1 head him ofif I head him off I" [Two pistol shots ; a confusion of voices and the trampling of 48 ROUOHINO IT. many feet, as if a crowd were closing and surging together around some object ; several heavy, dull blows, as with a club ; a voice that said appealingly, "Don't, gentlemen, please don't — I'm a dead man !" Then a fainter groan, and another blow, and away sped the stage into the darkness, and left the grisly mystery behind us.] What a startle it was I Eight seconds would amply cover the time it occupied— maybe even five would do it. We only had time to plunge at a curtain and unbuckle and unbutton part of it in an awkward and hindering flurry, when our whip cracked sharply overhead, and we went rumbling and thundering away, down a mountain " grade." We fed on that mystery the rest of the night — what was left of it, for it was waning fast. It had to remain a presant mystery, for all we could get from the conductor in answer to our hails was something that sounded, through the clatter of the wheels, like "Tell you in the morning I" So we lit our pipes and opened the comer of a curtain for a chimney, and lay there in the dark, listening to each other's story of how he first felt and how many thousand Indians he first thought had hurled themselves upon us, and what his remem- brance of the subsequent sounds was, and the order of their occurrence. And we theorized, too, but there was never a theory that would account for our driver's voice being out there, nor yet account for his Indian murderers talking such good English, if they were Indians. So we chatted and smoked the rest of the night comfortably away, our boding anxiety being somehow marvelously dissipated by the real presence of something to be anxious about. We never did get much satisfaction about that dark occurrence. All that we could make out of the odds and ends of the informa- tion we gathered iu the morning, was that the disturbance occurred at a station ; that we changed drivers there, and that the driver that got off there had been talking roughly about some of the outlaws that infested the region ("for there vtasn't a man around there but had a price on his head and didn''j dare show himself in the settlements," the conductor said) ; he had talked roughly about these characters, and ought to have " drove up there with his pistol cocked and ready on the seat alongside of ROUGHING IT. 49 him, and begun business himself, because any softy would know they would be laying for him." That was all we could gather, and we could see that neither the conductor nor the new driver were much concerned about the matter. They plainly had little respect for a man who would deliver offensive opinions of people and then be so simple as to come into their presence unprepared to ''back his judgment," as they pleasantly phrased the killing of any fellow-being who did not like said opinions. And likewise they plainly had a con- tempt for the man's poor discretion in venturing to rouse the wrath of such utterly reckless wild beasts as those outlaws — and the conductor added : " I tell you it's as much as Slade himself wants to do I" This remark created an entire revolution in my curiosity. I cared nothing now about the Indians, and even lost interest in the murdered driver. There was such magic in that name, Slade I Day or night, now, I stood always ready to drop any subject in hand, to listen to something new about Slade and his ghastly exploits. Even before we got to Overland City, we had bei,;un to hear about Slade and his " division" (for he was a " divi- sion-agent") on the Overland ; and from the hour we had left Overland City we had heard drivers and conductors talk about only three things — " Californy," the Nevada silver mines, and this desperado Slade. And a deal the most of the talk was about Slade. We had gradually come to have a realizing sense of the fact that Slade was a man whose heart and hands and soul were steeped in the blood of offenders against his dignity ; a man who awfully avenged all injuries, affronts, insults or slights, of what- ever kind — on the spot if he could, years afterward if lack of earlier opportunity compelled it ; a man whose hate tortured him iay and night till vengeance appeased it — and not an ordinary vengeance either, but his enemy's absolute death — nothing less ; a man whose face would light up with a terrible joy when he sur- prised a foe and had him at a disadvantage. A high and efficient servant of the Overland, an outlaw among outlaws and yet their relentless scourge, Slade was at once the most bloody, the most dangerous and the most valuable citizen that inhabited the savage fastnesses of the mountains. c r 50 BOUOHINa IT. CHAPTER X. "DEALLY and truly, two thirds of the talk of drivers and coii' •^^ ductors had been about this man Slade, ever since the day before we reached Julesburg. In order that the eastern reader may have a clear conception of what a Rocky Mountain desperado is, in his highest state of development, I will reduce all this mass of overland gossip to one straightforward narrative, and present it in the following shape : Slade was born in Illinois, of good parentage. At about twenty-six years of age he killed a man in a quarrel and fled the country. At St. Joseph, Missouri, he joined ons of the early California-bound emigrant trains, and was given the post of train- master. One day on the plains he had an angry dispute with one of his waggon-drivers, and both drew their revolvers. But the driver was the quicker artist, and had his weapon cocked first. So Slade said it was a pity to waste life on so small a matter, and proposed that the pistols be thrown on the ground and the quarrel settled by a fist-fight. The unsuspecting driver agreed, and threw down his pistol — whereupon Slade laughed at his simplicity, and shot him dead ! He made his escape, and lived a wild life for awhile, dividing his time between fighting Indians and avoiding an Illinois sheriff, who had been sent to arrest him for his first murder. It is said that in one Indian battle he killed three savages with his own hand, and afterward cut their ears off and sent them, with his compliments, to the chief of the tribe. Slade i^oon gained a name for fearless resolution, and this was sufficient merit to procure for him the important post of over- land division-agent at Julesburg, in place of Mr. Jules, removed. For some time previously, the company's horses had been fre- quently stolen, and the coaches delayed, by gangs of outlaws, who were wont to laugh at the idea of any man's having the temerity to resent such outrages. Slade resented them promptly. The outlaws soon found that the new agent was a man who did ROUOHINO IT. 51 not fear anything that breathed the breath of life. He made Hliort work of all offenders. The result was that the delays c('as(!(l, the company's property was let alone, and no matter what happened or who suffered, Slade's coaches went through, every time I True, in order to bring about this wholesome change, Slade had to kill several men—some say three, others say four, anil others six — but the world was the richer for their loss. The fust prominent difficulty he had was with the ex-agent Jules, who bore the reputation of being a reckless and desperate man himself. Jules hated Slade for supplanting him, and a good, fair occasion for a fight was all he was waiting for. < By and by Slade dared to employ a man whom Jules had once discharged. Next, Shide seized a team of stage-horses which he accused Jules of having driven off and hidden somewhere for his own use. War was declared, and for a day or two the two men walked warily about the streets, seeking each other, Jules armed with a double- barreled shot gun, and Slade with his history-creating revolver. Finally, as Slade stepped into a store, Jules poured the contents of his gun into him from behind the door. Slade was pluck, and Jules got several bad pistol wounds in return. Then both men fell, and were carried to their respective lodgings, both swearing that better aim should do deadlier work next time. Both were bed-ridden a long time, but Jules got on his feet first, and gather- ing his possonsions together, packed them on a couple of mules, and fled to the Rocky Mountains to gather strength in safety against thr day of reckoning. For many months he was not seen or h««ird of, and was gradually dropped out of the remem- brance of all save Slade himself. But Slade was not the man to forget him. On the contrary, common report said that Slade kept a reward standing for his capture, dead or alive I After awhile, seeing that Slade's energetic administration had restored i>eace and order to one of the worst divisions of the road, the overland stage company transferred hin^ to the Rocky Ri Ige division in the Rocky Mountains, to see if he could per- form a like miracle there. It was the very paradise of outlaws and desperadoes. There was absolutely no semblance of law there. Violence was the rule. Force was the OTdy recognized authority. The commonest misunderstandings were settled on < 52 BOnomNG IT. the spot with the revolver or the knife. Murders were done in open day, and with sparkling frequency, and nobody thought of enquiring into them. It was considered that the parties who did the killing had their private reasons for it j for other people to meddle would have been looked upon as indelicate. After a murder, all that Bocky Mountain etiquette required of a specta- tor was, that he should help the gentleman bury his game — otherwise his churlishness would surely be remembered against him the first time he killed a man himself and needed a neigh- borly turn in interring him. Slade took up his residence sweetly and peacefully in the midst of this hive of horse-thieves and assassins, and the very first time one of them aired his insolent swaggerings in his pre- sence he shot him dead ! He began a raid on the outlaws, and in a singularly short space of time he had completely stopped their depredations on the stage-stock, recovered a large number of stolen horses, killed several of the worst desperadoes of the district, and gained such a dread ascendancy over the rest that they respected him, admired him, feared him, obeyed him ! He wrought the same marvelous change in the ways of the commu- nity that had marked his administration at Overland City. He captured two men who had stolen overland stock, and with his own hands he hanged them. He was supreme judge in his dis- trict, and he was jury and executioner likewise — and not only in the case of offences against his employers, but against passing emigrants a? well. On one occasion some emigrants had their stock lost or stolen, and told Slade, who chanced to visit their camp. With a single companion he rode to a ranch, the owners of which he suspected, and opening the door, commenced firing, killing three, and wounding the fourth. From a bloodthirstily interesting little Montana book* I take this paragraph: " While on the road Slade held absolute sway. He would ride down to a station, get into a quarrel, turn the house out of windows, and maltreat the occupants most cruelly. The unfortunates had no means of redress, and were compelled to recuperate as best they could. On one of these occasions, it is said he killed the father of the fine little * «The YigilantoB of Montana," by Frof. Tlioa. J. Simadale. BOnOmNG IT. 58 half -breed boy Jemmy, whom he adopted, and who lived with his widow after his execution. Stories of Slade's hanging men, and of innumiera- ble assaults, shootings, stabbings and beatings, in which he was a prin< cipal actor, form part of the legends of the stage line. As for minor quarrels and shootings, it is absolutely certain that a minute history of Slade's life would be one long record of such practices. " Slade was a matchless marksman with a navy revolver. The legends say that one morning at Kocky Bidge, when he was feel- ing comfortable, he saw a man approaching who had offended him some days before — observe the fine memory he had for mat- ters like that— and, " Gentlemen," said Slade, drawing, " it is a good twenty-yard shot — I'll clip the third button on hid coat ! " Which he did. The bystanders all admired it. And they all at- tended the funeral, too. On one occasion a man who kept a little whisky-shelf at the station did something which angered Slade — and went and made his will. A day or two afterward Slade came in and called for some brandy. The man reached under the counter (ostensibly to get a bottle — possibly to get something else), but Slade smiled upon him that peculiarly bland and satisfied smile of his which the neighbors had long ago learned to recognize as a death-war- rant in disguise, and told him to '' none of that I — pass out the high-priced article." So the poor bar-keeper had to turn his back and get the high-priced brandy from the shelf; and when he faced around again he was looking into the muzzle of Slade's pistol. " And the next instant," added my informant, impres- sively, " he was one of the deadest men that ever lived." The stage-drivers and conductors told us that sometimes Slade would leave a hated enemy wholly unmolested, unnoticed and unmentioned, for weeks together — had done it once or twice at any rate. And some said they believed he did it in order to lull the victims into unwatchfulness, so that he could get the advantage of them, and others said they believed he saved up an enemy that way, just as a schoolboy saves up a cake, and made the pleasure go as far as it would by gloating over the anticipation. One of these cases was that of a Frenchman who had offended Slade. To the surprise of everybody Slade did not kill him on the spot, but let him alone for a considerable time. 54 ROUGHINa IT. i! .!! II Finally, however, he went to the Frenchman's house very late one night, knocked, and when his enemy opened the door, shot him dead — pushed the corpse inside the door with his foot, set the house on fire and burned up the dead man, his widow and three children I I heard this story from several different people, and they evidently believed what they were saying. It may be true, and it may not. " Give a dog a bad name," etc. Slade was captured, once, by a party of men who intended to lynch him. They disarmed him and shut him up in a strong log- house, and placed a guard over him. He prevailed on his cap- tors to send for his wife, so that he might have a last interview with her. She was a brave, loving, spirited woman. She jumped on a horse and rode for life and death. When she arrived they let her in without searching her, and before the door could be closed she whipped out a couple of revolvers, and she and her lord marched forth defying the party. And then, under a brisk fire, they mounted double and galloped away unharmed ! In the fullness of time Slade's myrmidons captured his ancient enemy Jules, whom they found in a well-chosen hiding-place in the remote fastness of the mountains, gaining a precarious liveli- hood with his rifle. They brought him to Rocky Ridge, bound hand and foot, and deposited him in the middle of the cattle- yard with his back against a post. It is said that the pleasure that lit Slade's face when he heard of it was something fearful to contemplate. He examined his enemy to see that he was securely tied, and then went to bed, content to wcit till morning before enjoying the luxury of killing him. Jules spent the night in the cattle-yard, and it is a region where warm nights are never known. In the morning Slade practised on him with his revolver, nipping the flesh here and there, and occasionally clipping off a finger, while Jules begged him to kill him outright and put him out of his misery. Finally Slade reloaded, and walking up close to his victim, made some characteristic remarks and then dis- patched him. The body lay there half a day, nobody venturing to touch it without orders, and then Slade detailed a party and assisted at the burial himself. But he first cut off the dead man's ears and put them in his vest pocket, where he carried them for some time with great satisfaction. That is the story as I have fre- BOUOHINa IT» 55 ■& ^>;.' quently heard it told and seen it in print in California newspapers. It is doubtless correct in all essential particulars. In due time we rattled up to a stage-station, and sat down to breakfast with a half-savage, half-civilized company of armed and bearded mountaineers, ranchmen and station employees. The most gentlemanly-appearing, quiet and affable officer we had yet found along the road in the company's service was the person who sat at the head of the table, at my elbow. Never youth stared and shivered as I did when I heard them call him Slade 1 Here was romance, and I sitting face to face with it! — ^looking upon it— touching it — hobnobbing with it, as it were I Here, right by my side, was the actual ogre who, in fights and brawls and various ways, had taken the lives of twenty-six human beings, or all men lied about him I I suppose I was the proudest stripling that ever traveled to see strange lands and wonderful people. He was so friendly and so gentle-spoken that I warmed to him in spite of his awful history. It was hardly possible to realize that this pleasant person was the pitiless scourge of the outlaws, the raw-head-and-bloody-bones the nursing mothers of the moun- tains terrified their children with. And to this day I can remember nothing remarkable about Slade except that his face was rather broad across the cheek bones, and that the cheek bones were low and the lips peculiarly thin and straight. But that was enough to leave something of an effect upon me, for since then I seldom see a face possessing those characteristics without fancying that the owner is a dangerous man. The coffee ran out. At least it was reduced to one tin-cupful, and Slade was about to take it when he saw that my cup was empty. He politely offered to fill it, but although I wanted it, I politely declined. I was afraid he had not killed anybody V/hat morning, and might be needing diversion. But still with firm politeness he insisted on filling my cup, and said I had traveled all nighc and better deserved it than he — and while he talked he placidly poured the fluid, to the last drop. I thanked him and drank it, but it gave me no comfort, for I could not feel sure that he would not be sorry, presently, that he had given it away, and proceed to kill me to distract his thoughts from the loss. But m» t i :m 56 Rouanraa it. nothing of the kind occurred. We left him with only twenty-six dead people to account for, and I felt a tranquil satisfaction in the thought that in so judiciously taking care of No. 1 at that breakfast-table I had pleasantly escaped being No. 27. Slade came out to the coach and saw us off, first ordering certain rearrange- ments of the mail-bags for our comfort, and then we took leave of him, satisfied that we should hear of him again, some day, and wondering in what connection. man : on ROUGHING IT. 57 CHAPTER XL AND sure enough, two or three years afterward, we did hear of him again. News came to the Pacific coast that the Vigi- lance Committee in Montana (whither Slade had removed from Rocky Bidge) had hanged him. I find an account of the aifair in the thrilling little book I quoted a paragraph from in the last chapter — "The Vigilantes of Montana ; being a Reliable Account of the Capture, Trial and Execution of Henry Plummer's Noto- rious Road Agent Band: By Prof. Thos. J. Dimsdale, Virginia City, M. T." Mr. Dimsdale's chapter is well worth reading, as a specimen of how the people of the frontier deal with criminals when the courts of law prove inefficient. Mr. Dimsdale makes two remarks about Slade, both of which are accurately descrip- tive, and one of which is exceedingly picturesque : " Those who saw him in his natural state only, would pronounce him to be a kind husband, a most hospitable host and a courteous gentle- man I on the contrary, those who met him when maddened with liquor and surrounded by a gang of armed roughs, would pro- nounce him a fiend incarnate." And this : " From Fort Kearney, west, he was feared a great deal more than the Almighty." For compactness, simplicity and vigor of expression, I will " back" that sentence against anything in literature. Mr. Dimsdale's narrative is as follows. In all places where italics occur, they are mine: " After the execution of the five men on the 14th of January, the Vigi- lantes considered that their work was nearly ended. They had freed the coiintry of highwaymen and murderers to a great extent, and they determined that in the absence of the regular civil authority they would establish a People's Court where all offenders should be tried by judge and jury. This was the nearest approach to social order that the cir- cumstances permitted, and, though strict legal authority was wanting, yet the people were firmly determined to maintain its efficiency, and to enforce its decrees. It may here be mentioned that the overt act which was the last rouud on the fatal ladder leading .to the scaffold on which lii r: 58 BonamKa it. Slade perished, was the tearing in pieces and stamping upon a writ qf this court, followed by his arrest of the Judge, Alex. Davis, by authority qf a presented Derringer, ami with his own hands. "J. A. Slade was himself, we have been informed, a Vigilante ; he openly boasted of it., and said he knew all that they knew. He was never accused, or even suspected, of either murder or robbery, commit- ted in this Territory' (the latter crime was never laid to his charge, in any place) ; but that he had killed several men in other localities was notorious, and his bad reputation in this respect was a most powerful argument in determining his fate, when he was finally arrested for the offence above mentioned. On returning from Milk River he became more and more addicted to drinking, until at last it was a common feat for him and his friends to ' take the town.' He and a couple of his dependents might often be seen on one horse, galloping thrcngh the streets, shouting and yelling, firing revolvers, etc. On many occasions be would ride his horse into stores, break up bars, toss the scales out of doors and use most insulting language to parties present. Just previous to the day of his arrest, he had given a fearful beating to one of his fol- lowers ; but such was his influence over them that the man wept bitterly at the gallows, and be^ed for his life with all his power. It had become quite common, when Slade wa^ on a spree, for the shop- keepers and citizens to close the stores and put out all the lights; being fearful of some outrage at his hands. For his wanton destruction of goods and furniture, he was always ready to pay, when sober, if he had money ; but there were not a few who regarded payment as small satisfaction for the outrage, and these men were his personal enemies. " From time to time Slade received warnings from men that he well knew would not deceive him, of the certain end of his conduct. There was not a moment, for weeks previous to his arrest, in which the public did not expect to hear of some bloody outrage. The dread of his very name, and the presence of the armed band of hangers-on who followed him, alone prevented a resistance which must certainly have ended in the instant murder or mutilation of the opposing party. " Slade was frequently arrested by order of the court whose organiza- tion we have described, and had treated it with respect by paying one or two fines and promising to pay the rest when he h^d money ; but in the transaction that occurred at this crisis, he forgot even this caution, and goaded by passion and the hatred of restraint, he sprang into the embrace of death. " Slade had been drunk and ' cutting up' all night. He and his com- BOUOEHNQ IT. 59 panions had made the town a perfect hell. In the morning, J. M. Fox, the sheriff, met him, arrested him, took him into court and commenced reading a warrant that he had for his arrest, by way of arraignment. He became uncontrollably furious, and seizing the writ, he tore it up, threw it on the ground and stamped upon it. The clicking of the locks of his companions' revolvers was instantly heard, and a crisis was expected. The sheriff did not attempt his retention ; but being at least as prudent as he was valiant, he succumbed, leaving Slade the master of the situa- tion and the conqueror and ruler of the courts, law and law-makers. This was a declaration of war, and was so accepted. The Vigilance Com- mittee now felt that the question of social order and the preponderance of the law-abiding citizens had then and there to be decided. They knew the character of Slade, and they were well aware that they must submit to his rule without murmur, or else that he must be dealt with in such fashion as would prevent his being able to wreak his vengeance on the Committee, who could never have hoped to live in the Territory secure from outrage or death, and who could never leave it without encountering his friends, wh his victory would have emboldened and stimulated to a pitch that would have rendered them reckless of conse- quences. The day previous he had ridden into Dorris's store, and on being requested to leave, he drew his revolver and threatened to kill the gentleman who spoke to him. Another saloon he had led his horse into, and buying a bottle of wine, he tried to make the animal drink it. This was not considered an uncommon performance, as he had often entered saloons and commenced firing at the lamps, causing a wild stampede. " A leading member of the Committee met Slade, and informed him in the quiet, earnest manner of one who ieels the importance of what he is saying : ' Slade, get your horse at once, and go home, or there will be to pay. ' Slade started and took a long look, with his dark and piercing eyes, at the gentleman. 'What do you mean?' said he. 'You have no right to ask me what I mean,' was the quiet reply; get your horse at once, and remember what I tell you. ' After a short pause he promised to do so, and actually got into the saddle ; but, being still intoxicated, fhe began calling aloud to one after another of his friends, and at last seemed to have forgotten the warning he had receiv- ed and became again uproarious, shouting the name of a well-known courtezan in compeny with those of two men whom he considered heads of the Committee, as a sort of challenge ; perhaps, however, as a simple act of bravado. It seems probable that the intimation of personal danger he had received had not been forgotten entirely ; though fatally ; I ! i ; I I !i 'l.v » ' 60 BOuamNO IT. 11! 'i for him, he took a foolish way of showing his remembrance of it. He sought out Alexander Davis, the Judge of the Court, and drawing a cocked Derringer, he presented it at his head, and told him that he should hold him as a hostage for his own safety. As the Judge stood perfectly quiet, and offered no resistance to his captor, no further out< rage followed on this score. Previous to this, on account of the critical state of affairs, the Committee had met, and at last resolved to arrest him. His execution had not been agreed upon, and, at that time, would have been negatived, most assuredly. A messenger rode down to Nevada to inform the leading men of what was on hand, as it was desirable to show that there was a feeling of unanimity on the subject, all along the gulch. "The miners turned out almost en masse, leaving their work and form- ing in solid column ; about six hundred strong, armed to the teeth, they marched up to Virginia. The leader of the body well knew the temper of his men on the subject. He spurred on ahead of them, and hastily calling a meeting of the executive, he told them plainly that the miners meant 'business,' and that, if they came up, they would not stand in the street to be shot down by Slade's friends ; but that they would take him and hang him. The meeting was small, as the Virginia men were loath to act at all. This momentous announcement of the feeling of the Lower Town was made to a cluster of men who were deliberating behind a wagon, at the rear of a store on Main street. " The Committee were most unwilling to proceed to extremities. All the duty they had ever performed seemed as nothing to the task before them ; but they had to decide, and that quickly. It was finally agreed that if the whole body of the miners were of the opinion that he should be hanged, that the Committee left it in their hands to deal with him. Off, at hot speed, rode the leader of the Nevada men to join his command. " Slade had foimd out what was intended, and the news sobered him instantly. He went into P. S. Pfouts' store, where Davis was, and apologized for his conduct, saying that he would take it all back. "The head of the column now wheeled into Wallace street and marched up at quick time. Halting in front of the store, the executive officer of the Committee stepped forward and arrested Slade, who was at once informed of hw doom, and enquiry was made as to whether he had any business to settle. Several parties spoke to him on the subject ; but to all such enquiries he turned a deaf ear, being entirely absorbed in the terrifying reflections on his own awful position. He never ceased his entreaties for life, and to see his dear wife. The unfortiinate lady referred to, between whom and Slade there existed a i^ arm affection, ROUOHINa IT. 61 was at this time living at their ranch on the Madison. She was pos- sessed of considerable personal attractions ; tall, well-formed, of grace- ful carriage, pleasing manners, and was, withal, an accomplished horse- woman. " A messenger from Slade rode at full speed to inform her of her hus- band's arrest. In an instant she was in the saddle, and with all the energy that love and despair could lend to an ardent temperament and a strong physique, she urged her fleet charger over the twelve miles of rough and rocky ground that intervened between her and the object of her passionate devotion. ' ' Meanwhile a party of volunteers had made the necessary preparations for the execution, in the valley traversed by the branch. Beneath the site of Ffout's and Russell's stone building there was a corral, the gate- posts of which were strong and high. Across the top was laid a beam, to which the rope was fastened, and a dry-goods box served for the platform. To this place Skde was marched, surrounded by a guard, composing the best armed and most numerous force that has ever ap- peared in Montana Territory. ''The doomed man had so exhausted himself ^y tears, prayers and lamentations, that he had scarcely strength left to stand under the fatal beam. He repeatedly exclaimed, ' My God ! my God ! must I die ? Oh. my dear wife !' " On the return of the fatigue part^, they encountered some friends of Slade, stuimch and reliable citizens and members of the Committee, but who were personally attached to the condemned. On hearing of his sentence, one of them, a stout-hearted man, pulled out his handkerchief and walked away, weeping like a child. Slade still begged to see his wife, most piteously, and it seemed hard to deny his request ; but the bloody consequences that were sure to follow the inevitable attempt at a rescue, that her presence and entreaties would have certainly incited, forbade the graating of his request. Several gentlemen were sent for to see him, in his last moments, one of whom (Judge Davis) made a short address to the people ; but in such low tones as to be inaudible, save to a few in his immediate vicinity. One of his friends, after exhausting his powers of entreaty, threw off his coat and declared that the prisoner could not be hanged until he himself was killed. A hun- dred guns were instantly leveled at hii j^ ; whereupon he turned and fled ; but, being brought back, he was compelled to resume his coat, and to give a promise of future peaceable demeanor. " Scarcely a leading man in Virginia could be' found, though numbers il- I i ROUOHINO IT. of the citizens joined the ranks of the guard when the arrest was made. All lamented the stem necessity which dictated the execution. " Everything being ready, the command was given, 'Men, do your duty,' and the box being instantly slipped from beneath his feet, ho died almost i'lstantaneously. " The body was cut down and carried to the Virginia Hotel, where, in a darkened room, it was scarcely luid out, when the unfortunate and bereaved companion of the deceased arrived, at headlong speed, to find that all was over, and that slie was a widow. Her grief and heart- piercing cries were terrible evidences of the depth of her aLtachment for her lost husband, and a considerable period elapsed before she could regain the command of her excited feelings." There is something about the desperado-nature that is wholly unaccountable — at least it looks unaccountable. It is this. The true desperado is gifted with splendid courage, and yet he will take the most infamous advantage of his enemy ; armed and free, he will stand up before a host and fight until he is shot all to pieces, and yet when he is under the gallows and helpless he will cry and plead like a child. Words are (^eap, and it is easy to call Slade a coward (all executed men who do not " die game " are promptly called cowards by unreflecting people), and when we read of Slade that he " had so exhausted himself by tears, prayers and lamentations, that he had scarcely strength left to stand under the fatal beam," the disgraceful word sug- gests itself in a moment — yet in frequently defying and inviting the vengeance of banded Eocky Mountain cut-throats by shoot- ing down their comrades and leaders, and never offering to hide or fly, Slade showed that he was a man of peerless bravery. No coward would dare that. Many a notorious coward, many a chicken-livered poltroon, coarse, brutal, degraded, has made his dying speech without a quaver in his voice and been swung into eternity with what looked like the calmest fortitude, and so we are justified m believing, from the low intellect of such a crea- ture, that it was not moral courage that enabled him to do it. Then, if moral courage is not the requisite quality, what could it have been that this stout-hearted Slade lacked? — this bloody, desperate, kindly-mannered, urbane gentleman, who never hesi- tated to warn his most ruffianly enemies that he would kill them whenever or wherever he came across them next I I think it is a conundruui worth investigating. BOUGHINa IT. 68 CHAPTEB XII. JUST beyond the breakfast-station we overtook a Mormon emigrant train of thirty-three wagons ; and tramping wearily along and driving their herd of loose cows, were dozens of coarse- clad and sad-looking men, women and children, who had walked as they were walking now, day after day for eight lingering weeks, and in that time had compassed the distance our stage had come in eight days and three hours — seven hundred and ninety-eight miles ! They were dusty and uncombed, hatless, bonnetless and ragged, and they did look so tired ! After breakfast, we bathed in Horse Creek, a (previously) limpid, sparkling stream — an appreciated luxury, for it was very seldom that our furious coach halted long enough for an in* dulgence of that kind. We changed horses ten or twelve times in every twenty-four hours — changed mules, rather — six mules —and did it nearly every time in four minutes. It was lively work. As our coach rattled up to each station six harnessed mules stepped gayly from the stable ; and in the twini^Kiing of an eye, almost, the old team was out, and the new one in and we off and away again. During the afternoon we passed Sweetwater Greek, Independ- ence Rock, Devil's Gate and the Devil's Gap. The latter were wild specimens of rugged scenery, and full of interest — we were in the heart of the Rocky Mountains, now. And we also passed by " Alkali" or "Soda Lake," and we woke up to the fact that our journey had stretched a long way across the world when the driver said that the Mormons often came there from Great Salt Lake City to haul away saleratus. He said that a few days gone by they had shoveled up enough pure saleratus from the ground (it was a dry lake) to load two wagons, and that when they got these two wagon-loads of a drug that cost them nothing, to Salt Lake, they could sell it for twenty-five cents a pound. In the night we sailed by a most notable curiosity, and one we had been hearing a good deal about for a day or two, and were c 1 i p 64 ROUGHING IT. suffering to see. This is what might be called a natural ice-house. It was August, now, and sweltering weather in the daytime, yet at one of the stations the men could scrape the soil on the hill- side under the lee of a range of boulders, and at a depth of six inches cut out pure blocks of ice — hard, compactly frozen, and clear as crystal I Toward dawn we got under way again, and presently as we sat with raised curtains enjoying our early-morning smoke and con- templating the first splendor of the rising sun as it swept down the long array of mountain peaks, flushing and gilding crag after crag and summit after summit, as if the invisible Creator reviewed his gray veterans and they saluted with a smile, we hove in sight of South Pass City. The hotel-keeper, the postmaster, the blacksmith, the mayor, the constable, the city marshal and the principal citizen and property holder, all came out and greeted us cheerily, and we gave him good day. He gave us a little Indian news, and a little Kocky Mountain news, and we gave him some Plains information in return. He then retired to his lonely grandeur and we climbed up amongst the bristling peaks and the ragged clouds. South Pass City consisted of four log cabins, one of which was unfinished, and the gentleman with all those oflfices and titles was the chiefestof the ten citizens of the place. Think of hotel-keeper, postmaster, blacksmith, mayor, constable, city marshal and principal citizen, all condensed into one person and crammed into one skin. Bemis said he was ''a perfect Allen's revolver of dignities." And he said that if he were to die as postmaster, or as blacksmith, or as postmaster and bUck- smith both, the people might stand it ; but if he were to die all over, it would be a frightful loss to the community. Two miles beyond South Pass City we saw for the first time that mysterious marvel which all Western untraveled boys have heard of and fully believe in, but are sure to be astounded at when they see it with their own eyes, nevertheless — banks of snow in dead summer time. We were now far up toward the sky, and knew all the time that we must presently encounter lofty summUs clad in the "eternal snow" which was so common- place a matter of mention in books, and yet when I did see it glittering in the sun on stately domes in the distance and knew BOUOHINO XT. 65 (lio month was August and that my coat was hanging up bocauso it wiis too warm to wear it, I was full as much amazud as if I iifvor had heard of snow in August before. Truly, " seeing is liclioving" — and many a man lives a long life through, thinking ho bolievos certain universally received and well established things, and yet never suspects that if he were confronted by tlioso things once, he would discover that he did not really boliovo them before, but only thought he believed then in a little while quite a number of peaks swung into view with long claws of glittering snow clasping them ; and with here and there, in the shade, down the mount in side, a little solitary patch of snow looking no larger than a lady's pocket-handker* chief, but being in reality as large as a "pubHc square." And now, at last, we were fairly in the renow id Sou' i Pak8, and whirling gayly along high above the common wc , I. We were perched upon the extreme summit of the grei; !, range of the Kocky Mountains, toward which we ho- been climbina, patiently climbing, ceaselessly climbing, for days and nights together — and about us was gathered a convention of Nature's kings that stood ten, twelve, and even thirteen thousand feet liigli — g'and old fellows who would have to stoop to see Mount Washington, in the twilight. We were in such an airy elevation above the creeping populations of the earth, and now and then when the obstructing crags stood out of the way it seemed that we could look around and abroad and contemplate the whole great globe, with its dissolving views of mountains, seas and conti- nents stretching away through the mystery of the summer haze. As a general thing the Pass wn' rnore suggestive of a valley than a suspension bridge in the cloucis — but it strongly suggested the latter at one spot. At that place the upper third of one or two majestic purple domes piojected above our level on either hand and gave us a sense cf a hidden great deep of mountains and plains and valleys down about their bases which we fancied we might see if we could step to the edge and look ever. These Sultans of the fastnesses were turbaned with tumbled volumes of cloud, which shredded away from time to time and drifted oflf fringed and torn, trailing their continents of shadow after them ; and catching presently on an intercepting peak, wrapped it 6 » 1 66 BOUOHINa IT. about and brooded there — then shredded away again and left the purple peak, as they had left the purple domes, downy and white with new-laid snow. In passing, these monstrous rags of cloud hung low and swept along right over the spectator's head, swinging their tatters so nearly in his face that his impulse was to shrink when they came closest. In the one place I s^eak of, one could look below him upon a world of diminishing crags and canyons leading down, down, and away to a vague plain with a thread in it which was a road, and bunches of feathers in it which were trees — a pretty picture sleeping in the sunlight — but with a darkness stealing over it and glooming its features deeper and deeper under the frown of a coming storm ; and then, while no film or shadow marred the noon brightness of his high perch, he could watch the tempest break forth down there, and see the lightnings leap from crag to crag and the sheeted rain drive along the canyon-sides, and hear the thunders peal and crash and roar, We had this spectacle ; a familiar one to many, but to us a novelty. We bowled along cheerily, and presently, at the very summit (though it had been all summit to us, and all equally level, for half an hour or more, we came to a spring whi^h spent its water through two outlets and sent it in opposite directions. The con- ductor said that one of those streams which we were looking at was just starting on a journey westward to the Gulf of California and the Pacific Ocean, thirugh hundreds pnd even thousands of miles of desert solitudes. He said that the other was just leaving its home among the snaw-peaks on a similar journey eastward — and we knew that long after we should have forgotten the simple rivulet it would still be plodding its patient way down the moun- tain sides, and canyon-beds, and between the banks of the Yel- lowstone ; and by and by would join the broad Missouri and flow through unknown plains and deserts and unvisited wildernesses ; and add a long and troubled pilgrimage among snags and wrecks and sand-bars ; and enter the Mississippi, touch the wharves of St. Louis and still drift on, traversing shoals and rocky channels then endless chains of bottomless and ample bends, walled with unbroken forests, then mysterious byways and secret passages among woody islands, then the chained bends again, bordered BOUamNG IT. 67 with wide levels of shining sugar-cane in place of the sombre forests ; then by New Orleans and still other chains of bends — and finally, after two long months of daily and nightly harass- ment, excitement, enjoyment, adventure, and awful peril of parched throats, pumps and evaporation, pass the Gulf and enter into its rest upon the bosom of the tropic sea, never to look upon its snow-peaks again or regret them. I freighted a leaf with a mental message for the friends at home, and dropped it in the stream. But I put no stamp on it and it was held for postage somewhere. On the summit we overtook an emigrant train of many wagons many tired men and women, and many a disgusted sheep and cow. In the wofully dusty horseman in charge of the expedition, I recognized John . Of all persons in the world to meet on top of the Hocky Mountains thousands of miles from home, he was the last one I should have looked for. We were school-boys together and warm friends for years. But a boyish prank of mine had disruptured this friendship and it had never been renewed* The act of which I speak was this. I had been accustomed to visit occasionally an editor whose room was in the third story of a building and overlooked the street. One day this editor gave me a watermelon which I made preparations to devour on the spot, but chancing to look out of the window, I saw John stand- ing directly under it and an irresistible desire came upon me to drop the melon on his head, which I immediately did. I was the loser, for it spoiled the melon, and John never forgave me and we dropped all intercourse and parted, but now met again under these circumstances. We recognized each other simultaneously, and hands were grasped as warmly as if no coldness had ever existed between us, and no allusion was made to any. All animosities were buried and the simple fact of meeting a familiar face in that isolated spot so far from home, was sufficient to make us forget all things but pleasant onej, and we parted again with sincere "good-byes" and "God bless you" from both. We had been climbing up the long shoulders of the Rocky Mountains for many tedious hours — we started down them, now. And we went spinning away at a round rate too. K«N » 68 BOUGHING IT. We left the snowy Wind River Mountains and Uinta Moun- tains behind, and sped away, always through splendid scenery but occasionally through long ranks of white skeletons of mules and oxen — monuments of the huge emigration of other days — and here and there were up-ended boards or small piles of stones which the driver said marked the resting-place of more precious remains. It was the loneliest land for a grave I A land given over to the cayote and the raven — which is but another name for desolation and utter solitude. On damp, murky nights, these scattered skeletons gave forth a soft, hideous glow, like very faint spots of moonlight starring the vague desert. It was because of the phosphorous in the bones. But no scientific explanation could keep a body from shivering when he drifted by one of those ghostly lights and kneW that a skull held it. At midnight it began to rain, and I never saw anything like it indeed, I did not even see this, for it was too dark. We fas- tened down the curtains and even caulked them with clothing, but the rain streamed in in twenty places, notwithstanding. There was no escape. If one moved his feet out of a stream, he brought his body under one ; and if he moved his body he caught one somewhere else. If he struggled out of the drenched blan- kets and sat up, he was bound to get one down the back of his neck. Meantime the stage was wandering about a plain with gaping gullies in it, for the driver could not see an inch before his face nor keep the road, and the storm pelted so pitilessly that there was no keeping the horses still. With the first abate- ment the conductor turned out with lanterns to look for the road, and the first dash he made was into a chasm about fourteen feet deep, his lantern following like a meteor. As soon as he touched bottom he sang out frantically : " Don't come here !" To which the driver, who was looking over the precipice where he had disappeared, replied, with an injured air : " Think I'm a dam fool I" The conductor was more than an hour finding the road — a matter which showed us how far we had wandered and what chances we had been taking. He traced our wheel-tracks to the imminent verge of danger, in two places. I have always been ROUGHING IT. 69 glad that we were not killed that night. I do not know any par- ticular reason, but I have always been glad. In the morning, the tenth day out, we crossed Green River, a fine, large, limpid stream — stuck in it, with the water just up to the top of our mail-bed, and waited till extra teams were put on to haul us up the steep bank. But it was nice cool water, and besides it could not find any fre^h place on us to wet. At the Green River station we had breakfast — hot biscuits, fresh antelope steaks, and coffee — the only decent meal we tasted between the United States and Great Salt Lake City, and the only one we were ever really thankful for. Think of the mono- tonous execrableness of the thirty that went before it, to leave this one simple breakfast looming up in my memory like a shot- tower after all these years have gone by I At five p. M. we reached Fort Bridger, one hundred and seven- teen miles from the South Pass, and one thousand and twenty- five miles from St. Joseph. Fifty-two miles further on, near the head of Echo Canyon, we met sixty United States soldiers from Camp Floyd. The day before, they had fired upon three hundred or four hundred Indians, whom they supposed gathered together for no good purpose. In the fight that had ensued, four Indians were captured, and the main body chased four miles, but nobody killed. This looked like business. We had a notion to get out and join the sixty soldiers, but upon reflecting that there were four hundred of the Indians, we concluded to go on and join the Indians. Echo Canyon is twenty miles long. It was like a long, smooth, narrow street, with a gradual descending grade, and shut in by enormous perpendicular walls of coarse conglomerate, four hun- dred feet high in many places, and turreted like medieeval castles. This was the most faultless piece of road in the moun- tains, and the driver said he would " let his team out." He did, and if the Pacific express trains whiz through there now any faster than we did then in the stag j-coach, I envy the passengers the exhilaration of it. We fairly seemed to pick up our wheels and fly — and the mail matter was lifted up free from everything and held in solution I I am not given to pxaggeration, and when I say a thing I mean it. Ii!| 70 BOUOHINO IT. However, time presses. At four in the afternoon we arrived on the summit of Big Mountain, fifteen miles from Salt Lake City, when all the world was glorified with the setting «un, and the most stupendous panorama of mountain peaks yet encoun- tered burst on our sight. We looked out rpon this sublime spectacle irom under the arch of a brilliant rainbow I Even the overland staoje-driver stopped his horses and gazed I Half ^n hour or an hour later, we changed horses, and took supper with a Mormon ''Destroying Angel." "Destroying Angels," as I understand it, are Latter-Day Saints who are set apart by the Church to conduct permanent disappearances of obnoxious citizens. I had heard a deal about these Mormon Destroying Angels and the dark and bloody deeds they had done, and when I entered this one's house I had my shudder all ready. But alas for all our romances, he was nothing but a loud, profane, offensive, old blackguard ! He was murderous enough, possibly, to fill the bill of a Destroyer, but would you Lave any kind of an Angel devoid of dignity? Could you abide an Angel in an unclean shirt and no suspenders ? Could you respect an Angel with a horse-laugh and a swagger like a buccaneer 7 There were other blackguards present — comrades of this one. And there was one person who Ic ed like a gentleman — Heber C. Kimball's son, tall and well made, and thirty years old, pert haps. A lot of slatternly women flitted hither and thither in a hurry, with coffee-pots, plates of bread, and other appurtenances to supper, and these were said to be the wives of the Angel — or some of them, at least. And of course they were ; for if they had been hired "help" they would not have let an angel from above storm and swear at them ai he did, let alone one from the place this one hailed from. This was our first experience of the western " peculiar institu- tion," and it was not Vfy prepossessing. We did not tarry long to observe it but hurried on to the home of the Latter- Day Saints, the stronghold of the prophets, the cap'tal of the only absolute monarch in America — Great Salt Lake City. \s the night closed in we took sanctuary in the Salt Lake House and unpacked our baggage. r"*^*^ ROUGHING IT. 71 CHAPTER XIII. WE bad a fine supper, of the freshest meats and fowls and vegetables — a great variety and as great abundance. Wo walked about the streets some, afterward, and glanced in at shops and stores; and there was fascination in surreptitiously staring at every creature we took to be a Mormon. This was fairy-land to us, to all intents and purposes— a land of enchantment, and gob- lins, and awful mystery. We felt a curiosity to ask every chilc^ how many mothers it had, and if it could tell them apart ; and we experienced a thrill every oime a dwelling-house door opened and shut as we passed, disclosing a glimpse of human heads and backs and shoulders — for we so longed to have a good, satisfying look at a Mormon family in all its comprehensive ampleness, disposed in the customary concentric rings of its home circle. By and by the Acting Governor of the Territory introduced us to other " Gentiles," and we spent a sociable hour with them. " Gentiles" are people who are not Mormons. Our fellow-passen- ger, Bemis, took care of himself, during this part of the evening, and did not make an overpowering success of it, either, for he came into our room in the hotel about eleven o'clock, full of cheerfulness, and talking loosely, disjointedly and indiscriminately, and every now and then tugging out a ragged word by the roots that had more hiccups than syllables in it. This, together with his hanging his coat on the floor on one side of a chair, and his vest on the floor on the other side, and piling his pants on the floor just in front of the same chair, and then contemplating the general result with superstitions awe, and finally pronouncing it '' too many for Am" and going to bed with his boots on, led us to fear that something he had eaten had not agreed with him. But we knew afterward that it was something he had been drinking. It was the exclusively Mormon refresher, " valley tan." Valley tan (or, at least, one form of valley tan) is a kind of whisky, or firpt cousin to it ; is of Mormon invention and manufactured only in Utah. Tradition says it is made of (imported) fire and ! I Kt.;.!, f i 72 ROUGHING IT. brimatoDO. If I remember rightly no public drinking saloons were allowed in the kingdom by Brigham Young, and no private drink- ing permitted among the faithful, except they confined themselves to "valley-tan." Next day we strolled about evcryvrliere througli the broad, straight, level streets, and enjoyed the pheasant stiani^eness of a city of fifteen thousand inhabitants with no loafers ()t.( ptible in it; iind no visible drunkards or noisy people; a liiy»i,iid stream rippling and dancing tlirougli every street in place of a filthy gutter; block after block of trim dwellings, built of "frame" and sunburned brick — a great thriving orchard and «;artl ;n behind every one of them, apparently — braaches from the street stream winding and sparkling among the garden be'? and fruit trees— and a grand general air of neatness, repair, t,brift and comfort, around and about and over the whole. And everywhere were workshops, lactones, and all manner of industries ; and intent faces and busy hands were to be seen wherever one looked; and in one's m.x% was the ceaseless clink of hammers, the buzz of trade and the contented hum of drums and f!y-wheels. The armorial crest of my own State consisted of two dissolute bears holding up the head of a dead and gone cask between them and making the pertinent remark, " United, We Stand— (hie i) — Divided, We Fall." It was always too figurative for the author of this book. But the Mormon crest was easy. And it was simple, unostentatious, and fitted like a glove. It was a representation of a Golden Beehive, with the bees all at work I The city lies in the edge of a level plain as broad as the State of Connecticut, and crouches close down to the ground under a curv- ing wall of mighty mountains whose heads are hidden in the clouds, and whose shoulders bear relics of the snows of winter all the summer long. Seen from one of these dizzy heights, twelve or fifteen miles ofl*, Great Salt Lake City is toned down and dimin- ished till it is suggestive of a child's toy-village reposing under the majestic protection of the Chinese wall. On some of those mountains, to the southwest, it had been raining every day for two weeks, but not a drop had fallen in the city. And on hot days in late spring and early autumn the citi- zens could quit fanning and growling and go out and cool off by BOUOHINO IT. 78 looking at the luxury of a glorious snow-storm going on in the mountains. They could enjoy it at a distance, at those seasons, every day, though no snow would fall in their streets, or anywhere near them. Salt Lake City was healthy — an extremely healthy city. They declared there was only one physician in the place and he was arresned every week regularly and held to answer under the va grant act for having " no visible means of support." They always give you a guod substantial article of truth in Salt Lake, and good measure and good weight, too. Very often, if you wished to weigh one of their airiest little commonplace statements you would want the hay scales. We desired to visit the famous inland sea, the American " Dead Sea," the great Salt Lake — seventeen miles, horseback, from the city — for we had dreamed about it, and thought about it, and talked about it, and yearned to see it, all the first part of our trip ; but now when it was only arm's length away it had suddenly lost nearly every bit of its interest. And so we put it off, in a sort of general way, till next day — and that was the last we ever thought of it. We dined with some hospitable Gentiles; and visited the foundation of the prodigious temple ; and talked long with that shrewd Connecticut Yankee, Heber C. Kimball (since deceased), a saint of high degree, and a mighty man of commerce. We saw the " Tithing-House," and the "Lion House," and I do not know or remember how many more church and government buildings of various kinds and curious names. Wo flitted hither and thither and enjoyed every hour, and picked up a great deal of useful information and entertaining nonsense, and went to bed at night satisfied. The second day we made the acquaintance of Mr. Street (since deceased; and put on white shirts and went and paid a state visit to the king. He seemed a quiet kindly, easy-mannered, dignified, self- possessed old gentleman of fifty-five or sixty, and had a gentle craft in his eye that probably belonged there. He was very simply dressed and was just taking off a straw hat as we entered. He talked about Utah, and the Indians, and Nevada, and general American matters and questions, with our Secretary and certain .1 : 74 BOUOHINO IT. government officials who came with us. But he never paid any attention to mo, notwithstanding I made several attempts to "draw him out " on federal politics and his high-handed attitude toward Congress. I thought some of the things I said were rather fine. But lie merely looked around at me, tit distant intervals, something as I have seen a benignant old cat look around to see which kitten was meddling with her tail. By and by I subsided into an indig- nant silence, and so sat until the end, hot and flushed, and execrat- ing him in my hear:: for an ignorant savage. But he was calm, His conversation with those gentlemen flowed on as sweetly and peacefully and musically as any summer brook. When the audience was ended and we were retiring from the presence, he put his hand on my heatl, beamed down on me in an admiring way and said to my brothek' ; " Ah — your child, I presui^« ? Boy, or girl ! " CHAPTER XIV. ■jV/TR. STREET was very busy with his telegraphic matters— and "^'-*- considering that he had eight or nine hundred miles of rugged, snowy, uninhabited mountains, and waterltss, treeless, melancholy desert? to traverse with his wire, it was natural and needful that he should be as busy as possible. He could not go comfortably along and cut his poles by the roadside, either, but they had to be hauled by ox teams across those exhausting deserts — and it was two days' journey from water to water, in one or two of them. Mr. Street's contract was a vast work, every way one looked at it ; and yet to comprehend what the vau'ue words "eight hundred miles of rugged mountains and dismal deserts" mean, one must go over the ground in pei ^on — pen and ink descriptions can- not convey the dreary reality to the reader. And after all, Mr. S.'s mightiest difficulty turned out to be one which he had never taken into the account at all. Unto Mormons he had sub-let the hardest and heaviest half of his great undertaking, and all of a sudden they concluded that they were going to make little or nothing, and so they tranquilly threw their pole overboard in mountain or BOUOHlNa IT. 76 desert, just as it happened when they took the notion, and drove home and went about their customary business I They were under written contract to Mr. Street, but they did not care anything for that. They said they would " admire " to see a " Gentile " force a Mormon to fulfil a losing contract in Utah ! And they made them- f?elves very merry over the matter. Street said — for it was he that told us these things: " I was in dismay. I was under heavy bonds to complete my contract in a given time, and this disaster looked very much like ruin. It was an astounding thing ; it was such an wholly unlooked- for difficulty, that I was entirely nonplussed. I am a business man —have always been a business man — do not know anything but business — and so you can imagine how like being struck by light- ning it was to find myself in a country where written contracts were worthless t — that main security, that sheet-anchor, that aljsolute n« cessity, of business. My confidence left me. There was no use in making new contracts—that was plain. I talked with fii jt one prominent citizen and then another. They all sympathized with me, first rate, but they did not know how to help me. But at last a Gentile said, * Go to Brigham Young 1 — these small fry cannot do you any good.' I did not think much of the idea, for if the law could not help me, what could an individual do who had not even anything to do with either making the laws or executing them ? He might be a very good patriarch of a church and preacher in its tabernacle, but something sterner than religion and moral suasion was needed to handle a hundred refractory, half-civilized sub-contractors. But what was a man to do ? I thought if Mr. Young could not do anything else, he might probably be able to give me some advice and a valuable hint or two, and so I went straight to him and laid the whole case before him. He said very little, but showed strong interest all the way through. He examined all the papers in de- tail, and whenever there seemed anything like a hitch, either in in the papers or my statement, he would go back and take up the thread and follow it patiently out to an intelligent and satisfactory result. Then he made a list of the contractora' names. Finally he said : il y^' / 76 ROUOHINO IT. « ;i i "Mr. Street, this is all perfectly plain. These contracts arc strictly and legally drawn, and am duly signed and certified, These men manifestly entered into them with their eyes open. 1 see no fault or flaw anywhert*." *• Then Mr. Young turned to a man waiting at the other end of the room and said : ' Take this Hat of names to So-and-so, and tell him to have these men here at such-and-such an hour.' " They were there, to the minute. So was I. Mr. Young asked them a number of questions, and their answers made my statement good. Then he said to them : '^ 'You signed these contracts and assumed these obligations of your own froe will and accord ?' "' Yes.' "' Then carry them out to the letter, if it makes paupers of you ! Gol' " And they did go, too ! They are strung across the deserts now, working like bees. And I never hear a word out of them. There is u batch of governors, and judges, and other officials here, ship- ped from Washington, and they maintain the semblance of a republican form of government — but the petrified truth is that Utah is an absolute monarchy and Brigham Young is king 1 " • Mr. Street was a fine man, and I believe his story. I knew him well during several years afterward in San Ftancisco. Our stay in Salt Lake City amounted to only two days, and therefore we had no time to make the customary inquisition into the workings of polygamy and get up the usual statistics and de- ductions preparatory to calling the attention of the nation at large once more to the matter. I had the will to do it. With the gushing self-sufficiency of youth I was feverish to plunge in headlong and achieve a great reform here — until I saw the Mormon women. Then Iwastouched. My heart was wiser than my head. It warmed toward these poor, ungainly and pathetically " homely " creatures, and as I turned to hide the generous moisture in my eyes, I paid, " No-r- the man that marries one of them has done an a<*.t of Christian charity which entitles him to the kindly applause of mankind, not their harsh censure — and ihe man that marries sixty of them has done a deed of open-handed generosity so sublime that the nations should stand uncovered in his ^)resence and worship in silence." ROUOniNO IT. 77 CHAPTER XV. IT is a luccious country for thrilling evening stories about assass- inations of intractable Gentiles. I cannot easily conceive of anything more cosy than the night in Salt Lake which we spent in 11 Oentile den, .mioking pipes and listening to tales of how Burton galloped in among the plcadinst snd defenceless " Morisites" and shot them down, men and women, like so many dogs. And how Bill Hickman, a Destroying Angel, shot Drown and Arnold dead for bringing suit against him for a debt. And how Porter Rock- well did this and that dreadful thing. And how heedless people often come to Utah and make remarks about Brigham, or poly- gamy, or some other sacred matter, and the very next morning at daylight such parties are sure to be found lying up some back alley, contentedly waiting for the hearse. And the next most interesting thing is to sit and listen to these Gentiles talk about polygamy ; and how some portly old frog of an elder, or a bishop, marries a girl — likes her, marries her sister — likes her, marries another sister— likes her, takes another — likshcr, marries her mother — likes her, marries her father, grandfather, great grandfather, and then comes back liungry and asks for more. And how the pert young thing of eleven will chance to be the favorite wife and her own venerable grandmother have to rank away down toward D 4 in their mutual husband's esteem, and have to sleep in the kitchen, as like as not. And how this dreadful sort of thing, this hiving together in one foi:i nest of mother and daughters, and the making a young daughter i uperior to her own mother in rank and authority, are things v/I ich Mormon women submit to because their religion teaches them that the more wives a man has on earth, and the more children he rears, the higher the place they will all have in the world to come— and the warmer, maybe, though they do not seem to say anything about that. According to these Gentile friends of ours, Brigham Young's harem contains twenty or thirty wives. They said that some of n.,. f ; 78 BOUOHINO IT. them liutl grown old and gone out of active Bcrvicc, but were com- fortably housed and cared for in the henery — or the Lion Ilouse, us it is strangely named. Along with each wife were her children - fifty altogether. The house was perfectly quiet and orderly, when the children were still. They all to-ok their meals in one room, and a happy and home-like sight it was pronounced tj be. None of our party got an opportunity to take dinner with Mr. Young, hut a Gentile by the name of Johnson professed to have enjoyed u sociable breakfast in the Lion House. IIo gave a preposterous account of the " calling of the roll," and other preliminaries, and the carnage that cnsuud \then the buckwheat cakes came in. Hut he embellished rather too much. He said that Mr. Young told him several smart sayings of certain of his *' two-year-olds," observing with some pride that for many years he liad been the lieaviest con- tributor in that lino to one of the Eastern magazines ; and then he wanted to show Mr. Johnson one of the pets that had said the last good thing, but he could not And the child. He searched the faces of the children in detail, but could not decide which one it was. Finally he gave it up with a sigh and said : " I thought I would know the little cub again, but I donH." Mr. Johnson said further, that Mr. Young observed that life was a sad, sad thing — " because the joy of every new marriage a man con- tracted was so apt to be blighted by the inopportune funeral of a less recent bride." And Mr. Johnson said that while he and Mr. Young were pleasantly conversing in private, one of the Mrs. Youngs came in and demanded a breast-pin, remarking that she had found out that he had been giving a breast-pin to No. 6, and «Ae, for one, did not propose to let this partiality go on without making a satisfactory amount of trouble about it. Mr. Young reminded her that there was a stranger present. Mrs. Young said that if the state of things inside the house was not agreeable to the stranger, he could find room outside. Mr. Young promised the breast-pin, and she went away. But in a minute or two another Mrs. Young came in and demanded a breast-pin. Mr. Young began a remonstrance, but Mrs. Young cut him short. She said No. 6 had got one, and No. 11 was promised one, and it was "no use for him to try and impose on her — she hoped b-i: ^nevr her rights." He gave his promise, and she went. And p^^esintly three Mrs. ; r I ! I ROUOniNO IT. 79 Vounj^H entered in a body and opened on their huHband a tompe; *. of tnirs, ubuse, and entreaty. They Imd lieard all almut No. tt, No. II, and No. 14. Three more breast-pins were promised. Tliey were hardly gone wlien nine more Mrs. Youngs tiled into tlie pro- gctu'c, and a new tempest burst forth and ranged round about the propliet and his guest. Nino breast-pins were promised, and tlie weird sisters filed out again. And in came eleven more, weeping and wailing and gnashing their teeth. Eleven promised breast- pins purchased peace once more. " That is a specimen," said Mr. Young. " You see how it is. You see what a life I lead. A man can^t be wise all the time. In ft heedless moment I gave my darling No. 0— excuse me calling her thus, as her other name has escaped me for the moment — a breast-pin. It was only worth twenty-five dollars — that is, appa- rently that was its whole cost— but its ultimate cost was ineyitably bound to be a good deal more. You yourself have seen it climb up to six hundred and fifty dollars— and alas, even that is not the end ! For I have wives all over this Territory of Utah. I have doxens of wives whose numbers, even, I do not know without looking in the family Bible. They are scattered far and wide among the mountains and valleys of my realm. And mark you, every solitary one of them will hear of this wretched breast-pin, and every last one of them will have one or die. No. 6^s breast- pin will cost me twenty-five hundred dollars before I see the end of it. And these creatures will compare these pins together, and if one is a shade finer than the rest, they will all be thrown on my hands, and I will have to order a new lot to keep peace in the family. Sir, you probably did not know it, but all the time you were present with my children your every movement was watched by vigilant servitors of mine. If you had offered to give a child a dime, or a stick of candy, or any trifle of the kind, you would have been snatched out of the house instantly, provided it could be done before your gift left your hand. Otherwise it would be absolutely necessary for you to make an exactly similar gift to all my children— and knowing by experience the importance of the thing I would have stood by and seen to it myself that you did it, and did it thoroughly. Once a gentleman gave one of my chil- dren a tin wbistle^a yeritable inye^tioii 0{ Saltan, sir, and one 80 ROUGFTNG IT. which I have an unspeakable horror of, and so would you if you had eighty or ninety children in your house. But the deed was done — the man cscaj)ed. I Icnew what the result was going to be, and 1 thirsted for vengeance. I ordered out a flock of Destroying Angels, and they hunted the man far into the fastnesses of the Nevada mountains. But they never caught him. I am not cruel, sir — I am not vindictive except when sorely outraged — but if I had caught him, sir, so help me Joseph Smith, I would have locked him into the nursery till the brats whistled him to death. By the slaughtered body of St. Parley Pratt (whom God assoil !) there was never anything on this earth like it ! / knew who gave the whistle to tlie child, but I could not make those jealous mothers believe me. They believed I did it, and the result was just what any man of reflection could have foreseen : I had to order a hundred and ten whistles — I think we had a hundred and ten children in the house then, but some of them are off at college now — I had to order a hundred and ten of those shrieking things, and I wish I may nevei' speak another word if we didn't have to talk on our fingers entirely, from that time forth until the children got tired of the whistles. And if ever another man gives a whistle to a child of mine and I get my hands on him, I will hang him higher than Haman 1 That is the word with the bark on it ! Shade of Nephi I You don't know anything about married life. I am rich, and everybody knows it. I am benevolent, and every- body takes advantage of it. I have a strong fatherly instinct, and all the foundlings are foisted on me. Every tin>e a woman wants to do well by her darling, she puzzles her brain to cipher out some scheme for getting it into my hands. Why, sir, a woman came here once with a child of a cuv'ous lifeless sort of complexion (and so had the woman), and swcre that the child was mine and she my wife — that I had married her at such-and-such a time in such-and-such a place, but she had forgotten her number, and of course I could not remember her name. Well, sir, she called my attention to the fact that the child looked like me, and really it did seem to resemble me — a common thing in the Territory — and, to cut the story short, I put it in my nursery, and she left. And by the ghost of Orson Hyde, when they came to wash the paint off that child it was an InjuQ \ Bless my soul, you don't know ROUGHING IT. 81 anything about married life. It is a perfect dog's life, sir — a per- fect dog's life. You can't economize. It isn't possible. I have tried keeping one set of bridal attire for all occasions. But it is of no use. First you'll marry a combination of calico and con- sumption that's as thin as a rail, and next you'll get a creature that's nothing more than the dropsy in disguise, and then you've got to eke out that bridal dress with an old balloon. That is the way it goes. And think of the wash-bill — (excuse these tears) — nine hundred and eighty-four pieces a week ! No, sir, there is no such a thing as economy in a family like mine. Why, just the one item of cradles— think of it ! And vermifuge ! Soothing syrup ! Teething rings ! And * papa's watches' for the babies to play with ! And things to scratch the furniture with ! And lucifer matches for them to eat, and pieces of glass to cut themselveB with ! The item of glass alone would support your family, I ven- ture to say, sir. Let me scrimp and squeeze all I can, I still can't get ahead as fast as I feel I ought to, with my opportunities. Bless you, sir, at a time when I had seventy-two wives in this house, I groaned under the pressure of keeping thousands of dollars tied up in seventy-two bedsteads v^hen the money ought to have been out at interest ; and I just sold out the whole stock, sir, at a sacrifice, and built a bedstead seven feet long and ninety- six feet wide. But it was a failure, sir. I could not sleep. It appeared to me that the whole seventy-two women snored at once. The roar was deafening. And then the danger of it ! That was what I was looking at. They would all draw in their breath at once, and you could actually see the walls of the house suck in — and then they would all exhale their breatii at once, and you could see the walls swell out, and strain, and hear the rafters crack, and the shingles grind together. My friend, take an old man's advice, and don't encumber yourself with a large family — mind, I tell you, don't do it. In a small family, and in a small family only, you will find that comfort and that peace of mind which are the best at last of the blessings this world is able to afford us, and for the lack of which no accumulation of wealth, and no acquisition of fame, power, and greatness can ever compensate us. Take my word for it, ten or eleven wives is all you need — never go over it." Some instinct or other made me set this Johnson down as being 6 82 ROUGHING IT. unreliable. And yet he was a very entertaining person, and I doubt if some of the information he gave us could have been acquired from any other source. He was a pleasant contrast to those reticent Mormons. CHAPTEE XVI. ■ ■ 1 1 I 1! A LL men have heard of the Mormon Bible, but few except the -*-*■ " elect " have seen it, or, at least, taken the trouble to read it. I brought away a copy from Salt Lake. The book is a curi- osity to me, it is such a pretentious affair, and yet so " slow," so sleepy ; such an insipid mess of inspiration. It is chloroform in print. If Joseph Smith composed this book, the act was a miracle — keeping awake while he did it was, at any rate. If he, accord- ing to tradition, merely translated it from certain ancient and mysteriously engraved plates of copper, which he declares he found under a stone, in an out-of-the-way locality, the work of translation was equally a miracle, for the same reason. The book seems to be merely a prosy detail of imaginary history, with the Old Testament for a model; followed by a tedious plagiarism of the New Testament. The author labored to give his words and phrases the quaint, old-fashioned sound and structure of our King Jameses translation of the Scriptures ; and the result is a mongrel — half- modern glibness, and half ancient simplicity and gravity. The latter is awkward and constrained; the former natu- ral, but grotesque by the contrast. Whenever he found his speech growing too modern — which was about every sentence or two — he ladled in a few such Scriptural phrases as " exceeding sore," " and it came to pass," etc., and made things satisfactory again. " And ROUGHING IT. it came to pass " was his pet. If he had left that out, his Bible would have been only a pamphlet. The title-page reads as follows : The Book of Mormon : an account written by the Hand of Mor- mon, UPON PLATEf? TAKEN FROM THE PlATES OF NbPHI. Wherefore it is an abridgment of the record of the people of Nephi, and also of Lamanites ; written to the Lamanites, who are a remnant of the House of Israel ; and also to Jew and Gentile ; written by way of commandment, and also by the spirit of prophecy and of revelation. Written and sealed up, and hid up unto the Lord, that they might not be destroyed ; to come forth by the gift and power of God imto the in- terpretation thereof ; sealed by the hand of Moroni, and hid up unto the Lord, to come forth in due time by the way of Grentile ; the interpre- tation thereof by the gift of God. An abridgment taken from the Book of Ether also ; which is a record of the people of Jared ; who were scattered at the time the Lord confounded the language of the people when they were building a tower to get to Heaven. "Hid up" is good. And so is "wherefore" — though why "wherefores"? Any other word would have answered as well — though in truth it would not have sounded so Scriptural. Next comes I r^*« THE TESTIMONY OP THREE WITNESSES. Be it known unto all nations, kindre*^.;, tongues; and people unto whom this work shall come, that we, iLiough the grace of God the Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, have seen the plates which contain this record, which is a record of the people of Nephi, and also of the Lamanites, their brethren, and alpo of the people of Jpred, who came from the tower of which hath been spoken ; and we also know that they have been translated by the gift and power of God, for His voice hath declared it unto us ; wherefore we know of a surety that the work is true. And we also testify that we have seen the engravings which are upon the plates ; and they have been shown unto us by the power of God, and not of man. And we declare \i 'th words of soberness, that an I..' gel of God came down from heaven, and he bronglit and laid before our eyes, that we beheld and saw the plates, and the engravings there- on ; and we know that it is by the grace of God the Father, and our Lord Jesus Christ, that we beheld and bear record that these things are true ; and it is marvelous in our eyes ; nevertheless the voice of the 84 ROUGHING IT. Lord commanded'usjthat we should bear record of it ; wherefore, to be obedient unto the commandments of God, we bear testimony of these things. And we know that if we are faithful in Christ, we shall rid our garments of the blood of all men, and be found spotless before the judgment-seat of Christ, and shall dwell with Him eternally in the heavens. And the honor be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost, which is one God. Amen. Olivkr Cowdery, . David Whitmer, Martin Harris. Some people have to have a world of evidence before they can come anywhere in the neighborhood of believing anything ; but for me, when a man tells me that be has " seen the engravings which are upon the plates," and not only that, but an angel was there at the time, and saw him see them, and probably took his receipt for it, I am very far on the road to conviction, no matter whether I ever heard of that man before or not, and even if I do not know the name of the angel, or his nationality either. Next is this : and also the testimony of eight WITNESS!! S, Be it known unto all nations, kindreds, tongues, and people unto whom this work shall come, that Joseph Smith, Jr., the translator of this work, has shown unto us the plates of which hath been spoken, which hav€ the appearance of gold ; and as many of the leaves as the said Smith has translated, we did handle with our hands ; and we also saw the engravings thereon, all of which has the appearance of anciert work, and of curious workmanship. And this we bear record with words of soberness, that the said Smith has shown unto us, for we have seen and hefted, and know of a surety that the said Smith has got the plates of which we have spoken. And we give our names untu the world, to witness unto the world that which we have seen ; and we lie not, God bearing witness of it. Christian Whitmer, Hiram Page, Jacob Whitmer, . Joseph Smith, Sr., Peter Whitmer, Jr., Hyritm Smith, John Whitmer, Samuel H. Smith. And when I am far on the road to conviction, and eight men, be they grammatical or otherwise, come forward and tell me that they ROUGHING IT. 86 have seen the plates too ; and not only seen those plates but " heft- ed" them, I am convinced. I could not feel more satisfied and at rest if the entire Whitmer family had testified. The Mormon Bible consists of fifteen " books" — being the books of Jacob, £nos, Jarom, Omni, Mosiah, Zaniff, Almh, Helaman, Ether, Moroni, two " books" of Mormon, and three of Nephi. In the first book of Nephi is a plagiarism of the Old Testament, which gives an account of the exodus from Jerusalem of the " chil- dren of Lehi ;" and It goes on to tell of their wanderings in the wilderness, v'uring eight years, ^.nd their supernatural protection by one of their number, a party by the name of Nephi. They fin, .ly reached the land of '■ Bountiful," and camped by the sea. After they had remained there "for the space of many days" — which is more Scriptural than definite — Nephi was commanded from on higJi to build a ship wherein to " carry the people across the waters." He travestied Noah's ark — but he obeyed orders in tlie matter of the plan. He finished the ship in a single day, whilQ his biethren stood by and made fun of it — and of him, too — "say- ing, our brother is a fool, for he thinketh that he can build a ship." They did not wait for the timbers to dry, but the whole tribe or nation sailed next day. Then a bit of genuine nature cropped out, and is revealed by outspoken Nephi with Scriptural frankness — they all got on a spree ! They, " and also their wives, began to make themselves merry, insomuch that they began to dance, and to sing, and to speak with much rudeness ; yea, they were lilted up unto exceeding rudeness." Nephi tried to stop these scandalous proceedings ; but th- y tied him neck and heels, and went on with their lark. But observe how Nephi the prophet circumvented them by the aid of the invisible powers : And it came to pass that after thoy had bound me, insomuch that I could not move, the compass, which had been prepared of the Lord, did cease to work ; wherefore, they knew not whither they should steer the ship, inriomuch that there arose a great storm, yea, a great and terrible tempest, and we were driven back upon the waters for the space of three days ; and they began to be frightened exceedingly, lest they should be drowned in the soa ; nevertheless they did not loose me. And on the >■'>. :■( II f-: ■bl I 86 EOUGHINa IT. m W\ fourth day, which we had been driven back, the tempest began to be exceeding sore. And it came to pass that we were about to be swallowed up in the depths of the sea. Then they untied him. And it came to pass after they had loosed me, behold, I took the com- pass, and it did work whither I desired it. And it came to pass that I prayed unto the Lord ; and after I had prayed, the winds did cease, and the storm did cease, and there was a great calm. Equipped with their compasB, these ancients appear to have had the advantage of Noah. Their voyage W8B toward a "promised land" — the only name they gave it. They reached it in safety. Polygamy is a recent feature in the Mormon religion, and was added by Brigham Young after Joseph Smith's death. Before that, it was regarded as an ^' abomination." This verse from the Mor- mon Bible occurs in Chapter II. of the book of Jacob : For behold, thus saith the Lord, this people begin to wax in iniquity; they understand not the Scriptures ; for they seek to excuse themselves in committing whoredoms, because of the things which were written con- cerning David, and Solomon his son. Behold, David and Solomon truly had many wives and concubines, which thing was abominable before me, saith the Lord ; wherefore, thus saith the Lord, I have led this people forth out of the land of Jerusalen, by the power of mine arm, that I might raise up unto me a righteous branch from the fruit of the loins of Joseph. Wherefore, I the Lord God, will not sufiFer that this p?ople shall do like unto them of old. Hov, ever, the project failed,— or at least the modern Mormoo end of it — for Brighau: " suffers " it. This verse is from the same chapter : Behold, the Lamanites your brethren, whom ye hate, because of their filthiness and the cursings which hath come upon their skins, are more righteous than you , for they have not forgotten the commandment of the Lord, which was given unto our fathers, that they should have, save ^ere one wife ; and concubines they should have none. ROUGHING IT. 87 The following verae (from Chapter IX. of the Book of Nephi) appears to contain information not familiar to everybody : And now it camp tu paas that when Jesus had ascended into heaven, the multitude did disperse, and every man did take his wife and his childrex'., and d'.d return to his own home. And it came xo pass that on the morrow, when the multitude was gathered together, behold, Nephi and his brother whom he had raised from the dead, v^hose name was Timothy, and also his son, whose name was Jonas, and also Mathoni, and Mathonihah, his brother, and Kumen, and Kumenonhi, and Jeremiah, and Shemnon, and Jonas, and Zedekiah, and Isaiah ; now these were the names of the disciples whom Jesus had chosen. t In order that the reader may observe how much more grandeur and picturesqueness (as seen by these Mormon twelve) accompa- nied one of the tenderest episodes in the life of our Saviour than other eyes seem to have been aware of, I quote the following from the same " book" — Nephi : And it came to pass that Jesus spake unto them, and bade them arise. And they arose from the earth, and He said unto them, Blessed are ye because of your faith. And now behold, My joy is full. And when He had said these words. He wept, and the multitude bear record of it, and He took their little children, one by one, and blessed them, and prayed unto the Father for them. And when He had done this He wept again, and He spake unto the multitude, and saith unto them, Behold your little ones. And as they looked to behold, they cast their eyes toward heaven, and they saw the heavens open, and they saw angels desosnding out of heaven as it were, in the midst of fire ; and they carxie down and encircled those little ones about, and they were cnciroied about with fire ; and the angels did minister unto them, and the multitude did see and hear and bear record ; and they know that their record is true, for they all of them did see and hear, every man for himself ; and they were in number about two thousand and five hundred souls ; and they did consist of men, women, and children. And what else would they be likely to consist of ? The Book of Ether is an incomprehensible medley of " history," much of it relating to battles and sieges among peoples whom the reader has possibly never heard of; and who inhabited a country |i:i: iWi F ! 88 ROUGHING IT. which is not set down in the geography. here was a King with the remarkable name of Coriantumr, and he warred with Shared, and Lib, and Shiz, and others, in the *' plains of Heshlon ;" and the " valley of Gilgal ;" and the " wilderness of Akish ;" and the " land of Moran ;'' and the " plains of Agosh ;" and " Ogath," and " Raniah," and the " land of Corihor," and the " hill Comnor," by " the waters of Ripliancum," etc., etc., etc. " And it came to pass," after a deal of fighting, that Coriantumr, upon making cal- culation of his losses, found that " there had been slain two mil- lions of mighty men, and also their wives and their children"— say 5,000,00 or 6,000,000 in all — "and he began to sorrow in his heart." Unquestionably it was time. So he wrote to Shiz, asking a cessation of hostilities, and ofl'ering to give up his kingdom to save his people. Shiz declined, except upon condition that Coriantumr would come and let him cut his head off first — a thing w^hich Coriantumr would not do. Then there was more fighting for a season ; then four years were devoted to gathering the forces for a final 8trug 1. And it came tf) [ <8 that Coriantumr fell to the earth, and became as if he had no life. And the Lord {.pake unto Ether, m d said unto him, j;o fortli. And he went forth, and beheld that thj words of the Lord had all been fulfilled ; and hu finished his record ; and the hundredth part I have not written. It seems a pity he did not finish, for after all his dreary form( chapters of commonplace, he stopped just as he was in danger of becoming interesting. The Mormon Bible is rather stupid and tiresome to read, but there is nothing vicious in its teachings. Its code of morals is unobjectionable— it is smouched" • from the New Testament and no credit given. CHAPTER XVII. A T the end if our two days' sojourn, we left Great Salt Lake JLX. cjty iiearty and well fed and happy — physically superb but rot 10 very much wiser as regards the " Mormon question," than WG were when we arrived, perhaps. "We had a deal more " infor- mation " than we had before, of course, but we did not know what portion of it was reliable and what was not — for it all came from acquaintances of a day — strangers, strictly speaking. We were told, for instance, that the dreadful "Mountain Mtadows Massacre " was the work of the Indians entirely, and that the Gentiles had meanly tried to fasten it upon the Mormons ; we were told, likewise, that the Indians were to blame, partly, and partly the Mormons; and we were told, likewise, and just as positively that the Mormons were almost if not wholly and completely respon- sible for that most treacherous and pitiless butchery. "We got the story in all these differ jut shapes, but it was not till several years afterward that Mrs. V aite's book, " The Mormt n Prophet," came out with Judge Cradlcbaugh's trial of the accused parties in it and * Milton. ROUOniNO IT. 91 revealed the truth that tho latter version was the correct one and that the Mormons were the assas ins. All our "information" had three sides to it, and so I gave up the idea that I could settle tho "Mormon question" in two days. Still I have seen newspaper correspondents do it in one. I left Great Salt Lake a good deal confused as to what state of things existed there— and sometimes even questioning in my own mind whether a state of things existed there at all or not. Bnt presently I remembered with j^htning sense of relief that we had til ere which we could be certain oily lost. For instance, we . I^ioneer land, in absolute and Overland City. Salt Lake City. learned two or three trivi' of; and so the two days > had learned that we were i. N. York. St. Louis. 1 cent, 5 cents. 10 cents. RESULT OF HIGH rRKIGHTS. 25 cents. tangible reality. The high prices charged for trifles were eloquent of high freights and bewildering instances of freightage. In the east, in those days, the smallest moneyed denomination was a penny and it repreBente( I the smallest purchasable quantity of any commodity. West of Cincinnati the smallest coin in use was the silver five-cent piece and no ^mailer quantity of an article could be bought than "'five cents' worth." In Overland City the lowest coin appeared to be the ten-cent piece ; but in Salt Lake there did not seem to be any money in circulation smaller than a quarter, or any smaller quantity purchasable of any commodity than twenty- five cents' worth. We had always been used to half dimes and " five cents' worth " as the minimum of financial negotiations ; but in Salt Lake if one vanted a cigar, it was a quarter; if he wanted a chalk pipe, it was a quarter ; if he wanted a peach, or a candle, or a newspaper, or a shave, or a little Gentile whiskey to rub on J ; ; I IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) 1.25 U|Z8 2.5 2.2 2.0 1.4 1^ 1 w ■'I V ^ ^^*> -^^ FhotogFaphic Sciences Corporation 23 van MAM STIHT WnSTIR,N.Y. 14SM (7U)S7a-4S03 % ^/^ ^ .^^ -uMMhIwUi 92 BOUGHma IT. ' I • ■ I m Pi m !:!rl 1 i I I;; ; ; his corns to arrest indigestion and keep him from having the toothache, twenty-five cents was the price, every time. When we looked at the shot-bag of silver, now and then, we seemed to be wasting our substance in riotous living, but if we referred to the expense account we could see that we had not been doing anything of the kind. But people easily get reconciled to big money and big prices, and fond and vain of both— it is a descent to little coins and cheap prices that is hardest to bear and slowest to take hold on one's toleration. After a month's acquaintance with the twenty-five cent minimum, the average humpn being is ready to blush every time he thinks of his despicable five-cent days. How sunburnt with blushes I used to get in gaudy Nevada, every time I thought of my first financial experience in Salt Lake. It was on this wise (which is a favorite expression of great authors, and a very neat one, too, but I never hear anybody say on this wise when they are talking). A young half-breed with a complexion like a yellow-jacket asked me if I would have my boots blacked It was at the Salt Lake House the morning after we arrived. I said yes, and he blacked them. Then I handed him a silver five-cent piece, with the benevolent air of a person who is conferring wealth nnd blessedness upon poverty and suffering. The yellow-jacket took it with what I judged to be suppressed emotion, and laid it reveicntly down in the middle of his broad hand. Then he began to contemplate it, much as a philosopher contemplates a gnat's ear in the ample field of his microscope. Several mountaineers, teamsters, stage-drivers, etc., drew near and dropped into the tableau and fell to surveying the money with that attractive indifierence to formality which is noticeable in the hardy pioneer. Presently the yellow-jacket handed the half-dime back to me and told me I ought to keep my money in my pocket-book instead of in my soul, and then I wouldn't get it cramped and shriveled up so t What a roar of vulgar laughter there was ! I destroyed the mongrel reptile on the spot, but I smiled and smiled all the time I was detaching his scalp, for the remark he made was good for an " Injun." Tes, we had learned in Salt Lake to be charged great prices without letting the inward shudder appear on the sorface — ^for BOUOHINO IT. 98 even already we had overheard and noted the tenor of conversa- tions among drivers, conductors, and hostlers, and finally among citizens of Salt Lake, until we were well aware that these superior beings despised ^* emigrants." We permitted no tell-tale shudders and winces in our countenances, for we wanted to seem pioneers, or Mormons, half-breeds, teamsters, stage-drivers, Mountain Mea- dow assassins->anything in the world that the plains and Utah respected and admired — but we were wretchedly ashamed of being " emigrants," and sorry enough that we had white shirts and could not swear in the presence of ladies without looking the other way. And many a time in Nevada, afterwardS} we had occasion to re- member with humiliation that we were " emigrants," and conse- quently a low and inferior sort of creatures. Perhaps the reader has visited Utah, Nevada, or California, even in these latter days, and while communing with himself upon the sorrowful banish- ment of those countries from what he considers ** the world," has had his wings clipped by finding that he is the one te be pitied, and that there are entire populations around him ready and will- ing to do it for him — yea, who are complacently doing it for him already, wherever he steps his foot. Poor thing, they are making fun of his hat ; and the cut of his New York coat ; and his con- scientiousness about his grammar ; and his feeble profanity ; and his consumingly ludicrous ignorance of ores, shafts, tunnels, and other things which he never saw before, and never felt enough interest in to read about. And all the time that he is thinking what a sad fate it is to be exiled to that far country, that lonely land, the citizens around him are looking down* on him with a blighting compassion becietuse he is an " emigrant " instead of tbat proudest and blessedest creature that exists on all the earth, a " FOKTY-NlNKR." The accustomed coach life began again, now, and by midnight it almost seemed as if we never had been out of our snuggery among the mail sacks at all. We had made one alteration, how- ever. We had provided enough bread, boiled ham and hard boiled eggs to last double the six hundred miles of staging we had still to do. _ And it was comfort in thoes succeeding days to sit up and con- template the majestic panorama of mountains and valleys spread I'. s ! 'i| ft ' tm4Amh ii0>iimmM»)mmmm it ' i m 94 BouamNa it. out below us and eat ham and hard boiled eggs while our spiritual natures reveled alternately in rainbows, thunderstorms, and peer- less sunsets. Nothing helps scenery like ham and eggs. Ham and eggs, and after these a pipe— an old, rank, delicious pipe — ham and eggs and scenery, a *'down grade," a flying uoach, a fragrant pipe and a contented heart — these make happiness. It is what all the ages have struggled for. n A'"' I ill CHAPTEE XVIII. AT eight in the morning we reached the remnant and ruin of what had been the important military station of " Gamp Floyd," some forty-five or fifty miles from Salt Lake City. At four p. M. we had doubled our distance and were ninety or a hun- dred miles from Salt Lake. And now we entered upon one of that species of deserts whose concentrated hideousness shames the diffused and diluted horrors of Sahara — an " alkali " desert. For sixty-eight miles there was but one break in it. I do not remem- ber that this was really a break ; indeed it seems to me that it was nothing but a watering depot in the midst of the stretch of sixty- eight miles. If my memory serves me, there was no well or spring at this place, but the water was hauled there by mr nd ox teams from the^ further side of the desert. There w. ^ stage station there. It was forty-five miles from the beginning of the desert, and twenty-three from the end of it. We plowed and dragged and groped along, the whole live-long night, and at the end of this uncomfortable twelve hours we fin- ished the forty-five-mile part of the desrrt and got to the stage station where the imported water was. The sun was just rising. It was easy enough to cross a desert in the night while we were asleep ; and it was pleasant to reflect, in the morning, that we in actual person had encountered an absolute desert and could always speak knowingly of deserts in presence of the ignorant thenceforward. And it was pleasant also to reflect that this was BOnOHINO IT. 95 not an obscure, back country desert, but a very celebrated one, the metropolis itself, as you may say. All this was very well and very comfortable and satisfactory — but now we were to cross a desert in daylight This was fine — novel — romantic — dramatically ad- venturous — this, indeed, was worth living for, worth traveling for I We would write home all about it. This enthusiasm, this stem thirst for adventure, wilted under the sultry August su and did not last above one hour. One poor little hour — and then we were ashamed that we had " gushed " so, The poetry was all in the anticipation— there is none in the reality. Imagine a vast, waveless ocean stricken dead and turned to ashes ; imagine this solemn waste tufted with ash-dusted sage- bushes; imagine the lifeless silence and solitude that belong to such a place ; imagine a coach, creeping like a bug through the midst of this shoreless level, and sending up tumbled volumes of dust as if it were a bug that went by steam ; imagine this aching monotony of toiling and plowing kept up hour after hour, and the shore still as far away as ever, apparently ; imagine team, driver, coach and passengers so deeply coated with ashes that they are all one colorless color ; imagine ash-drifts roosting above moustaches and eyebrows like snow accumulations on boughs and bushes. This is the reality of it. The sun beats down with dead, blistering, relentless malignity ; the perspiration is welling from every pore in man and Least, but scarcely a sign of it finds its way to the surface — it is absorbed be- fore it gets there ; there is not the faintest' breath of air stirring ; there is not a merciful shred of cloud in all the brilliant firma- ment; there is not a living creature visible in any direction whither one searches the blank level that stretches its monotonous miles on every hand; there is not a sound— not a sigh — not a whisper — not a buzz, or a whir of wings, or distant pipe of bird — not even a sob from the lost souls that doubtless people that dead air. And so the occasional sneezing of the resting mules, and the champing of the bits, grate harshly on the grim stillness, not dis- sipating the spell but accenting it and making one feel more lone- some and forsaken than before. The mules, under violent swearing, coaxing and whip-cracking, would make at stated intervals a *' spurt,*' and drag the coach a 1., 1! »iSiH55K*l 96 BOUOHINO IT. ■I' Hi hundred or may be two hundred yards, stirring up a billowy cloud of dust that rolled back, enveloping the vehicle to the wheel- tops or higher, and making it seem afloat in a fog. Then a rest followed, with the usual sneezing and bit-champing. Then an- other " spurt" of a hundred yards and another rest at the end of it. All day long we kept this up, without water for the mules and without ever changing the team. At least we kept it up ten hours, which, I take it, is a day, and a pretty honest one, in an alkali desert. It was from four in the morning till two in the afternoon. And it was so hot I and so close I and our water can- teens went dry in the middle of the day and we {-'>t so thirsty ! It was so stupid and tiresome and dull ! and the tedious hours did lag and drag and limp along with such a cruel deliberation ! It was so trying to give one's watch a good long undisturbed spell and then take it out and find that it had been fooling away the time and not trying to get ahead any I The alkali dust cut through our lips, it persecuted our eyes, it ate through the delicate mem- branes and made our noses bleed and kept them bleeding — and truly and seriously the romance all faded far away and disappear- ed, and left the desert trip nothing but a harsh reality — a thirsty, sweltering, longing, hateful reality I Two miles and a quarter an hour for ten hours — that was what we accomplished. It was hard to bring the comprehension away down to such a snail-pace as tV^at, when we had been used to making eight and ten miles an hour. When we reached the station on the farther verge of the desert, we were glad, for the first time, that the dictionary was along, because we never could have found language to tell how glad we were, in any sort of dictionary but an unabridged one with pictures in it. But there could not have been found in a whole library of dictionaries language sufficient to tell how tired those mules were after their twenty-three mile pull. To try to give the reader an idea of how thirsty they were, would be to *' gild refined gold or paint the Hly." Somehow, now that it is there, the quotation does not seem to fit— but no matter, let it stay, anyhow. I think it is a graceful and attractive thing, and therefore have tried time and time again to work it in where it would fit, but could not succeed. These efforts have kept my mind distracted and ill at ease, and made my BOuomNa IT. 97 llowy vheel- arest jn an- end of mules ap ten in an in the er can- hirety 1 ars did on! It sd spell vay the through ;e mem- ig — and aappear- I thirsty, as what )n away used to B station rsttime, e found lary but aot have icient to lile pull. j, would seem to I graceful 16 again These lade my narrative seem broken and disjointed, in places. Under these circumstances it seems to me best to leave it in, as above, since this will afford at least a temporary respite from the wear and tear of trying to " lead up" to this really apt and beautiful quotation. CHAPTER XIX. ON the morning of the sixteenth day out from St Joseph we arrived at the entrance of Rocky Canyon, two hundred and fifty miles from Salt Lake. It was along in this wild country somewhere, and far from any habitation of white men, except the stage stations, that we came across the wretchedest type of man- kind I have ever seen, up to this 'zriting. I refer to the Ooshoot Indians. From what we could see and all we could learn, they are very considerably inferior to even the despised Digger Indians of California; inferior to all races of savages on our continent; inferior to even the Terra del Fuegans ; inferior to the Hottentots, and actually inferior in some respects to the Kytches of AMca. Indeed, I have been obliged to look the bulky volumes of Wood's " Uncivilized Races of Men" clear through in order to find a savage tribe degraded enough to take rank with the Goshoots. I find but one people fairly open to that shameful verdict. It is the Bosjesmans (Bushmen) of South Africa. Such of the Goshoots as we saw, along the road and hanging about the stations, were small, lean, " scrawny'' creatures ; in complexion a d^U black like the ordinary American negro ; their faces and hands bearing dirt which they had been hoarding and accumulating for months, years, and even generations, according to the age of the proprietor ; a silent, sneaking, treacherous looking race ; taking note of every- thing, covertly, like all the other " Noble Red Men" that we (do not) read about, and betraying no sign in their countenances; [indolent, everlastingly patient and tireless, like all other Indians; I prideless beggars — for if the beggar instinct were left out of an Indian he would not " go," any more than a clock without a pen- tdulum ; hungry, always hungry, and yet never refusing anyttiing Ithat a hog would eat, though often eating what a hog would V. !ii JS :' 98 ROUOHINO IT. I:|i ?■*'■< I v'a decline ; hunters, but having no higher ambition than to kill and eat jackass rabbits, crickets and grasshoppers, and embezzle carrion from the buzzards and cayotes ; savages who, when asked if they have the common Indian belief in a Great Spirit show a something which almost amounts to emotion, thinking whiskey is referred to a thin, scattering race of almost naked black children, these Qq. shoots are, who produce nothing at all, and have no villages, and no gatherings together into strictly defined tribal communities— a people whose only shelter is a rag cast on a bush to keep off a portion of the snow, and yet who inhabit one of the most rocky, wintry, repulsive wastes that our country or any other can exhibit The Bushmen and our Goshoots are manifestly descended from the self-same gorilla, or kangaroo, or Norway rat, whichever I animal-Adam the Darwinians trace them to. One would as soon expect the rabbits to fight as the Goshoots, and I yet they used to live off the offal and refuse of the stations a few mouths and then come some dark night when no mischief wag expected, and bum down the buildings and kill the men from ambush as they rushed out. And once, in the night, they attacked 1 the stage-coach when a District Judge, of Nevada Territory, wail the only passenger, and with their first volley of arrows (and t| bullet or two) they riddled the stage curtains, wounded a horse orl two and mortally wounded the driver. The driver was full of pluckJ and so was his passenger. At the driver^s call Judge Mott swung] himself out, clambered to the box and seized the reins of the teani,| and away they plunged, through the racing mob of skeletons under a hurtling storm of missiles. The stricken driver had sun down on the boot as soon as he was wounded, but had held on the reins and said he would manage to keep hold of them unti relieved. And after they were taken from his relaxing grasp, lay with his head between Judge Mott*s feet, and tranquilly gm directions about the road ; he said he believed he could live the miscreants were outrun and lett behind, and that if he manag that, the main difiiculty would be at an end, and then if the Judg drove so and so (giving directions about bad places in the ro and general course) he would reach the next station withoij trouble. The Judge distanced the enemy and at last rattled up t 1/^- ROUOBIMa IT. 09 kill and B carrion I if they tmething ferrecl to ihese Go- ages, and inities— a :eep off a [)gt rocky, tn exhibit. shoots, and ions a few Ischief was] B men from I ey attacked I ■ritory, wail ows (andil 1 a horse oil lUofpluckJ ftott swungi :>f the team,! eletons and| it had suD held on them unti grasp, iquilly gftfl aid live " he manag iftheJudg in the ro ion witboi^ ratttedupt the station and knew that the night's perils were done ; but there was no comrade-in-arms for him to rejoice with, for the soldierly driver was dead. Let us forget that we have been saying harsh things about the Overland drivers, now. The disgust which the Goshoots gave me, a disciple of Cooper and a worshiper of the Red Man — even of the scholarly savages in the " Last of the Mohicans " who are fit- tingly associated with backwoodsmen who divide each sentence into two equal parts : one part critically gramatical, refined and choice of language, and the other part just such an attempt to talk like a hunter or a mountaineer, as a Broadway clerk might make after eating an edition of Emerson Bennet's works and studying frontier life at the Bowery Theatre a couple of weeks— I say that the nausea which the Goshoots gave me, an Indian worshiper, set me to examining authorities, to see if perchance I had been over- estimating the Red Man while viewing him through the mellow moonshine of romance. The revelations that came were disen- chanting. It was curious to see how quickly the paint and tinsel fell away from him and left him treacherous, fi[lthy and repulsive —and how quickly the evidence accumulated that wherever one finds an Indian tribe he has only found Goshoots more or less modified by ciacumstances and surroundings — but Goshoots, after all. They deserve pity, poor creatures ; and they can have mine —at this distance. Nearer by, they never get anybody's. There is an impression abroad that the Baltimore and Washing- ton Railroad Company and many of its employees are Goshoots ; but it is an error. There is only a plausible resemblance, which, while it is apt enough to mislead the ignorant, cannot deceive parties who have contemplated both tribes. But seriously, it was not only poor wit, but very wrong to start the report referred to above; for however innocent the motive may have been, the necessary effect was to injure the reputation of a class who have a I hard enough time of it in the pitiless deserts of the Rocky Moun- tains, Heaven knows 1 If we cannot find it in our hearts to give those poor naked creatures our Christian sympathy and compas- Bion, in God's name let us at least not throw mud at them. 1 1. I ' 100 BOUOHINO IT. »)' I Ml -|% ' ! • CHAPTER XX. /^N the seventeenth day we passed the highest mountain peaks ^^ we had yet seen, and although the day was very warm the night that followed upon its heels was wintry cold and blankets were next to useless. On the eighteenth day we encountered the eastward-bound telegraph-constructors at Reese River station and sent a message to his Excellency Gov. Nye at Carson City (distant one hundred and fifty-six miles). On the nineteenth day we crossed the Great American Desert- forty memorable miles of bottomless sand, into which the coach wheels sunk from six inches to a foot. We worked our passage most of the way across. That is to say, we got out and walked. It was a dreary pull and a long and thirsty one, for we had no water. From one extremity of this desert to the other, the road was white with the bones of oxen and horses. It would hardly be an exaggeration to say that we could have walked the forty milei and set our feet on a bone at every step I The desert was one prodigious graveyard. And the log-chains, wagon tyres, and rotting wrecks of vehicles were almost as thick as the bones. I think we saw log-chains enough rusting there in the desert, to, reach across i^ny State in the Union. Do not these relics suggest! something of an idea of the fearful suffering and privation tbtj early emigrants to California endured ? At the border of the Desert lies Carson Lake, or The " Sink " the Carson, a shallow, melancholy sheet of water some eighty or hundred miles in circumference. Carson River empties intoi and is lost— sinks mysteriously into the earth and never appears i the light of the sun again— for the lake has no outlet whatever. There are several rivers in Nevada, and they all have this myi rious fate. They end in various lakes or " sinks," and that is tb] last of them. Carson Lake, Humboldt Lake, Walker Lake, Moi Lake, are all great sheets of water without any visible outli Water is of them, nor overf to the Cr On tb( Hagtown. the map. This ren burg, on t "I can t like to list When he n that he ha anxious to started off such a terr coat, and fi] and then he said he wai Hank Monki on time'— aJ A day or roads, and Gregory Dij man well p< marked : "I can te like to liste When he wai that he had anxious to gt Istarted off at Isnch a terrific coat, and fina (and then he ^^ he warn' ^aok Monk >n timej'— an ill iii; BOUOmMO IT. 101 Water is always flowing into them ; none is erer seen to flow out of them, and yet they remain always level full, neither receding nor overflowing. What they do with their surplus is only known to the Creator. On the western verge of the Desert we halted a moment at Bagtown. It consisted of one log-house and is not set down on the map. This reminds me of a circumstance. Just after we left Jules- burg, on the Platte, I was sitting with the driver, and he said : "I can tell you a most laughable thing indeed, if you would' like to listen to it Horace Greeley wvnt over this road once. When he was leaving Carson City he told the driver. Hank Monk, that he had an engagement to lecture at Placerville and was very anxious to go through quick. Hank Monk cracked his whip and started off at an awful pace. The coach bounced up and down in such a terrific way that it jolted the buttons all off of Horace^! coat, and finally shot his head clean through the roof of the stage, and then he yelled at Hank Monk and bugged him to go easier — said he wam't in as much of a hurry as he was awhile ago. But Hank Monk said, * Keep your seat, Horace, and Vl\ get you there on time* — and you bet you he did, too, what was left of him I" A day or two after that we picked up a Denver man at the cross roads, and he told us a good deal about the country and the Qregory Diggings. He seemed a very entertaining person and a man well posted in the affairs of Colorado. By and by he re* 1 marked : "I can tell yon a most laughable thing indeed, if you would I like to listen to it. Horace Greeley went over this road once. When he was leaving Carson City he told the driver, Hank Monk, that he had an engagement to lecture at Placerville and \vn<» very I anxious to go through quick. Hank Monk cracked his whip and Istarted off at an awful pace. The coach bounced up and down in Isnch a terrific way that it jolted the buttons all off of Horace's Icoat, and finally shot his head clean through the roof of the stage, [and then he yelled at Hank Monk and begged him to go easier — id he wam't in as much of a hurry as he was awhile ago. But lank Monk said, ' Keep your seat, Horace, and I'll get you there pn timej' — and you bet you he did, too, what was left of him !'* lii !:•. 102 ROUOHINO XT. „, -t ir Hi J At Fort Bridger, some days after thii, we took on board a cavalry nergeant, a very proper and soldierly person indeed. From no other man during the whole journey did we gather such a store of concise and well-arranged military information. It was BOUOHINO IT. 108 surprising to find in the desolate wilds of our country a man to thoroughly acquainted with everything useful to know in his line of life, and yet of such inferior rank and unpretentious bearing. For as much as three hours we listened to him with unabated interest. Finally he got upon the subject of trans-continental travel, and presently said : " I can tell you a very laughable thing indeed, if you would like to listen to it. Horace Greeley went over this road once. When he was leaving Carson City he told the driver, Hank Monk, that he had an engagement to lecture at Placerville and was very anxious to go through quick. Hank Monk cracked his whip and started off at an awful pace. The coach bounced up and down in such a terrific way that it jolted the buttons all o£f of Horace's coat, and finally shot his head clean through the roof of the stage, and then he yelled at Hank Monk and begged him to go easier— said he wam't in as much of a hurry as he was awhile ago. But Hank Monk said, ' Keep your seat, Horace, and I'll get you there on time I' — and you bet you he did, too, what was left of him I" When we were eight hours out from Salt Lake City a Mormon preacher got in with us at a way station — a gentle, soft-spoken, kindly man, and one whom any stranger would warm to at first sight. I can never forget the pathos that was in his voice as he told, in simple language, the story of his people's wanderings and unpitied sufferings. No pulpit eloquence was ever so moving and so beautiful as this outcast's picture of the first Mormon pilgrimage across the plains, struggling sorrowfully onward to the land of its banishment and marking its desolate way with graves and watering it with tears. His words so wrought upon us that it was a relief to us all when the conversation drifted into a more cheerful channel and the natural features of the curious country we were in came under treatment. One matter after another was pleasantly discussed, and at length the stranger said : " I can tell you a most laughable thing indeed, if you would I like to listen to it. Horace Greeley went over this road once. I When he was leaving Carson City he told the driver. Hank Monki j that he had an engagement to lecture in Placerville, and was very anxious to go through quick. Hank Monk cracked his whip ! I MiiMMM 104 ROUOHmO IT. .J and started o£F at an awful pace. The coach bounced up and down m such a terrific way that it jolted the buttons all off of Horace's coat, and finally shot his head clean through the roof of the stage, and then he yelled at Hank Monk and begged him to go easier — said he Warn't in as much of a hurry as he was awhile ago. But Hank Monk said, 'Keep your seat, Horuce,and I'll get you there on time' — and you bet you he did, too, what was left of him !" Ten miles out of Bagtown we found a poor wanderer who had lain down to die. He had walked as long as he could, but his limbs had failed him at last. Hun- ger and fatigue had conquered him. It would have been inhuman to leave him there. We paid his fare to Car- son and lifted him into the coach. It was some little time before he showed any very decided signs of' life ; but by dint of chafing him and pouring brandy between his: lips we finally brought him to a languid consciousness. Then we- fed him a little, and by and by he seemed to comprehend the situa- tion and a grateful light softened his eye. We made his mail-sack bed as comfortable as possible, and constructed a pillow for himi BOUOmNG IT. 105 with our coats. He seemed very thankful. Then he looked up in our faces, and said in a feeble voice that had a tremble of honest emotion in it : " Gentlemen, I know not who you are, but you have saved my life ; and although I can never be able to repay you for it, I feel that I can at least make one hour of your long journey lighter. I take it you are strangers to this great thoroughfare, but I am entirely familiar with it. In this connection I can tell you a most laughable thing indeed, if you would like to listen to it. Horace Greeley — " I said,*impreBsively : " Suffering stranger, proceed at your peril. You see in me the melancholy wreck of a once stalwart and magnificent manhood. What has brought me to this ? That thing which you are about to tell. Gradually but surely, that tiresome old anecdote has sapped my strength, undermined my constitution, withered my life. Pity my helplessness. Spare me only just this once, and tell me about young George Washington and his little hatchet for a change." We were saved. But not so the invalid. In trying to retain the anecdote in his system he strained himself and died in our arms. I am aware, now, that I ought not to have asked of the sturdiest citizen of all that region, what I asked of that mere shadow of a man ; for, after seven years' residence on the Pacific coast, I know that no passenger or driver on ^he Overland ever corked that anecdote in, when a stranger was by, and survived. Within a period of six years I crossed and recrossed the Sierras between Nevada and California thirteen times by stage and listened to that deathless incident four hundred and eighty-one or eighty-two times. I have the list somewhere. Drivers always told it, con- ductors told it, landlords told it, chance passengers told it, the very Chinamen and vagrant Indians recounted it. I have had the same driver tell it to me two or three times in the same afternoon. It has come to me in all the multitude of tongues that Babel bequeathed to earth, and flavored with whiskey, brandy, beer, cologne, sozodont, tobacco, garlic, onions, grasshoppers — everything that has a fragrance to it throu^ all the long list of ! I Mii 106 BOUGHINa IT. t; ' ^f things that are gorged or guzzled by the sons of men. I never have smelt any anecdote as often as I have smelt that one ; never have smelt any anecdote that smelt so variegated . as that one. And you never could learn to know it by its smell, because every time you thought you had learned the smell of it, it would turn up with a different smell. Bayard Taylor has written about this hoary anecdote, Richardson has published it; so have Jones, Smith, Johnson, Ross, Browne, and every other correspondence- inditing being that ever set his foot upon the great overland road anywhere between Julesburg and San Francisco; and I have heard that it is in the Talmud. I have seen it in print in nine different foreign languages ; I have been told that it is employed in the inquisition in Rome ; and I now learn with regret that it is going to be set to music. I do not think that such things are right. Stage-coaching on the Overland is no more, and stage drivers are a race defunct. I wonder if they bequeathed that bald- headed anecdote to their successors, the railroad brakemen and conductors, and if these latter still persecute the helpless pas- senger with it until he concludes, as did many a tourist of other days, that the real grandeurs of the Pacific coast are not Yo Semite and the Big Trees, but Hank Monk and his adventure with Horace Greeley.* * And what makes that worn anecdote the more aggravating is, that the adven- ture it celebrates never occurred. If it were a good anecdote, that seeming demerit would be its chiefest virtue, for creative power belongs to greatness ; but what ought to be done to a man who would wantonly contrive so flat a one as this ? If J were to suggest what ought to be done to him, I should be called extravagant— but what does the sixteenth chapter of Daniel say t Aha. ROUOTTNO IT. 107 CHAPTEK XXI. WE were approaching the end of our long journey. It was the morning of the twentieth day. At noon we would reach Carson City, the Capital of Nevada Territory. We we're not glad, but sorry. It had been a fine pleasure trip ; we had fed fat on wonders every day ; we were now well accustomed to stage life, and very fond of it ; so the idea of coming to a stand-still and settling down to a humdrum Existence in a village was not agree- able, but on the contrary depressing. Visibly our new home was a desert, walled in by barren, snow- clad mountains. There was not a tree in sight. There was no vegetation but the endless sage-brush and greasewood. All nature was gray with it. We were plowing through great deeps of powdery alkali dust that rose in thick clouds and floated across the plain like smoke from a burning house. We were coated with it like millers ; so were the coach, the mules, the mail-bags, the driver— -we and the sage brush and the other scenery were all one monotonous color. Long trains of freight wagons in the distance enveloped in ascending masses of dust suggested pictures of prairies on fire. These teams and their masters were the only life we saw. Otherwise we moved in the midst of solitude, silence and desolation. Every twenty steps we passed the skeleton of some dead beast or burthen, with its dust-coated skin stretched tightly over its empty ribs. Frequently a solemn raven sat upon the skull or the hips and contemplated the passing coach with meditative serenity. By and by Carson City was pointed out to us. It nestled in the edge of a great plain and was a sufficient number of miles away to look like an assemblage of mere white spots in the shadow of a grim range of mountains overlooking it, whose summits seemed lifted clear out of companionship and consciousness of earthly things. We arrived, disembarked, and the stage went on. It was a " wooden" town ; its population two thousand souls. The main ^ (' I! 108 BOUOHINO IT. ?'r, r 9 i!! r^ street consisted of four or five blocks of little white frame stores which were too high to sit down on, but not too high for various other purposes ; in fact, hardly high enough. They were packed close together, side by side, as if room were scarce in that mighty plain. The sidewalk was of boards that were more or less loose and inclined to rattle when walked upon. In the middle of the town, opposite the stores, was the " plaza" which is native to all towns beyond the Bocky Mountains — a large, unfenced level vacancy, with a liberty pole in it, and very useful as a place for public auctions, horse trades, and mass meetings, and likewise for teamsters to camp in. Two other sides of the plaza were faced by stores, offices and stables. The rest of Carson City was pretty scattering. We were introduced to several citizens, at the stage-office and on the way up to the Governor's from the hotel — ^among others, to a Mr. Harris, who was on horseback ; he began to say some- thing, but interrupted himself with the remark : " I'll have to get you to excuse me a minute ; yonder is the witness that swore I helped to rob the California coach— a piece of impertinent intermeddling, sir, for I am not even acquainted with the man." « Then he rode over and began to rebuke the stranger with a six-shooter, and the stranger began to explain with another. When the pistols were emptied, the stranger resumed his work (mending a whiplash), and Mr. Harris rode by with a polite nod, homeward bound, with a bullet through one of his lungs, and several in his hips ; and from them issued little rivulets of blood that courned down the horse's sides and made the animal look quite picturesque. I never saw Harris shoot a man after that but it recalled to mind that first day in Carson. This was all we saw that day, for it was two o^clock, now, and according to custom the daily " Washoe Zephyr " set in ; a soar- ing dust-drift about the size of the United States set up edgewise came with it, and the capital oif Nevada Territory disappeared from view. Still, there were sights to be^een which were not wholly uninteresting to new comers ; for the vast dust cloud was thickly freckled with things strange to the upper air — things living and dead, that ffitted hither and thither, going and coming, ';k ROUOHINO IT. 109 appearing and disappearing among the rolling billows of dust — hats, chickens and parasols sailing in the remote heavens ; blankets, tin signs, sage-brush and shingles a shade lower ; door- mats and buffalo robes lower still ; shovels and coal scuttles on the next grade ; glass doors, cats and little children on the next ; disrupted liunber yards, light buggies and wheelbarrows on the next ; and down only thirty or forty feet above ground was a scurrying storm of emigrating roofs and vacant lots. It was something to see that much. I could have seen more, if I could have kept the dust out of my eyes. But seriously a Washoe wind is by no means a trifling matter. It blows flimsy houses down, lifts shingle roofs occasionally, rolls up tin ones like sheet music, now and th«n blows a stage coach over and spills the passengers; and tradition says the reason there are so many bald people there is, that the wind blows the hair oflp their heads while they are looking skyward after their hats. Carson streets seldom look inactive on Summer afternoons, because there so many citizens skipping around their escaping hats, like chamber-maids trying to head oflTa spider. The " Washoe Zephyr " (Washoe is a pet nickname for Nevada) is a peculiarly Scriptural wind, in that no man knoweth ''whence it Cometh." That is to say, where it originates, it comes right over the mountains from the West, but when one crosses the ridge he does not find any of it on the oUier side I It probably is manufactured on the mountain-top for the occasion, and starts from there. It is a pretty regularwind, in the summer time. Its office hours are from two in the afternoon till two the next morning; and anybody venturing abroad during Hhose twelve hours needs to allow for the wind or he will bring up a mile or two to the leeward of the point he is aiming at. And yet the first complaint a Washoe visitor to San Francisco makes is that the sea winds blow so, there ! Thero is a good deal of human nature in that. We found the state palace of the Governor of Nevada Territory to consist of a white frame one-story house with two small rooms in it and a stanchion supported shed in front— for grandeur — it compelled the respect of the citizen and inspired the Indians with awe. The newly arrived Chief and Associate Justices' of the 110 BOUOBINa IT. I. t p*' Br Territory, and other xnaohinery of the government, were domiciled with less splendor. They were boarding around privately, and had their offices in their bedrooms. The Secretary and I took quarters in the ** ranch " of a worthy French lady by the name of Bridget O'Flannigan, a camp follower of his Excellency the Oovernor. ' She had known him in his prosperity as commander-in chief of the Metropolitan Police of New York, and she would not desert him in his adversity as Governor of Nevada. Our room was on the lower floor, facing the plaza, and when we had got our bed, a small table, two chairs, the government fire-proof safe, and the Unabridged Dictionary into it, there was still room enough left for a visitor — may be two, but not without straining the walls. But the walls could stand it— - at least the partitions could, for they consisted simply of one thickness of white " cotton domestic " stretched from corner to comer of the room. This was the rule in Carson — any other kind of partition was the rare exception. And if you stood in a dark room and your neighbors in the next had lights, the shadows on your canvas told queer secrets sometimes! Very often these partitions were made of old flour sacks basted together ; and then the difiference between the common herd and the aristocracy was, that the common herd had unornamented sacks, while the aristocrat were overpowering with rudimental frescoe — t. «., red and blue mill brands on the flour sacks. Occasionally, also, the better classes embellished their canvass by pasting pictures from Harper's Weekly on them. In many cases, too, the wealthy and the cultured rose to spittoons and other evidences of a sumptuous and luxurious taste.* We had a carpet and a genuine queen's- ware washbowl. Consequently we were hated without reserve by the other tenants of the O'Flannigan "ranch." When we added a painted oilcloth window curtain, we simply took our lives into our own hands. To prevent bloodshed I removed up stairs and took up quarters with the untitled plebeians in one of the fourteen white pine cot-bedsteads that stood in two long ranks in the one sole room of which the second story consisted. * Washoe people take a Joke so hard that I must explain that the above description was only the rule; there were many honorable ezcsptioni in' Carson— plastered ceilings and houses that had considerable fomiture in them.— M. T. BouamNo IT. Ill It 'was a jolly company the fourteen. They were principally voluntary camp-followers of the Governor, who had joined his retinue by their own election at New York and San Francisco and came along, feeling that in the scuffle for little territorial crumbs and offices they could not make their condition more precarious than it was, and might reasonably expect to make it better. They were popularly known as the "Irish Brigade/* though there were only four or five Irishmen among all the Governor's retainers. His good-natured Excellency was much annoyed at the gossip his henchmen created — especially when there arose a rumor that they were paid assassins of his, brought along to quietly reduce the democratic vote when desirable 1 Mrs. O'Flanigan was boarding and lodging them at ten dollars a week apiece, and they were cheerfully giving their notes for it. They were perfectly satisfied, but Bridget presently found that notes that could not be discounted were but a feeble constitution for a Carson boarding-house. So she began to harry the Gover- nor to find employment for the "Brigade." Her importunities and theirs together drove him to a gentle desperation at last, and he finally summoned the Brigade to the presence. Then, said he: " Gentlemen, I have planned a lucrative and useful service for you — ^a service which will provide you with recreation amid noble landscapes, and a£ford you never ceasing opportunities for enriching your minds by observation and study. I want you to survey a railroad from Carson City westward to a certain point I When the legislature meets I will have the necessary bill passed and the remuneration arranged." " What, a railroad over the Sierra Nevada Mountains V' " Well, then, survey it eastward to a certain point I " He converted them into surveyors, chain-bearers and so oh, and turned them loose in the desert. It was " recreation " with a vengeance I Recreation on foot, lugging chains through sand and sage-brush, under a sultry sun and among cattle bones, cayotes and tarantulas. "Romantic adventure" could go no' further. They surveyed very slowly, very deliberately, very carefully. They returned every night during the first week, dusty, footsore, tired, and hungry, but very jolly. They brought in great store of prodigious hairy spiders — tarantulas--^aid im- i ' J *«(i|« *f*^'\^ i| M i TV 112 BOUOHINO IT. & ' prisoned them in covered tumblers up stairs in the " ranch." After the first week, they had to camp on the field, for they were getting well eastward. They made a good many enquiries as to the location of that indefinite " certain point/' but got no infor* mation. At last, to a peculiarly urgent enquiry of ''How far eastward ?" Governor Nye telegraphed back : ** To the Atlantic Ocean, blast you t — and then bridge it and go on I " This brought back the dusty toilers, who sent in a report and ceased from their labors. The Governor was always comfortable about it; he said Mrs. O'Flannigan would hold him for the Brigade's board anyhow, and he intended to get what entertain* ment he could out of the boys ; he said, with his old-time pleasant twinkle, that he meant to survey them into Utah and then telegraph Brigham to hang them for trespass I The surveyors brought back more tarantulas with them, and so we had quite a menagerie arranged along the shelves of the room. Some of these spiders could straddle over a common saucer with their hairy, muscular legs, and when their feelings were hurt, or their dignity offended, they were the wickedest* looking desperadoes the anima! world can furnish. If their glass prison-houses were touched ever so lightly they were up and spoiling for a fight 'in a minute. Starchy ? — proud ? Indeed, they would take up a straw and pick their teeth like a member of Congress. There was as usual a furious " zephyr" blowing the first night of the brigade's return, and about midnight the roof of an ac^'oining stable blew off, and a comer of it came crash- ing through the side of our ranch. There was a simultaneous awakening, and a tumultuous muster of the brigade in the dark, and a general tumbling and sprawling over each other in the narrow aisle between the bed-rows. In the midst of the tur- moil. Bob H sprung up out of a sound sleep, and knocked down a shelf with his head. Instantly he shouted : '' Turn out, boys — the tarantulas is loose !" No warning ever sounded so dreadfiil. Nobody tried, any longer, to leave the room, lest he might step on a tarantula. Every man groped for a trunk or a bed, and jumped on it. Then followed the strangest silence — a silence of grisly suspense it BOUGHINa IT. 118 inch." ywere > as to ) infor* ow far it and »rt and brtable for the tertain* »ld-time iah and Bm, and } of the jommon feelings skedest* If their vere up Indeed, member blowing ghi the .e orash- taneous ledark, in the ,e tur* lOoked [ed, any itula. Then )ense it was, too— waiting, expectancy, fear. It was as dark As pitch, and one had to imagine the spectacle of those fourteen scant- clad men roosting gingerly on trunks and beds, for not a thing could be seen. Then came occasional little interruptions of the silence, and one could recognize a man and tell his locality by his voice, or locate any other sound a sufiferer made by his grop- ings or changes of position. The occasional voices were not given to much speaking — ^you simply heard a gentle ejaculation of " Ow I" followed by a solid thump, and you knew the gentle- man had felt a hairy blanket or something touch his bare skin and had skipped from a bed to the floor. Another silence. Presently you would hear a gasping voice say : " Su-su-something's crawling up the back of my neck !" Every now and then you could hear a little subdued scramble and a sorrowful " Lord 1" and then you knew that somebody was getting away from something he took for a tarantula, and not losing any time about it, either. Directly a voice in the corner rang out wild and clear : « I've got him t I've got him !" [Pause, and probable change of circumstances.] " No, he's got me 1 Oh, ain't they never going to fetch a lantern I" The lantern came at that moment, in the hands of Mrs. O'Flannigan, whose anxiety to know the amount of damage done by the assaulting roof had not prevented her waiting a judicious interval, after getting out of bed and lighting up, to see if the wind was done, now, upstairs, or had a larger contract. The landscape presented when the lantern flashed into the room was picturesque, and might have been funny to some people, but was not to us. Although we were perched so strangely upon boxes, trunks and beds, and so strangely attired, too, we were too earnestly distressed and too genuinely miserable to see any fun about it, and there was not the semblance of a smile anywhere visible. I know I am not capable of sufiering more than I did during those few minutes of suspense in the dark, surrounded by those creeping, bloody-minded tarantulas. I had skipped from bed to bed and from box to box in a cold agony, and every time I touched anything that was forzy I fancied I felt the fangs. I had rather go to war than live that episode over 'i \ I i II: I , ti < 114 BOUOHIMO IT. again. Nobody was hurt, The man who thought a tarantula had '' got him" was mistaken — only a oraok in a box had caught his finger. Not one of those escaped tarantulas was ever seen again. There were ten or twelve of them. We took candles and hunted the place high and low for them, but with no suo> cess. Did we go back to bed then ? We did nothing of the kind. Money could not have persuaded us to do it. We sat up the rest of the night playing cribbage and keeping a sharp lookout for the enemy. CHAPTER XXII. TF there is any life that is happier than the life we led in a -^ timber ranch for two or three weeks, it must be a sort of life which I have not read of in books or experienced in person. We did not see a human being but ourselves during the time, or hear any soimds but those that were made by the wind and the waves, the sighing of the pines, and now and then the far-off thunder of an avalanche. The forest about us was dense and cool, the sky above us was cloudless and brilliant with sunshine, the broad lake beforu us was glassy and clear, or rippled and breezy, or black and storm-tossed, according to Nature's mood ; and its circling border of mountain domes, clothed with forests, scarred with land-slides, cloven by canons and valleys, and helmeted with glittering snow, fitly framed and finished the noble picture. The view was always fascinating, bewitching, entrancing. The eye was never tired of gazing, night or day, in calm or storm ; it suf* fered but one grief, and that was that it could not look always, but must close sometimes in sleep. We slept in the sand close to the water's edge, between two protecting boulders, which took care of the stormy night winds for us. We never took any paregoric to make us sleep. At the first break of dawn we were always up and running foot-races to I tone down excess of physical vigor and exuberance of spirits. ROnOHINO XT. 115 ftntula saught r Been andles lO BUO' e kind, up the ookout That is, Johnny was— but I held his hat. While smoking the pipe of peace after breakfast we watched the sentinel peaks put on the glory of the sun, and followed the conquering light as it swept down among the shadows, and set the captive crags and forests free. We watched the tinted pictures grow and brighten upon the water till every little detail of forest, precipice and pinnacle was wrought in and finished, and the miracle of the enchanter complete. Then to '* business." That is, drifting around in the boat. We were on the north shore. There, the rocks on the bottom are sometimes gray, sometimes white. This gives the marvelous transparency of the water a fuller advantage than it has elsewhere on the lake. We usually pushed out a hundred yards or so from shore, and then lay down on the thwarts, in the sun, and let the boat drift by the hour whither it would. We seldom talked. It interrupted the Sabbath stillness, and marred the dreams the luxurious rest and indolence brought. The shore all along was indented with deep- curved bays and coves, bordered by narrow sand beaches ; and where the sand ended, the steep mountain sides rose right up aloft into space — rose up like a vast wall a little out of the per- pendicular, and thickly wooded with tall pines. So singularly clear was the water, that where it was only twenty or thirty feet deep the bott4>m was so perfectly distinct that the boat seemed floating in the air I Yes, where it was even eighty feet deep. Every little pebble was distinct, every speckled trout, every hand's-breadth of sand. Often, as we lay on our faces, a granite boulder, as large as a village church, would start out of the bottom apparently, and seem climbing up rapidly to the sur- face, till presently it threatened to touch our faces, and we could not resist the impulse to seize an oar and avert the danger. But the boat would float on, and the boulder descend again, and then we could see that when we had been exactly above it, it must still have been twenty or thirty feet below the surface. Down through the transparency of these great depths, the water was not merely transparent, but dazzlingly, brilliantly so. All objects seen through it had a bright, strong vividness, not only of outline, but of every minute detail, which they would not have had when seen simply through the same depth of atmosphere. So empty .jid I 16 11 liv i ttly on the end of his nose at a depth of eighty f()et, but ho would only shake it off with an annoyed manner, and nliift hio pc^ Ition. W ) ! .thed occasionally, but the water was rather chilly, for all it looked so f>unny. Sometimes we rowed out to the " blue water," a mile or two from shore. It was as dead blue as indigo there, because of the immense depth. By official measurement the lake in its centre is one thousand five hundred and twenty- five feot deep I Sometimes, on lazy afternoons, we lolled on the sand in camp, and smoked pipea and read some old well worn novels. At night, by the camp-fire, we played euchre and seven-up to strengthen the mind — and played them with cards so greasy and defaced that only a whole summer's acquaintance with them could enable the student to tell the ace of clubs from the jack of diamonds. We never slept in our " house." It never recurred to us, for one thing ; and besides, it was built to hold the ground, and that was enough. We did not wish to strain it. By and by our provisions began to run short, and we went back to the old camp and laid in a new supply. We were gone all day, and reached home again about nightfall, pretty tired and hungry. Whii<^ -Johnny was carrying the main bulk of the provisions up to our - iiouse" for future use, I took the loaf of bread, some slices of bacon, and the cofiee-pot ashore, set them down by a tree, lit a tire, and went back to the boat to get the frying pan. While I was at this, I heard a shout from Johnny, and looking up I saw that my fire was galloping all over the premises I Johnny was on the other side of it. He had to run through the flames to get to the lake shore, and then we stood helpless and watched the devastation, lit- 1 Mlk. 'V / 5 I tit •'1 118 BonamNa it. ^i The ground was deeply carpeted with dry pine-needles, and the fire touched them off as if they were gunpowder. It was wonder- ful to see with what fierce speed the tall sheet of flame traveled ! My coffee-pot was gone, and everything with it. In a minute and a half the fire seized upon a dense growth of dry manzanita chap- paral six or eight feet high, and then the roaring and popping and crackling w. something terrific. We were driven to the h^at by the intense heat, and there we remained, spellbound. Within half an hour all before us was a tossing, blinding tempest of flame I It went surging up adjacent ridges — surmounted them and disappeared in the canons beyond — burst into view upon higher and farther ridges, presently — shed a grander illumination abroad, and dove again — flamed out again, directly higher, and still higher up the mountain-side — threw out skirmishing parties of fire here and there, and sent them trailing their crimson spirals away among remote ramparts and ribs and gorges, till as far as the eye could reach the lofty mountain-fronts were webbed as it were with a tangled net-work of red lava streams. Away across the water the crags and domes were lit with a ruddy glare, and the firmament above was a reflected hell I Every feature of the spectacle was repeated in the glowing mirror of the lake I Both pictures were sublime, both were beau- tiful ; but that in the lake had a bewildering richness about it that enchanted the eye and held it with the stronger fascination. We sat absorbed and motionless through four long hours. We never thought of supper, and never felt fatigue. But at eleven o'clock the conflagration had traveled beyond our range of vision, and then darkness stole down upon the landscape again, Hunger asserted itself now, but there was nothing to eat. The j previsions were all cooked, no doubt, but we did not go to see. We were homeless wanderers again, without any property. Our I fence was gone, our house burned down ; no insurance. Our I pine forest was well scorched, the dead trees all burned up, and our broad acres of manzanita swept away. Our blankets were on I our usual sand-bed, however, and so we lay down and went toj sleep. The next morning we started back to the old camp, but! while out a long way from shore, so great a storm came up tbati we dared not try to land. So I b»led out the seas we shippedtj and Job a point increasi: hazard c of wate] down in The inst washed c shivered all the n down, an sary dela; Brigade's about it ; ment of d Wema( hair-bread never be i BonamNo it. 119 and Johnny pulled heavily through the billows till we had reached a point three or four miles beyond the camp. The storm was increasing, and it became evident that it was better to take the hazard of beaching the boat than go down in a hundred fathoms of water ; so we ran in, with tall white-caps following, and I sat down in the stern-sheet and pointed her head-on to the shore. The instant the bow struck, a wave came over the stem that washed crew and cargo ashore, and saved a deal of trouble. We shivered in the lee of a boulder all the rest of the day, and froze all the night through. In the morning the tempest had gone down, and we paddled down to the camp without any unneces- sary delay. We were so starved that we ate up the rest of the Brigade's provisions, and then set out to Carson to tell them about it and ask their forgiveness. It was accorded, upon pay- ment of damages. We made many trips to the lake after that, and had many a hair-breadth escape and blood-curdling adventure which will never be recorded in any history. ! I r. i 1 120 BOUOHING IT. CHAPTEK XXIII. : 1: y RESOLVED to have a horse to ride. I had never seen such -^ wild, free, magnificent horsemanship outside of a circus as these picturesquely-clad Mexicans, Californians and Mexicanized Americans displayed in Carson streets every day. How they rode I Leaning just gently forward out of the perpendicular easy and nonchalant, with broad slouch-bat brim blown square up in front, and long riata swinging above the head, they swept through the town like the wind I The next minute they were only a sailing puff of dust on the far desert. If they trotted, they sat up gallantly and gracefully, and seemed part of the horse ; did not go jiggering up and down after the silly Miss-Nancy fashion of the riding schools. I had quickly learned to tell a horse from a cow, and was full of anxiety to learn more. I was resolved to buy a horse. While the thought was rankling in my mind, the auctioneer came skurrying through the plaza on a black beast that had as many humps and corners on him as a dromedary, and was neces- sarily uncomely; but he was "going, going at twenty-two 1— horse, saddle and bridle at twenty-two dollars, gentlemen I " and I could hardly resist. A man whom I did not know (he turned out to be the auction- eer's brother) noticed the wistful look in my eye, and observed that that was a very remarkable horse to be going at such a price ; and added that the sadddle alone was worth the money. It was a Spanish saddle, with ponderous tapidaros, and furnished with the ungainly sole-leather covering with the unspellable name. I said I had half a notion to bid. Then this keen-eyed perfion appeared to me to be " taking my measure ; " but I dis- missed the suspicion when he spoke, for his manner was full of guileless candor and truthfulness. Said he : " I know that horse — know him well. You are a stranger, I take it, and so you might think he was an American horse, maybe, ROUGHINa IT. 121 but I assure you he is not. He is nothing of the kind ; but — excuse my speaking in a low voice, other people being near — he is, without the shadow of a doubt, a Genuine Mexican Plug ! " I did not know what a Genuine Mexican Plug was, but there was something about this man's way of saying it, that made me swear inwardly that I would own a Genuine Mexican Plug, or die. " Has he any other— er advantages ? " I inquired, suppressing what eagerness I could. He hooked his forefinger in the pocket of my army-shirt, led me to one side, and breathed in my ear impressively these words: " He can out-buck anything in America ! " " Going, going, going — at twent-ty-fonr dollars and a half, gen — " " Twenty-seven 1" I shouted, in a frenzy. " And sold I" said the auctioneer, and passed over the Genuine Mexican Plug to me. I could scarcely contain myexhultation. I paid the money, and put the animal in a neighboring livery stable to dine and rc(it himself. In the afternoon I brought the creature into the plaza, and certain citizens held him by the head, and others by Hhe tail, while I mounted him. As soon as they let go he placed all his feet in a bunch together, lowered his back, and then suddenly arched it upward, and shot me straight into the air a matter of three or four feet ! I came as straight down again, lit in the saddle, went instantly up again, came down almost on the high pommel, shot up again, and came down on the horse's neck — all in the space of three or four seconds. Then he rose and stood almost straight up on his hind feet, and I, clasping his lean neck desperately, slid back into the saddle, and held oh. He came down, and immediately hoisted his heels into the air, delivering a vicious kick at the sky, and stood on his forefeet. And then down he came once more, and began the original exercise of shooting me straight up again. The third time I went up I heard a stranger say : " Oh, donH he buck, though I" While I was up, somebody struck the horse a sounding thwack with a leathern strap, and when I arrived again the Genuine 1-, 4m ^ W * I 122 BOUOHINa IT. \h :|%' f Mexican Plug was not there. A Califomian youth chased him up and caught him, and asked if he might have a ride. I granted him that luxury. He mounted the Genuine, got lifted into the air once, but sent his spurs home as he descended, and the horse darted away like a telegram. He soared over three fences like a bird, and disappeared down the road toward the Washoe Valley. I sat down on a stone, with a sigh, and by a natural impulse one of my hands sought my forehead, and the other the base of my stomach. I believe I never appreciated, till then, the poverty of the human machinery — for I still needed a hand or two to place elsewhere. Fen cannot describe how I was jolted up. Imagination cannot conceive how disjointed I was — how inter- nally, externally and universally I was unsettled, mixed up and ruptured. There was a sympathetic crowd around me, though. One elderly-looking comforter said : "Stranger, you've been taken in. Everybody in this camp knows that horse. Any child, any Injun, could have told you that he'd buck ; he is the very worst devil to buck on the con- tinent of America. You hear me. I'm Curry. Old Curry. Old Abe Curry. And moreover, he is a simon-pure, out-and-out, genuine d— d Mexican plug, and an uncommon mean one at that, too. Why, your turnip, if you had laid low and kept dark there's chances to buy an American horse for mighty little more than you paid for that bloody old foreign relic." I gave no sign ; but I made up my mind that if the auctioneer's brother's funeral took place while I was in the Territory I would postpone all other recreations and attend it. After a gallop of sixteen miles the Califomian youth and the Genuine Mexican Plug came tearing into town agair j shedding foam-flakes like the spume-spray that drives before a typhoon, and, with one final skip over a wheelbarrow and a Chinaman, cast anchor in front of the " ranch." Such panting and blowing ! Such spreading and contracting of the red equine nostrils, and glaring of the wild equine eye I But was the imperial beast subjugated? Indeed he was not. His lordship the Speaker of the House thought he was, and mounted him to go down to the Capital ; but the first dash the ROUOHXMa IT. i2e creature made was over a pile of telegraph poles half as high as a churoh; and his time to the Capitol — one mile and three quarters — remains unbeaten to this day. But then he took an advantage — he left out the mile, and only did the three-quarters. That is to say, he made a straight cut acrpss lots, preferring fences and ditches to a crool^ed road ; and when the Speaker got to the Capitol he said he had been in the air so much he felt as if he had made the trip on a comet. In the evening the Speaker came home afoot for exercise, and got the Genuine towed back behind a quartz wagon. The next day I loaned the animal to the Clerk of the House to go down to the Dana silver mine, six miles, and he walked back for exer- cise, and got the horse towed. Everybody I loaned him to always walked back ; they never could get enough exercise any other way. Still, I continued to loan him to anybody who was willing to borrow him, my idea being to get him crippled, and throw him on the borrower's hands, or killed, and make the borrower pay for him. But somehow nothing ever happened to him. He took chances that no other horse ever took and survived, but he always came out safe. It was his daily habit to try experiments that had always before been considered impossible, but he always got through. Sometimes he miscalculated a little, and did not get his rider through intact, but he always got through himself. Of course I had tried to sell him ; but that was a stretch of sim- plicity which met with little sympathy. The auctioneer stormed up and down the streets on him for four days, dispersing the populace, interrupting business, and destroying children, and never got a bid — at least never any but the eighteen-doUar one he hired a notoriously substanceless bummer to make. The people smiled pleasantly, and restrained their desire to buy, if they had any. Then the auctioneer brought in his bill, and I withdrew the horse from the market. We tried to trade him off at private vendue next, ofifering him at a sacrifice for second- hand tombstones, old iron, temperance tracts — any kind of pro- perty — but holders were stiff, and we retired from the market again. I never tried to ride the horse any more. Walking was good enough exercise for a man like me, that had nothing the matter with him except ruptures, internal injuries, and such I ! fe B m I; 124 BOUOmNO IT. things. Finally I tried to give him away. But it was a failure. Parties said earthquakes were handy enough on the Facifio coast — they did not wish to own one. As a last resort I offered him to the Governor for the use of the " Brigade.'* His face lit up eagerly at first, but toned down again, and he said the thing would be too palpable. Just then the livery stable man brought in his bill for six weeks' keeping — stall-room for the horse, fifteen dollars ; hay for the horse, two hundred and fifty I The Genuine Mexican Plug had eaten a ton of the article, and the man said he would have eaten a hundred if he bad let him. I will remark here^ in all seriousness, that the regular price of hay during that year and a part of the next was really two hun- dred and fifty dollars a ton. During a part of the previous year it had sold at five hundred a ton, in gold, and during the winter before that there was such a scarcity of the ai tide that in several instances small quantities had brought eight hundred dollars a ton in coin I The consequence might be guessed without my telling it : people turned their stock loose to starve, and before the spring arrived Carson and Eagle valleys were almost literally carpeted with their carcases 1 Any old settler there will verify these statements. I managed to pay the livery bill, and that same day I gave the Genuine Mexican Plug to a passing Arkansas emigrant whom fortune delivered into my hand. If this ever meets his eye, he will doubtless remember the donation. Now whoever has had the luck to ride a real Merican plug will recognize the animal depicted in this chapter, and hardly consider him exaggerated — but the uninitiated will feel justified in regarding his portrait as a fancy sketch, perhaps. ' mi'' BOUOHINa IT. 125 allure. coast d him lit up i thing for six hay for in Plug Ld have price of sifo hun- DU8 year 3 winter a several ioUars a hout my d before literally ill verify CHAPTEE XXIV. OEIGINALLY, Nevada was a part of Utah and was called Carson county; and a pretty large county it was, too. Certain of its valleys produced no end of hay. and this attracted small colonies of Mormon stock-raisers and farmers to them. A few orthodox Americans straggled in from California, but no love was lost between the two classes of colonists. There was little or no friendly intercourse ; ea.ch party staid to itself. The Mormons were largely in the majority, and had the additional advantage of being peculiarly under the protection of the Mor- mon government of the Territory. Therefore they could afiford to be distant, and even peremptory toward their neighbors. One of the traditions of Carson Valley illustrates the condition of things that prevailed at the time I speak of. The hired girl of one of the American families was Irish, and a Catholic ; yet it was noted with surprise that she was the only person outside of the Mormon ring who could get favors from the Mormons. She asked kindnesses of them often, and always got them. It was a mystery to everybody. But one day as she was passing out at the door, a large bowie knife dropped from under her apron, and when her mistress asked for an explanation she ob- served that she was going out to ** borry a wash-tub from the Mormons I " In 1858 silver lodes were discovered in " Carson County," and then the aspectof things changed. Californians began to flock in, and the American element was soon in the majority. Allegiance to Brigham Young and Utah was renounced, and a temporary terri- torial government for " Washoe " was instituted by the citizenii. Governor Roop was the first and only chief magistrate of it. In due course of time Congress passed a bill to organize " Nevada Territory," and President Lincoln sent out Governor Nye to supplant Roop. At this time the population of the Territory was about twelve or fifteen thousand, and rapidly increasing. Silver mines were ' ,1 I ( ;.'. T\ 126 BOUOHINa IT. '4^ being vigorously developed, and silver mills erected. Business of all kinds was active and prosperous, and growing more so day by day. The people were glad to have a legitimately constituted gov- ernment, but did not particularly enjoy having strangers from distant States put in authority over them — a sentiment that was natural enough. They thought the officials should have been chosen from among themselves — from among prominent citizens who had earned a right to such promotion, and who would be in sympathy with the populace, and likewise thoroughly acquainted with the needs of the Territory. They were right in viewing the matter thus, without doubt. The new officers were "emigrants," and that was no title to anybody's affection or admiration either. The new government was received with considerable coolness. It was not only a foreign intruder, but a poor one. It was not even worth plucking — except by the smallest of small fry office- seekers and such. Everybody knew that Congress had appropri- ated only twenty thousand dollars a year in greenbacks for its support— about money enough to run a quartz mill a month. And everybody knew, also, that the first year's money was still in Washington, and that the getting hold of it would be a tedious and difficult process. Carson City was too wary and too wise to open up a credit account with the imported bantling with any- thing like indecent haste. There is something solemnly funny about the struggles of a new-born Territorial government to get a start in this world. Ours had a trying time of it. The Organic Act and the " instructions " from the State Department commanded that a legislature should be elected at such-and-such a time, and its sittings inaugurated i at such-and-such a date. It was easy to get legislators, even at three dollars a day, although board was four dollars and fifty | cents, for distinction has its charm in Nevada as well as else* where, and there were plenty of patriotic souls out of employ- ment ; but toget alegifilative hall for them to meet in was another! matter altogether. Carson blandly declined to give a room rent-j free, or let one to the government on credit. But when Curryheard of the difficulty, he came forward, solij tary and alone, and shouldered the Ship of State over the bar] >d gov- •B from lat ^as ^e been citizens d be in [uainted iving the igrants," n either, joolness. was not ry office- appropri- cs for its a month. [ was still a tedious 30 wise to with any BOVaHINO IT. 127 and got her afloat again. I refer to " Cnrrj—Old Curry—Old Abe Curryc" But for him the legislature would have been obliged to sit in the desert. He offered his large stone building just outside the capital limits, rent-free, and it was gladly accepted. Then he built a horse-railroad from town to the capitol, and carried the legislators gratis. He also furnished pine benches and chairs for the legislature, and covered the floors with clean saw-dust by way of carpet and spittoon combined. But for Gurry the govern* ment would have died in its tender infancy. A canvas partition to separate the Senate from the House of Representatives was put up by the Secretary, at a cost of three dollars and forty cents but the United States declined to pay for it. Upon being reminded that the "instructions" permitted the payment of a liberal rent for a legislative hall, and that that money was saved to the country by Mr. Curry's generosity, the United States said that did not alter the matter, and the three dollars and forty cents would be subtracted from the Secretary's eighteen hundred dollar salary — anditioa«/ The matter of printing was from the beginning an interesting feature of the new government's difficulties. The Secretary was sworn to obey his volume of written " instructions,- ' and these commanded him to do two certain things without fail, viz : 1. Get the House and Senate journals printed; and, 2. For this work pay one dollar and fifty cents per " thousand', for composition, and one dollar and fifty cents per "token" for press work, in greenbacks. It was easy to swear to do these two things, but it was entirely impossible to do more than one of them. When greenbacks had gone down to forty cents on the dollar, the nrines regularly charged everybody by printing establishments were one dollar and fifty cents per " thousand" and one dollar and fifty cents per " token" in gold. The " instructions" commanded that the Sec- retary regard a paper dollar issued by the government as equal to any other dollar issued by the government. Hence the print- ing of the journals was discontinued. Then the United States sternly rebuked the Secretary for disregarding the " instructions," and warned him to correct his ways. Wherefore he got some printing done, forwarded the bill to Washington with full exhibits >1 :| 128 ROUOHINO IT. .! ( I* . ^ " 'II of the high prices of things in the Territory, and called attention to a printed market report wherein it would be observed that even hay was two hundred and fifty dollars a ton. The United States responded by substraoting the printing-bill from the Sec- retary's suffering salary — and moreover remarked with dense gravity that he would find nothing in his " instructions" requiring him to purchase hay I Nothing in this world is palled in such impenetrable obscurity as a U. S. Treasury Comptroller's understanding. The very fires of the hereafter could get up nothing more than a fitful glimmer in it. In the days I. speak of he never could be made to com- prehend why it was that twenty thousand dollars would not go as far in Nevada, where all commodities ranged at an enormous figure, as it would in the other Territories, where exceedinj; cheapness was the rule. He was an officer who looked out for the little expenses all the time. The Secretary of the Territory kept his ofiBce in his bedroom, as I before remarked ; and he charged the United States no rent, although his " instructions" provided for that item, and he could have justly taken advantage of it (a thing which I would have done with more than lightning promptness if I had been Secretary myself). But the United States never applauded this devotion. Indeed, I think my country was ashamed to have so improvident a person in its employ. Those " instructions" (we used to read a chapter from them every morning, as intellectual gymnastics, and a couple of chap- ters in Sunday school every Sabbath, for they treated of all subjects under the sun and had much valuable religious matter in them along with the other statistics) those "instructions" commanded that pen-knives, envelopes, pens and writing-paper be furnished the members of the legislature. So the Secretary made the purchase and the distribution. The knives cost three dollars apiece. There was one too many, and the Secretary gave it to the Clerk of the House of Representatives. The United States said the Clerk of the House was not a '' member" of the legislature, and took that three dollars out of the Secretary's ^ salary, as usual. White men charged three or four dollars a " load" for sawing I up Ntove-' tljiU the I HO ]je got I and a half to it— sitn done the v way, but c< the nocossi and a half. iiis econom BOUOHINO IT« 129 icurity •y fires immer com- ot go as ormous jeedinj? out for erritory and he actions" Ivantage | ightning > United link my m in its )in them of chap- id of all ,s matter ructions" [ng-paper Secretary iost three itary gave United ,r" of the icretary'9 )r sawing 1 e /' uj) Htove-wood. The Secretary was sagacious enough to know that the United States would never pay any such price as that ; so he got an Indian to saw up a load of office wood at one dollar and a half. He made out the usual voucher, but signed no name to it— simply appended a note explaining that an Indian had done the work, and had done it in a very capable and satisfactory way, but could not sign the voucher owing to lack of ability in the necessary direction. The Secretary had to pay that dollar and a half. He thought the United States would admire both his economy and his honesty in getting the work done at half SATISRAOTOHT VOUCHER. price and not putting a pretended Indian's signature to the voucher, but the United States did not see it in thai light. The United States was too much accustomed io employing dollar-and- a half thieves in all manner of official capacities to regard his explanation of the voucher as^ having any foundation in fact. But the next time the Indian sawed wood for us I taught him to make a cross at the bottom of the voucher — it looked like a cross that had been drunk a year — and then I" witnessed" it and I it went through all right. The United States never said a word. I I was sorry I had not made the voucher for a thousand loads of [wood instead of one. The government of my country snubs honest simplicity but fondles artistic villany, and I think I might {have developed into a very capable pickpocket if I had remained I in the public service a year or two. That was a fine collection of sovereigns, that first Nevada legis- llature. They levied taxes to the amoimt of thirty or forty Ithousand dollars and ordered expenditures to the extent of about la million. Yet they had their little periodical explosions of leconomy like all other bodies of the kind. A member proposed 9 I * 130 ROUOHINO IT. r to Have throo dollutri a day to the nation by diuponHing with the Chaplain. And yet that Hhort-siglitcd man needed the Chupluin more tlian any other member, porhai)H, for he generally Hat with his feet on his desk, eating raw turnips, during the morning prayer. «»; The legislature sat sixty days, and passed private toU-roiid franchises all the time. When thoy adjourned it was estimated that every citizen owned about three franchises, and it was be- lieved that unless Congress gave the Territory another degree of longiiude there would not be room enough to accommodate the toll-roads. The ends of them were hanging over the boundary line everywhere like a fringe. ^ . The fact is, the freighting business had grown to such im- portant proportions that there was nearly as much excitement over suddenly acquired toll-road fortunes as over the wonderful | silver mines. CHAPTEK XXV. T>Y-and-by I was s:nitten with the silver fever. "Prospect- -^ ing parties " were leaving for the mountains every day, and discovering and taking possession of rich silver-bearing | lodes and ledges of quartz. Plainly this was the road to for* I tune. The great " Gould and Curry " mine was held at thre« or four hundred dollars a foot when we arrived ; but in twol months it had sprung up to eight hundred. The "OphirJ had been worth only a mere trifle, a year gone by, and now ill was selling at nearly four thousand dollars a foot! Not »| mine could be named that had not experienced an astonishinjl advance in value within a short time. Everybody was talkiDH about these marvels. Go where you would, you heard nothinj| else, from morning till far into the night. Tom So-and-So 1 sold out of the " Amanda Smith " for $40,000— hadn't a centl when he " took up " the ledge six months ago. John Jonesj had sold half his interest in the ''Bald Eagle and Mary Ann' for $65;000, gold coin, and gone to the States for hid family. Tbtl house apiece L for a drink at) frunk on ch( friends in a td 'ands from lo] common loafel ROUGHINO IT, 131 sat with aiorning toU-vowl Btimated 1 was \)C' degree ol )date tlie boundary such im- (tcitemenl wonderful I »« Prospect- 1 every day,| widow BrowBter had " struck it rich" in the "Golden Fleece" and Hold ten feet for •18,000 — hadn't money enough to buy a crape boiinot when Sing-Sing Tommy killed her huaband at Baldy Johnson's wake last spring. The " Last Chance" had found a " clay casing" and knew they were " right on the ledge" — conso* (juciice^ '* feet" that went begging yesterday were worth a brick SILVER BRICKS. Ihouse apiece to-day, and seedy owners who could not get trusted Ifor a drink at any bar in the country yesterday were roaring Idrunk on champagne to*day and had hosts of warm personal piends in a town where they had forgotten how to bow or shake hands from long-continued want of practice. Johnny Morgan, a bommon loafer, had gone to sleep in the gutter and waked up ,t ; 182 BOUGHINO IT. 4 ■■ t worth a hundred thousand dollars, in consequence of the decision in the " Lady Franklin and Rough and Ready" lawsuit. And so on — day in and day out the talk pelted our ears and the excite- ment waxed hotter and hotter around us. I would have been more or less than human if I had not gone mad like the rest. Cart-loads of solid silver bricks, as large as pigs of lead, were arriving from the mills every day, and such sights as that gave substance to the wild talk about me. I suc- cumbed and grew as frenzied as the craziest. Every few days news would come of the discovery of a bran- new mining region ; immediately the papers would teem with accounts of its richness, and away the surplus population would scamper to take possession. By the time I was fairly inoculated with the disease, "Esmeralda" had just had a run and "Hum- bolt" was beginning to shriek for attention. " Humboldt I Hum- boldt!" was the new cry, and straightway Humboldt, the newest of the new, the richest of the rich, the most marvellous of the marvellous discoveries in silverland, was occupying two columns of the public prints to " Esmeralda's" one. I was just on the point of starting to Esmeralda, but turned with the tide and got ready for Humboldt. That the reader may see what moved me, and what would as surely have moved him had he been there, I insert here one of the newspaper letters of the day. It and several other letters from the same calm hand were the main means of converting me. I shall not garble the extract, but put it in just as it appeared in the Daily Territorial Enterprise: But what about our mines ? I shall be candid with you. I shall ex- press an honest opinion, based upon a thorough examination. Humboldt county is the richest mineral region upon God's footstool. Each moun- tain range is gorged with the precious ores. Humboldt is the true Golconda. The other day an assay of mere croppinga yeilded exeeeding /our thousand dollars to the ton. A week, or two ago an assay of just sucb surface developments made returns of seven thousand dollars to the toa Oiu* mountains are full of rambling prospectors. Each day and almost every hour reveals new and more startling evidences of the profuse and intensified wealth of our favored county. The metal is not silver alone. There are distinct ledges of auriferous ore. A late discovery plainljl evinces cinnebar. The coarser metals are in gross abundance. Latelji evidences been that past, that previous u no confide the exulta: Captain Bi went that the length > forests onct firm in the boldt count Let me s better comj near neigh I locality in J daily shipm Gold Hill o] yield was or pounds of c reader will j one fourth t< every one hu dollars up tc this same coil I have spokl it is incredible cious ore to plj tains as to fur 1 have also toll finest mill sitej boldt? The capitalists. I^ 'render it diflScJ The proprietor exordium. Th the length of oJ the developmeJ k effort, the s] Ke. I done ROUGHING IT. 183 ' a bran- em with on would loculated d " Hum- it I Hum- ae newest lus of the 3 columns st on the ie and got noved me, sn there,! . It and the main it, but put \rprise : I shall ex- Humboldt Eachmoun- is the true] endences of bituminous coal have been detected. My theory has ever been that coal is a ligneous formation. I told Col. Whitman, in times past, that the neighborhood of Dayton (Nevada) betrayed no present or previous manifestations of a ligneous foundation, and that hence I had no confidence in his lauded coal mines. I repeated the same doctrine to the exultant coal discoverers of Humboldt. I talked with my friend Captain Burch on the subject. My pyrhanism vanished upon his state- ment that in the very region referred to he had seen petrified trees of the length of two hundred feet. Then is the fact established that huge forests once cast their grim shadows over this remote section. I am firm in the coal faith. Have no fears of the mineral resources of Hum- boldt county. They are immense — incalculable. Let me state one or two things which will help the reader to better comprehend certain items in the above. At this time, our near neighbor, Gold Hill, was the most successful silver mining locality in Nevada. It was from there that more than half the daily shipments of silver bricks came. *' Very rich" (and scarce) Gold Hill ore yielded from |100 to $400 to the ton; but the usual yield was only 20 to $40 per ton — that is to say, each hundred pounds of ore yielded from one dollar to two dollars. But the reader will perceive by the above extract, that in Humboldt from one fourth to nearly half the mass was silver ! That is to say, every one hundred pounds of the ore had from from two hundred dollars up to about three hundred and fifty in it. Some days later this same correspondent wrote : I have spoken of the vast and almost fabulous wealth of this region — it is incredible. The intestines of our mountains are gorged with pre- cious ore to plethora. I have said that nature has so shaped our moun- tains as to furnish most excellent faciUties for the working of our mines. 1 1 have also told you that the country about here is pregnant with the finest mill sites in the world. But what is the mining history of Hum- boldt? The Sheba mine is in the hands of energetic San Francisco capitalists. It would seem that the ore is combined with metals that render it difficult of reduction with our imperfect mountain machinery. I The proprietors have combined the capital and labor hinted at in my I exordium. They are toiling and probing. Their tunnel has reached Ithe length of one hundred feet. From primal assays alone, coupled with |the development of the mine and public confidence in the continuance of effort, the stock had reared itself to eight hundred dollars market lvalue. I do not know that one ton of the ore has been converted into ^1-.. i 1 -^•■I 184 BOUamNG IT. current metal. I do not know that there are many lodes in this section that surpass the Sheba in primal assay value. Listen a moment to the calculations of the Sheba operators. They purpose transporting the ore concentrated to Europe. The conveyance from Star City (its locality) to Virginia City will cost seventy dollars per ton ; from Virginia to San Francisco, forty dollars per ton ; from thence to Liverpool, its destina- tion, ten dollars per ton. Their idea is that its conglomerate metals will reimburse them their cost of original extraction, the price of trans- portation, and the expense of reduction, and that then a ton of the raw ore will net them twelve hundred dollars. The estimate may be ex- travagant. Cut it in twain, and the prrduct is enormous, far transcend- ing any previous developments of our racy Territory. A very common calculation is that many of our mines will yield five himdred dollars to the ton. Such fecundity throws the Gould & Curry, Ophir and the Mexican, of your neighborhood, in the darkest shadow, I have given you the estimate of the value of a single developed mine. Its richness is indexed by its market valuation. The people of Hum- boldt county axQfeet crazy. As I write, our towns are near deserted. They look as languid as a consumptive girl. What has become of our sinewy and athletic fellow-citizens ? They are coursing through ravines and over mountain-tops. Their tracks are visible in every direction, Occasionally a horseman will dash among us. His steed betrays hard usage. He alights before his adobe dwelling, hastily exchanges cour- tesies with his townsmen, hurries to an assay office and from thence to the District Recorder's. In the morning, having renewed his provi- sional supplies, he is off again on his wild and unbeaten route. Why, the fellow numbers already his feet by the thousands. He is the horse- leech. He has the craving stomach of the shark or anaconda. He would conquer metallic worlds. This was enough. The instant we had finished reading the above article, four of us decided to go to Humboldt. We com- menced getting ready at once. And we also commenced upbraid- ing ourselves for not deciding sooner — for we were in terror lest all | the rich mines w juld be found and secured before we got therei and we might have to put up with ledges that would not yield I more than tWvO or three hundred dollars a ton, maybe. An hour I before, I would have felt opulent if I bad owned ten feetin aOoldl Hill mine whose ore produced twenty-five dollars to the ton ; now! I was already annoyed at the prospect of having to put up witiij mines the poorest of which would be a marvel in Gold Hill. JJURRY, -■^ *- sisted young lawy able old hoi and mining December al soon found 1 walked. It be belter if i It was at thi never driven I position wou I But in a litl the driver gc I resigned th< ' Within the h was absolutel should put oi through the J loutof the wa to know his f ours in one af I tile sand anc I miles. So w< I never rode. Iwatches push: We made s( j(oow member Iwatered the h land brought jsmith did tht Iment, was adl BOUOHIKG IT. 135 CHAPTER XXVI. HURRY, was the word ! We wasted no time. Our party con- sisted of four persons — a blacksmith sixty years of age, two young lawyers, and myself. We bought a waggon and two miser- able old horses. We put eighteen hundred pounds of provisions and mining tools in the wagon and drove out of Carson on a chilly December afternoon. The horses were so weak and old that we soon found "that it would be better if one or two of us got out and walked. It was an improvement. Next, we found that it would be better if a third man got out. That was an improvement also. It was at this time that I volunteered to drive, although I had never driven a harnessed horse before and many a man in such a position would have felt fairly excused from such a responsibility. But in a little while it was found that it would be a fine thing if the driver got out and walked also. It was at this time that I I resigned the position of driver, and never resumed it again. Within the hour, we found that it would not only be better, but I was absolutely necessary, that we four, taking turns, two at a time, should put our hands against the end of the wagon and push it through the sand, leaving the feeble horses little to do but keep out of the way and hold up the tongue. Perhaps it is well for one to know his fate at first, and get reconciled to it. We had learned ours in one afternoon. It was plain that we had to walk throngh ■the sand and shove that wagon and those norses two hundred miles. So we accepted the situation, and from that time forth we never rode. More than that, we stood regular and nearly constant |watche8 pushing up behind. We made seven miles, and cr.mped in the desert. Young Clagget |(dow member of Congress from Montana) unharnessed and fed and Iwatered the horses ; Oliphant and I cut saue-brush, built the fire land brought water to cook with ; and old Mr. Ballou the black- smith did the cooking. This division of labor, and this appoint- Iment, was adhered to throughout the journey. We had no tent, :i ! il -T^WIHH 186 ROUGHINO IT. JW It*',' F w V> ■1 ■iir 'i m [i : , ■ ■ and so we slept under our blankets in the open plain. We were so tired that we rlept soundly. We were fifteen days making the trip— two hundred miles J thirteen, rather, for we lay by a couple of days, in one place, to let the horses rest. We could really have accomplished the journey in ten days if we had towed the horses behind the wagon, but wc did not think of that until it was too late, and so went on shoving the horses and the wagon too v/hen we might have saved half the labor. Parties who met us, occasionally, advised us to put the horses in the wagon, but Mr. Ballou, through whose iron-clad earnestness no sarcasm could pierce, said that that would not do , because the provisions were exposed and would suflfer, the horses being " bituminous from long deprivation." The reader will excuse me from translating. What Mr. Ballou customarily meant, when he used a long word, was a secret between himself and his Maker. He was one of the best and kindest hearted men that ever graced a humble sphere of life. He was gentleness and simplicity itself— and unselfishness, too. Although he was more than twice as old as the eldest of us, he never gave himself any airs, privileges! or exemptions on that account. He did a young man^s share of the work ; and did bis share of conversing and entertaining from the general stand-point of any age — not from the arrogant, over- awing summit-height of sixty years. His one striking peculiarity was his Partingtonian fashion of loving and using big words for their own sakes, and independent of any bearing they might have upon the thought he was purposing to convey. He always let his ponderous syllables fall with an easy unconsciousness that left them wholly without offensiveness. In truth his air was so natural and so simple thtt one was always catching himself accepting his stately sentences as meaning something, when they really meant nothing in the world. If a word was long and grand and resonant, that ivas suf^cient to win the old man's love, and he would drop that word irto the most out-of-the-way place in a sentence or a subject, and be as pleased with it as if it were perfectly luminous with meaning. We four always spread our common stock of blankets together on the frozen ground, and slept side by side ; and finding that our foolish, long-legged hound pup had a deal of animal heat in him. ROUOHINa IT. 187 Ve were . miles I ;e, to let journey , but -wo shoving half the put the iron-clad not do, le horses ider will ly meant, I and his that over jimplicity tian twice jrivilegesj I share of ling from ant, over- eculiarity ^ords for ight have lys let his that left so natural tpting his illy meant resonant, luld drop lence or a luminous Oliphant got to admitting him to the bed, between himself and Mr. Ballou, hugging the dog^s warm back to his breast and finding great comfort in it. But in the night the pup would get stretchy and brace his feet against the old man^s back and shove, grunting complacently the while; and now and then, being warm and snug, grateful and happy, he would paw the old man^s back simply in excess of comfort ; and at yet other times he would dream of the chase and in his sleep tug at the old man's back hair and bark in his ear. The old gentleman complained mildly about these familiarities, at last, and when he got tlirough with his statement he said that such a dog as that was not a proper animal to admit to bed with tired men, because he was *' so meretro(ious in his movements and so organic in his emotions." We turned the dog out. It was a hard, wearing, toilsome journey, but it had its bright side ; for after each day was done and our wolfish hunger ap- peased with a hot supper of fried bacon, bread, molasses and black coflfee, the pipe-smoking, song-singing and yarn-sgjinning around the evening camp-fire in the still solitudes of the desert was a happy, care-fi'ee sort of recreation that seemed the very summit and culmination of earthly luxury. It is a kind of life that has a potent charm for all men, whether city or country- bred. We are descended from desert- lounging Arabs, and count- less ages of growth toward perfect civilization have failed to root out of us the nomadic instinct. We all confess to a gratified thrill at the thought of " camping out." Once we made twenty -five miles in a day, and once we made forty miles (through the Great American Desert), and ten miles beyond — fifty in all — in twenty-three hours, without halting to eat, drink or rest. To stretch out and go to sleep, even on stony and frozen ground, after pushing a wagon and two horses fifty miles, is a delight so supreme that for the moment it almost seems cheap at the price. We camped two days in the neighborhood of the " Sink of the Humboldt." 'We tried to use the strong alkaline water of the Sink, but it would not answer. It was like drinking lye, and not weak lye, either. It left a taste in the mouth, bitter and every way execrable, and a burning in the stomach that was very 1 138 BOUGHINO IT. uncomfortable. We put molasses in it, but that helped it very little ; we added a pickle, yet the rlkali was the prominent taste, and so it was unfit for drinking. The coffee we made of this water was the meanest compound man has yet invented. It was really viler to the taste than the unameliorated water itself. Mr. Ballou, being the architect and builder of the beverage felt constrained to endorse and uphold it, and so drank half a cup, by little sips, making shift to praise it faintly the while, but fin. ally threw out the remainder, and said frankly it was " too tech- nical for him," But presently we found a spring of fresh water, convenient, and then, with nothing to mar our ei\joyment, and no stragglers to interrupt it, we entered into our rest. •t' CHAPTEK ^XVII. A FTER leaving the Sink, we traveled along the Humboldt ■^^ river a little way. People accustomed to the monster mile- wide Mississippi, grow accustomed to associating the term *' river'' with a high degree of watery grandeur. Consequently, such people feel rather disappointed when they stand on the shores of the Humboldt or the Carson and find that a " river" in Nevada is a sickly rivulet which is just the counterpart of the Erie canal in all respects save that the canal is twice as long and four times as deep. One of the pleasantest and most invigorating exercises one can contrive is to run and jump across the Humboldt river till he is overheated, and then drink it dry. On the fifteenth day we completed our march of two hundred miles and entered Unionville, Humboldt county, in the midst of a driving snow-storm. Unionville consisted of eleven cabins and a liberty-pole. Six of the cabins were strung along one side of a deep canyon, and the other five faced them. The rest of the landscape was made up of bleak mountain walls that rose so high into the sky from both sides of the canyon that the village was left, as it were, far down in the bottom of a crevice. It was ROUGHING IT. 189 always daylight on the mountain tops a long time before the darkness lifted and revealed Unionville. We built a small, rude cabin in the side of the crevice and roofed it with canvas, leaving a corner open to serve as a chimney, through which the cattle used to tumble occasionally, at night, and mash our furniture and interrupt our sleep. It was very cold weather and fuel was scarce. Indians brought brush and bushes several miles on their backs ; and when we could catch a laden Indian it was well— and when we could not (which was the rule, not the exception), we shivered and bore it. J confess, without shame, that I expected to find masses of silver lying all about the ground. I expected to see it glittering in the sun on the mountain summits. I said nothing about this, for some instinct told me that I might possibly have an exagger- ated idea about it, and so if I betrayed my thought I might bring derision upon myself. Yet I was as perfectly satisfied in my own mind as I could be of anything, that I was going to gather up, in a day or two, or at furthest a week or two, silver enough to make me satisfactorily wealthy — and so my fancy was already busy with plans for spending this money. The first opportunity that offered, I sauntered carelessly away from the cabin, keeping an eye on the other boys, and stopping and contemplating the sky when they seemed to be observing me ] but as soon as the coast was manifestly clear, I fled away as guiltly as a thief might have done and never halted till I was far beyond sight and call. Then I began my search with a feverish excitement that was brimful of expectation — almost of certainty. I crawled about the ground, seizing and examining bits of stone, blowing the dust from them or rubbing them on my clothes, and then peering at them with anxious hope. Presently I found a bright fragment and my heart bounded I I hid behind a boulder and polished it and scrutinized it with a nervous eagerness and a delight that was more pro* nounced than absolute certainty itself could have afforded. The more I examined the fragment the more I was convinced that I had found the door to fortune. I marked the spot and carried away my specimen. Up and down the rugged mountain side I searched, with always increasing interest and always augmenting gratitude that I had come to Humboldt and come in time. Of I ' M... ii m[ is II *! •'* ! ;i . ' 140 BOUGHINa IT. all the experiences of my life, this secret search among the hidden treasures of silver-land was the nearest to unmarred ecstasy. It was a delirious revel. By and by, in the bed of a shallow rivulet, I found a deposit of shining yellow scales, and my breath almost forsook me 1 A gold mine, and in my simplicity I had been con* tent with vulgar silver I I was so excited that I half believed my overwrought imagination was deceiving me. Then a fear came upon me that people might be observing me and would guess my secret. Moved by this thought, I made a circuit of the place, and ascended a knoll to reconnoiter. Solitude. No creature was near. Then I returned to my mine, fortifying my* self against possible disappointment, but my fears were ground- less—the shining scales v/ere still there. I set about scooping them out, and for an hour I toiled down the winding? of the stream and robbed its bed. But at last the descending sun warned me to give up the quest, and I turned homeward laden with wealth. As I walked along I could not help smiling at the thought of my being so excited over my fragment of silver when a nobler metal was almost under my nose. In this little time the former had so fallen in my estimation that once or twice I was on the point of throwing it away. The boys were as hungry as usual, but I could eat nothing. Neither could I talk. I was full of dreams and far away. Their conversation interrupted the flow of my fancy somewhat, and annoyed me a little, too. I despised the sordid and commonplace things they talked about. But as they proceeded, it began to amuse me. It grew to be rare fun to hear them planning their poor little economies and sighing over possible privations and distresses when a gold mine, all our own, lay within sight of the cabin and I could point it out at any moment. Smothered hilarity began to oppress me, presently. It was hard to resist the impulse to burst out with exultation and reveal everything ; but I did resist. I said within myself that I w juld filter the great news through my lips calmly and be serene as a summer morning while I watched its effect in their faces. I said : " Where have you all been ?" " Prospecting." "What did you find?" "Nothing." ROUOHINO IT. 141 " Nothing? What do you think of the country ?" *' Can't tell, yet," said Mr. Ballou, who was an old gold miner, und had likewise had considerable expe^^ience among the silver mines. " Well, haven't you formed any sort of opinion ?" '' Yes, a sort of a one. It's fair enough here, may be, but over* rated. Seven thousand dollar ledges are scarce, though. That Sheba may be rich enough, but we don't own it ; and besides, the rock is so full of base metals that all the science in the world can't work it. We'll not starve, here, but we'll not get rich, I'm afraid." " So you think the prospect is pretty poor ?" '' No name for it !" " Well, we'd better go back, hadn't we?" " Oh, not yet— of course not. We'll try it a riffle, first." " Suppose, now — this is merely a supposition, you know — sup- pose you could find a ledge that would yield, say, a hundred and fifty dollars a ton - would that satisfy you ?" « Try us once 1" from the whole party. " Or suppose — merely a supposition, of course — suppose you were to find a ledge that would yield two thousand dollars a ton —would that satisfy you ?" " Here — what do you mean ? What are you coming at ? Is there some mystery behind all this ?" « Never mind. I am not saying anything. You know perfectly well there are no rich mines here-— of course you do. Because you have been around and examined for yourselves. Anybody would know that, that had been around. But just for the sake of argument, suppose — in a kind of general way — suppose some person were to tell you that two-thousand-dollar ledges were simply contemptible — contemptible, understand — and that right yonder in sight of this very cabin there were piles of pure gold and pure silver— oceans of it — enough to make you all rich in twenty-four hours ! Come !" " I should say he was as crazy as a loon i" said old Ballou, but wild with excitement, nevertheless. ''Gentlemen," said I, ''I don't say anything— I haven't been around, you know, and of course don't know anything — but all I I > n. 142 ROUGHING IT. «ll»! ,|M|