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+Project Gutenberg's Roughing It, Part 4., by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Roughing It, Part 4.
+
+Author: Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
+
+Release Date: July 2, 2004 [EBook #8585]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ROUGHING IT, PART 4. ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+                              ROUGHING IT
+
+                             by Mark Twain
+
+                                 1880
+
+                                Part 4.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+There were two men in the company who caused me particular discomfort.
+One was a little Swede, about twenty-five years old, who knew only one
+song, and he was forever singing it.  By day we were all crowded into one
+small, stifling bar-room, and so there was no escaping this person's
+music.  Through all the profanity, whisky-guzzling, "old sledge" and
+quarreling, his monotonous song meandered with never a variation in its
+tiresome sameness, and it seemed to me, at last, that I would be content
+to die, in order to be rid of the torture.  The other man was a stalwart
+ruffian called "Arkansas," who carried two revolvers in his belt and a
+bowie knife projecting from his boot, and who was always drunk and always
+suffering for a fight.  But he was so feared, that nobody would
+accommodate him.  He would try all manner of little wary ruses to entrap
+somebody into an offensive remark, and his face would light up now and
+then when he fancied he was fairly on the scent of a fight, but
+invariably his victim would elude his toils and then he would show a
+disappointment that was almost pathetic.  The landlord, Johnson, was a
+meek, well-meaning fellow, and Arkansas fastened on him early, as a
+promising subject, and gave him no rest day or night, for awhile.  On the
+fourth morning, Arkansas got drunk and sat himself down to wait for an
+opportunity.  Presently Johnson came in, just comfortably sociable with
+whisky, and said:
+
+"I reckon the Pennsylvania 'lection--"
+
+Arkansas raised his finger impressively and Johnson stopped.  Arkansas
+rose unsteadily and confronted him.  Said he:
+
+"Wha-what do you know a--about Pennsylvania?  Answer me that.  Wha--what
+do you know 'bout Pennsylvania?"
+
+"I was only goin' to say--"
+
+"You was only goin' to say.  You was!  You was only goin' to say--what
+was you goin' to say?  That's it!  That's what I want to know.  I want to
+know wha--what you ('ic) what you know about Pennsylvania, since you're
+makin' yourself so d---d free.  Answer me that!"
+
+"Mr. Arkansas, if you'd only let me--"
+
+"Who's a henderin' you?  Don't you insinuate nothing agin me!--don't you
+do it.  Don't you come in here bullyin' around, and cussin' and goin' on
+like a lunatic--don't you do it.  'Coz I won't stand it.  If fight's what
+you want, out with it!  I'm your man!  Out with it!"
+
+Said Johnson, backing into a corner, Arkansas following, menacingly:
+
+"Why, I never said nothing, Mr. Arkansas.  You don't give a man no
+chance.  I was only goin' to say that Pennsylvania was goin' to have an
+election next week--that was all--that was everything I was goin' to say
+--I wish I may never stir if it wasn't."
+
+"Well then why d'n't you say it?  What did you come swellin' around that
+way for, and tryin' to raise trouble?"
+
+"Why I didn't come swellin' around, Mr. Arkansas--I just--"
+
+"I'm a liar am I!  Ger-reat Caesar's ghost--"
+
+"Oh, please, Mr. Arkansas, I never meant such a thing as that, I wish I
+may die if I did.  All the boys will tell you that I've always spoke well
+of you, and respected you more'n any man in the house.  Ask Smith.  Ain't
+it so, Smith?  Didn't I say, no longer ago than last night, that for a
+man that was a gentleman all the time and every way you took him, give me
+Arkansas?  I'll leave it to any gentleman here if them warn't the very
+words I used.  Come, now, Mr. Arkansas, le's take a drink--le's shake
+hands and take a drink.  Come up--everybody!  It's my treat.  Come up,
+Bill, Tom, Bob, Scotty--come up.  I want you all to take a drink with me
+and Arkansas--old Arkansas, I call him--bully old Arkansas.  Gimme your
+hand agin.  Look at him, boys--just take a look at him.  Thar stands the
+whitest man in America!--and the man that denies it has got to fight me,
+that's all.  Gimme that old flipper agin!"
+
+They embraced, with drunken affection on the landlord's part and
+unresponsive toleration on the part of Arkansas, who, bribed by a drink,
+was disappointed of his prey once more.  But the foolish landlord was so
+happy to have escaped butchery, that he went on talking when he ought to
+have marched himself out of danger.  The consequence was that Arkansas
+shortly began to glower upon him dangerously, and presently said:
+
+"Lan'lord, will you p-please make that remark over agin if you please?"
+
+"I was a-sayin' to Scotty that my father was up'ards of eighty year old
+when he died."
+
+"Was that all that you said?"
+
+"Yes, that was all."
+
+"Didn't say nothing but that?"
+
+"No--nothing."
+
+Then an uncomfortable silence.
+
+Arkansas played with his glass a moment, lolling on his elbows on the
+counter.  Then he meditatively scratched his left shin with his right
+boot, while the awkward silence continued.  But presently he loafed away
+toward the stove, looking dissatisfied; roughly shouldered two or three
+men out of a comfortable position; occupied it himself, gave a sleeping
+dog a kick that sent him howling under a bench, then spread his long legs
+and his blanket-coat tails apart and proceeded to warm his back.  In a
+little while he fell to grumbling to himself, and soon he slouched back
+to the bar and said:
+
+"Lan'lord, what's your idea for rakin' up old personalities and blowin'
+about your father?  Ain't this company agreeable to you?  Ain't it?  If
+this company ain't agreeable to you, p'r'aps we'd better leave.  Is that
+your idea?  Is that what you're coming at?"
+
+"Why bless your soul, Arkansas, I warn't thinking of such a thing.  My
+father and my mother--"
+
+"Lan'lord, don't crowd a man!  Don't do it.  If nothing'll do you but a
+disturbance, out with it like a man ('ic)--but don't rake up old bygones
+and fling'em in the teeth of a passel of people that wants to be
+peaceable if they could git a chance.  What's the matter with you this
+mornin', anyway?  I never see a man carry on so."
+
+"Arkansas, I reely didn't mean no harm, and I won't go on with it if it's
+onpleasant to you.  I reckon my licker's got into my head, and what with
+the flood, and havin' so many to feed and look out for--"
+
+"So that's what's a-ranklin' in your heart, is it?  You want us to leave
+do you?  There's too many on us.  You want us to pack up and swim.  Is
+that it?  Come!"
+
+"Please be reasonable, Arkansas.  Now you know that I ain't the man to--"
+
+"Are you a threatenin' me?  Are you?  By George, the man don't live that
+can skeer me!  Don't you try to come that game, my chicken--'cuz I can
+stand a good deal, but I won't stand that.  Come out from behind that bar
+till I clean you!  You want to drive us out, do you, you sneakin'
+underhanded hound!  Come out from behind that bar!  I'll learn you to
+bully and badger and browbeat a gentleman that's forever trying to
+befriend you and keep you out of trouble!"
+
+"Please, Arkansas, please don't shoot!  If there's got to be bloodshed--"
+
+"Do you hear that, gentlemen?  Do you hear him talk about bloodshed?  So
+it's blood you want, is it, you ravin' desperado!  You'd made up your
+mind to murder somebody this mornin'--I knowed it perfectly well.  I'm
+the man, am I?  It's me you're goin' to murder, is it?  But you can't do
+it 'thout I get one chance first, you thievin' black-hearted,
+white-livered son of a nigger!  Draw your weepon!"
+
+With that, Arkansas began to shoot, and the landlord to clamber over
+benches, men and every sort of obstacle in a frantic desire to escape.
+In the midst of the wild hubbub the landlord crashed through a glass
+door, and as Arkansas charged after him the landlord's wife suddenly
+appeared in the doorway and confronted the desperado with a pair of
+scissors!  Her fury was magnificent.  With head erect and flashing eye
+she stood a moment and then advanced, with her weapon raised.  The
+astonished ruffian hesitated, and then fell back a step.  She followed.
+She backed him step by step into the middle of the bar-room, and then,
+while the wondering crowd closed up and gazed, she gave him such another
+tongue-lashing as never a cowed and shamefaced braggart got before,
+perhaps!  As she finished and retired victorious, a roar of applause
+shook the house, and every man ordered "drinks for the crowd" in one and
+the same breath.
+
+The lesson was entirely sufficient.  The reign of terror was over, and
+the Arkansas domination broken for good.  During the rest of the season
+of island captivity, there was one man who sat apart in a state of
+permanent humiliation, never mixing in any quarrel or uttering a boast,
+and never resenting the insults the once cringing crew now constantly
+leveled at him, and that man was "Arkansas."
+
+By the fifth or sixth morning the waters had subsided from the land, but
+the stream in the old river bed was still high and swift and there was no
+possibility of crossing it.  On the eighth it was still too high for an
+entirely safe passage, but life in the inn had become next to
+insupportable by reason of the dirt, drunkenness, fighting, etc., and so
+we made an effort to get away.  In the midst of a heavy snow-storm we
+embarked in a canoe, taking our saddles aboard and towing our horses
+after us by their halters.  The Prussian, Ollendorff, was in the bow,
+with a paddle, Ballou paddled in the middle, and I sat in the stern
+holding the halters.  When the horses lost their footing and began to
+swim, Ollendorff got frightened, for there was great danger that the
+horses would make our aim uncertain, and it was plain that if we failed
+to land at a certain spot the current would throw us off and almost
+surely cast us into the main Carson, which was a boiling torrent, now.
+Such a catastrophe would be death, in all probability, for we would be
+swept to sea in the "Sink" or overturned and drowned.  We warned
+Ollendorff to keep his wits about him and handle himself carefully, but
+it was useless; the moment the bow touched the bank, he made a spring and
+the canoe whirled upside down in ten-foot water.
+
+Ollendorff seized some brush and dragged himself ashore, but Ballou and I
+had to swim for it, encumbered with our overcoats.  But we held on to the
+canoe, and although we were washed down nearly to the Carson, we managed
+to push the boat ashore and make a safe landing.  We were cold and
+water-soaked, but safe.  The horses made a landing, too, but our saddles
+were gone, of course.  We tied the animals in the sage-brush and there
+they had to stay for twenty-four hours.  We baled out the canoe and
+ferried over some food and blankets for them, but we slept one more night
+in the inn before making another venture on our journey.
+
+The next morning it was still snowing furiously when we got away with our
+new stock of saddles and accoutrements.  We mounted and started.  The
+snow lay so deep on the ground that there was no sign of a road
+perceptible, and the snow-fall was so thick that we could not see more
+than a hundred yards ahead, else we could have guided our course by the
+mountain ranges.  The case looked dubious, but Ollendorff said his
+instinct was as sensitive as any compass, and that he could "strike a
+bee-line" for Carson city and never diverge from it.  He said that if he
+were to straggle a single point out of the true line his instinct would
+assail him like an outraged conscience.  Consequently we dropped into his
+wake happy and content.  For half an hour we poked along warily enough,
+but at the end of that time we came upon a fresh trail, and Ollendorff
+shouted proudly:
+
+"I knew I was as dead certain as a compass, boys!  Here we are, right in
+somebody's tracks that will hunt the way for us without any trouble.
+Let's hurry up and join company with the party."
+
+So we put the horses into as much of a trot as the deep snow would allow,
+and before long it was evident that we were gaining on our predecessors,
+for the tracks grew more distinct.  We hurried along, and at the end of
+an hour the tracks looked still newer and fresher--but what surprised us
+was, that the number of travelers in advance of us seemed to steadily
+increase.  We wondered how so large a party came to be traveling at such
+a time and in such a solitude.  Somebody suggested that it must be a
+company of soldiers from the fort, and so we accepted that solution and
+jogged along a little faster still, for they could not be far off now.
+But the tracks still multiplied, and we began to think the platoon of
+soldiers was miraculously expanding into a regiment--Ballou said they had
+already increased to five hundred!  Presently he stopped his horse and
+said:
+
+"Boys, these are our own tracks, and we've actually been circussing round
+and round in a circle for more than two hours, out here in this blind
+desert!  By George this is perfectly hydraulic!"
+
+Then the old man waxed wroth and abusive.  He called Ollendorff all
+manner of hard names--said he never saw such a lurid fool as he was, and
+ended with the peculiarly venomous opinion that he "did not know as much
+as a logarythm!"
+
+We certainly had been following our own tracks.  Ollendorff and his
+"mental compass" were in disgrace from that moment.
+
+After all our hard travel, here we were on the bank of the stream again,
+with the inn beyond dimly outlined through the driving snow-fall.  While
+we were considering what to do, the young Swede landed from the canoe and
+took his pedestrian way Carson-wards, singing his same tiresome song
+about his "sister and his brother" and "the child in the grave with its
+mother," and in a short minute faded and disappeared in the white
+oblivion.  He was never heard of again.  He no doubt got bewildered and
+lost, and Fatigue delivered him over to Sleep and Sleep betrayed him to
+Death.  Possibly he followed our treacherous tracks till he became
+exhausted and dropped.
+
+Presently the Overland stage forded the now fast receding stream and
+started toward Carson on its first trip since the flood came.  We
+hesitated no longer, now, but took up our march in its wake, and trotted
+merrily along, for we had good confidence in the driver's bump of
+locality.  But our horses were no match for the fresh stage team.  We
+were soon left out of sight; but it was no matter, for we had the deep
+ruts the wheels made for a guide.  By this time it was three in the
+afternoon, and consequently it was not very long before night came--and
+not with a lingering twilight, but with a sudden shutting down like a
+cellar door, as is its habit in that country.  The snowfall was still as
+thick as ever, and of course we could not see fifteen steps before us;
+but all about us the white glare of the snow-bed enabled us to discern
+the smooth sugar-loaf mounds made by the covered sage-bushes, and just in
+front of us the two faint grooves which we knew were the steadily filling
+and slowly disappearing wheel-tracks.
+
+Now those sage-bushes were all about the same height--three or four feet;
+they stood just about seven feet apart, all over the vast desert; each of
+them was a mere snow-mound, now; in any direction that you proceeded (the
+same as in a well laid out orchard) you would find yourself moving down a
+distinctly defined avenue, with a row of these snow-mounds an either side
+of it--an avenue the customary width of a road, nice and level in its
+breadth, and rising at the sides in the most natural way, by reason of
+the mounds.  But we had not thought of this.  Then imagine the chilly
+thrill that shot through us when it finally occurred to us, far in the
+night, that since the last faint trace of the wheel-tracks had long ago
+been buried from sight, we might now be wandering down a mere sage-brush
+avenue, miles away from the road and diverging further and further away
+from it all the time.  Having a cake of ice slipped down one's back is
+placid comfort compared to it.  There was a sudden leap and stir of blood
+that had been asleep for an hour, and as sudden a rousing of all the
+drowsing activities in our minds and bodies.  We were alive and awake at
+once--and shaking and quaking with consternation, too.  There was an
+instant halting and dismounting, a bending low and an anxious scanning of
+the road-bed.  Useless, of course; for if a faint depression could not be
+discerned from an altitude of four or five feet above it, it certainly
+could not with one's nose nearly against it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII.
+
+We seemed to be in a road, but that was no proof.  We tested this by
+walking off in various directions--the regular snow-mounds and the
+regular avenues between them convinced each man that he had found the
+true road, and that the others had found only false ones.  Plainly the
+situation was desperate.  We were cold and stiff and the horses were
+tired.  We decided to build a sage-brush fire and camp out till morning.
+This was wise, because if we were wandering from the right road and the
+snow-storm continued another day our case would be the next thing to
+hopeless if we kept on.
+
+All agreed that a camp fire was what would come nearest to saving us,
+now, and so we set about building it.  We could find no matches, and so
+we tried to make shift with the pistols.  Not a man in the party had ever
+tried to do such a thing before, but not a man in the party doubted that
+it could be done, and without any trouble--because every man in the party
+had read about it in books many a time and had naturally come to believe
+it, with trusting simplicity, just as he had long ago accepted and
+believed that other common book-fraud about Indians and lost hunters
+making a fire by rubbing two dry sticks together.
+
+We huddled together on our knees in the deep snow, and the horses put
+their noses together and bowed their patient heads over us; and while the
+feathery flakes eddied down and turned us into a group of white statuary,
+we proceeded with the momentous experiment.  We broke twigs from a sage
+bush and piled them on a little cleared place in the shelter of our
+bodies.  In the course of ten or fifteen minutes all was ready, and then,
+while conversation ceased and our pulses beat low with anxious suspense,
+Ollendorff applied his revolver, pulled the trigger and blew the pile
+clear out of the county!  It was the flattest failure that ever was.
+
+This was distressing, but it paled before a greater horror--the horses
+were gone!  I had been appointed to hold the bridles, but in my absorbing
+anxiety over the pistol experiment I had unconsciously dropped them and
+the released animals had walked off in the storm.  It was useless to try
+to follow them, for their footfalls could make no sound, and one could
+pass within two yards of the creatures and never see them.  We gave them
+up without an effort at recovering them, and cursed the lying books that
+said horses would stay by their masters for protection and companionship
+in a distressful time like ours.
+
+We were miserable enough, before; we felt still more forlorn, now.
+Patiently, but with blighted hope, we broke more sticks and piled them,
+and once more the Prussian shot them into annihilation.  Plainly, to
+light a fire with a pistol was an art requiring practice and experience,
+and the middle of a desert at midnight in a snow-storm was not a good
+place or time for the acquiring of the accomplishment.  We gave it up and
+tried the other.  Each man took a couple of sticks and fell to chafing
+them together.  At the end of half an hour we were thoroughly chilled,
+and so were the sticks.  We bitterly execrated the Indians, the hunters
+and the books that had betrayed us with the silly device, and wondered
+dismally what was next to be done.  At this critical moment Mr. Ballou
+fished out four matches from the rubbish of an overlooked pocket.  To
+have found four gold bars would have seemed poor and cheap good luck
+compared to this.
+
+One cannot think how good a match looks under such circumstances--or how
+lovable and precious, and sacredly beautiful to the eye.  This time we
+gathered sticks with high hopes; and when Mr. Ballou prepared to light
+the first match, there was an amount of interest centred upon him that
+pages of writing could not describe.  The match burned hopefully a
+moment, and then went out.  It could not have carried more regret with it
+if it had been a human life.  The next match simply flashed and died.
+The wind puffed the third one out just as it was on the imminent verge of
+success.  We gathered together closer than ever, and developed a
+solicitude that was rapt and painful, as Mr. Ballou scratched our last
+hope on his leg.  It lit, burned blue and sickly, and then budded into a
+robust flame.  Shading it with his hands, the old gentleman bent
+gradually down and every heart went with him--everybody, too, for that
+matter--and blood and breath stood still.  The flame touched the sticks
+at last, took gradual hold upon them--hesitated--took a stronger hold
+--hesitated again--held its breath five heart-breaking seconds, then gave a
+sort of human gasp and went out.
+
+Nobody said a word for several minutes.  It was a solemn sort of silence;
+even the wind put on a stealthy, sinister quiet, and made no more noise
+than the falling flakes of snow.  Finally a sad-voiced conversation
+began, and it was soon apparent that in each of our hearts lay the
+conviction that this was our last night with the living.  I had so hoped
+that I was the only one who felt so.  When the others calmly acknowledged
+their conviction, it sounded like the summons itself.  Ollendorff said:
+
+"Brothers, let us die together.  And let us go without one hard feeling
+towards each other.  Let us forget and forgive bygones.  I know that you
+have felt hard towards me for turning over the canoe, and for knowing too
+much and leading you round and round in the snow--but I meant well;
+forgive me.  I acknowledge freely that I have had hard feelings against
+Mr. Ballou for abusing me and calling me a logarythm, which is a thing I
+do not know what, but no doubt a thing considered disgraceful and
+unbecoming in America, and it has scarcely been out of my mind and has
+hurt me a great deal--but let it go; I forgive Mr. Ballou with all my
+heart, and--"
+
+Poor Ollendorff broke down and the tears came.  He was not alone, for I
+was crying too, and so was Mr. Ballou.  Ollendorff got his voice again
+and forgave me for things I had done and said.  Then he got out his
+bottle of whisky and said that whether he lived or died he would never
+touch another drop.  He said he had given up all hope of life, and
+although ill-prepared, was ready to submit humbly to his fate; that he
+wished he could be spared a little longer, not for any selfish reason,
+but to make a thorough reform in his character, and by devoting himself
+to helping the poor, nursing the sick, and pleading with the people to
+guard themselves against the evils of intemperance, make his life a
+beneficent example to the young, and lay it down at last with the
+precious reflection that it had not been lived in vain.  He ended by
+saying that his reform should begin at this moment, even here in the
+presence of death, since no longer time was to be vouchsafed wherein to
+prosecute it to men's help and benefit--and with that he threw away the
+bottle of whisky.
+
+Mr. Ballou made remarks of similar purport, and began the reform he could
+not live to continue, by throwing away the ancient pack of cards that had
+solaced our captivity during the flood and made it bearable.
+
+He said he never gambled, but still was satisfied that the meddling with
+cards in any way was immoral and injurious, and no man could be wholly
+pure and blemishless without eschewing them.  "And therefore," continued
+he, "in doing this act I already feel more in sympathy with that
+spiritual saturnalia necessary to entire and obsolete reform."  These
+rolling syllables touched him as no intelligible eloquence could have
+done, and the old man sobbed with a mournfulness not unmingled with
+satisfaction.
+
+My own remarks were of the same tenor as those of my comrades, and I know
+that the feelings that prompted them were heartfelt and sincere.  We were
+all sincere, and all deeply moved and earnest, for we were in the
+presence of death and without hope.  I threw away my pipe, and in doing
+it felt that at last I was free of a hated vice and one that had ridden
+me like a tyrant all my days.  While I yet talked, the thought of the
+good I might have done in the world and the still greater good I might
+now do, with these new incentives and higher and better aims to guide me
+if I could only be spared a few years longer, overcame me and the tears
+came again.  We put our arms about each other's necks and awaited the
+warning drowsiness that precedes death by freezing.
+
+It came stealing over us presently, and then we bade each other a last
+farewell.  A delicious dreaminess wrought its web about my yielding
+senses, while the snow-flakes wove a winding sheet about my conquered
+body.  Oblivion came.  The battle of life was done.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII.
+
+I do not know how long I was in a state of forgetfulness, but it seemed
+an age.  A vague consciousness grew upon me by degrees, and then came a
+gathering anguish of pain in my limbs and through all my body.  I
+shuddered.  The thought flitted through my brain, "this is death--this is
+the hereafter."
+
+Then came a white upheaval at my side, and a voice said, with bitterness:
+
+"Will some gentleman be so good as to kick me behind?"
+
+It was Ballou--at least it was a towzled snow image in a sitting posture,
+with Ballou's voice.
+
+I rose up, and there in the gray dawn, not fifteen steps from us, were
+the frame buildings of a stage station, and under a shed stood our still
+saddled and bridled horses!
+
+An arched snow-drift broke up, now, and Ollendorff emerged from it, and
+the three of us sat and stared at the houses without speaking a word.
+We really had nothing to say.  We were like the profane man who could not
+"do the subject justice," the whole situation was so painfully ridiculous
+and humiliating that words were tame and we did not know where to
+commence anyhow.
+
+The joy in our hearts at our deliverance was poisoned; well-nigh
+dissipated, indeed.  We presently began to grow pettish by degrees, and
+sullen; and then, angry at each other, angry at ourselves, angry at
+everything in general, we moodily dusted the snow from our clothing and
+in unsociable single file plowed our way to the horses, unsaddled them,
+and sought shelter in the station.
+
+I have scarcely exaggerated a detail of this curious and absurd
+adventure.  It occurred almost exactly as I have stated it.  We actually
+went into camp in a snow-drift in a desert, at midnight in a storm,
+forlorn and hopeless, within fifteen steps of a comfortable inn.
+
+For two hours we sat apart in the station and ruminated in disgust.
+The mystery was gone, now, and it was plain enough why the horses had
+deserted us.  Without a doubt they were under that shed a quarter of a
+minute after they had left us, and they must have overheard and enjoyed
+all our confessions and lamentations.
+
+After breakfast we felt better, and the zest of life soon came back.
+The world looked bright again, and existence was as dear to us as ever.
+Presently an uneasiness came over me--grew upon me--assailed me without
+ceasing.  Alas, my regeneration was not complete--I wanted to smoke!
+I resisted with all my strength, but the flesh was weak.  I wandered away
+alone and wrestled with myself an hour.  I recalled my promises of reform
+and preached to myself persuasively, upbraidingly, exhaustively.  But it
+was all vain, I shortly found myself sneaking among the snow-drifts
+hunting for my pipe.  I discovered it after a considerable search, and
+crept away to hide myself and enjoy it.  I remained behind the barn a
+good while, asking myself how I would feel if my braver, stronger, truer
+comrades should catch me in my degradation.  At last I lit the pipe, and
+no human being can feel meaner and baser than I did then.  I was ashamed
+of being in my own pitiful company.  Still dreading discovery, I felt
+that perhaps the further side of the barn would be somewhat safer, and so
+I turned the corner.  As I turned the one corner, smoking, Ollendorff
+turned the other with his bottle to his lips, and between us sat
+unconscious Ballou deep in a game of "solitaire" with the old greasy
+cards!
+
+Absurdity could go no farther.  We shook hands and agreed to say no more
+about "reform" and "examples to the rising generation."
+
+The station we were at was at the verge of the Twenty-six-Mile Desert.
+If we had approached it half an hour earlier the night before, we must
+have heard men shouting there and firing pistols; for they were expecting
+some sheep drovers and their flocks and knew that they would infallibly
+get lost and wander out of reach of help unless guided by sounds.
+
+While we remained at the station, three of the drovers arrived, nearly
+exhausted with their wanderings, but two others of their party were never
+heard of afterward.
+
+We reached Carson in due time, and took a rest.  This rest, together with
+preparations for the journey to Esmeralda, kept us there a week, and the
+delay gave us the opportunity to be present at the trial of the great
+land-slide case of Hyde vs. Morgan--an episode which is famous in Nevada
+to this day.  After a word or two of necessary explanation, I will set
+down the history of this singular affair just as it transpired.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV.
+
+The mountains are very high and steep about Carson, Eagle and Washoe
+Valleys--very high and very steep, and so when the snow gets to melting
+off fast in the Spring and the warm surface-earth begins to moisten and
+soften, the disastrous land-slides commence.  The reader cannot know what
+a land-slide is, unless he has lived in that country and seen the whole
+side of a mountain taken off some fine morning and deposited down in the
+valley, leaving a vast, treeless, unsightly scar upon the mountain's
+front to keep the circumstance fresh in his memory all the years that he
+may go on living within seventy miles of that place.
+
+General Buncombe was shipped out to Nevada in the invoice of Territorial
+officers, to be United States Attorney.  He considered himself a lawyer
+of parts, and he very much wanted an opportunity to manifest it--partly
+for the pure gratification of it and partly because his salary was
+Territorially meagre (which is a strong expression).  Now the older
+citizens of a new territory look down upon the rest of the world with a
+calm, benevolent compassion, as long as it keeps out of the way--when it
+gets in the way they snub it.  Sometimes this latter takes the shape of a
+practical joke.
+
+One morning Dick Hyde rode furiously up to General Buncombe's door in
+Carson city and rushed into his presence without stopping to tie his
+horse.  He seemed much excited.  He told the General that he wanted him
+to conduct a suit for him and would pay him five hundred dollars if he
+achieved a victory.  And then, with violent gestures and a world of
+profanity, he poured out his grief.  He said it was pretty well known
+that for some years he had been farming (or ranching as the more
+customary term is) in Washoe District, and making a successful thing of
+it, and furthermore it was known that his ranch was situated just in the
+edge of the valley, and that Tom Morgan owned a ranch immediately above
+it on the mountain side.
+
+And now the trouble was, that one of those hated and dreaded land-slides
+had come and slid Morgan's ranch, fences, cabins, cattle, barns and
+everything down on top of his ranch and exactly covered up every single
+vestige of his property, to a depth of about thirty-eight feet.  Morgan
+was in possession and refused to vacate the premises--said he was
+occupying his own cabin and not interfering with anybody else's--and said
+the cabin was standing on the same dirt and same ranch it had always
+stood on, and he would like to see anybody make him vacate.
+
+"And when I reminded him," said Hyde, weeping, "that it was on top of my
+ranch and that he was trespassing, he had the infernal meanness to ask me
+why didn't I stay on my ranch and hold possession when I see him
+a-coming!  Why didn't I stay on it, the blathering lunatic--by George,
+when I heard that racket and looked up that hill it was just like the
+whole world was a-ripping and a-tearing down that mountain side
+--splinters, and cord-wood, thunder and lightning, hail and snow, odds and
+ends of hay stacks, and awful clouds of dust!--trees going end over end
+in the air, rocks as big as a house jumping 'bout a thousand feet high
+and busting into ten million pieces, cattle turned inside out and
+a-coming head on with their tails hanging out between their teeth!--and
+in the midst of all that wrack and destruction sot that cussed Morgan on
+his gate-post, a-wondering why I didn't stay and hold possession!  Laws
+bless me, I just took one glimpse, General, and lit out'n the county in
+three jumps exactly.
+
+"But what grinds me is that that Morgan hangs on there and won't move
+off'n that ranch--says it's his'n and he's going to keep it--likes it
+better'n he did when it was higher up the hill.  Mad!  Well, I've been so
+mad for two days I couldn't find my way to town--been wandering around in
+the brush in a starving condition--got anything here to drink, General?
+But I'm here now, and I'm a-going to law.  You hear me!"
+
+Never in all the world, perhaps, were a man's feelings so outraged as
+were the General's.  He said he had never heard of such high-handed
+conduct in all his life as this Morgan's.  And he said there was no use
+in going to law--Morgan had no shadow of right to remain where he was
+--nobody in the wide world would uphold him in it, and no lawyer would take
+his case and no judge listen to it.  Hyde said that right there was where
+he was mistaken--everybody in town sustained Morgan; Hal Brayton, a very
+smart lawyer, had taken his case; the courts being in vacation, it was to
+be tried before a referee, and ex-Governor Roop had already been
+appointed to that office and would open his court in a large public hall
+near the hotel at two that afternoon.
+
+The General was amazed.  He said he had suspected before that the people
+of that Territory were fools, and now he knew it.  But he said rest easy,
+rest easy and collect the witnesses, for the victory was just as certain
+as if the conflict were already over.  Hyde wiped away his tears and
+left.
+
+At two in the afternoon referee Roop's Court opened and Roop appeared
+throned among his sheriffs, the witnesses, and spectators, and wearing
+upon his face a solemnity so awe-inspiring that some of his
+fellow-conspirators had misgivings that maybe he had not comprehended,
+after all, that this was merely a joke.  An unearthly stillness
+prevailed, for at the slightest noise the judge uttered sternly the
+command:
+
+"Order in the Court!"
+
+And the sheriffs promptly echoed it.  Presently the General elbowed his
+way through the crowd of spectators, with his arms full of law-books, and
+on his ears fell an order from the judge which was the first respectful
+recognition of his high official dignity that had ever saluted them, and
+it trickled pleasantly through his whole system:
+
+"Way for the United States Attorney!"
+
+The witnesses were called--legislators, high government officers,
+ranchmen, miners, Indians, Chinamen, negroes.  Three fourths of them were
+called by the defendant Morgan, but no matter, their testimony invariably
+went in favor of the plaintiff Hyde.  Each new witness only added new
+testimony to the absurdity of a man's claiming to own another man's
+property because his farm had slid down on top of it.  Then the Morgan
+lawyers made their speeches, and seemed to make singularly weak ones
+--they did really nothing to help the Morgan cause.  And now the General,
+with exultation in his face, got up and made an impassioned effort; he
+pounded the table, he banged the law-books, he shouted, and roared, and
+howled, he quoted from everything and everybody, poetry, sarcasm,
+statistics, history, pathos, bathos, blasphemy, and wound up with a grand
+war-whoop for free speech, freedom of the press, free schools, the
+Glorious Bird of America and the principles of eternal justice!
+[Applause.]
+
+When the General sat down, he did it with the conviction that if there
+was anything in good strong testimony, a great speech and believing and
+admiring countenances all around, Mr. Morgan's case was killed.
+Ex-Governor Roop leant his head upon his hand for some minutes, thinking,
+and the still audience waited for his decision.  Then he got up and stood
+erect, with bended head, and thought again.  Then he walked the floor
+with long, deliberate strides, his chin in his hand, and still the
+audience waited.  At last he returned to his throne, seated himself, and
+began impressively:
+
+"Gentlemen, I feel the great responsibility that rests upon me this day.
+This is no ordinary case.  On the contrary it is plain that it is the
+most solemn and awful that ever man was called upon to decide.
+Gentlemen, I have listened attentively to the evidence, and have
+perceived that the weight of it, the overwhelming weight of it, is in
+favor of the plaintiff Hyde.  I have listened also to the remarks of
+counsel, with high interest--and especially will I commend the masterly
+and irrefutable logic of the distinguished gentleman who represents the
+plaintiff.  But gentlemen, let us beware how we allow mere human
+testimony, human ingenuity in argument and human ideas of equity, to
+influence us at a moment so solemn as this.  Gentlemen, it ill becomes
+us, worms as we are, to meddle with the decrees of Heaven.  It is plain
+to me that Heaven, in its inscrutable wisdom, has seen fit to move this
+defendant's ranch for a purpose.  We are but creatures, and we must
+submit.  If Heaven has chosen to favor the defendant Morgan in this
+marked and wonderful manner; and if Heaven, dissatisfied with the
+position of the Morgan ranch upon the mountain side, has chosen to remove
+it to a position more eligible and more advantageous for its owner, it
+ill becomes us, insects as we are, to question the legality of the act or
+inquire into the reasons that prompted it.  No--Heaven created the
+ranches and it is Heaven's prerogative to rearrange them, to experiment
+with them around at its pleasure.  It is for us to submit, without
+repining.
+
+"I warn you that this thing which has happened is a thing with which the
+sacrilegious hands and brains and tongues of men must not meddle.
+Gentlemen, it is the verdict of this court that the plaintiff, Richard
+Hyde, has been deprived of his ranch by the visitation of God!  And from
+this decision there is no appeal."
+
+Buncombe seized his cargo of law-books and plunged out of the court-room
+frantic with indignation.  He pronounced Roop to be a miraculous fool, an
+inspired idiot.  In all good faith he returned at night and remonstrated
+with Roop upon his extravagant decision, and implored him to walk the
+floor and think for half an hour, and see if he could not figure out some
+sort of modification of the verdict.  Roop yielded at last and got up to
+walk.  He walked two hours and a half, and at last his face lit up
+happily and he told Buncombe it had occurred to him that the ranch
+underneath the new Morgan ranch still belonged to Hyde, that his title to
+the ground was just as good as it had ever been, and therefore he was of
+opinion that Hyde had a right to dig it out from under there and--
+
+The General never waited to hear the end of it.  He was always an
+impatient and irascible man, that way.  At the end of two months the fact
+that he had been played upon with a joke had managed to bore itself, like
+another Hoosac Tunnel, through the solid adamant of his understanding.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV.
+
+When we finally left for Esmeralda, horseback, we had an addition to the
+company in the person of Capt. John Nye, the Governor's brother.  He had
+a good memory, and a tongue hung in the middle.  This is a combination
+which gives immortality to conversation.  Capt. John never suffered the
+talk to flag or falter once during the hundred and twenty miles of the
+journey.  In addition to his conversational powers, he had one or two
+other endowments of a marked character.  One was a singular "handiness"
+about doing anything and everything, from laying out a railroad or
+organizing a political party, down to sewing on buttons, shoeing a horse,
+or setting a broken leg, or a hen.  Another was a spirit of accommodation
+that prompted him to take the needs, difficulties and perplexities of
+anybody and everybody upon his own shoulders at any and all times, and
+dispose of them with admirable facility and alacrity--hence he always
+managed to find vacant beds in crowded inns, and plenty to eat in the
+emptiest larders.  And finally, wherever he met a man, woman or child, in
+camp, inn or desert, he either knew such parties personally or had been
+acquainted with a relative of the same.  Such another traveling comrade
+was never seen before.  I cannot forbear giving a specimen of the way in
+which he overcame difficulties.  On the second day out, we arrived, very
+tired and hungry, at a poor little inn in the desert, and were told that
+the house was full, no provisions on hand, and neither hay nor barley to
+spare for the horses--must move on.  The rest of us wanted to hurry on
+while it was yet light, but Capt. John insisted on stopping awhile.
+We dismounted and entered.  There was no welcome for us on any face.
+Capt. John began his blandishments, and within twenty minutes he had
+accomplished the following things, viz.: found old acquaintances in three
+teamsters; discovered that he used to go to school with the landlord's
+mother; recognized his wife as a lady whose life he had saved once in
+California, by stopping her runaway horse; mended a child's broken toy
+and won the favor of its mother, a guest of the inn; helped the hostler
+bleed a horse, and prescribed for another horse that had the "heaves";
+treated the entire party three times at the landlord's bar; produced a
+later paper than anybody had seen for a week and sat himself down to read
+the news to a deeply interested audience.  The result, summed up, was as
+follows: The hostler found plenty of feed for our horses; we had a trout
+supper, an exceedingly sociable time after it, good beds to sleep in, and
+a surprising breakfast in the morning--and when we left, we left lamented
+by all!  Capt. John had some bad traits, but he had some uncommonly
+valuable ones to offset them with.
+
+Esmeralda was in many respects another Humboldt, but in a little more
+forward state.  The claims we had been paying assessments on were
+entirely worthless, and we threw them away.  The principal one cropped
+out of the top of a knoll that was fourteen feet high, and the inspired
+Board of Directors were running a tunnel under that knoll to strike the
+ledge.  The tunnel would have to be seventy feet long, and would then
+strike the ledge at the same dept that a shaft twelve feet deep would
+have reached!  The Board were living on the "assessments."  [N.B.--This
+hint comes too late for the enlightenment of New York silver miners; they
+have already learned all about this neat trick by experience.]  The Board
+had no desire to strike the ledge, knowing that it was as barren of
+silver as a curbstone.  This reminiscence calls to mind Jim Townsend's
+tunnel.  He had paid assessments on a mine called the "Daley" till he was
+well-nigh penniless.  Finally an assessment was levied to run a tunnel
+two hundred and fifty feet on the Daley, and Townsend went up on the hill
+to look into matters.
+
+He found the Daley cropping out of the apex of an exceedingly
+sharp-pointed peak, and a couple of men up there "facing" the proposed
+tunnel. Townsend made a calculation.  Then he said to the men:
+
+"So you have taken a contract to run a tunnel into this hill two hundred
+and fifty feet to strike this ledge?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Well, do you know that you have got one of the most expensive and
+arduous undertakings before you that was ever conceived by man?"
+
+"Why no--how is that?"
+
+"Because this hill is only twenty-five feet through from side to side;
+and so you have got to build two hundred and twenty-five feet of your
+tunnel on trestle-work!"
+
+The ways of silver mining Boards are exceedingly dark and sinuous.
+
+We took up various claims, and commenced shafts and tunnels on them, but
+never finished any of them.  We had to do a certain amount of work on
+each to "hold" it, else other parties could seize our property after the
+expiration of ten days.  We were always hunting up new claims and doing a
+little work on them and then waiting for a buyer--who never came.  We
+never found any ore that would yield more than fifty dollars a ton; and
+as the mills charged fifty dollars a ton for working ore and extracting
+the silver, our pocket-money melted steadily away and none returned to
+take its place.  We lived in a little cabin and cooked for ourselves; and
+altogether it was a hard life, though a hopeful one--for we never ceased
+to expect fortune and a customer to burst upon us some day.
+
+At last, when flour reached a dollar a pound, and money could not be
+borrowed on the best security at less than eight per cent a month (I
+being without the security, too), I abandoned mining and went to milling.
+That is to say, I went to work as a common laborer in a quartz mill, at
+ten dollars a week and board.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI.
+
+I had already learned how hard and long and dismal a task it is to burrow
+down into the bowels of the earth and get out the coveted ore; and now I
+learned that the burrowing was only half the work; and that to get the
+silver out of the ore was the dreary and laborious other half of it.
+We had to turn out at six in the morning and keep at it till dark.
+This mill was a six-stamp affair, driven by steam.  Six tall, upright
+rods of iron, as large as a man's ankle, and heavily shod with a mass of
+iron and steel at their lower ends, were framed together like a gate, and
+these rose and fell, one after the other, in a ponderous dance, in an
+iron box called a "battery."  Each of these rods or stamps weighed six
+hundred pounds.  One of us stood by the battery all day long, breaking up
+masses of silver-bearing rock with a sledge and shoveling it into the
+battery.  The ceaseless dance of the stamps pulverized the rock to
+powder, and a stream of water that trickled into the battery turned it to
+a creamy paste.  The minutest particles were driven through a fine wire
+screen which fitted close around the battery, and were washed into great
+tubs warmed by super-heated steam--amalgamating pans, they are called.
+The mass of pulp in the pans was kept constantly stirred up by revolving
+"mullers."  A quantity of quicksilver was kept always in the battery, and
+this seized some of the liberated gold and silver particles and held on
+to them; quicksilver was shaken in a fine shower into the pans, also,
+about every half hour, through a buckskin sack.  Quantities of coarse
+salt and sulphate of copper were added, from time to time to assist the
+amalgamation by destroying base metals which coated the gold and silver
+and would not let it unite with the quicksilver.
+
+All these tiresome things we had to attend to constantly.  Streams of
+dirty water flowed always from the pans and were carried off in broad
+wooden troughs to the ravine.  One would not suppose that atoms of gold
+and silver would float on top of six inches of water, but they did; and
+in order to catch them, coarse blankets were laid in the troughs, and
+little obstructing "riffles" charged with quicksilver were placed here
+and there across the troughs also.  These riffles had to be cleaned and
+the blankets washed out every evening, to get their precious
+accumulations--and after all this eternity of trouble one third of the
+silver and gold in a ton of rock would find its way to the end of the
+troughs in the ravine at last and have to be worked over again some day.
+There is nothing so aggravating as silver milling.  There never was any
+idle time in that mill.  There was always something to do.  It is a pity
+that Adam could not have gone straight out of Eden into a quartz mill, in
+order to understand the full force of his doom to "earn his bread by the
+sweat of his brow."  Every now and then, during the day, we had to scoop
+some pulp out of the pans, and tediously "wash" it in a horn spoon--wash
+it little by little over the edge till at last nothing was left but some
+little dull globules of quicksilver in the bottom.  If they were soft and
+yielding, the pan needed some salt or some sulphate of copper or some
+other chemical rubbish to assist digestion; if they were crisp to the
+touch and would retain a dint, they were freighted with all the silver
+and gold they could seize and hold, and consequently the pan needed a
+fresh charge of quicksilver.  When there was nothing else to do, one
+could always "screen tailings."  That is to say, he could shovel up the
+dried sand that had washed down to the ravine through the troughs and
+dash it against an upright wire screen to free it from pebbles and
+prepare it for working over.
+
+The process of amalgamation differed in the various mills, and this
+included changes in style of pans and other machinery, and a great
+diversity of opinion existed as to the best in use, but none of the
+methods employed, involved the principle of milling ore without
+"screening the tailings."  Of all recreations in the world, screening
+tailings on a hot day, with a long-handled shovel, is the most
+undesirable.
+
+At the end of the week the machinery was stopped and we "cleaned up."
+That is to say, we got the pulp out of the pans and batteries, and washed
+the mud patiently away till nothing was left but the long accumulating
+mass of quicksilver, with its imprisoned treasures.  This we made into
+heavy, compact snow-balls, and piled them up in a bright, luxurious heap
+for inspection.  Making these snow-balls cost me a fine gold ring--that
+and ignorance together; for the quicksilver invaded the ring with the
+same facility with which water saturates a sponge--separated its
+particles and the ring crumbled to pieces.
+
+We put our pile of quicksilver balls into an iron retort that had a pipe
+leading from it to a pail of water, and then applied a roasting heat.
+The quicksilver turned to vapor, escaped through the pipe into the pail,
+and the water turned it into good wholesome quicksilver again.
+Quicksilver is very costly, and they never waste it.  On opening the
+retort, there was our week's work--a lump of pure white, frosty looking
+silver, twice as large as a man's head.  Perhaps a fifth of the mass was
+gold, but the color of it did not show--would not have shown if two
+thirds of it had been gold.  We melted it up and made a solid brick of it
+by pouring it into an iron brick-mould.
+
+By such a tedious and laborious process were silver bricks obtained.
+This mill was but one of many others in operation at the time.  The first
+one in Nevada was built at Egan Canyon and was a small insignificant
+affair and compared most unfavorably with some of the immense
+establishments afterwards located at Virginia City and elsewhere.
+
+From our bricks a little corner was chipped off for the "fire-assay"--a
+method used to determine the proportions of gold, silver and base metals
+in the mass.  This is an interesting process.  The chip is hammered out
+as thin as paper and weighed on scales so fine and sensitive that if you
+weigh a two-inch scrap of paper on them and then write your name on the
+paper with a course, soft pencil and weigh it again, the scales will take
+marked notice of the addition.
+
+Then a little lead (also weighed) is rolled up with the flake of silver
+and the two are melted at a great heat in a small vessel called a cupel,
+made by compressing bone ashes into a cup-shape in a steel mold.  The
+base metals oxydize and are absorbed with the lead into the pores of the
+cupel.  A button or globule of perfectly pure gold and silver is left
+behind, and by weighing it and noting the loss, the assayer knows the
+proportion of base metal the brick contains.  He has to separate the gold
+from the silver now.  The button is hammered out flat and thin, put in
+the furnace and kept some time at a red heat; after cooling it off it is
+rolled up like a quill and heated in a glass vessel containing nitric
+acid; the acid dissolves the silver and leaves the gold pure and ready to
+be weighed on its own merits.  Then salt water is poured into the vessel
+containing the dissolved silver and the silver returns to palpable form
+again and sinks to the bottom.  Nothing now remains but to weigh it; then
+the proportions of the several metals contained in the brick are known,
+and the assayer stamps the value of the brick upon its surface.
+
+The sagacious reader will know now, without being told, that the
+speculative miner, in getting a "fire-assay" made of a piece of rock from
+his mine (to help him sell the same), was not in the habit of picking out
+the least valuable fragment of rock on his dump-pile, but quite the
+contrary.  I have seen men hunt over a pile of nearly worthless quartz
+for an hour, and at last find a little piece as large as a filbert, which
+was rich in gold and silver--and this was reserved for a fire-assay!  Of
+course the fire-assay would demonstrate that a ton of such rock would
+yield hundreds of dollars--and on such assays many an utterly worthless
+mine was sold.
+
+Assaying was a good business, and so some men engaged in it,
+occasionally, who were not strictly scientific and capable.  One assayer
+got such rich results out of all specimens brought to him that in time he
+acquired almost a monopoly of the business.  But like all men who achieve
+success, he became an object of envy and suspicion.  The other assayers
+entered into a conspiracy against him, and let some prominent citizens
+into the secret in order to show that they meant fairly.  Then they broke
+a little fragment off a carpenter's grindstone and got a stranger to take
+it to the popular scientist and get it assayed.  In the course of an hour
+the result came--whereby it appeared that a ton of that rock would yield
+$1,184.40 in silver and $366.36 in gold!
+
+Due publication of the whole matter was made in the paper, and the
+popular assayer left town "between two days."
+
+I will remark, in passing, that I only remained in the milling business
+one week.  I told my employer I could not stay longer without an advance
+in my wages; that I liked quartz milling, indeed was infatuated with it;
+that I had never before grown so tenderly attached to an occupation in so
+short a time; that nothing, it seemed to me, gave such scope to
+intellectual activity as feeding a battery and screening tailings, and
+nothing so stimulated the moral attributes as retorting bullion and
+washing blankets--still, I felt constrained to ask an increase of salary.
+He said he was paying me ten dollars a week, and thought it a good round
+sum.  How much did I want?
+
+I said about four hundred thousand dollars a month, and board, was about
+all I could reasonably ask, considering the hard times.
+
+I was ordered off the premises!  And yet, when I look back to those days
+and call to mind the exceeding hardness of the labor I performed in that
+mill, I only regret that I did not ask him seven hundred thousand.
+
+Shortly after this I began to grow crazy, along with the rest of the
+population, about the mysterious and wonderful "cement mine," and to make
+preparations to take advantage of any opportunity that might offer to go
+and help hunt for it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII.
+
+It was somewhere in the neighborhood of Mono Lake that the marvellous
+Whiteman cement mine was supposed to lie.  Every now and then it would be
+reported that Mr. W. had passed stealthily through Esmeralda at dead of
+night, in disguise, and then we would have a wild excitement--because he
+must be steering for his secret mine, and now was the time to follow him.
+In less than three hours after daylight all the horses and mules and
+donkeys in the vicinity would be bought, hired or stolen, and half the
+community would be off for the mountains, following in the wake of
+Whiteman.  But W. would drift about through the mountain gorges for days
+together, in a purposeless sort of way, until the provisions of the
+miners ran out, and they would have to go back home.  I have known it
+reported at eleven at night, in a large mining camp, that Whiteman had
+just passed through, and in two hours the streets, so quiet before, would
+be swarming with men and animals.  Every individual would be trying to be
+very secret, but yet venturing to whisper to just one neighbor that W.
+had passed through.  And long before daylight--this in the dead of
+Winter--the stampede would be complete, the camp deserted, and the whole
+population gone chasing after W.
+
+The tradition was that in the early immigration, more than twenty years
+ago, three young Germans, brothers, who had survived an Indian massacre
+on the Plains, wandered on foot through the deserts, avoiding all trails
+and roads, and simply holding a westerly direction and hoping to find
+California before they starved, or died of fatigue.  And in a gorge in
+the mountains they sat down to rest one day, when one of them noticed a
+curious vein of cement running along the ground, shot full of lumps of
+dull yellow metal.  They saw that it was gold, and that here was a
+fortune to be acquired in a single day.  The vein was about as wide as a
+curbstone, and fully two thirds of it was pure gold.  Every pound of the
+wonderful cement was worth well-nigh $200.
+
+Each of the brothers loaded himself with about twenty-five pounds of it,
+and then they covered up all traces of the vein, made a rude drawing of
+the locality and the principal landmarks in the vicinity, and started
+westward again.  But troubles thickened about them.  In their wanderings
+one brother fell and broke his leg, and the others were obliged to go on
+and leave him to die in the wilderness.  Another, worn out and starving,
+gave up by and by, and laid down to die, but after two or three weeks of
+incredible hardships, the third reached the settlements of California
+exhausted, sick, and his mind deranged by his sufferings.  He had thrown
+away all his cement but a few fragments, but these were sufficient to set
+everybody wild with excitement.  However, he had had enough of the cement
+country, and nothing could induce him to lead a party thither.  He was
+entirely content to work on a farm for wages.  But he gave Whiteman his
+map, and described the cement region as well as he could and thus
+transferred the curse to that gentleman--for when I had my one accidental
+glimpse of Mr. W. in Esmeralda he had been hunting for the lost mine, in
+hunger and thirst, poverty and sickness, for twelve or thirteen years.
+Some people believed he had found it, but most people believed he had
+not.  I saw a piece of cement as large as my fist which was said to have
+been given to Whiteman by the young German, and it was of a seductive
+nature.  Lumps of virgin gold were as thick in it as raisins in a slice
+of fruit cake.  The privilege of working such a mine one week would be
+sufficient for a man of reasonable desires.
+
+A new partner of ours, a Mr. Higbie, knew Whiteman well by sight, and a
+friend of ours, a Mr. Van Dorn, was well acquainted with him, and not
+only that, but had Whiteman's promise that he should have a private hint
+in time to enable him to join the next cement expedition.  Van Dorn had
+promised to extend the hint to us.  One evening Higbie came in greatly
+excited, and said he felt certain he had recognized Whiteman, up town,
+disguised and in a pretended state of intoxication.  In a little while
+Van Dorn arrived and confirmed the news; and so we gathered in our cabin
+and with heads close together arranged our plans in impressive whispers.
+
+We were to leave town quietly, after midnight, in two or three small
+parties, so as not to attract attention, and meet at dawn on the "divide"
+overlooking Mono Lake, eight or nine miles distant.  We were to make no
+noise after starting, and not speak above a whisper under any
+circumstances.  It was believed that for once Whiteman's presence was
+unknown in the town and his expedition unsuspected.  Our conclave broke
+up at nine o'clock, and we set about our preparation diligently and with
+profound secrecy.  At eleven o'clock we saddled our horses, hitched them
+with their long riatas (or lassos), and then brought out a side of bacon,
+a sack of beans, a small sack of coffee, some sugar, a hundred pounds of
+flour in sacks, some tin cups and a coffee pot, frying pan and some few
+other necessary articles.  All these things were "packed" on the back of
+a led horse--and whoever has not been taught, by a Spanish adept, to pack
+an animal, let him never hope to do the thing by natural smartness.  That
+is impossible.  Higbie had had some experience, but was not perfect.  He
+put on the pack saddle (a thing like a saw-buck), piled the property on
+it and then wound a rope all over and about it and under it, "every which
+way," taking a hitch in it every now and then, and occasionally surging
+back on it till the horse's sides sunk in and he gasped for breath--but
+every time the lashings grew tight in one place they loosened in another.
+We never did get the load tight all over, but we got it so that it would
+do, after a fashion, and then we started, in single file, close order,
+and without a word.  It was a dark night.  We kept the middle of the
+road, and proceeded in a slow walk past the rows of cabins, and whenever
+a miner came to his door I trembled for fear the light would shine on us
+an excite curiosity.  But nothing happened.  We began the long winding
+ascent of the canyon, toward the "divide," and presently the cabins began
+to grow infrequent, and the intervals between them wider and wider, and
+then I began to breathe tolerably freely and feel less like a thief and a
+murderer.  I was in the rear, leading the pack horse.  As the ascent grew
+steeper he grew proportionately less satisfied with his cargo, and began
+to pull back on his riata occasionally and delay progress.  My comrades
+were passing out of sight in the gloom.  I was getting anxious.  I coaxed
+and bullied the pack horse till I presently got him into a trot, and then
+the tin cups and pans strung about his person frightened him and he ran.
+His riata was wound around the pummel of my saddle, and so, as he went by
+he dragged me from my horse and the two animals traveled briskly on
+without me.  But I was not alone--the loosened cargo tumbled overboard
+from the pack horse and fell close to me.  It was abreast of almost the
+last cabin.
+
+A miner came out and said:
+
+"Hello!"
+
+I was thirty steps from him, and knew he could not see me, it was so very
+dark in the shadow of the mountain.  So I lay still.  Another head
+appeared in the light of the cabin door, and presently the two men walked
+toward me.  They stopped within ten steps of me, and one said:
+
+"Sh!  Listen."
+
+I could not have been in a more distressed state if I had been escaping
+justice with a price on my head.  Then the miners appeared to sit down on
+a boulder, though I could not see them distinctly enough to be very sure
+what they did.  One said:
+
+"I heard a noise, as plain as I ever heard anything.  It seemed to be
+about there--"
+
+A stone whizzed by my head.  I flattened myself out in the dust like a
+postage stamp, and thought to myself if he mended his aim ever so little
+he would probably hear another noise.  In my heart, now, I execrated
+secret expeditions.  I promised myself that this should be my last,
+though the Sierras were ribbed with cement veins.  Then one of the men
+said:
+
+"I'll tell you what!  Welch knew what he was talking about when he said
+he saw Whiteman to-day.  I heard horses--that was the noise.  I am going
+down to Welch's, right away."
+
+They left and I was glad.  I did not care whither they went, so they
+went.  I was willing they should visit Welch, and the sooner the better.
+
+As soon as they closed their cabin door my comrades emerged from the
+gloom; they had caught the horses and were waiting for a clear coast
+again.  We remounted the cargo on the pack horse and got under way, and
+as day broke we reached the "divide" and joined Van Dorn.  Then we
+journeyed down into the valley of the Lake, and feeling secure, we halted
+to cook breakfast, for we were tired and sleepy and hungry.  Three hours
+later the rest of the population filed over the "divide" in a long
+procession, and drifted off out of sight around the borders of the Lake!
+
+Whether or not my accident had produced this result we never knew, but at
+least one thing was certain--the secret was out and Whiteman would not
+enter upon a search for the cement mine this time.  We were filled with
+chagrin.
+
+We held a council and decided to make the best of our misfortune and
+enjoy a week's holiday on the borders of the curious Lake.  Mono, it is
+sometimes called, and sometimes the "Dead Sea of California."  It is one
+of the strangest freaks of Nature to be found in any land, but it is
+hardly ever mentioned in print and very seldom visited, because it lies
+away off the usual routes of travel and besides is so difficult to get at
+that only men content to endure the roughest life will consent to take
+upon themselves the discomforts of such a trip.  On the morning of our
+second day, we traveled around to a remote and particularly wild spot on
+the borders of the Lake, where a stream of fresh, ice-cold water entered
+it from the mountain side, and then we went regularly into camp.  We
+hired a large boat and two shot-guns from a lonely ranchman who lived
+some ten miles further on, and made ready for comfort and recreation.
+We soon got thoroughly acquainted with the Lake and all its
+peculiarities.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII.
+
+Mono Lake lies in a lifeless, treeless, hideous desert, eight thousand
+feet above the level of the sea, and is guarded by mountains two thousand
+feet higher, whose summits are always clothed in clouds.  This solemn,
+silent, sail-less sea--this lonely tenant of the loneliest spot on earth
+--is little graced with the picturesque.  It is an unpretending expanse
+of grayish water, about a hundred miles in circumference, with two
+islands in its centre, mere upheavals of rent and scorched and blistered
+lava, snowed over with gray banks and drifts of pumice-stone and ashes,
+the winding sheet of the dead volcano, whose vast crater the lake has
+seized upon and occupied.
+
+The lake is two hundred feet deep, and its sluggish waters are so strong
+with alkali that if you only dip the most hopelessly soiled garment into
+them once or twice, and wring it out, it will be found as clean as if it
+had been through the ablest of washerwomen's hands.  While we camped
+there our laundry work was easy.  We tied the week's washing astern of
+our boat, and sailed a quarter of a mile, and the job was complete, all
+to the wringing out.  If we threw the water on our heads and gave them a
+rub or so, the white lather would pile up three inches high.  This water
+is not good for bruised places and abrasions of the skin.  We had a
+valuable dog.  He had raw places on him.  He had more raw places on him
+than sound ones.  He was the rawest dog I almost ever saw.  He jumped
+overboard one day to get away from the flies.  But it was bad judgment.
+In his condition, it would have been just as comfortable to jump into the
+fire.
+
+The alkali water nipped him in all the raw places simultaneously, and he
+struck out for the shore with considerable interest.  He yelped and
+barked and howled as he went--and by the time he got to the shore there
+was no bark to him--for he had barked the bark all out of his inside, and
+the alkali water had cleaned the bark all off his outside, and he
+probably wished he had never embarked in any such enterprise.  He ran
+round and round in a circle, and pawed  the earth and clawed the air, and
+threw double somersaults, sometimes backward and sometimes forward, in
+the most extraordinary manner.  He was not a demonstrative dog, as a
+general thing, but rather of a grave and serious turn of mind, and I
+never saw him take so much interest in anything before.  He finally
+struck out over the mountains, at a gait which we estimated at about two
+hundred and fifty miles an hour, and he is going yet.  This was about
+nine years ago.  We look for what is left of him along here every day.
+
+A white man cannot drink the water of Mono Lake, for it is nearly pure
+lye.  It is said that the Indians in the vicinity drink it sometimes,
+though.  It is not improbable, for they are among the purest liars I ever
+saw.  [There will be no additional charge for this joke, except to
+parties requiring an explanation of it.  This joke has received high
+commendation from some of the ablest minds of the age.]
+
+There are no fish in Mono Lake--no frogs, no snakes, no polliwigs
+--nothing, in fact, that goes to make life desirable.  Millions of wild
+ducks and sea-gulls swim about the surface, but no living thing exists
+under the surface, except a white feathery sort of worm, one half an inch
+long, which looks like a bit of white thread frayed out at the sides.  If
+you dip up a gallon of water, you will get about fifteen thousand of
+these.  They give to the water a sort of grayish-white appearance.  Then
+there is a fly, which looks something like our house fly.  These settle
+on the beach to eat the worms that wash ashore--and any time, you can see
+there a belt of flies an inch deep and six feet wide, and this belt
+extends clear around the lake--a belt of flies one hundred miles long.
+If you throw a stone among them, they swarm up so thick that they look
+dense, like a cloud.  You can hold them under water as long as you
+please--they do not mind it--they are only proud of it.  When you let
+them go, they pop up to the surface as dry as a patent office report, and
+walk off as unconcernedly as if they had been educated especially with a
+view to affording instructive entertainment to man in that particular
+way.  Providence leaves nothing to go by chance.  All things have their
+uses and their part and proper place in Nature's economy: the ducks eat
+the flies--the flies eat the worms--the Indians eat all three--the wild
+cats eat the Indians--the white folks eat the wild cats--and thus all
+things are lovely.
+
+Mono Lake is a hundred miles in a straight line from the ocean--and
+between it and the ocean are one or two ranges of mountains--yet
+thousands of sea-gulls go there every season to lay their eggs and rear
+their young.  One would as soon expect to find sea-gulls in Kansas.
+And in this connection let us observe another instance of Nature's
+wisdom.  The islands in the lake being merely huge masses of lava, coated
+over with ashes and pumice-stone, and utterly innocent of vegetation or
+anything that would burn; and sea-gull's eggs being entirely useless to
+anybody unless they be cooked, Nature has provided an unfailing spring of
+boiling water on the largest island, and you can put your eggs in there,
+and in four minutes you can boil them as hard as any statement I have
+made during the past fifteen years.  Within ten feet of the boiling
+spring is a spring of pure cold water, sweet and wholesome.
+
+So, in that island you get your board and washing free of charge--and if
+nature had gone further and furnished a nice American hotel clerk who was
+crusty and disobliging, and didn't know anything about the time tables,
+or the railroad routes--or--anything--and was proud of it--I would not
+wish for a more desirable boarding-house.
+
+Half a dozen little mountain brooks flow into Mono Lake, but not a stream
+of any kind flows out of it.  It neither rises nor falls, apparently, and
+what it does with its surplus water is a dark and bloody mystery.
+
+There are only two seasons in the region round about Mono Lake--and these
+are, the breaking up of one Winter and the beginning of the next.  More
+than once (in Esmeralda) I have seen a perfectly blistering morning open
+up with the thermometer at ninety degrees at eight o'clock, and seen the
+snow fall fourteen inches deep and that same identical thermometer go
+down to forty-four degrees under shelter, before nine o'clock at night.
+Under favorable circumstances it snows at least once in every single
+month in the year, in the little town of Mono.  So uncertain is the
+climate in Summer that a lady who goes out visiting cannot hope to be
+prepared for all emergencies unless she takes her fan under one arm and
+her snow shoes under the other.  When they have a Fourth of July
+procession it generally snows on them, and they do say that as a general
+thing when a man calls for a brandy toddy there, the bar keeper chops it
+off with a hatchet and wraps it up in a paper, like maple sugar.  And it
+is further reported that the old soakers haven't any teeth--wore them out
+eating gin cocktails and brandy punches.  I do not endorse that
+statement--I simply give it for what it is worth--and it is worth--well,
+I should say, millions, to any man who can believe it without straining
+himself.  But I do endorse the snow on the Fourth of July--because I know
+that to be true.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX.
+
+About seven o'clock one blistering hot morning--for it was now dead
+summer time--Higbie and I took the boat and started on a voyage of
+discovery to the two islands.  We had often longed to do this, but had
+been deterred by the fear of storms; for they were frequent, and severe
+enough to capsize an ordinary row-boat like ours without great
+difficulty--and once capsized, death would ensue in spite of the bravest
+swimming, for that venomous water would eat a man's eyes out like fire,
+and burn him out inside, too, if he shipped a sea.  It was called twelve
+miles, straight out to the islands--a long pull and a warm one--but the
+morning was so quiet and sunny, and the lake so smooth and glassy and
+dead, that we could not resist the temptation.  So we filled two large
+tin canteens with water (since we were not acquainted with the locality
+of the spring said to exist on the large island), and started.  Higbie's
+brawny muscles gave the boat good speed, but by the time we reached our
+destination we judged that we had pulled nearer fifteen miles than
+twelve.
+
+We landed on the big island and went ashore.  We tried the water in the
+canteens, now, and found that the sun had spoiled it; it was so brackish
+that we could not drink it; so we poured it out and began a search for
+the spring--for thirst augments fast as soon as it is apparent that one
+has no means at hand of quenching it.  The island was a long, moderately
+high hill of ashes--nothing but gray ashes and pumice-stone, in which we
+sunk to our knees at every step--and all around the top was a forbidding
+wall of scorched and blasted rocks.  When we reached the top and got
+within the wall, we found simply a shallow, far-reaching basin, carpeted
+with ashes, and here and there a patch of fine sand.  In places,
+picturesque jets of steam shot up out of crevices, giving evidence that
+although this ancient crater had gone out of active business, there was
+still some fire left in its furnaces.  Close to one of these jets of
+steam stood the only tree on the island--a small pine of most graceful
+shape and most faultless symmetry; its color was a brilliant green, for
+the steam drifted unceasingly through its branches and kept them always
+moist.  It contrasted strangely enough, did this vigorous and beautiful
+outcast, with its dead and dismal surroundings.  It was like a cheerful
+spirit in a mourning household.
+
+We hunted for the spring everywhere, traversing the full length of the
+island (two or three miles), and crossing it twice--climbing ash-hills
+patiently, and then sliding down the other side in a sitting posture,
+plowing up smothering volumes of gray dust.  But we found nothing but
+solitude, ashes and a heart-breaking silence.  Finally we noticed that
+the wind had risen, and we forgot our thirst in a solicitude of greater
+importance; for, the lake being quiet, we had not taken pains about
+securing the boat.  We hurried back to a point overlooking our landing
+place, and then--but mere words cannot describe our dismay--the boat was
+gone!  The chances were that there was not another boat on the entire
+lake.  The situation was not comfortable--in truth, to speak plainly, it
+was frightful.  We were prisoners on a desolate island, in aggravating
+proximity to friends who were for the present helpless to aid us; and
+what was still more uncomfortable was the reflection that we had neither
+food nor water.  But presently we sighted the boat.  It was drifting
+along, leisurely, about fifty yards from shore, tossing in a foamy sea.
+It drifted, and continued to drift, but at the same safe distance from
+land, and we walked along abreast it and waited for fortune to favor us.
+At the end of an hour it approached a jutting cape, and Higbie ran ahead
+and posted himself on the utmost verge and prepared for the assault.  If
+we failed there, there was no hope for us.  It was driving gradually
+shoreward all the time, now; but whether it was driving fast enough to
+make the connection or not was the momentous question.  When it got
+within thirty steps of Higbie I was so excited that I fancied I could
+hear my own heart beat.  When, a little later, it dragged slowly along
+and seemed about to go by, only one little yard out of reach, it seemed
+as if my heart stood still; and when it was exactly abreast him and began
+to widen away, and he still standing like a watching statue, I knew my
+heart did stop.  But when he gave a great spring, the next instant, and
+lit fairly in the stern, I discharged a war-whoop that woke the
+solitudes!
+
+But it dulled my enthusiasm, presently, when he told me he had not been
+caring whether the boat came within jumping distance or not, so that it
+passed within eight or ten yards of him, for he had made up his mind to
+shut his eyes and mouth and swim that trifling distance.  Imbecile that I
+was, I had not thought of that.  It was only a long swim that could be
+fatal.
+
+The sea was running high and the storm increasing.  It was growing late,
+too--three or four in the afternoon.  Whether to venture toward the
+mainland or not, was a question of some moment.  But we were so
+distressed by thirst that we decide to try it, and so Higbie fell to work
+and I took the steering-oar.  When we had pulled a mile, laboriously,
+we were evidently in serious peril, for the storm had greatly augmented;
+the billows ran very high and were capped with foaming crests,
+the heavens were hung with black, and the wind blew with great fury.
+We would have gone back, now, but we did not dare to turn the boat
+around, because as soon as she got in the trough of the sea she would
+upset, of course.  Our only hope lay in keeping her head-on to the seas.
+It was hard work to do this, she plunged so, and so beat and belabored
+the billows with her rising and falling bows.  Now and then one of
+Higbie's oars would trip on the top of a wave, and the other one would
+snatch the boat half around in spite of my cumbersome steering apparatus.
+We were drenched by the sprays constantly, and the boat occasionally
+shipped water.  By and by, powerful as my comrade was, his great
+exertions began to tell on him, and he was anxious that I should change
+places with him till he could rest a little.  But I told him this was
+impossible; for if the steering oar were dropped a moment while we
+changed, the boat would slue around into the trough of the sea, capsize,
+and in less than five minutes we would have a hundred gallons of
+soap-suds in us and be eaten up so quickly that we could not even be
+present at our own inquest.
+
+But things cannot last always.  Just as the darkness shut down we came
+booming into port, head on.  Higbie dropped his oars to hurrah--I dropped
+mine to help--the sea gave the boat a twist, and over she went!
+
+The agony that alkali water inflicts on bruises, chafes and blistered
+hands, is unspeakable, and nothing but greasing all over will modify it
+--but we ate, drank and slept well, that night, notwithstanding.
+
+In speaking of the peculiarities of Mono Lake, I ought to have mentioned
+that at intervals all around its shores stand picturesque turret-looking
+masses and clusters of a whitish, coarse-grained rock that resembles
+inferior mortar dried hard; and if one breaks off fragments of this rock
+he will find perfectly shaped and thoroughly petrified gulls' eggs deeply
+imbedded in the mass.  How did they get there?  I simply state the fact
+--for it is a fact--and leave the geological reader to crack the nut at his
+leisure and solve the problem after his own fashion.
+
+At the end of a week we adjourned to the Sierras on a fishing excursion,
+and spent several days in camp under snowy Castle Peak, and fished
+successfully for trout in a bright, miniature lake whose surface was
+between ten and eleven thousand feet above the level of the sea; cooling
+ourselves during the hot August noons by sitting on snow banks ten feet
+deep, under whose sheltering edges fine grass and dainty flowers
+flourished luxuriously; and at night entertaining ourselves by almost
+freezing to death.  Then we returned to Mono Lake, and finding that the
+cement excitement was over for the present, packed up and went back to
+Esmeralda.  Mr. Ballou reconnoitred awhile, and not liking the prospect,
+set out alone for Humboldt.
+
+About this time occurred a little incident which has always had a sort of
+interest to me, from the fact that it came so near "instigating" my
+funeral.  At a time when an Indian attack had been expected, the citizens
+hid their gunpowder where it would be safe and yet convenient to hand
+when wanted.  A neighbor of ours hid six cans of rifle powder in the
+bake-oven of an old discarded cooking stove which stood on the open
+ground near a frame out-house or shed, and from and after that day never
+thought of it again.  We hired a half-tamed Indian to do some washing for
+us, and he took up quarters under the shed with his tub.  The ancient
+stove reposed within six feet of him, and before his face.  Finally it
+occurred to him that hot water would be better than cold, and he went out
+and fired up under that forgotten powder magazine and set on a kettle of
+water.  Then he returned to his tub.
+
+I entered the shed presently and threw down some more clothes, and was
+about to speak to him when the stove blew up with a prodigious crash, and
+disappeared, leaving not a splinter behind.  Fragments of it fell in the
+streets full two hundred yards away.  Nearly a third of the shed roof
+over our heads was destroyed, and one of the stove lids, after cutting a
+small stanchion half in two in front of the Indian, whizzed between us
+and drove partly through the weather-boarding beyond.  I was as white as
+a sheet and as weak as a kitten and speechless.  But the Indian betrayed
+no trepidation, no distress, not even discomfort.  He simply stopped
+washing, leaned forward and surveyed the clean, blank ground a moment,
+and then remarked:
+
+"Mph!  Dam stove heap gone!"--and resumed his scrubbing as placidly as if
+it were an entirely customary thing for a stove to do.  I will explain,
+that "heap" is "Injun-English" for "very much."  The reader will perceive
+the exhaustive expressiveness of it in the present instance.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL.
+I now come to a curious episode--the most curious, I think, that had yet
+accented my slothful, valueless, heedless career.  Out of a hillside
+toward the upper end of the town, projected a wall of reddish looking
+quartz-croppings, the exposed comb of a silver-bearing ledge that
+extended deep down into the earth, of course.  It was owned by a company
+entitled the "Wide West."  There was a shaft sixty or seventy feet deep
+on the under side of the croppings, and everybody was acquainted with the
+rock that came from it--and tolerably rich rock it was, too, but nothing
+extraordinary.  I will remark here, that although to the inexperienced
+stranger all the quartz of a particular "district" looks about alike, an
+old resident of the camp can take a glance at a mixed pile of rock,
+separate the fragments and tell you which mine each came from, as easily
+as a confectioner can separate and classify the various kinds and
+qualities of candy in a mixed heap of the article.
+
+All at once the town was thrown into a state of extraordinary excitement.
+In mining parlance the Wide West had "struck it rich!"  Everybody went to
+see the new developments, and for some days there was such a crowd of
+people about the Wide West shaft that a stranger would have supposed
+there was a mass meeting in session there.  No other topic was discussed
+but the rich strike, and nobody thought or dreamed about anything else.
+Every man brought away a specimen, ground it up in a hand mortar, washed
+it out in his horn spoon, and glared speechless upon the marvelous
+result.  It was not hard rock, but black, decomposed stuff which could be
+crumbled in the hand like a baked potato, and when spread out on a paper
+exhibited a thick sprinkling of gold and particles of "native" silver.
+Higbie brought a handful to the cabin, and when he had washed it out his
+amazement was beyond description.  Wide West stock soared skywards.  It
+was said that repeated offers had been made for it at a thousand dollars
+a foot, and promptly refused.  We have all had the "blues"--the mere
+sky-blues--but mine were indigo, now--because I did not own in the Wide
+West.  The world seemed hollow to me, and existence a grief.  I lost my
+appetite, and ceased to take an interest in anything.  Still I had to
+stay, and listen to other people's rejoicings, because I had no money to
+get out of the camp with.
+
+The Wide West company put a stop to the carrying away of "specimens," and
+well they might, for every handful of the ore was worth a sun of some
+consequence.  To show the exceeding value of the ore, I will remark that
+a sixteen-hundred-pounds parcel of it was sold, just as it lay, at the
+mouth of the shaft, at one dollar a pound; and the man who bought it
+"packed" it on mules a hundred and fifty or two hundred miles, over the
+mountains, to San Francisco, satisfied that it would yield at a rate that
+would richly compensate him for his trouble.  The Wide West people also
+commanded their foreman to refuse any but their own operatives permission
+to enter the mine at any time or for any purpose.  I kept up my "blue"
+meditations and Higbie kept up a deal of thinking, too, but of a
+different sort.  He puzzled over the "rock," examined it with a glass,
+inspected it in different lights and from different points of view, and
+after each experiment delivered himself, in soliloquy, of one and the
+same unvarying opinion in the same unvarying formula:
+
+"It is not Wide West rock!"
+
+He said once or twice that he meant to have a look into the Wide West
+shaft if he got shot for it.  I was wretched, and did not care whether he
+got a look into it or not.  He failed that day, and tried again at night;
+failed again; got up at dawn and tried, and failed again.  Then he lay in
+ambush in the sage brush hour after hour, waiting for the two or three
+hands to adjourn to the shade of a boulder for dinner; made a start once,
+but was premature--one of the men came back for something; tried it
+again, but when almost at the mouth of the shaft, another of the men rose
+up from behind the boulder as if to reconnoitre, and he dropped on the
+ground and lay quiet; presently he crawled on his hands and knees to the
+mouth of the shaft, gave a quick glance around, then seized the rope and
+slid down the shaft.
+
+He disappeared in the gloom of a "side drift" just as a head appeared in
+the mouth of the shaft and somebody shouted "Hello!"--which he did not
+answer.  He was not disturbed any more.  An hour later he entered the
+cabin, hot, red, and ready to burst with smothered excitement, and
+exclaimed in a stage whisper:
+
+"I knew it!  We are rich!  IT'S A BLIND LEAD!"
+
+I thought the very earth reeled under me.  Doubt--conviction--doubt
+again--exultation--hope, amazement, belief, unbelief--every emotion
+imaginable swept in wild procession through my heart and brain, and I
+could not speak a word.  After a moment or two of this mental fury, I
+shook myself to rights, and said:
+
+"Say it again!"
+
+"It's blind lead!"
+
+"Cal, let's--let's burn the house--or kill somebody!  Let's get out where
+there's room to hurrah!  But what is the use?  It is a hundred times too
+good to be true."
+
+"It's a blind lead, for a million!--hanging wall--foot wall--clay
+casings--everything complete!" He swung his hat and gave three cheers,
+and I cast doubt to the winds and chimed in with a will.  For I was worth
+a million dollars, and did not care "whether school kept or not!"
+
+But perhaps I ought to explain.  A "blind lead" is a lead or ledge that
+does not "crop out" above the surface.  A miner does not know where to
+look for such leads, but they are often stumbled upon by accident in the
+course of driving a tunnel or sinking a shaft.  Higbie knew the Wide West
+rock perfectly well, and the more he had examined the new developments
+the more he was satisfied that the ore could not have come from the Wide
+West vein.  And so had it occurred to him alone, of all the camp, that
+there was a blind lead down in the shaft, and that even the Wide West
+people themselves did not suspect it.  He was right.  When he went down
+the shaft, he found that the blind lead held its independent way through
+the Wide West vein, cutting it diagonally, and that it was enclosed in
+its own well-defined casing-rocks and clay.  Hence it was public
+property.  Both leads being perfectly well defined, it was easy for any
+miner to see which one belonged to the Wide West and which did not.
+
+We thought it well to have a strong friend, and therefore we brought the
+foreman of the Wide West to our cabin that night and revealed the great
+surprise to him.  Higbie said:
+
+"We are going to take possession of this blind lead, record it and
+establish ownership, and then forbid the Wide West company to take out
+any more of the rock.  You cannot help your company in this matter
+--nobody can help them.  I will go into the shaft with you and prove to
+your entire satisfaction that it is a blind lead.  Now we propose to take
+you in with us, and claim the blind lead in our three names.  What do you
+say?"
+
+What could a man say who had an opportunity to simply stretch forth his
+hand and take possession of a fortune without risk of any kind and
+without wronging any one or attaching the least taint of dishonor to his
+name?  He could only say, "Agreed."
+
+The notice was put up that night, and duly spread upon the recorder's
+books before ten o'clock.  We claimed two hundred feet each--six hundred
+feet in all--the smallest and compactest organization in the district,
+and the easiest to manage.
+
+No one can be so thoughtless as to suppose that we slept, that night.
+Higbie and I went to bed at midnight, but it was only to lie broad awake
+and think, dream, scheme.  The floorless, tumble-down cabin was a palace,
+the ragged gray blankets silk, the furniture rosewood and mahogany.
+Each new splendor that burst out of my visions of the future whirled me
+bodily over in bed or jerked me to a sitting posture just as if an
+electric battery had been applied to me.  We shot fragments of
+conversation back and forth at each other.  Once Higbie said:
+
+"When are you going home--to the States?"
+
+"To-morrow!"--with an evolution or two, ending with a sitting position.
+"Well--no--but next month, at furthest."
+
+"We'll go in the same steamer."
+
+"Agreed."
+
+A pause.
+
+"Steamer of the 10th?"
+
+"Yes.  No, the 1st."
+
+"All right."
+
+Another pause.
+
+"Where are you going to live?"  said Higbie.
+
+"San Francisco."
+
+"That's me!"
+
+Pause.
+
+"Too high--too much climbing"--from Higbie.
+
+"What is?"
+
+"I was thinking of Russian Hill--building a house up there."
+
+"Too much climbing?  Shan't you keep a carriage?"
+
+"Of course.  I forgot that."
+
+Pause.
+
+"Cal., what kind of a house are you going to build?"
+
+"I was thinking about that.  Three-story and an attic."
+
+"But what kind?"
+
+"Well, I don't hardly know.  Brick, I suppose."
+
+"Brick--bosh."
+
+"Why?  What is your idea?"
+
+"Brown stone front--French plate glass--billiard-room off the
+dining-room--statuary and paintings--shrubbery and two-acre grass plat
+--greenhouse--iron dog on the front stoop--gray horses--landau, and a
+coachman with a bug on his hat!"
+
+"By George!"
+
+A long pause.
+
+"Cal., when are you going to Europe?"
+
+"Well--I hadn't thought of that.  When are you?"
+
+"In the Spring."
+
+"Going to be gone all summer?"
+
+"All summer!  I shall remain there three years."
+
+"No--but are you in earnest?"
+
+"Indeed I am."
+
+"I will go along too."
+
+"Why of course you will."
+
+"What part of Europe shall you go to?"
+
+"All parts.  France, England, Germany--Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Syria,
+Greece, Palestine, Arabia, Persia, Egypt--all over--everywhere."
+
+"I'm agreed."
+
+"All right."
+
+"Won't it be a swell trip!"
+
+"We'll spend forty or fifty thousand dollars trying to make it one,
+anyway."
+
+Another long pause.
+
+"Higbie, we owe the butcher six dollars, and he has been threatening to
+stop our--"
+
+"Hang the butcher!"
+
+"Amen."
+
+And so it went on.  By three o'clock we found it was no use, and so we
+got up and played cribbage and smoked pipes till sunrise.  It was my week
+to cook.  I always hated cooking--now, I abhorred it.
+
+The news was all over town.  The former excitement was great--this one
+was greater still.  I walked the streets serene and happy.  Higbie said
+the foreman had been offered two hundred thousand dollars for his third
+of the mine.  I said I would like to see myself selling for any such
+price.  My ideas were lofty.  My figure was a million.  Still, I honestly
+believe that if I had been offered it, it would have had no other effect
+than to make me hold off for more.
+
+I found abundant enjoyment in being rich.  A man offered me a
+three-hundred-dollar horse, and wanted to take my simple, unendorsed note
+for it.  That brought the most realizing sense I had yet had that I was
+actually rich, beyond shadow of doubt.  It was followed by numerous other
+evidences of a similar nature--among which I may mention the fact of the
+butcher leaving us a double supply of meat and saying nothing about
+money.
+
+By the laws of the district, the "locators" or claimants of a ledge were
+obliged to do a fair and reasonable amount of work on their new property
+within ten days after the date of the location, or the property was
+forfeited, and anybody could go and seize it that chose.  So we
+determined to go to work the next day.  About the middle of the
+afternoon, as I was coming out of the post office, I met a Mr. Gardiner,
+who told me that Capt. John Nye was lying dangerously ill at his place
+(the "Nine-Mile Ranch"), and that he and his wife were not able to give
+him nearly as much care and attention as his case demanded.  I said if he
+would wait for me a moment, I would go down and help in the sick room.
+I ran to the cabin to tell Higbie.  He was not there, but I left a note
+on the table for him, and a few minutes later I left town in Gardiner's
+wagon.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Roughing It, Part 4.
+by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
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