41. CHAPTER XLI.
CAPTAIN NYE was very ill indeed, with spasmodic
rheumatism. But the old gentleman was himself—which is to say,
he was kind-hearted and agreeable when comfortable, but a
singularly violent wild-cat when things did not go well. He would
be smiling along pleasantly enough, when a sudden spasm of his
disease would take him and he would go out of his smile into a
perfect fury. He would groan and wail and howl with the anguish,
and fill up the odd chinks with the most elaborate profanity that
strong convictions and a fine fancy could contrive. With fair
opportunity he could swear very well and handle his adjectives
with considerable judgment; but when the spasm was on him it
was painful to listen to him, he was so awkward. However, I had
seen him nurse a sick man himself and put up patiently with the
inconveniences of the situation, and consequently I was willing
that he should have full license now that his own turn had come.
He could not disturb me, with all his raving and ranting, for my
mind had work on hand, and it labored on diligently, night and
day, whether my hands were idle or employed. I was altering and
amending the plans for my house, and thinking over the propriety
of having the billard-room in the attic, instead of no the same floor
with the dining-room; also, I was trying to decide between green
and blue for the upholstery of the drawing-room, for, although my
preference was blue I feared it was a color that would be too easily
damaged by dust and sunlight; likewise while I was content to put
the
coachman in a modest livery, I was uncertain about a footman—I
needed one, and was even resolved to have one, but wished he
could properly appear and perform his functions out of livery, for I
somewhat dreaded so much show; and yet, inasmuch as my late
grandfather had had a coachman and such things, but no liveries, I
felt rather drawn to beat him;—or beat his ghost, at any rate; I was
also systematizing the European trip, and managed to get it all laid
out, as to route and length of time to be devoted to it—everything,
with one exception—namely, whether to cross the desert from
Cairo to Jerusalem per camel, or go by sea to Beirut, and thence
down through the country per caravan. Meantime I was writing to
the friends at home every day, instructing them concerning all my
plans and intentions, and directing them to look up a handsome
homestead for my mother and agree upon a price for it against my
coming, and also directing them to sell my share of the Tennessee
land and tender the proceeds to the widows' and orphans' fund of
the typographical union of which I had long been a member in
good standing. [This Tennessee land had been in the possession of
the family many years, and promised to confer high fortune upon
us some day; it still promises it, but in a less violent way.]
When I had been nursing the Captain nine days he was
somewhat better, but very feeble. During the afternoon we lifted
him into a chair and gave him an alcoholic vapor bath, and then set
about putting him on the bed again. We had to be exceedingly
careful, for the least jar produced pain. Gardiner had his shoulders
and I his legs; in an unfortunate moment I stumbled and the patient
fell heavily on the bed in an agony of torture. I never heard a man
swear so in my life. He raved like a maniac, and tried to snatch a
revolver from the table—but I got it. He ordered me out of the
house, and swore a world of oaths that he would kill me wherever
he caught me when he got on his feet again. It was simply a
passing fury, and meant nothing. I knew he would forget it in an
hour, and maybe be sorry for it, too; but it angered me a little, at
the moment. So much so, indeed, that I determined
to go back to Esmeralda. I thought he was able to get along alone,
now, since he was on the war path. I took supper, and as soon as
the moon rose, began my nine-mile journey, on foot.
Even millionaires needed no horses, in those days, for a mere
nine-mile jaunt without baggage.
As I "raised the hill" overlooking the town, it lacked fifteen
minutes of twelve. I glanced at the hill over beyond the canyon,
and in the bright moonlight saw what appeared to be about half the
population of the village massed on and around the Wide West
croppings. My heart gave an exulting bound, and I said to myself,
"They have made a new strike to-night—and struck it richer than
ever, no doubt." I started over there, but gave it up. I said the
"strick" would keep, and I had climbed hill enough for one night. I
went on down through the town, and as I was passing a little
German bakery, a woman ran out and begged me to come in and
help her. She said her husband had a fit. I went in, and judged she
was right—he appeared to have a hundred of them, compressed into
one. Two Germans were there, trying to hold him, and not making
much of a success of it. I ran up the
street half a block or so and routed out a sleeping doctor, brought
him down half dressed, and we four wrestled with the maniac, and
doctored, drenched and bled him, for more than an hour, and the
poor German woman did the crying. He grew quiet, now, and the
doctor and I withdrew and left him to his friends.
It was a little after one o'clock. As I entered the cabin door,
tired but jolly, the dingy light of a tallow candle revealed Higbie,
sitting by the pine table gazing stupidly at my note, which he held
in his fingers, and looking pale, old, and haggard. I halted, and
looked at him. He looked at me, stolidly. I said:
"Higbie, what—what is it?"
"We're ruined—we didn't do the work—THE BLIND LEAD'S
RELOCATED!"
It was enough. I sat down sick, grieved—broken-hearted,
indeed. A minute before, I was rich and brimful of vanity; I was a
pauper now, and very meek. We sat still an hour, busy with
thought, busy with vain and useless self-upbraidings, busy with
"Why didn't I do this, and
why didn't I do that," but neither
spoke a word. Then we dropped into
mutual explanations, and the mystery was cleared away. It came
out that Higbie had depended on me, as I had on him, and as both
of us had on the foreman. The folly of it! It was the first time that
ever staid and steadfast Higbie had left an important matter to
chance or failed to be true to his full share of a responsibility.
But he had never seen my note till this moment, and this
moment was the first time he had been in the cabin since the day
he had seen me last. He, also, had left a note for me, on that same
fatal afternoon—had ridden up on horseback, and looked through
the window, and being in a hurry and not seeing me, had tossed the
note into the cabin through a broken pane. Here it was, on the
floor, where it had remained undisturbed for nine days:
"Don't fail to do the work before the ten days expire. W. has
passed through and given me notice. I am to join him at Mono
Lake, and we shall go on from there to-night. He says he will find
it this time, sure. CAL."
"W." meant Whiteman, of course. That thrice accursed
"cement!"
That was the way of it. An old miner, like Higbie, could no
more withstand the fascination of a mysterious mining excitement
like this "cement" foolishness, than he could refrain from eating
when he was famishing. Higbie had been dreaming about the
marvelous cement for months; and now, against his better
judgment, he had gone off and "taken the chances" on my keeping
secure a mine worth a million undiscovered cement veins. They
had not been followed this time. His riding out of town in broad
daylight was such a common-place thing to do that it had not
attracted any attention. He said they prosecuted their search in the
fastnesses of the mountains during nine days, without success; they
could not find the cement. Then a ghastly fear came over him that
something might have happened to prevent the doing of the
necessary work to hold the blind lead (though indeed he thought
such a thing hardly possible), and forthwith he started home with
all speed. He would have reached Esmeralda in time, but his horse
broke down and he had to walk a great part of the distance. And
so it happened that as he came into Esmeralda by one road, I
entered it by another. His was the superior energy, however, for he
went straight to the Wide West, instead of turning aside as I had
done—and he arrived there about five or ten minutes too late! The
"notice"
was already up, the "relocation" of our mine completed beyond
recall, and the crowd rapidly dispersing. He learned some facts
before he left the ground. The foreman had not been seen about
the streets since the night we had located the mine—a telegram had
called him to California on a matter of life and death, it was said.
At any rate he had done no work and the watchful eyes of the
community were taking note of the fact. At midnight of this woful
tenth day, the ledge would be "relocatable," and by eleven o'clock
the hill was black with men prepared to do the relocating. That
was the crowd I had seen when I fancied a new "strike" had been
made—idiot that I was.
[We three had the same right to relocate the lead that other people
had, provided we were quick enough.] As midnight was
announced, fourteen men, duly armed and ready to back their
proceedings, put up their "notice" and proclaimed their ownership
of the blind lead, under the new name of the "Johnson." But A. D.
Allen our partner (the foreman) put in a sudden appearance about
that time, with a cocked revolver in his hand, and said his name
must be added to the list, or he would "thin out the Johnson
company some." He was a manly, splendid,
determined fellow, and known to be as good as his word, and
therefore a compromise was effected. They put in his name for a
hundred feet, reserving to themselves the customary two hundred
feet each. Such was the history of the night's events, as Higbie
gathered from a friend on the way home.
Higbie and I cleared out on a new mining excitement the next
morning, glad to get away from the scene of our sufferings, and
after a month or two of hardship and disappointment, returned to
Esmeralda once more. Then we learned that the Wide West and
the Johnson companies had consolidated; that the stock, thus
united, comprised five thousand feet, or shares; that the foreman,
apprehending tiresome litigation, and considering such a huge
concern unwieldy, had sold his hundred feet for ninety thousand
dollars in gold and gone home to the States to enjoy it. If the stock
was worth such a gallant figure, with five thousand shares in the
corporation, it makes me dizzy to think what it would have been
worth with only our original six hundred in it. It was the
difference between six hundred men owning a house and five
thousand owning it. We would have been millionaires if we had
only worked with pick and spade one little day on our property and
so secured our ownership!
It reads like a wild fancy sketch, but the evidence of many
witnesses, and likewise that of the official records of Esmeralda
District, is easily obtainable in proof that it is a true history. I can
always have it to say that I was absolutely and unquestionably
worth a million dollars, once, for ten days.
A year ago my esteemed and in every way estimable old
millionaire partner, Higbie, wrote me from an obscure little
mining camp in California that after nine or ten years of buffetings
and hard striving, he was at last in a position where he could
command twenty-five hundred dollars, and said he meant to go
into the fruit business in a modest way. How such a thought would
have insulted him the night we lay in our cabin planning European
trips and brown stone houses on Russian Hill!