43. CHAPTER XLIII.
HOWEVER, as I grew better acquainted with the business and
learned the run of the sources of information I ceased to require
the aid of fancy to any large extent, and became able to fill my
columns without diverging noticeably from the domain of
fact.
I struck up friendships with the reporters of the other journals,
and we swapped "regulars" with each other and thus economized
work. "Regulars" are permanent sources of news, like courts,
bullion returns, "clean-ups" at the quartz mills, and inquests.
Inasmuch as everybody went armed, we had an inquest about every
day, and so this department was naturally set down among the
"regulars." We had lively papers in those days. My great
competitor among the reporters was Boggs of
the Union. He was an
excellent reporter. Once in three or four months he
would get a little intoxicated, but as a general thing he was a wary
and cautious drinker although always ready to tamper a little with
the enemy. He had the advantage of me in one thing; he could get
the monthly public school report and I could not, because the
principal hated the Enterprise.
One snowy night when the report was due, I started out sadly
wondering how I was going to get it. Presently, a few steps up the
almost deserted street I stumbled on Boggs and asked him where
he was going.
"After the school report."
"I'll go along with you."
"No, sir. I'll excuse you."
"Just as you say."
A saloon-keeper's boy passed by with a steaming pitcher
of hot punch, and Boggs snuffed the fragrance gratefully. He
gazed fondly after the boy and saw him start up
the
Enterprise stairs. I said:
"I wish you could help me get that school business, but since
you can't, I must run up to
the Union office and
see if I can get them to let me have a proof of it after
they have set it up, though I don't begin to suppose they will. Good
night."
"Hold on a minute. I don't mind getting the report and sitting
around with the boys a little, while you copy it, if you're willing to
drop down to the principal's with me."
"Now you talk like a rational being. Come along."
We plowed a couple of blocks through the snow, got the report
and returned to our office. It was a short document and soon
copied. Meantime Boggs helped himself to the punch. I gave the
manuscript back to him and we started out to get an inquest, for
we heard pistol shots near by. We got the particulars with little
loss of time, for it was only an inferior sort of bar-room murder,
and of little interest to the public, and then we separated. Away at
three o'clock in the morning, when we had gone to press and were
having a relaxing concert as usual—for some of the printers were
good singers and others good performers on the guitar and on that
atrocity the accordeon—the proprietor of
the Union strode
in and desired to know if anybody had heard anything of
Boggs or the school report. We stated the case, and all turned out
to help hunt for the delinquent. We found him standing on a table
in a saloon, with an old tin lantern in one hand and the school
report in the other, haranguing a gang of intoxicated Cornish
miners on the iniquity of squandering the public moneys on
education "when hundreds and hundreds of honest hard-working
men are literally starving for whiskey." [Riotous applause.] He
had been assisting in a regal spree with those parties for hours.
We dragged him away and put him to bed.
Of course there was no school report in
the Union, and Boggs
held me accountable, though I was innocent of any
intention or desire to compass its absence from that paper and was
as sorry as any one that the misfortune had occurred.
But we were perfectly friendly. The day that the school report
was next due, the proprietor of the "Genessee" mine
furnished us a buggy and asked us to go down and write something
about the property—a very common request and one always gladly
acceded to when people furnished buggies, for we were as fond of
pleasure excursions as other people. In due time we arrived at the
"mine"—nothing but a hole in the ground ninety feet deep, and no
way of getting down into it but by holding on to a rope and being
lowered with a windlass. The workmen had just gone off
somewhere to dinner. I was not strong enough to lower Boggs's
bulk; so I took an unlighted candle in my teeth, made a loop for
my foot in the end of the rope, implored Boggs not to go to sleep
or let the windlass get the start of him, and then swung out over
the shaft. I reached the bottom muddy and bruised about the
elbows, but safe. I lit the candle, made an examination of the
rock, selected some specimens and shouted to Boggs to
hoist away. No answer. Presently a head appeared in the circle of
daylight away aloft, and a voice came down:
"Are you all set?"
"All set—hoist away."
"Are you comfortable?"
"Perfectly."
"Could you wait a little?"
"Oh certainly—no particular hurry."
"Well—good by."
"Why? Where are you going?"
"After the school report!"
And he did. I staid down there an hour, and surprised the
workmen when they hauled up and found a man on the rope
instead of a bucket of rock. I walked home, too—five miles—up
hill. We had no school report next morning; but the Union
had.
Six months after my entry into journalism the grand "flush
times" of Silverland began, and they continued with unabated
splendor for three years. All difficulty about filling up the "local
department" ceased, and the only trouble now was how to make
the lengthened columns hold the world of incidents and
happenings that came to our literary net every day. Virginia had
grown to be the "livest" town, for its age and population, that
America had ever produced. The sidewalks
swarmed with people—to such an extent, indeed, that it was
generally no easy matter to stem the human tide. The streets
themselves were just as crowded with quartz wagons, freight
teams and other vehicles. The procession was endless. So great
was the pack, that buggies frequently had to wait half an hour for
an opportunity to cross the principal street. Joy sat on every
countenance, and there was a glad, almost fierce, intensity in every
eye, that told of the money-getting schemes that were seething in
every brain and the high hope that held sway in every heart.
Money was as plenty as dust; every individual considered himself
wealthy, and a melancholy countenance was nowhere to be seen.
There were military companies, fire companies, brass bands,
banks, hotels, theatres, "hurdy-gurdy houses," wide-open gambling
palaces, political pow-wows, civic processions, street fights,
murders, inquests, riots, a whiskey mill every fifteen steps, a Board
of Aldermen, a Mayor, a City Surveyor, a City Engineer, a Chief of
the Fire Department, with First, Second and Third Assistants, a
Chief of Police, City Marshal and a large police force, two Boards
of Mining Brokers, a dozen breweries and half a dozen jails and
station-houses in full operation, and some talk of building a
church. The "flush times" were in magnificent flower! Large
fire-proof brick buildings were going up in the principal streets,
and the wooden suburbs were spreading out in all directions.
Town lots soared up to prices that were amazing.
The great "Comstock lode" stretched its opulent length straight
through the town from north to south, and every mine on it was in
diligent process of development. One of these mines alone
employed six hundred and seventy-five men, and in the matter of
elections the adage was, "as the `Gould and Curry' goes, so goes
the city." Laboring men's wages were four and six dollars a day,
and they worked in three "shifts" or gangs, and the blasting and
picking and shoveling went on without ceasing, night and day.
The "city" of Virginia roosted royally midway up the steep side
of Mount Davidson, seven thousand two hundred
feet above the level of the sea, and in the clear Nevada atmosphere
was visible from a distance of fifty miles! It claimed a population
of fifteen thousand to eighteen thousand, and all day long half of
this little army swarmed the streets like bees and the other half
swarmed among the drifts and tunnels of the "Comstock,"
hundreds of feet down in the earth directly under those same
streets. Often we felt our chairs jar, and heard the faint boom of a
blast down in the bowels of the earth under the office.
The mountain side was so steep that the entire town had a slant
to it like a roof. Each street was a terrace, and from each to the
next street below the descent was forty or fifty feet. The fronts of
the houses were level with the street they
faced, but their rear first floors were propped on lofty stilts; a man
could stand at a rear first floor window of a C street house and
look down the chimneys of the row of houses below him facing D
street. It was a laborious climb, in that thin atmosphere, to ascend
from D to A street, and you were panting and out of breath when
you got there; but you could turn around and go down again like a
house a-fire—so to speak. The atmosphere was so rarified, on
account of the great altitude, that one's blood lay near the surface
always, and the scratch of a pin was a disaster worth worrying
about, for the chances were that a grievous erysipelas would ensue.
But to offset this, the thin atmosphere seemed to carry healing to
gunshot wounds, and therefore, to simply shoot your adversary
through both lungs was a thing not likely to afford you any
permanent satisfaction, for he would be nearly certain to be around
looking for you within the month, and not with an opera glass,
either.
From Virginia's airy situation one could look over a vast,
far-reaching panorama of mountain ranges and deserts; and
whether the day was bright or overcast, whether the sun was rising
or setting, or flaming in the zenith, or whether night and the moon
held sway, the spectacle was always impressive and beautiful.
Over your head Mount Davidson lifted its gray dome, and before
and below you a rugged canyon clove the battlemented hills,
making a sombre gateway through which a soft-tinted desert was
glimpsed, with the silver thread of a river winding through it,
bordered with trees which many miles of distance diminished to a
delicate fringe; and still further away the snowy mountains rose up
and stretched their long barrier to the filmy horizon—far enough
beyond a lake that burned in the desert like a fallen sun, though
that, itself, lay fifty miles removed. Look from your window
where you would, there was fascination in the picture. At rare
intervals—but very rare—there were clouds in our skies, and then
the setting sun would gild and flush and glorify this mighty
expanse of scenery with a bewildering pomp of color that held the
eye like a spell and moved the spirit like music.