Roughing It

M >> Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) >> Roughing It


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.