Resolved to Die in Deserted City.
Living only in the memory of a distant past, isolated from the rest of the world, yet living in a city of a thousand homes, sitting idly hour by hour at the front of a small saloon where twenty years ago prosperity and excitement were on every hand, Sam Bolger, former Topeka bartender, later an adventurer, gambler, and Colorado saloon owner, is residing in the deserted mining town of Gillette, Col.
The life of Sam Bolger reads like a romance, tinged with all the vicissitudes of life, livened by the carefree days when gold was more plentiful in Cripple Creek than to-day, shadowed by more sorrows than falls to the lot of the average man.
Several Topeka pioneers may remember him in the days of yore when he served drinks over the bar of a saloon on lower Kansas Avenue, before the amendment was put into effect which placed Kansas in the fore rank of dry States.
A newspaper man and party visited Gillette. They found the town deserted, except by one man, Sam Bolger. He occupied a dilapidated saloon, but had no customers.
An inquisitive nomad put the following question to the old relic:
"Where are the rest of the voters?"
The faded old man did not answer at first, but then he replied: "They are everywhere but here."
He then relapsed into silence, but another Kansan—or, rather, he was a Kansas Cityan—spied a table and a few suspicious-looking bottles within the place. He called the ancient gentleman and together they entered the poorly kept saloon. (Film here deleted by censor.) When the old man came out, some ten minutes later, he was in a more talkative mood.
"I hear that you fellows are from Kansas," he said, "but you don’t know Kansas as I knew it. The men who were young then are now in their dotage. When I lived in Topeka, it was a wide-open town, and it was my business to furnish beer and whiskies to its progressive citizens."
The man—he said his name was Sam Bolger—again fell into a moody silence. Then he resumed his talk.
"I was a fool for ever leaving Topeka. It was in 1880, not long after the prohibition amendment went into effect. I had lost my job. I had no money. So I just naturally drifted West, and for the next ten years I roamed around California, New Mexico, Arizona, and old Mexico. But it was in eighteen-ninety that I came to Cripple Creek. The first real strike had been made. With thousands of others I fell a victim to my ambition to be rich. Out of all those who went to Cripple Creek in those years, only a few remain to-day who have wealth.
"I just naturally had no luck. I sweated my life away in the mines. I gambled and drank away my wages in Cripple Creek. There never was a city yet that could equal it. Money flowed like water. I believe it was the wickedest spot on the map.
"I was in the great Cripple Creek fire of eighteen-ninety-[Pg 60]six. By that time I was part owner of a small saloon. The fire destroyed my place, and I was broke again.
"Then I heard rumors of Gillette. The town became a city in a night. The rush of men here at that time was heavy. Being one of the first on the ground, I started a saloon in a shack and a boarding house in a tent. Then I leased the upstairs of a building and owned the first dance hall here. For several months Gillette was fast becoming the center of the Cripple Creek region. Then the gold gave out. It was shallow. People left here in a single night. Many did not take even the precaution of shutting their doors. Gillette started like a whirlwind, and in a like manner it became deserted.
"Only a few of us remained, firm in the belief that the country was plentiful in gold. My saloon business was ruined, yet I kept it up, and still have it to-day. Gradually my friends left Gillette, but I remained, and have lived in solitary grandeur since nineteen hundred and eight, when the last of my family moved away.
"Why don’t I leave, you ask? Why should I? I have nothing especially to live for. I have formed an attachment to Gillette. I will die here. I am emperor of the place. My word is law, having no one to dispute it."
The visitors soon after this resumed their journey to Cripple Creek, seven miles away. An air of depression filled each and every one of them. They began to realize what Carthage looked like after the carnage of the Romans. As they turned off the main "drag" into a side street and thence to the main road, the newspaper man looked back. Sam Bolger, a pathetic figure to say the least, was still sitting where he had been left.