HUGH LEARNS OLD GRIMES IS STILL DEAD
Fortune picks her favourites strangely. While the McClintocks were away at the war Robert Dodson, incompetent and worthless, developed from a pauper to a millionaire. His was one of the sudden shifts of luck to which Virginia City was becoming used.
Most men in the camp had a trunkful of mining stock picked up here and there, a lot of it feet in wildcat concerns hawked about in exchange for meal tickets, boots, shirts, liquor, and other supplies. This was scattered so promiscuously that one could acquire reams of it without giving much in actual value for it. Dodson’s rise to affluence was a camp joke. It was said that he sold two bags of bones and a pile of kindling for a million dollars. What he actually did was to swap his ramshackle wagon and starving team for fifty feet in the Never Say Die, twenty-five feet in the Gambler’s Luck, twenty in the Mollie Macrae, and fifteen in the Road to China. He was given a quart of whisky to boot. The trade was made while Dodson was drunk, and all his saloon cronies chuckled over the way he had been sold. For all of these were stock jobbing enterprises and nothing more. None of them were doing any developing at all.
A mine adjacent to the Never Say Die and the Gambler’s Luck struck it rich. There was a sympathetic boom in mines of surrounding territory. The Never Say Die sank a shaft and ran a crosscut. This cut into a vein that appeared to be a bonanza. Half seas over again, Dodson sold out his interest in both prospects at the height of the boom. Within a week it was known that the crosscut had run into only a small pocket.
Luck pursued Dodson. It would not let him alone. He took a flyer in Ophir stock, and the Ophir soared. He invested in Crown Point and the Belcher. Both were big winners.
Presently a younger brother of the new magnate appeared on the scene to manage his interests. Ralph Dodson was a big athletic fellow with glossy black hair and small black moustache. The dark eyes were keen and cold. They roved a good deal, but it was noticeable that they came to pause whenever they fell on a good-looking woman. He had a hail-fellow-well-met manner, but there was something hard and icy in him that frustrated his jollity.
The younger brother had a powerful influence over Robert Dodson. The man pulled himself up and stopped drinking. He was of nature parsimonious, and he hung on to his fortune in spite of the parasites who fawned on him. Ralph’s cool business judgment was a factor in the rapid increase of it.
Scot McClintock returned to civil life to find that the wastrel and ne’er-do-well was an important figure in the community. He had the responsibilities that go with wealth, and these always entail a certain amount of public recognition. The bullet head of Robert Dodson might be seen among the notables at the International Hotel. His shifty yellow eyes looked down from the platform on various important occasions.
Both Scot and his brother had saved money. They had, too, a long credit at the banks and among private friends. They went into freighting on an extensive scale. They bought teams, increasing gradually the size of their business. Ore and wood contracts were their specialties.
Dan De Quille has said that the Comstock is the tomb of the forests of the Sierras. This is literally true. Already enough timber had been buried in the Lode to build a city several times as large as San Francisco was. The square-set system of timbering, invented by Philip Deidesheimer, made it possible to develop the mines to a great depth in spite of the tendency of the ground to cave. But this necessitated hauling timber from a distance. The nearer slopes of the range were already denuded.
Upon this need the McClintocks built their business. It prospered year by year, for both members of the firm were shrewd and energetic.
Vicky had remained at school in Carson when Scot moved to Virginia City. When she reached the age of sixteen Scot sent her to a young lady’s seminary at San Francisco where she could have better advantages. For a year she remained in the city at the Golden Gate.
It chanced that Hugh had not seen Vicky since the day when she first set out for school at Carson years ago. Upon the occasions of her visits to Mollie’s house he had been out of town on business. Once he had called at Miss Clapp’s to see her, but Miss Victoria happened to be up King’s Cañon gathering wild flowers.
“What’s she look like now?” Hugh asked Scot when he heard the girl was returning from San Francisco. “Must be a right sizable little girl now, I reckon. Last time I was in Sacramento I sent her a nigger toll. Here’s the letter she wrote me. I’d think they’d teach her to spell better.”
Scot read the note.
Dere Mister Santa Claws,
I got the doll. Thank you very much for it. I like dolls. I am lerning speling, reading, riting, gography, numbers, grammar, and deportment. Deportment is when you say thanks to a kind gentelman for giveing you a doll. We had bluebery pie for dinner. Do you like bluebery pie? I do. Wel I must close for this time your greatful little friend Victoria Lowell.
The older brother wiped a smile from his face as he looked at Hugh. The note was like the little vixen who had written it. She was having her fun with Hugh, who seemed to have forgotten that in the course of four years children of Vicky’s sex have a habit of shooting up into young ladies. A black doll! Well, Hugh had brought it on himself. Scot did not intend to spoil sport. He told a part of the truth.
“She’s a pretty good match for the black doll herself—the blackest little thing you ever saw. Hair flies wild. A good deal of long arms and legs about her. Some whirlwind when she gets started.”
“Always was that,” Hugh said. “I can imagine how she looks. Blueberry pie painted on her face when she wrote that letter probably.” He shifted the conversation to business. “Are you going down to Piodie or do you want me to go?”
Piodie was the newest camp in Nevada. Discovery of ore had just been made and a stampede for the new diggings was on. They were said to be very rich in both gold and silver. If this proved true, the handling of freight to the new camp would be profitable.
“You go, Hugh. I don’t want to leave Mollie just now.”
In the mining country camps have their little day and cease to be. They wallow in prosperity and never dream of the time when the coyote will howl in their lonesome streets. A camp which “comes back” is as rare as a pugilist who recovers a lost championship. Aurora’s star had set. The live citizens were flitting, and the big mines were pulling their pumps. The name on every tongue was Piodie.
“All right,” agreed Hugh. “I been wantin’ to have a look at that camp.”
“Take your time. No hurry. Look the ground over carefully. The business will run right along while you’re away.”
“Hope Mollie gets along fine,” Hugh said awkwardly.
The young man was now a responsible member of a business firm which handled a large trade. The days when he had ridden pony express, even the ones when he had left the army with a sergeant’s stripes on his sleeve, belonged to his adventurous past. Young as he was, Hugh served on civic committees and attended board of trade banquets. In his heart sometimes he rebelled. He did not look forward with eagerness to the day when he would be a leading citizen with an equatorial paunch. The blood of youth still sang in him a saga of untravelled trails.
Perhaps that was why he chose to ride to Piodie instead of taking a seat beside “Pony” King on the stage. It was a day of the gods as he rode up the Geiger Grade from B Street. His lungs drank in the rare air like wine. The sky was crystal clear except for a long-drawn wisp of cloud above the summit of Mt. Davidson. Below him a cañon cleft the hills, and beyond its winding gorge was a glimpse of soft-toned desert through which ran a gleaming silver ribbon edged with the green of cottonwood foliage. Far away, at the horizon edge, were white mountain barriers, the Sierras to the right, the Humboldt and the Pine Nut ranges to the east.
It was noon when he reached Reno, the new town which had just changed its name from End-of-the-Track. The Central Pacific, built the previous year, had brought Reno into existence. It was still a little village. If any one had predicted then that the day was coming when both Carson and Virginia would be displaced in importance by the little railroad station Reno, he would have been judged a poor guesser.
Hugh jogged along at the steady road gait which is neither quite a trot nor a walk. The miles fell behind him hour after hour. The sun sank into the hills and left behind it a great splash of crimson glory. This faded to a soft violet, which in turn deepened to a lake of purple as the evening shadows lengthened.
The traveller camped in the sage. He scooped out a hole in the soft sand and built in it a fire of greasewood and brush. This he kept replenished till it was full of live coals. He knew it would last till morning without fresh fuel. Supper finished, he rolled up in his blanket and found for a pillow the softest spot in the saddle.
His brain buzzed with thoughts of the old riding days when life had been an adventure and not a humdrum business. Into his memory there sang itself a chantey of the trail. He found himself now murmuring the words drowsily:
“Last night as I lay on the prairie,
And looked at the stars in the sky,
I wondered if ever a cowboy
Would drift to that sweet by and by.
Roll on, roll on,
Roll on, little dogies, roll on, roll on,
Roll on, roll on,
Roll on, little dogies, roll on.”
The tune of it followed in a rough way that of “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean.” Stanza after stanza Hugh sang it softly, and each time as he came to the chorus his brain was a little less active, his eyes a little heavier.
“Roll on, roll on,
Roll on, little—dogies—roll—on.”
He fell asleep with the words on his lips.
The gray of dawn was streaking the east when he awoke. After breakfast he fell again into the jog-trot of travel. The sage hills slipped behind him, and always there were others to replace the ones that had vanished. The sun crept high and became a ball of fire in the sky. Dust in yellow clouds, fine and penetrating, sifted over and into him. His eyes became irritated with it and his throat caked.
It was late afternoon when he rode down through Piodie Cañon to the flats where enterprising real estate agents were laying out suburbs of the new camp. Hugh turned in at a feed corral and swung from the saddle stiffly.
A familiar voice lifted itself in tuneless but cheerful song:
“He lived at peace with all mankind,
In friendship he was true;
His coat had pocket holes behind.
His pantaloons were blue.”
Hugh grinned. “The dawggoned old-timer. I ain’t seen him since I quit ridin’,” he said aloud to himself.
“But poor old Grimes is now at rest,
Nor fears misfortune’s frown;
He had a double-breasted vest,
The stripes ran up and down,”
continued the singer from the stable.
McClintock tiptoed forward and looked in. A man of Falstaffian girth was oiling a set of harness.
“Ain’t old man Grimes wore out them blue pants yet?” asked Hugh, dropping into the free-and-easy speech of his youth.
The fat man whirled. “Hell’s hinges! If it ain’t Kid McClintock. Where did you drap from?” He fell on the young man and pounded him with his hamlike fists. “Say, I’ll bet Byers’ll be plumb tickled to see you.”
“Byers here, too?”
“Sure as you’re a foot high. That damn railroad done run us outa business. So we got this feed corral here. Didn’t you see the sign: Pony Express Corral, Budd & Byers, Props?”
“You’re sure some prop, Jim. Don’t you reckon you’re most a pillar? By jiminy, you been takin’ on flesh since I saw you.”
“Hmp! Nothin’ of the kind,” snorted Budd indignantly. “Shows what you know. I been losin’ flesh, if you want the straight goods. Pillar, shucks! If you had enough education to outfit a Piute you’d sabe that ‘Props.’ is short for Proprietors. It means we own this here place.”
Hugh registered intelligence. “Oh, I get you. Why, dad gum it, I’m a prop, my own se’f. Freighting and Contracting, McClintock & McClintock, Props.”
“Yes, I done heard you been keepin’ two jumps ahead of the wolf. I reckon that’s why you come to a good town at last.” Budd’s body shook with mirth like an immense jelly. This was his idea of repartee as was repartee.
“Is it a good camp?” asked Hugh seriously. “That’s what I came to find out.”
“Kid, it’s a sockdolager. Them hills is full of silver. All you got to do is to drive a pick in and find the ore.”
“That’s all you’ve got to do anywhere in these United States,” agreed McClintock drily. “Question is, will you find it?”
Budd began to sputter with excitement. In the West it always has been the first article of a man’s faith to believe in his town. One might have slandered the fat man’s relatives and hoped to escape alive, but for Piodie he would have fought at the drop of a hat.
“Why—why—doggone yore hide, kid, this camp’s got Virginia skinned four ways from Sunday. It’s the best ever. Ore from the grass roots. Everywhere—all ’round. Millions o’ tons of it.” He waved a fat hand expansively as he warmed to his theme. “This here town is built in the heart of nature’s storehouse, the mint where her auriferous deposits were planted when the Sierras was a hole in the ground. Son, you tie up to Piodie an’ you’ll sure do yorese’f proud.”
In the midst of his oration a small wiry man stepped unobtrusively into the stable. Hugh deserted Budd to greet his partner.
Byers, always taciturn, broke a record and made a long speech. He said, “Glad to see you.”