Mr. Monk was on time. There is a tradition that Mr. Greeley was very indignant for a while; then he laughed, and finally presented Mr. Monk with a brand new suit of clothes.
Mr. Monk himself is still in the employ of the California Stage Company, and is rather fond of relating a story that has made him famous all over the Pacific coast. But he says he yields to no man in his admiration for Horace Greeley.
4.8. TO REESE RIVER.
I leave Virginia for Great Salt Lake City, via the Reese River
Silver Diggings.
There are eight passengers of us inside the coach—which, by the way, isn't a coach, but a Concord covered mud wagon.
Among the passengers is a genial man of the name of Ryder, who has achieved a widespread reputation as a strangler of unpleasant bears in the mountain fastnesses of California, and who is now an eminent Reese River miner.
We ride night and day, passing through the land of the Piute Indians. Reports reach us that fifteen hundred of these savages are on the Rampage, under the command of a red usurper named Buffalo Jim, who seems to be a sort of Jeff Davis, inasmuch as he and his followers have seceded from the regular Piut organization. The seceding savages have announced that they shall kill and scalp all pale-faces [which makes our face pale, I reckon] found loose in that section. We find the guard doubled at all the stations where we change horses, and our passengers nervously examine their pistols and readjust the long glittering knives in their belts. I feel in my pockets to see if the key which unlocks the carpet-bag containing my revolvers is all right—for I had rather brilliantly locked my deadly weapons up in that article, which was strapped with the other baggage to the rack behind. The passengers frown on me for this carelessness, but the kind-hearted Ryder gives me a small double-barrelled gun, with which I narrowly escape murdering my beloved friend Hingston in cold blood. I am not used to guns and things, and in changing the position of this weapon I pulled the trigger rather harder than was necessary.
When this wicked rebellion first broke out I was among the first— to stay at home—chiefly because of my utter ignorance of firearms. I should be valuable to the Army as a Brigadier-General only so far as the moral influence of—my name went.
. . . .
When this wicked rebellion first broke out I was among the first to stay at home -chiefly because of my utter ignorance of firearms. I should be valuable to the army as a Brigadier General only so far as the moral influence of my name went.