We approached the ladies, tipped our hats, and passed the compliments of the day. They responded pleasantly enough, entered into a conversation with us and soon we all strolled further on from the town and sat down on a viaduct spanning a rushing irrigation ditch. Billy was as chipper as anyone when once he got started and held his end down in the conversation first class. The girls were merry and talkative and seemed to like to talk to the fellers. They told us all about the Mormons, how they live, act, and what they do, and Billy wanted to know how Mormons got married.
"Why don't you get married and find out?" asked one of the girls.
"I ain't no Mormon," spoke up Billy.
"You can be if you want to," says the girl, "religion is free."
"All right," says Billy, "I'll think it over."
The girls were giving us a game I thought, but we could stand it if they could. We chinned away there for hours until it began to grow late, when the girls concluded they would have to go. We were sorry to part from such elegant company but it was a case of have to.
After they had gone we wondered what their little game was, whether it was merely a case of flirtation or whether they were looking for converts to their religion. Billy put the question to me and I told him he could search me; I didn't know. Anyway, neither of us wanted to get married just then, so after the girls left us we troubled our heads no more about them.
We stopped in Ogden, Utah, a few days, and then beat our way to Virginia City, Nevada, where we did some laboring work at the old Bonanza mines. Neither of us were miners, although we had prospected some without results. We found the miners to be a good-hearted set of fellows and liked to be among them. Grub and booze could be had for the asking in Virginia City when we were broke, but handouts were more plentiful than work. Not many strangers wander to Virginia City these days, for the town is off the main line and no bums visit it. It is on the decay order. Its streets are in ruins, ditto the sidewalks and houses, and over the whole place there is a musty odor. It is away high up in the air about eight thousand feet above sea level and the wealth that once was brought up from several thousand feet below the surface amounted to billions, not millions of dollars. Today the big mill houses still stand in their usual place in good order but little mining is done there.
Some of the big plants, such as the Ophir, Savage, Norcross and Hale, Consolidated Virginia and Best & Belcher are still there, but where there were a thousand miners working before there are not ten working today. The place is strictly on the bum, just like me and my little pardner. Once there were forty or fifty thousand people in Virginia City, but today there are not five thousand, or anyways near that number and the ruins and scenes of desolation make a fellow feel sad. The old International Hotel where the nobs used to stop and spent a fortune every day, is now run by a Chinaman at a cheap rate. There is plenty of fine scenery around Virginia City, however, and plenty of Piute Indians, but the Piutes don't enhance the scenery any. They are a dirty crowd and sit around on decaying lumber piles and hillsides within the town, playing cards and other gambling games. The miners are mostly Cornishmen, Englishmen from Cornwall, England, and as Billy is English he took to them very readily.
Carson was our next stopping place and we found it to be a nice little town. It isn't far from Virginia City and is the capital of Nevada. It contains a few thousand people, lots of tall poplar trees which stand along the streets, sage-brush and alkali covered hills and plains, a large stone railroad roundhouse, the State Capitol building (which is enclosed in a park several acres in extent), a U. S. mint and that's about all. No work to speak of is going on around there and as Billy and me could not get anything to do we lived on hand-outs mostly. One evening we saw a hen wandering about rather aimlessly, so to put her out of misery we caught her, wrung her neck and took her out of town where we roasted her over a slow fire. We rubbed her while she was cooking with a little sage to make us think of Christmas and devoured her by starlight. Bill said she reminded him of home and felt kind of blue for a few moments. But he munched away and soon cheered up.