Westerners, as a rule, are free and generous, and seem to be just as ready to spend their money as they are to earn it.
Bootblacks, waiters, cooks, newsboys and all sorts of men are always ready and willing to take a chance in the games. Sometimes they win and sometimes they lose, but win or lose they are always ready to try their luck again.
Another gaming place I went into was situated on the first floor above the street in a building facing the railroad, and it, too, was palatial. On the ground floor was the saloon and above were the gambling rooms. A pretty tough crowd was in them at the time of my visit and the crowd was so dense it was rather difficult to move about. I was jostled considerably and found it difficult to get near the gaming tables. Craps and roulette were the main games here, too.
Fights and shooting scrapes are common in the gambling places, but the Reno officers are alert and fearless, and soon put obstreperous people where the dogs won't bite them.
Notwithstanding its gambling and recklessness, Reno is a good business town, and full of orderly, respectable people. There are many wholesale and retail establishments in the town; ice plants, machine shops, breweries, ore reduction works and lumber yards. Besides, it is a great cattle shipping center.
Many of the streets are broad and well-shaded, and the Truckee River, in which are any number of speckled beauties in the shape of mountain trout, flows through the town. Surrounding Reno are tall mountains which form a part of the Sierra Nevada range, but they seem bare and lonely.
I landed in Reno during the afternoon and steered straight for the Truckee River, as I needed a bath. I quickly espied a sequestered nook under a wagon-bridge on the outskirts of the town, and from the looks of things in the vicinity could tell that it was a hobo camping place. Old tin cans were strewn about, and down the bank near the water was a fireplace made of stones. One lone Wandering Willie was in camp and he greeted me as effusively as if I were a long-lost brother. A hobo can tell another hobo at a glance.
"Hello, pardner; how's tricks?" was the greeting of my fellow wayfarer.
"Fair to middlin'," responded I.
"Where you bound for?"