It may be the proper thing here to give a short description of Billy.
Billy was a little fellow, about five foot two, and was a Britisher, a native of the city of York, in Yorkshire, after which New York is named. He was what you might call a strawberry blonde, for he had light hair and a moustache that was halfway between golden and red. It wasn't one of your straggly kind of moustaches with big hairs sticking out all over it, but small, neat and compact with just the cutest little turned up spit-curls at each end of it you ever saw. Maybe Billy wasn't proud of that moustache! He was dead stuck on it and was nearly always fussing with it and fondling it. Quite often he trimmed it with the aid of a little looking glass which he carried in his kit. Whenever the kit was unrolled Billy got the glass and admired himself with it. And yet I can't say the little cuss was vain, for whenever he met females he seemed indifferent to their charms and looked another way. His eyes were blue and his hands and feet small. Taken all together he wasn't a bad looking chap. Billy had some folks in the old country, a mother and two sisters but no father or brothers, and they lived in old York. Billy was born and raised in York and at a very early age was apprenticed to a harness-maker. His folks probably thought that the sooner he got out and rustled the better for himself and all concerned. Apprentices don't get much in old England, Billy told me, and have to serve long years at their trade before they can become a journeyman. Billy worked seven or eight years for his clothes and board and an occasional ha-'penny with which he bought a meat pie or lollipops.
One day the idea struck him that he wasn't getting rich very fast. He had been working a long time and hadn't a bean to show for it, so he began to grow dissatisfied. He had heard some tales of how easy it is to get rich in America and he thought that it might be a good thing if he went there. His mother and sisters didn't agree with his notions but Billy didn't seem to care for that. He just laid low for awhile and said nothing. But the more he thought things over the more dissatisfied he became and the more determined to flit. He slept in the back room of his boss's shop and had to arise early every morning to take down the shutters, sweep out, dust off, and get things in shape generally for business.
One day the boss came down and found the shutters still up, the place unswept and no Billy. The boss probably wondered where little Billy was but he had to take it out in wondering, for Billy had flown the coop and was over the hills and far away on his way to London. The boss went to Billy's folks and asked them if they knew where Billy was, but they told him he could search them. They didn't know anything about Billy. The boss probably did some pretty tall cussing just then and made up his mind that something would happen to Billy when he turned up, but he never did turn up and never will until he (Billy) gets rich. Then he'll go back to visit his folks and settle with his master, he told me. Billy says the boss don't owe him any money and he don't owe the boss any, so it's a standoff financially between them; but Billy owes him a few years of service which he says he is willing to put in if the boss can catch him. Billy says he had a hard time of it in London and found it difficult to secure passage to this country. Finally, after many heart-breaking experiences he secured a job as steward on an ocean liner by a fluke, merely because another chap who had previously been engaged failed to show up. Billy was in luck, he thought. He landed in New York with a little tip-money, for the steamship company would pay him no wages unless he made the round trip according to an agreement previously made in London and with this small sum of money he managed to live until he found work. He secured a job as dishwasher in a restaurant and received five dollars a week and his chuck as wages. Out of this big sum he paid room rent and managed to save a little money which he sent home to his mother. Compared with what he had been getting in the old country Billy considered that he was on the road to fortune and he felt elated. He held down his job for some months but got into a difficulty one day with his boss over something or other and got fired. He took his discharge much to heart and concluded to leave New York. He made his way to Philadelphia, about one hundred miles west, and there secured work in a small restaurant as a hashslinger. When he left this place because of a little argument with another waiter, he concluded to go out West where he was told the opportunities were great. I met him in a camp seated at a fire one evening surrounded by a lot of 'bos in Wyoming. He didn't look wealthy just then. We scraped up an acquaintance and I took to the young fellow at the first go-off as I saw he was not a professional vag, and we joined forces and have been together ever since.
Our trip from Carson in Nevada over the mountains into California was a delightful one. From Carson to Reno the scenery is no great shakes (although it was over hill and dale), for the hills looked lone and barren. The crops had just been gathered from these hills and dales. The leaves were turning color on the trees and it was the melancholy season of the year when nature looks blue. Me and Billy weren't melancholy, however, for we were good company to each other and never felt lonely. At Reno early one morning we crept into an unsealed boxcar and rode upward to the high Sierras. The scenery when day broke was so fine that we were enchanted. No barren mountains were here and no sage-brush covered plains, but well-timbered mountains whereon grew trees and bushes of all kinds. To us it seemed like wakening from autumn to spring. Billy and me couldn't understand this. A few miles away were leaves that were turning in their autumn tints whilst here everything was green and fresh like the dawning of life. It astonished us but made us feel good all over. We were both as happy and joyous as if we were millionaires. Here was a beautiful sheet of water with a big paper-mill near it; further along was a little railroad station entirely surrounded by hills. Nothing but lofty mountains towered all around us, with a canyon running through them, along which we rode. Ice-ponds were there with no ice in them just then, for it was the wrong season for ice, but numerous huge ice-houses were there, which showed us what the ponds were for. The iron horse wound around and around these lofty mountains and the keen, pure air made us feel as good as if we had been taking a nip. We sure felt gay and happy as larks. By-and-by we reached a place called Truckee which seemed to be quite a town. We hopped off to reconnoiter for we knew the freight train would be there some little time, and noticed that there was only one street in the town, which contained several stores, a butcher-shop or two, several restaurants, two hotels and about a dozen or more saloons. As we walked along the street we noticed a sign over a stairway leading into a cellar which read, "Benny's Gray Mule." We started to go down the steps but found that "Benny's Gray Mule" was shut up tight. Too bad! A saloon with such a romantic name as that ought to thrive. We went into another saloon and I ordered two beers and threw a dime upon the counter in payment. "Come again," said Mr. Barkeep, giving me an evil glance. I hesitated. "Another dime, pardner, all drinks are ten cents here," says barkeep. "All right," says I, "don't get huffy; I didn't know the price." I laid down another dime and this Mr. Barkeep swept into his till nonchalantly.
The place seemed tough and so did the barkeeper. Toward the rear of the large room was a lunch counter where a square meal could be had for two bits (25 cents), or coffee and hot cakes for fifteen cents; sandwiches for a dime each; a piece of pie and coffee, ten cents. In convenient places were gambling layouts where a fellow could shoot craps, play roulette or stud-horse poker. It was too early in the day for gambling but a few tough-looking nuts were there sitting around and waiting for a chance to try their luck. We saw all we wanted of this place and sloped. Truckee is the last big town in California going eastward, and it is a lumber camp, railroad division and icing station (refrigerator cars are iced there). A pretty rough old place it is. Me and Billy bought a couple of loaves of bread and some cheese and then made tracks for our box-car. We found it all right and climbed aboard. Our train had done a lot of switching at Truckee and a good many cars had been added to the train. Two big engines now were attached to the train instead of one and soon with a "toot toot" we were off. It was uphill all the way and the locomotives seemed to be having a hard time of it for their coughs were loud and deep and the hissing of steam incessant. To Billy and me the work was easy for all we had to do was to listen to the laboring engines and look out at the pretty scenery. The scenery was fine and no mistake, for the higher we went the prettier it got. Mountains we saw everywhere with spruce, fir, pine and cedar trees upon them. The views were ever changing but soon we came to a lot of snow-sheds that partly shut off the views. They must have been a hundred miles in length, for it took us an awful long time to get through them. The sheds were huge affairs of timber built over the track to keep off the snow in winter, and I felt like stopping and counting how many pieces of timber were in each shed. It must have taken a forest to build these sheds.
Along in the afternoon we began to get hungry, so we jumped off at a place called Dutch Flat, to see what we could scare up in the shape of a handout. The outlook didn't seem promising to us for all we could see of Dutch Flat was a lot of Chinese shacks strung along one side of the railroad track.
"Billy, I guess we're up against it here," I remarked; "I don't see any signs of a white man's house around. Where can we get anything to eat?"
"Let's try the Chinks; we've got to have something to eat, you know; we can't starve," ruefully responded Billy.
We were both pretty hungry by this time for the bracing mountain air had given us a hearty appetite.