COMSTOCK DISCOVERING SILVER.
In the evening of the day on which the grand discovery was made by O’Riley[O’Riley] and McLaughlin, H. T. P. Comstock made his appearance upon the scene.
“Old Pancake,” who was then looking after his Gold Hill mines, which were beginning to yield largely, had strolled northward up the mountain, toward evening, in search of a mustang pony that he had out prospecting for a living among the hills. He had found his pony, had mounted him, and with his long legs dragging the tops of the sage-brush, came riding up just as the lucky miners were making the last clean-up of their rockers for the day.
Comstock, who had a keen eye for all that was going on in the way of mining in any place he might visit, saw at a glance the unusual quantity of gold that was in sight.
When the gold caught his eye, he was off the back of his pony in an instant. He was soon down in the thick of it all—“hefting” and running his fingers through the gold, and picking into and probing the mass of strange-looking “stuff” exposed.
Conceiving at once that a wonderful discovery of some kind had been made, Old Pancake straightened himself up, as he arose from a critical examination of the black mass in the cut, wherein he had observed the glittering spangles of gold, and coolly proceeded to inform the astonished miners that they were working on ground that belonged to him.
He asserted that he had some time before taken up 160 acres of land at this point, for a ranche; also, that he owned the water they were using in mining, it being from the Caldwell spring, in what was afterwards known as Spanish Ravine.
Suspecting that they were working in a decomposed quartz vein, McLaughlin and O’Riley had written out and posted up a notice, calling for a claim of 300 feet for each and a third claim for the discovery; which extra claim they were entitled to under the mining laws.
Having soon ascertained all this from the men before him, Comstock would have “none of it.” He boisterously declared that they should not work there at all, unless they would agree to locate himself and his friend Manny (Emmanuel) Penrod in the claim. In case he and Penrod were given an interest, there should be no further trouble about the ground.