CHAPTER XI.
OLD VIRGINIA AND HIS STORIES.
Old Virginia used to tell of a terrible fight that took place one evening in Gold Hill. The stakes, he said, were two short bits (twenty cents). The fight lasted half an hour and was most stubbornly contested on both sides. The contest was, as he would here explain, between his appetite and his “drinketite.” He held stakes, and for a good while was unable to decide which had won. At last, however, drinketite got his opponent down and kept him down so long that he decided in his favor, and all three struck out for the nearest saloon—appetite grumbling at him all the way about his decision.
As has been already mentioned, Old Virginia was a great hunter. When not engaged in mining or prospecting, he was off in the hills with his gun; most generally alone wandering and philosophizing through the wilderness as he viewed the stupendous works of nature. He used to tell a story of a feast he once had in the desert regions of the Humboldt, which was quite amusing. It ran as follows:
OLD VIRGINIA’S FISHER STORY.
“In ’53, six or eight of us were out on a huntin’ trip and camped on the Humboldt River, down to’ards the sink of the same.
“We’d been havin’ miserable luck. Couldn’t strike any game and had ’bout devoured what grub we’d carried out with us when we left Johntown. This being the case, we nat’rally had to keep stirrin’ about to try to skeer up somethin’ that would do to eat. So, one afternoon, when the pot was ’bout empty, all hands struck out to try for something in the way of game; some goin’ one way and some another.
“Old Captain Crooks and one or two more, went off down the river, while the rest of our fellers struck back from the stream and kind o’ promiscuously diversified themselves out across the sand-hills and sage-brush flats in search of sage-hen and rabbits; you see we couldn’t expect to find big game in that section—deer, and antelope, and them sort of fellers.
“I finally went off up the river alone. I jogged along up the stream, ’bout half a mile, and then laid down in a big bunch of weedy-lookin’ bushes. As I was reposin’ thar in the silence, gazin’ up at the deep blue sky, I fell to ruminatin’ on the unsartainty of all things here below—on what is above, and why we are here.
“I had jist arrived at the conclusion that man can no more help bein’ born than a blade of grass can stay in the ground when spring comes; and, as the blade of grass can’t help fadin’ and dyin’ when winter comes on, so man goes out of the world with about as little say in the matter as when he comes into it.
“All of this I was a-thinkin’ about as I lay thar lookin’ up[up] at the sky, half-way noticin’ a solitary raven as was a sailin about high above. I’d fixed it up that thar was a great head mind up in them blue heavens somewhar, as was a-seein’ to all matters for me and the grass, and that things was liable to work jist about as that mind willed, whether me and the grass made a fuss about it or not, when all at once I heerd a small racket, near me in some dry grass.