From Seven to Seventy: Memories of a Painter and a Yankee

by Edward Simmons

While we were eating and drinking, in came a man whose type I had been warned against in Cincinnati, where all the talk was of the West. He was a handsome, sharp, keen, inbred Yankee with a fur coat down to his heels, and kept swinging a bunch of mink skins while simulating drunkenness. I should have known that he was the three-card-monte man, as he fitted perfectly the description that had been given to me; but he was such an artist that, in my youthful ignorance, he convinced me that he was the real drunk that the three-card-monte man imitated. Swaggering around the room, he fished in his pocket for some money and, pulling out a roll of bills, threw it on the floor in disgust. Taking out a lot of gold, he indicated that it was the only money he cared to use.

“I’ve been in the land of Mormons,” he cried, producing a pack of cards, “and I learned a new game which I’ll show you. It’s called ‘Find the Mormon.’”

All the men, including a crowd of my acquaintances from the train, who had come in, crowded around him, myself in the front row. My friend, the capper, tried his hand and won several times, making a great haul. Then he urged me to bet and, upon my telling him I was broke, thrust a twenty-dollar bill into my hand. I bet it and won, paying back my debt, and then held out the other bill to the bartender to change so I could divide with my “pal.” He reached his head down below the bar and I suddenly felt the atmosphere change....

I turned to my friend. He was gently fingering a gun. With a cold, steely eye, the three-card-monte man stood, a pistol in his hand, with one end lying on the bar, casually pointing my way. In front of me the “barkeep” had risen with another. I looked behind for help, and all the men from the train had silently melted away. Leaving the twenty on the bar, I turned and walked slowly out of the place, not daring to increase my pace by one second until I reached the train.

I told my story to the conductor, and he said if I had carried off any winnings these men would have followed me to the ends of the earth and taken it from me. If I had been killed, they would have hitched my body to a horse and dragged it out into the sagebrush, leaving the coyotes to do the rest.

As an unpleasant sequel to this, I read in one of the first papers I picked up in San Francisco an account of two brothers from Vermont who got in with the same men. The first lost all of his money and borrowed all of his brother’s, finally getting into a row with the gamblers, and was shot dead. The other brother escaped and somehow got to the train, going on to Salt Lake City, where he telegraphed home for more money. Watching his time, he went back to the saloon, shot the “barkeep” and capper dead, and left the three-card-monte man dying on the floor.

I carried a pistol on this trip, but up to this time I had had no chance to use it. However, since I had looked down the barrels of several myself, I was beginning to feel very brave. That romantic idea of “avenging one’s honor or that of one’s women” had quite got into my blood. The train broke down at Winnemucca, in a country covered with six feet of snow. A crowd of us had been having a good time amid much good-natured talking and chaffing, when I saw one of the trainmen, evidently drunk, sitting beside a woman passenger, with his arms about her, kissing her violently. Her husband was standing beside the seat, protesting, with no effect. Instantly I was at the head of a crowd that took the offender by the neck and threw him off the train. Without my counting the cost, I became the hero of the hour. But all was not finished. Our intoxicated friend came around under the window and raged threateningly until there was nothing for me to do but go out to meet him. Drawing my pistol, I strode on to the platform. The minute he saw me his hand went to his pocket and drew out his gun, but I had him covered.

It was just a question of who dared to shoot first. My blood ran cold; but just at that moment four hands came round the corner of the car, two had him by the back of the neck and two had taken his gun away. Then slowly but surely he was withdrawn from view. The conductor asked me not to report the occurrence, as the man was a fireman, a family man, and all right when sober. I was so glad to get away with my life that I would never have told a soul. Furthermore, I sold my pistol as soon as I reached San Francisco, and have never carried another.

The rarest sight I ever saw was the sudden change from six feet of snow to the southern slope of the Sierras. With a plunge from winter into summer, the whole character of the landscape changed. The air was balmy, the sky was a soft blue, and looking like orchards of apple trees of enormous size were the live oaks that covered the slopes of those mighty mountain sides. But best of all, beside the tracks, and almost denying the month of February, was growing tender young green grass! I picked some of it, put it in my buttonhole, and cried. I had fallen in love with California.

After that every shanty station saw me out of the car, smelling the atmosphere and feasting my eyes on the beauty of this big, good-natured, sweet, mild country. At one of these mountain stops, feeling hungry, I bought a large slab of custard pie. Beside the tracks was a cage on wheels in which lay a big female grizzly whose owner was taking her to San Francisco to be sold. The man was nothing loath to explain his prowess in capturing such a fearsome beast, and we all crowded about, myself, of course, in the front row. Looking at us while talking and gesticulating, his hand went fairly well within the bars, whereupon the lazy grizzly, seemingly dozing, closed her mouth over his fingers and backed slowly to the rear of the cage, pulling his arm in with her. With that he whirled, fed his arm in between the bars and, quickly looking around, grabbed my pie and slapped the bear in the face with it. Of course it splashed, and she immediately let go of him to lick her chops, but his hand came out with the mark of every tooth upon its back. In spite of its lack of humor, I truly believe that this is the original custard-pie story.