XIV
DAVY SIGNS AS “EXTRA”
One more day in Denver and Auraria satisfied Dave. He had seen about all there was to see, and had loafed long enough. He wanted to go to work. However, many other people wanted to go to work, too. But work was scarce and money scarcer, and provisions were tremendously high. Travellers were constantly coming back from the mountains with tales of woe and with empty pockets and sore feet. The great editor, Horace Greeley, had advised people to plant crops; then he had continued on west, for California. But the people were bent on getting rich all at once by mining instead of waiting for crops. This made the situation bad, especially for a boy.
“You’d better take the stage back to-morrow, Dave,” counselled Mr. Baxter. “I’ll see you later.”
“Guess I will, then,” said Dave. “What will you do, though?” For he did not like to desert his partner.
“Oh,” laughed Mr. Baxter, “there’s a good living in hauling timber in from the foothills. Another fellow has offered to furnish the team and do the hauling if I’ll do the chopping. But that’s no life for a boy, Dave. You’ll learn more, freighting out of Leavenworth; and then you can go to school in the winter. See?”
That sounded sensible. Thus the Hee-Haw outfit had divided: Billy Cody and Hi and Jim and Left-over mining; Mr. Baxter cutting timber, and Davy freighting across the plains. Such was life in the busy West.
Davy engaged passage in the next morning’s Leavenworth & Pike’s Peak stage, east bound to the States. It had taken the Hee-Haw outfit forty days to come out; now Davy was going back in six. This was luxury. The coach held six passengers, with one on the seat. There was a school-teacher from Vermont, a merchant from Ohio, a banker from Chicago, an army officer from Fort Leavenworth, a man and wife from Boston, and Davy. All, except Davy, had been to the “diggin’s”—and the Ohio merchant let slip the fact that he had located a good claim there where he and his partner were washing out two hundred dollars a day! So he was returning for his family.
Yes, it was an interesting company; but as best of all, the driver was Hank Bassett!