“Where they going?”
“Out to the diggin’s.”
“What line they in?”
“Newspaper fellows of some sort, I hear tell. Anyhow, they ask a heap of questions. That old chap in the white coat he’s been speech-makin’ all through Kansas. As I understand it, he an’ that young fellow are goin’ out to the mines to write up the country, so the people of the East’ll know what’s true an’ what ain’t.” And Tom the driver walked on into the hotel to wash and eat.
“Seems to me I’ve heard of Horace Greeley,” mused Wild Bill. “He’s quite a man.”
“Sure. He’s editor of the New York Tribune,” asserted a man who had not spoken before. “He’s the biggest man on the biggest paper in the States, and what he says will influence the people more than a stage-load of gold. Richardson’s a newspaper man, too; and another reporter, named Henry Villard, of Cincinnati, is out at the diggin’s now. But Greeley’s the biggest of the lot. They say only one printer in his office can read his writing; but the old man has come out here to get the truth, and if he tells the people to ‘go West’ they’ll go.”
“That,” quoth Wild Bill emphatically, “is the best thing that’s ever happened to this country. But it seems to me it’s a lot of trouble for a man to take. Do you reckon he’s going to start a paper out thar at Cherry Creek?”
“No, sir! They say Horace Greeley is wedded to two things: his New York Tribune and his old white coat.”
“Well, if he makes any speech here to-night I’m going to hear him,” said Wild Bill.