I was afraid to go out at night, so I stayed in the stable and helped Billy. It was a very large stable, holding over one hundred horses, and there was a good deal of work to do after dark.
At that time Virginia City was booming. Two or three men were killed every day. I had not driven here very long before I saw a man hanged at what they called the Golden Gate. I don’t remember what he had done, but I saw him hanged, anyway.
Those were rough, wild days, and this was one of the roughest spots in the savage West. I was glad enough to leave it. After a few months of staging here, I quit the job and returned home.
Spring at Rockwell’s stage station, Salt Lake County, Utah.
“All of us but the driver would walk ahead of the team.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE A TERRIBLE JOURNEY
When I returned from Nevada to Utah, I found that mother had moved to Cache Valley, so I went up there and stayed all winter with her. It proved to be a very sad winter for me, though it began very happily. I found here my first sweetheart, a beautiful girl, who made me love her very dearly by her sweet ways and her kind heart; for she helped my mother nurse me through a dangerous illness.
We had spent the time delightfully for about a month, when I got hurt. My horse, which I was riding one day very fast, struck some ice, slipped and fell, throwing me to the ground. My head struck the ice so hard that it nearly killed me. I was carried home; brain fever came on and I lay in bed till spring. To make matters worse, the wound in my head broke out again and I was delirious for part of the time. But this dear girl stayed by my bedside day after day, and helped me past death’s door. They thought I was dying one day, and she was driven half wild for fear I might go; but the next day I had rallied and from then on I recovered very fast.