You see, it was Dry again.
All about lay the eternal waste of the desert and mountain slopes, barren and desolate, walled in that arid corner of the world.
THE WIFE—AT GOODSPRINGS
Not Hitherto Published — 1947
By John T. Bristow
To round out the foregoing story, I might say here that my wife was a guest for the week during my absence in Crescent, at Mrs. Yount’s hotel in Goodsprings. Sam Yount, the landlady’s husband, was leading merchant, postmaster, private banker—and miner. And he backed the hotel proposition too. The sleeping quarters of the hotel were a detached row of ground-floor rooms close by the main structure. It was before the building in Goodsprings of the Southern Nevada Hotel, said at the time to have been the most commodious hotel in the state. It was before the camp boasted a newspaper, even before the camp got electricity.
My wife was not versed in the ways of the West; and she had some misgivings about making this stop-over on the desert, particularly because of the lateness of our train, while on our way to visit my people in California. I had told her that of the many times I had been out there I had never seen a gun-toting man—and that there was a fixed impression that it would be about as much as a man’s life was worth to molest a woman.
This trip was made at a time following the great flood that had wiped out all the railroad bridges for many miles along the Meadow Valley Wash, in eastern Nevada. Owing to a slow track, our train, due in Jean in the forenoon, did not arrive until near midnight. There were no accommodations at Jean when I was last out there, and I had told Myrtle that, as we would now miss the stage, we might have to sit in the depot until morning, or walk ten miles across the desert to Goodsprings.
Frankly, she was not of a mind to do anything of the kind. She said we could remain on the train, go on to Los Angeles, and maybe stop at Goodsprings on our return trip—or we could, as far as she was concerned, pass it up altogether. I pointed out that we could hardly do this, with her trunk and all her fine clothes—clothes she didn’t need at all—checked through to Jean. And besides, we would be returning by way of San Francisco.
Remember, I had told her that I had never seen a gun toter in the West. Remember also that this was before Crescent. Then, imagine my surprise, and the wife’s renewed misgivings, when, on getting off at Jean, the first and only man to be seen had a murderous looking six-shooter strapped on him. And the wife had so little respect for my veracity as to tell me right out loud that in her best judgement I had purposely misrepresented matters to her.