The West from a car window

by Richard Harding Davis

THIRD CAVALRY TROOPERS—SEARCHING A SUSPECTED REVOLUTIONIST

And then the Mexican, who had expected to see them hung to a tree until they talked or died, as would have been done in his own free republic, would sigh bitterly, and trot off patiently and hopefully after more. Hope was especially invented for soldiers and fishermen. One thought of this when one saw the spirit of the men as they stole out at night, holding up their horses’ heads to make them step lightly, and dodging the lights of the occasional ranches, and startling some shepherd sleeping by the trail into the belief that a file of ghosts had passed by him in the mist. They were always sure that this time it meant something, and if the captain made a dash from the trail, and pounded with his fist on the door of a ranch where lights shone when lights should have been put out, the file of ghosts that had stretched back two hundred yards into the night in an instant became a close-encircling line of eager, open-eyed boys, with carbines free from the sling-belts, covering the windows and the grudgingly opened door. They never grew weary; they rode on many days from nine at night to five the next afternoon, with but three hours’ sleep. On one scouting expedition Tyler and myself rode one hundred and ten miles in thirty-three hours; the average, however, was from thirty to fifty miles a day; but the hot, tired eyes of the enlisted men kept wandering over the burning prairie as though looking for gold; and if on the ocean of cactus they saw a white object move, or a sombrero drop from sight, or a horse with a saddle on its back, they would pass the word forward on the instant, and wait breathlessly until the captain saw it too.

I asked some of them what they thought of when they were riding up to these wandering bands of revolutionists, and they told me that from the moment the captain had shouted “Howmp!” which is the only order he gives for any and every movement, they had made themselves corporals, had been awarded the medal of honor, and had spent the thirty thousand dollar reward for Garza’s capture. And so if any one is to take Garza, and the hunting of the Snark is to be long continued in Texas, I hope it will be G Troop, Third Cavalry, that brings the troublesome little wretch into camp; not because they have worked so much harder than the others, but because they had no tents, as did the others, and no tinned goods, and no pay for two months, and because they had such an abundance of enthusiasm and hope, and the good cheer that does not come from the commissariat department or the canteen.

III
AT A NEW MINING CAMP

III
AT A NEW MINING CAMP

MY only ideas of a new mining camp before I visited Creede were derived from an early and eager study of Bret Harte. Not that I expected to see one of his mining camps or his own people when I visited Creede, but the few ideas of miners and their ways and manners that I had were those which he had given me. I should have liked, although I did not expect it, to see the outcasts of Poker Flat before John Oakhurst, in his well-fitting frock-coat, had left the outfit, and Yuba Bill pulling up his horses in front of the Lone Star saloon, where Colonel Starbuckle, with one elbow resting on the bar, and with his high white hat tipped to one side, waited to do him honor. I do not know that Bret Harte ever said that Colonel Starbuckle had a white hat, but I always pictured him in it, and with a black stock. I wanted to hear people say, “Waal, stranger,” and to see auburn-haired giants in red shirts, with bags of gold-dust and nuggets of silver, and much should I have liked to meet Rose of Touloumme. But all that I found at Creede which reminded me of these miners and gamblers and the chivalric extravagant days of ’49 were a steel pan, like a frying-pan without a handle, which I recognized with a thrill as the pan for washing gold, and a pick in the corner of a cabin; and once when a man hailed me as “Pardner” on the mountain-side, and asked “What luck?” The men and the scenes in this new silver camp showed what might have existed in the more glorious sunshine of California, but they were dim and commonplace, and lacked the sharp, clear-cut personality of Bret Harte’s men and scenes. They were like the negative of a photograph which has been under-exposed, and which no amount of touching up will make clear. So I will not attempt to touch them up.

MINING CAMP ON THE RANGE ABOVE CREEDE