“All right, George, then I’ll get out at once. You boys can wash up, if you will; and you’ll find a mattress and plenty of blankets in the back room. I’ll be back soon after eleven.”
With that, carrying a lantern in his hand, for it was getting dark, away he went; while the miner hurried off across lots for town; neither of them, apparently, thinking it anything out of the way to do a full day’s work and then, instead of taking his well-earned rest, to go off and do another half-day’s work in order to “hold the job” for a third man, to whom neither of them was under any obligation.
Nor was it anything out of the way; for the silver-miners of Colorado, whatever their faults, did in those days, and probably do still, exercise towards their fellows a practical charity which might well be counted to cover a multitude of sins.
“Look here, Phil!” exclaimed my companion, after we had washed and put away the dishes. “I’ll tell you what we’ll do. Let’s pitch in and put in Tom’s second window for him!”
“Good idea!” I cried. “We’ll do it! Let’s go out first, though, Joe, and take a look at old Snyder’s house, so that we may see what effect Tom expects to get.”
“Come on, then!”
The row of six little houses, of which Tom’s was the third, counting from the west, had been one of Yetmore’s speculations. They were situated on the southern outskirts of town, and were mostly occupied by miners working on the Pelican. Each house was an exact counterpart of every other, they having been built by contract all on one pattern. Each had a room in front and a room behind; one little brick chimney; a front door with two steps; and a window on the right-hand side of the door as you faced the house. All were painted the same color.
Yetmore having secured the land, had laid it out as “Yetmore’s Addition” to the town of Sulphide; had marked out streets and alleys, and had built the six houses as a starter, hoping thereby to draw people out there. But as yet his building-lots were a drug in the market: they were too far out; there being a vacant space of a quarter of a mile or thereabouts between them and the next nearest houses in town. The streets themselves were undistinguishable from the rest of the country, being merely marked out with stakes and having had no work whatever expended upon them.
The six houses, built about three hundred feet apart, all faced north—towards the town—and being so far apart and all so precisely alike, it was absolutely impossible for any one coming from town on a dark night to tell which house was which. Not even the tenants themselves, coming across the vacant lots after nightfall, could tell their own houses from those of their neighbors; and consequently it was a common event for one of the sleepy inmates, stirred out of bed by a knock at the door, to find a belated citizen outside inquiring whether this was his house or somebody else’s. Not infrequently they neglected to knock first, and walking straight in, found themselves, to their great embarrassment, in the wrong house.
Old man Snyder, a somewhat irritable old gentleman, having been thus disturbed two nights in succession, determined that he would no longer subject himself to the nuisance. He bought a single sash and inserted a second window on the other side of his door; a device which not only saved him from intrusion, but served as a guide to his neighbors in finding their own houses. It was also a very obvious improvement, and we did not wonder that Tom Connor had determined to follow his neighbor’s example.