I had all the business I could attend to, and was making money, and as fast as I could accumulate a little money I invested it in different parts of the city in good property.
In the month of May, 1889, two brothers named Clark, from Chicago, came to my hotel for the purpose of buying me out, but I told them my property was not for sale, as I was satisfied and liked the business and did not think I could find a place that would suit me better; but about the first of June they returned and made me an offer of twenty thousand dollars. I told them that I would not sell at any price, as I was satisfied and intended to remain there as long as I lived. On the morning of the sixth of June, 1889, my clerk came to my room and woke me up, saying that there was a fire in the northern part of town and that the wind was blowing strong from that direction. I dressed at once, and when I got out on the street I could see the fire about a half mile from my property, but had not the faintest idea that it would ever reach me, although the excitement was running high on the street. I returned to the hotel, washed, and was just eating my breakfast when one of the waiters came and told me that he could see the fire from the door. I told him he must be mistaken, but he went and looked again and came back and told me that the fire was getting very close. I ran to the door and saw that it was then within one block of my hotel. Now I saw that my property was sure to be burnt, so I sent my clerk up stairs to see whether or not there were any lodgers in the rooms, and I made a rush for the safe and only just had time to get it unlocked and the contents out when the fire was on us.
That fire wiped me out slick and clean as I did not have a dollar's worth of insurance on the property. Any business man would have known enough at least to have a few thousand dollars of insurance on that amount of property, but I had never seen a fire before in a city and thought it folly to insure, and did not find out my mistake until it was too late. During the next six months I had a number of offers of money to build a brick hotel on my lots, but I could not think for a moment of borrowing the money for that purpose.
I remained in Seattle for nine months, during which time there was a great decrease in the value of property, and I sold my lots where my hotel had stood at a very reduced price. I tried various speculations on a small scale during this time, but with very poor success.
By this time I had spent and lost in speculation about all the money that I had realized for my property, and the outside property that I owned I could not sell at any price. Since that time I have wandered around from pillar to post, catching a little job here and there, and at this writing I am temporarily located at Moscow, Idaho, which is situated in the heart of the famous Palouse country, one of the greatest countries on the globe for the growing of wheat, oats, barley, rye, flax and vegetables of all kinds.
And now kind reader, begging your pardon, I would say that I have been two years making up my mind to allow my life to go down in history to be read by the public, as notoriety is something I never cared for. One reason, perhaps, is that I was brought up by noble and generous-hearted Kit Carson, who very much disliked notoriety, and I do not believe that there ever was a son who thought more of his father than I did of that high-minded and excellent man.
I have had many opportunities to have the history of my life written up, but would never consent to anything of the kind. Finally, however, I decided to write it myself, and while it is written in very rude and unpolished language, by an old frontiersman who never went to school a day in his life, all he knows he picked up himself, yet it is the true history of the most striking events, trials, troubles, tribulations, hardships, pleasures and satisfactions of a long life of strange adventure among wild scenes and wilder people, and in telling the story I hope I have interested the reader.
It is not strange that in the wilderness, where all nature sings, from the fairy tinkle of the falling snow to the boom of a storm- swept canyon; and from the warbling of the birds to the roaring growl of mad grizzlies; and from the whispers of lost breezes to thunder of thousands of stampeding hoofs—it is not strange that among all that, even a worn and illiterate old hunter should try to sing, if nothing more than the same sort of a song that the dying sachem sings. So I beg you bear with
THE OLD SCOUT'S LAMENT.
Come all of you, my brother scouts,
And join me in my song;
Come, let us sing together,
Though the shadows fall so long.