West of Washoe

by Tim Champlin

  “Tolerable. Stayed at the International.”

  “High-toned lodgings.”

  “Had to move. My pocketbook couldn’t stand it. I’m at the Algonquin now.”

  The editor nodded. “Not a bad place. But, if you’ll be here a couple of weeks, I recommend my boarding house.”

  “Show me the way,” Ross said. “Guess I just assumed you had a house here.”

  Scrivener guided him into his own office since the pressmen were making too much noise for conversation. “No. Thought about it,” he said, gesturing for Ross to take a chair. “Virginia City was more than my wife could put up with…wide open, day and night, shootings, stabbings, me coming home from work about the time she was getting up.” He shrugged. “Bought a little place for her and the daughter over in Sacramento. I take the stage over every chance I get…maybe once a month or so.” Placing a lumpy paperweight of silver ore on his stack of papers, he smiled. “The arrangement seems to work,” he said as if he had to further explain his domestic situation. “Fact is, I think maybe she was tired of me, rather than of all the constant hullabaloo in this mining town.”

  Ross thought it better not to comment.

  “Oh, by the way,” Scrivener said, putting on his glasses and locating two sheets of paper. He handed them across the desk. “Here’s something for you to read. It’s the account of your stage trip from Placerville last night. See if it comes close to what happened. If you told it to me accurately, it needs no embellishments.”

  At first glance, Ross thought the editor’s desk a cluttered chaos. But all stacks and sheaves of papers and advertising handbills were carefully arranged in some sort of order. Scrivener’s handwriting was neat and legible, although written with a dashing flair, as if the writer were enjoying himself. He quietly scanned the piece.

  “Accurate to the last detail, and you’ve even dramatized it by shaping up my English when quoting me.”

  “I’m glad you approve because it’s being set in type right now for tomorrow’s edition. I got the jump on The Gold Hill Clarion.”

  “That bit you added about me being here to survey and report on the mineral resources might help me get a foot in the door at some of the mines.”

  “No doubt.”

  “These people know and trust you.”

  He nodded. “Some of these mine owners are closemouthed about what they have or haven’t discovered,” Scrivener said, leaning back in his chair and looking over his spectacles. “Word always leaks out from the miners themselves if there’s a new vein, or if they’ve broken through the face of a drift and hot water’s flooding in. News like that can’t be kept secret. But in that short interim of a day…or even a few hours before the shift changes…thousands of dollars in stock stand to be gained or lost, depending on who has the earliest inside information. So don’t expect to be let in on anything new. The superintendents or foremen will show you what they want you to see.”

  “Fine. The daily fluctuations are not what I’m after, anyway. I want the long-term, general picture.”

  “I forgot, you’re not here for your own financial gain or to speculate in hot stock.” The editor smiled, giving the impression he really knew better.

  “It actually bores me,” Ross insisted. “If I owned a fistful of stock in the richest mine on the Comstock, I’d throw it in a drawer and probably forget where I put it.”

  “You’re one of those who could go sound asleep in a raucous stockholders’ meeting.”

  “That’s about it. I have to be out in the field doing something physical in order to take any interest, or get any satisfaction from a job. Fortunes won and lost on paper are not as exciting as reading a good adventure novel.”

  “You’ll be in the field tomorrow. We’ll take my buggy and drive down to Gold Hill and Silver City toward Carson. Unless you have a preference, we can start with the Crown Point on the divide between here and Gold Hill.”

  “Good enough.”

  Scrivener stood up and stretched, covering a yawn. “I’m going to make an early night of it. Be in bed by two.”

  “They won’t be going home early?” Ross jerked a thumb toward the men working in the next room.

  “Naw. My associate editor, Silas Bonner, will keep ’em at it till the paper’s put to bed. Most of the younger men are single and like the night life. But…” He paused. “I’d fire anyone who leaves without finishing.” Then he grinned. “I also give them an added incentive to stay here and get the job done night after night. The Enterprise furnishes up to ten gallons of beer from Chauncey’s Saloon next door.”

  “Ten gallons per day?”

  Scrivener nodded. “Gets pretty hot and dry in that composing room on summer nights. It also helps fire the imaginations of some of my reporters when they’re writing up their articles. Makes for some very creative prose.”

  Ross whistled softly. “A lot of men I know would like to have a job with those fringe benefits.”

  “Helps make up for the marginal pay. Keeps some of the more wild-eyed ones from plunging over their heads into stocks, or quitting and going off prospecting themselves…especially now that all the good ore deposits are owned by big companies. No more surface placer mining where a man can sluice out the gravel and come up with anything more than a few grains of gold. The silver ore is hundreds of feet underground. Hard-rock miners make a better salary than my men, but it’s tough, dangerous work, and they generally don’t live as long.”

  The two men walked into the large room with the high ceiling. One of the men in an ink-stained apron came over to Scrivener, holding a wet proof sheet, and said something that Ross didn’t catch. The editor glanced at the sheet.

  “Don’t rewrite the head. Reduce the type to make it fit,” the editor said.

  The man nodded, and moved away.

  “I’ll look for you in the morning,” Ross said, reaching for the door handle. The twilight had deepened to dusk and C Street was lighted by the glow from several dozen stores and saloons.

  Silhouetted against the lamplight of many businesses, a lone horseman came galloping down the street, weaving in and around the wagon and horse traffic. The rider held a flaming torch in one hand, wind whipping the flames over his shoulder.

  Ross opened the door and stepped out onto the boardwalk. He heard thrumming hoofs just as the horse veered to his side of the street, nearly galloping up onto the sidewalk. Ross instinctively dived sideways. The rider’s extended arm came up, flinging the blazing torch end over end. It crashed through one of the tall front windows of the newspaper office, and the interior of the room burst into flame.

  Ross ducked flying particles of glass, then sprang into the street, yanking his Colt. Thumbing back the hammer, he brought up the weapon and held his breath. Steady…don’t hit anyone else, he thought. Horse and rider were receding down the darkened street when Ross fired. The Navy Colt bucked and roared, a yellow tongue of flame darting from the long barrel. He fired again, and saw the rider reel in the saddle just before a bend in the street screened him from view.

  “Somebody get the sheriff!” he yelled, holstering his gun and dashing back inside where the entire staff was fighting the fire. The torch had struck a container of type cleaner and the flames were licking up the wall.

  “Fossett!” Scrivener hissed as he grabbed up a cuspidor and flung its contents on the blaze. One of the compositors had been splashed with the burning liquid and his co-workers were rolling him in a coat to smother the flames.

  Ross snatched up a heavy container of sand near the door and, face averted from the heat, threw it at the base of the blaze near the wall. The flames instantly dropped, but the fire still burned. Thank God the inside of the wall was rough brick with no paneling or wallpaper.

  A fire bell clanged somewhere outside, apparently summoning a volunteer fire company.

  One of the men ran to the edge of the flames, kicking bales of paper out of the way. Another grabbed up two small buckets of beer and flung them on the burning wooden f
loor.

  Ross stripped off his coat, doused it with beer, and began beating the edges of the spreading flames.

  It was less than ten minutes, but it seemed like a stretch in purgatory before the clanging of an approaching bell signaled the arrival of the horse-drawn fire wagon. The volunteers had drilled themselves well and took over with no confusion or wasted motion. Two men grabbed the pump handles on each side of the tank while two others unreeled the hose and another secured the big draft horses. Within a minute, the brawny men had the hose spraying the fire through the broken front window. As they beat back the blaze, they advanced, stepping through the window frame, playing the stream of water at the base of the fire, then on nearby flammable furniture.

  Within minutes, the blaze was out. The firemen continued to wet down the steaming wall and floor. The room was filled with smoke and steam, and a nauseating charred odor.

  The newspaper workers had retreated out onto the sidewalk, coughing to clear their lungs of the smoke that continued to billow out the open door and the shattered window frame. A quick survey showed no one injured except the burned compositor. A crowd had quickly gathered and blocked the street around the fire engine, a buzz of conversation filling the air. Ross and Scrivener stood to one side, watching the efficient volunteer fire company work, making sure no embers remained to re-ignite.

  “I told you Fossett wouldn’t have the guts to challenge me to a duel,” Scrivener said, wiping his sweaty face with a handkerchief, leaving a streak of soot on his cheek.

  Ross took a deep breath of clean air. “You had him pegged. Low-down coward to torch a man’s business, not caring who he might burn up in the process.”

  “And he thinks he got away with it, because I can’t prove he did it.”

  “Don’t know if he personally slung the torch, but I’m almost sure I wounded that rider.”

  Scrivener turned to him with a slow smile. “So maybe we do have proof…if we can find him.”

  Ross shook his head. “Unless it’s Fossett himself, it’ll be hard to say. Too many men shot in this town every day to make a wound anything unusual. And my Thirty-Six-caliber Navy lead ball is common enough. But we can get the law to investigate.”

  “What law?” the editor countered. “Like the stock market, this place pretty much regulates itself. There’s supposed to be a sheriff over in Carson City, but don’t know that anybody sees much of him. The police force here is a joke.”

  Ross gestured at the damaged office. “Did he put you out of business?”

  “Hell no! The press is OK. Looks like we saved the ink and there’s still plenty of dry paper. It’d take more than that to keep The Territorial Enterprise from publishing.”

  Scrivener stepped up to a muscular, red-faced man who was supervising the firefighting effort. “Murph, I want to thank you and the boys for a helluva good job saving the paper.”

  “That’s what we train for,” the big man said, pulling off his gloves. “The way the wind’s blowing tonight, the whole town could’ve gone up, if this’d gotten away from us. We’ll stand by for a couple hours to make sure it’s completely out.”

  The crowd in the street was beginning to disperse now that the excitement had died down.

  “Let’s get this place cleaned up, men,” Scrivener said, stepping back inside the office. “We’ll have that window boarded up tomorrow.”

  “I’ll stay and help,” Ross said.

  Scrivener surveyed the damage, hands on hips. “How badly is Bill burned?”

  Two men were gently removing the tattered remains of Bill’s charred shirt. The injured man was flinching as the cloth adhered to the raw spots.

  “Dunno yet.”

  Scrivener went into his office and jerked open a desk drawer. “Here, slather some of this on him and go get the doctor. You know where he lives? Roust him out of bed if you have to.” He handed over a tin of Mabrey’s Analgesic Balm.

  The editor looked at the others who appeared to be in shock. “Somebody open that back door and let’s get a cross draft in here to clear out some of this smoke. Break out the brooms.” He turned to a curly-haired, mustached young man standing nearby. “Clemens, you have experience as a typesetter. Drop whatever you’re working on and jump in there and take Bill’s place for now. First, check that case and see how much of the lead type was melted.” To his young assistant editor he barked: “Kill the lead story. I’m writing a new one. Banner head.” He stepped inside his office and snatched a pad off the desk, pulled a pencil from his pocket, and slipped on his glasses.

  Ross watched over his shoulder as he wrote in block letters: ENTERPRISE ATTACKED. Beneath that, in smaller letters: Cowardly Enemy Torches Newspaper Office. Farther down, in normal cursive, he wrote: Attacker Wounded And Will Be Apprehended Soon. He pulled out his desk chair and sat down, finishing the article quickly.

  “You going to accuse Fossett in print?” Ross asked.

  Without looking up, Scrivener replied: “Not using his name, but I’m leaving no doubt I know who did it, and why. For anyone who reads this, it won’t be hard to guess.”

  “Don’t want to tell you your business, but aren’t you adding fuel to the fire? Maybe we should wait and see if we can find that wounded man first.”

  Scrivener looked up. “You’d never make it in the newspaper business. This is the kind of thing that sells papers. And I’m not letting that coward off the hook for a minute.”

  Ross shrugged. “Suit yourself.” He grabbed a push broom standing against the wall and began sweeping shattered glass and blackened water toward the open front door.

  Scrivener finished, scanned the piece, and handed it to Sam Clemens. “You and Baxter start setting that.”

  “Your men didn’t panic,” Ross said when Scrivener came to stand beside him near the front door. “And they did a great job keeping that fire under control until the firemen got here.”

  “I might increase their beer ration,” Scrivener said under his breath.

  “For morale, or to put out fires?”

  “Both. They can drink it for morale, and run it through to put out any fires.”

  Chapter Four

  It was nearly noon the next day before Martin Scrivener and Gil Ross rolled south out of town in the editor’s buggy.

  “By God, all of Washoe will know about Fossett’s attack,” Scrivener said, snapping the reins on the back of the sorrel, urging him to a trot.

  “Guess I’ll really have to watch your back now,” Ross said, yawning and stretching. He’d been in town less than thirty-two hours but it felt more like a week.

  “That sneaky, torch-throwing s.o.b. slowed us down. The morning edition hit the streets two hours late.”

  Ross wondered if all editors took this much pride in their jobs. If he worked at a newspaper, it’d have to be an evening publication; he couldn’t stand to work all night and sleep all day. In spite of Scrivener’s resolve to make an early night of it, neither man had departed the damaged Enterprise office until nearly 5:00 a.m. The editor had left two men on guard to be sure the fire-throwing attacker or someone else didn’t come back to finish the job. Ross thought a twenty-four-hour guard would have to be posted to prevent any further destruction. Scrivener was on the defensive now. Ross had heard of these battles between editors before, and had assumed they were all contrived to keep up interest and circulation in both papers. He was convinced that wasn’t the case here.

  The wind was light out of the southwest today, making for a beautiful, warm spring day. He settled back to enjoy the ride.

  “As long as we’re running this far behind in our schedule,” Scrivener said, “I thought we’d shoot on down to Carson City and leave word at the sheriff’s office…for whatever good that’ll do. On the way back, you can take a look at the mines and decide where you want to go later.”

  “Good idea. I didn’t see much the other morning from the stage. It was barely daylight and I was tired.”

  Shortly after, as they drove up the saddle that
divided Virginia City from Gold Hill, Scrivener pointed. “There’s the Crown King. We’ll catch it on the way back.”

  “A big operation,” Ross said, noting the hoisting works, the big buildings, the smoke billowing from a tall stack.

  “Not the largest, by any means,” the editor said.

  By 2:00 p.m. they’d reached Carson City and left a report of the fiery raid with the sheriff’s office. As expected, the lawman was not there, and the deputy, sunning himself on the porch, could hardly be stirred to take down the details.

  “That report’s probably already in the files…or the stove,” Scrivener said as he guided his sorrel back the way they’d come.

  “I hear tell there’s to be a branch mint in Carson to avoid having to freight all that bullion over the Sierras to the San Francisco mint,” Ross said.

  “There’s some movement in that direction. A fella bought some land and is petitioning Congress to authorize and fund it.”

  “Sounds like a good idea to me,” Ross said. “The sooner, the better. That would save a lot of money and prevent a lot of robberies.”

  The editor nodded. “It’ll be built about the time the last glacier melts in Alaska.”

  “A bit pessimistic.”

  “The usual political wrangling. Some for, some against. Everyone has a selfish motive. Of course, there’s a war on and Congress doesn’t want to fund anything they don’t have to.”

  “But a mint would be to the government’s advantage. More specie in circulation.”

  “I know. Maybe they’re waiting until Nevada is admitted to the Union. I think it’ll eventually happen as long as the mines here are producing. But I’m not holding my breath waiting to spend the first coins it mints.”

  Ross looked ahead, thinking he’d prepared himself for the changes between Carson City and Virginia City. But he was overwhelmed by what he saw. “Is this Empire City?”

  “Yep.”

  “This used to be sagebrush, inhabited by an old man named Dutch Nick. Just look at it now.”