by Tim Champlin
The valley along the head of the Carson River was filled with quartz mills and sawmills. The hammering of stamps, the hissing of steam, the whirling clouds of smoke from tall chimneys, and confused clamor of voices from crowds of workmen reminded him of some manufacturing city in the East.
A bit farther beyond, at Silver City, was more of the same. From the descent into the cañon through the Devil’s Gate, and up the grade to Gold Hill, stretched a nearly continuous line of mills, dumps, sluices, water wheels, frame shanties, and grog shops. Gold Hill had swelled to the size of a small city, and was now a continuation of Virginia City. The whole hill was riddled and honeycombed with shafts and tunnels, some apparently abandoned. Engine houses for hoisting were perched on points that appeared nearly inaccessible. Quartz mills of various sizes lined the side of the cañon. The main street was flanked by brick stores, hotels, express offices, saloons, and restaurants.
“Shall we stop in Gold Hill and see if Fossett is at the Clarion office?” Ross suggested, only half in jest. “He’s liable to be home nursing that wound I gave him. Who knows? It could be serious.”
Scrivener grunted. “If I see him, I’ll probably finish him off.” He flipped a latch and pushed back the top of the buggy so the afternoon sun shone fully on them.
“That feels good,” Ross said. He was in his shirt sleeves since his coat had been ruined the night before when he’d soaked it in beer and used it to help beat out the fire.
“I used to rattle around this camp in a buckboard, but finally decided, when I hit fifty, that I’d had enough of the elements. Invested in a buggy with a folding top and some leaf springs. The comforts of middle age.”
If the editor was getting soft, it wasn’t apparent to Ross.
They rode in silence for a few minutes while Ross surveyed more of the large and small mining operations that covered nearly every square yard of the mountainsides. Dozens of swarthy, bearded, dust-covered men were piercing the grim mountains, ripping them open, thrusting murderous holes through their crusty bodies, setting up engines to cut out their vital arteries, stamping and crushing up their disemboweled fragments, and holding fiendish revels amid the chaos of destruction. Their numbers and ruthless energy reminded him of nothing so much as swarms of termites on huge earthen mounds he’d seen on a Caribbean island. But the earth was fighting back, as if it had a vengeful mind against its human tormentors. The mighty mountains rose up to strike down these puny men with disease and death. Do your worst, it seemed to say. Dig, delve, pierce, and bore with your picks and shovels and machines to wring out a few drops of my precious blood. Hoard it, spend it, gamble for it, damn your souls for it. You rip and rave, but you are finite. Do what you will, but I will win out in the end. Sooner or later, death will strike you down and I’ll swallow your remains. From dust you came and to dust you will inevitably return. The earth alone endures.
“Gil! Gil!”
Scrivener’s voice cut into his deep reverie.
“Huh? Oh, sorry…what did you say?”
“Here we are.”
Ross looked up to see they were stopped in front of the tin-sided building housing the hoisting works of the Crown King Mine. Inside, they found a muscular man in overalls and wool shirt inspecting a frayed cable. Scrivener introduced Ross to Jacob Rrug, the foreman. Ross’s hand was enveloped and nearly crushed by the man’s grip.
“A mine inspector, is it? And you want to take a look down below?” The burly man stood with legs apart and hands on hips as he looked Ross up and down. “We inspect our own mine every day. We don’t need any government man to do it for us.”
Ross was instantly irritated, but patiently explained: “I’m only reporting a general idea of the potential of the minerals in Washoe so the government will have an idea of what it’s worth when statehood comes.”
“You can write in your report that the Crown King is doing as well as can be expected, what with all the competition around here.”
Ross shrugged. “There are plenty of other mines I can examine. They’ll be mentioned by name and I’m sure their stock will increase as a result of my published report.”
Krug seemed to deflate slightly. “We ain’t got nothing to hide, mind you. It’s just that we got miners down there working, and we can’t be responsible for any visitors. Could be dangerous, you know.”
“Quite all right, Mister Krug,” Ross said, climbing back into the buggy. Scrivener slapped the reins over the sorrel and they rolled away.
“Where to?” Scrivener inquired.
“It’s getting late in the day. Back to Virginia City. I’ve decided to check out of my hotel and move into your boarding house.”
“For this area, you can’t beat it. Nice and clean and quiet, away from all the ruckus of town. Widow lady runs it and charges twelve dollars a week, without board.”
“Better than the two dollars a night I’m paying now.”
“Tell you what…maybe you should cut your teeth on the Ophir Mine. It’s one of the biggest and best run operations on the Comstock, and the foreman, Michael Flannery, is a good friend of mine. We’ll go up there in the morning. Of course, there are any number of operations you’ll probably want to delve into while you’re here…the Consolidated Virginia close by the Ophir, the Belcher Mine, the Gould and Curry, Hale and Norcross, the Savage, the Yellow Jacket, and a few of the smaller ones, like the Lady Washington and the Trench. There are at least two dozen more. You can take your pick.”
Ross nodded.
“On the way back, there’s a nearby place in the desert I’d like to stop,” Scrivener said. “I’ve picked up a few artifacts from ancient Indians…shards of pottery, and that sort of thing.”
“Fine. Then we can eat supper. Somehow, lunch got away from us.”
A few minutes later Scrivener reined up in a barren, deserted stretch of desert. He tied his horse to a splinter of rock. Ross stepped down, glad to stretch his legs and breathe fresh air, since they were on the windward side of the smoke stacks.
Scrivener walked along, studying the rocky ground. “At this time of day, when the sun’s at a low angle, it’s easier to spot anything on the ground that’s not natural, something manmade.”
To Ross, it looked just like any other patch of desert terrain with almost no plants. The poisonous fall-out from the smoke stacks in the area had killed all the vegetation—no piñon, no juniper, no sage.
“Apparently, bighorn sheep lived in this region in centuries past. The ancient ones hunted them, along with pronghorn antelope and mule deer. Evidence indicates there must have been a decent growth of wheat grass, needle grass, buckwheat, rice grass, and rabbitbrush.” He squatted and moved his head from side to side, carefully scanning the rocky ground, then rose, moved a few more yards, and repeated the process.
Of all the hobbies a man like Martin Scrivener might have, hunting ancient artifacts was one that seemed completely at odds with his normal life. But that’s exactly why it made sense—a relaxing escape from the pressure of his job as editor of The Territorial Enterprise.
“Ahh!” Scrivener sprang forward and picked up a tiny stone. “Look!” He held out an arrowhead. “An Elko corner-notched projectile point…probably from a hunting spear, by the size of it.”
“Your really know your points.”
The editor smiled. “Been a passion of mine since I was a kid. This one is a rare beauty. Not even damaged. Made and used between One Thousand B.C. and Five Hundred A.D.” He rubbed the dirt from it. “Just think…this point probably brought down game, more than once, during a period when the Greek or the Roman civilizations dominated the known world. Those Mediterranean empires had no idea North America or its inhabitants even existed. Even though they might be broken, every spear point or arrowhead that was ever made is still in existence…somewhere. It just takes a little patience to find them. I like to scout this area shortly after a good rain like we had the other night. It tends to wash them out if they’ve been covered up over time.” He carefully wrappe
d the point in his handkerchief and put it in his jacket pocket. “I’m buying supper to celebrate,” Scrivener said as they climbed back into the buggy. “This is the most exciting find I’ve made in a long time. Remind me to show you my collection.”
They decided to eat at nearby Gold Hill, unhitching the sorrel and leaving him at the livery for water and grain. A leisurely, two-hour meal followed, with good conversation and good beer. When they finally walked out toward the livery stable, full darkness had fallen and the moon had not yet made an appearance.
Ross felt the bite of the night chill since he had no coat. He walked along, hands in pockets, shivering, when a sharp command burst out of the darkness.
“Throw up your hands!”
Ross felt the muzzle of a gun in his ribs. He brought his hands out of his pockets and put them over his head, the three double eagles from his right front pocket clutched tightly in his raised right hand.
Scrivener silently put up his hands as well.
The masked robber ordered them to turn their pockets inside out and empty everything into a sack he held. His total take was two pocket combs, two billfolds, three silver dollars, several pennies and dimes, a pad and pencil, and a handkerchief. The footpad stuffed the money into his pocket and apparently felt the spear point in the handkerchief. “What’s this? A piece of ore? Some rich specimen, I’ll wager. Where’d you get it?”
“No. It’s an arrowhead. I collect Indian arrowheads.”
“Shit!” The robber flung it down. “A few dollars worth of change. If you two ever come through here again without some money in your pockets, I’ll blast you.” He snorted in disgust, dumped their billfolds, combs, and other items on the ground, and faded away into the darkness.
Ross let out a deep breath and put the three $20 gold pieces back into his pocket. “Glad it was too dark for him to notice I had my fists balled up.”
“The divide between here and Virginia City is a favorite place for robberies of men afoot at night.” Scrivener was on his hands and knees to retrieve his spear point. “So many hold-ups, I don’t even hear about them all, so I just have to generalize in the paper. Boring and repetitive.”
“Probably not to the victims.”
The men came out into the welcome light of storefronts as they neared the livery.
“Next time I come through here after dark, I’ll be in a buggy or on a horse with my gun in hand,” Ross vowed.
“You know…that man’s voice sounded somehow familiar,” Ross said, scratching his chin. But the name and face kept sliding off the edge of his consciousness and would not come into focus. “Maybe it’ll come to me later.”
Chapter Five
Next morning Ross stood at the Ophir Mine and watched Scrivener’s buggy roll away.
“Here, put this on to keep your clothes clean,” said Michael Flannery, the foreman, handing him a pair of well-used canvas coveralls coated with smears of clay and dirt, stiffened with the drippings of candle wax and whitewash.
Flannery was a wiry, black-haired son of Erin with sharp eyes that seemed to take in everything. The foreman led him up a small hill to the mouth of a narrow shaft, handed him a thick candle, and lit it. “Hold this so the light reflects from the palm of your hand,” he said. “I’ll go down first.”
They backed into the opening and began descending a slightly canted ladder. The small opening and the sight of sky receded above them. The smoky wicks of their candles cast wavering light on the rough walls of the shaft. At the end of the ladder was a small spot of ground to stand on, similar to a landing. Then they started down another ladder. At the end of that one came another, and yet another, until Ross lost track of how many they’d descended. A large pipe descended parallel to the shaft. A ponderous pump somewhere was hoisting water from the depths of the mine.
Ross stepped down carefully, looking around him. It wasn’t light enough to see if silver ore lay in the loose dirt or rock of the narrow shaft.
Every few steps, Flannery paused and held his candle near the dripping rocks and banks of earth. “There…you see it? Horblendic, feldspathic…graniferous! There…and there! See? Look at that forty-five degree dip. Very rich.”
“Yes, I see.” Ross ducked under a wooden beam and an overhanging spur of rock. He twisted himself around corners and stubbed his toe on piles of ore heaped on landings as they moved down from one level to the next.
Finally they reached the bottom. The square-set timbering was an ingenious invention of a German immigrant; it allowed men to burrow more than a thousand feet into the earth. Timbers eighteen inches square interlocked with one another to form hollow cubes of any desired size, like small rooms.
“Make way, gents. Stand aside!” came a call from ahead in the tunnel. Miners were pushing ore-filled handcars along the tracks. The whole tunnel wasn’t over five feet wide. The tracks and cars took up three feet of that, the square-set timbers the rest. Ross and the foreman hugged a dark, wet wall as the ore cars rumbled past.
With Flannery leading the way, they explored the fifth level, and the sixth level. The foreman seemed in a hurry to rush him through for a cursory tour.
“Slow down,” Ross said, crouching by a ledge of rock. “I want to take a closer look.” He pulled the small, prospector’s hammer from his belt and chipped off a sample.
At one point, miners were pitching down loose earth and rocks to the next level to be hauled out by ore cars. Ross and the foreman climbed up a long ladder.
When they’d reached the relative safety of the upper level, Flannery turned to Ross. “Recently two miners were killed by a dog in the main shaft.”
“A dog?” He had visions of a wild, rabid dog loose in the tunnels.
“They were on their way up in a bucket. A dog tripped trying to run across the mouth of the shaft up top. Fell into the shaft and hit the men a hundred feet below, and down they all went another hundred and seventy-five feet to the bottom. Wasn’t much left of them.”
Flannery was apparently trying to throw a scare into an outsider. He didn’t know Ross had crawled through many mines more dangerous than this one.
“That’s about it,” the foreman said, “unless there’s something else you want to see. All these tunnels and shafts look about the same.”
“I’m ready to go. Maybe I can jot down a few figures on your production, number of miners employed, how many miles of tunnels you have, capital outlay on equipment…that sort of thing.”
“Sure.” Flannery pointed the way they’d come down. “We can climb back up the ladders, or be dragged up the incline by a steam engine, or be hoisted up a shaft in a wooden bucket by means of a hand winch. Your choice.”
Ross didn’t relish the long, weary climb up a series of steep ladders. “I’ll take the hand windlass,” he said, choosing the least strenuous way.
He dispensed with the bucket and put a foot into a loop of the dangling rope. At a bell signal from the foreman, someone at the top began to hoist Ross. He bobbed around, swinging freely and scraped against the walls of the shaft. Eventually he arrived at the top and stepped off onto the landing platform.
Flannery gave him the statistics he asked for. Ross returned the coveralls and candle, then hiked back into town.
The usual crowds milled around the streets, sidewalks, saloons, and shops. The place hummed like a hornet’s nest. Ross gazed in wonder at the handbills plastered and nailed to every square foot of space on store fronts, porch posts, fences, and walls. Cheaper than running ads in the paper, he thought. The bills were pushing everything—brandy, cigars, stomach bitters, cheap suits, the variety show at Maguire’s Opera House. Under a boardwalk awning, an organ grinder was cranking out a melody on a well-used, one-legged music box, while a red monkey, less than two feet tall, scampered around at the end of a ten-foot tether, importuning all passers-by with his tin cup. Snatching out the coins that clunked into the cup, he handed them to his master.
Ross paused for a moment to watch.
“Now, where, out
side of the Mediterranean, could a man see a sight like that?” a voice at his shoulder said.
Ross turned. “Sam Clemens.”
“Actually you wouldn’t see that sight in the Mediterranean at all,” Clemens went on, “because that’s a Red Uakari monkey. It’s found in Peru and Brazil.”
“Now, how in hell would you know that?”
Clemens shrugged. “I asked him.”
“The man or the monkey?”
Clemens chuckled.
“I saw you at the Enterprise fire the other night, but we haven’t been officially introduced. I’m Gilbert Ross, mine inspector and student of human nature.”
“Now, there’s a course you’ll never graduate from,” Clemens said, gripping his hand.
“Can I buy you a drink?” Ross asked.
“Sun’s not quite over the yardarm yet,” the curly-haired newsman replied. “Besides, I probably had more than my share last night. I’m just getting up and around, and was thinking of breakfast…or lunch.”
“So was I. Fancy some company?”
“Sure. This looks as good as any.”
They ducked into the nearby Howling Wilderness Saloon. A sign on the outside wall advertised a good square meal for 50¢.
Ross noticed the young reporter was looking a little rumpled—unshaven around the heavy reddish mustache that hid his mouth, white shirt wrinkled, thick, curly hair appearing to have been combed with his fingers.
“Lunch is on me,” Ross said. “I’m sixty dollars richer than I should be after a run-in with one of your hold-up men last night between here and Gold Hill.” He related the incident of holding up his hands, clutching the gold coins.
“By God, I’d write up a short piece about that, but I’m afraid it’d just alert the next robber to the trick.”
“Where you from, Sam?”
“Missouri. Been at the paper sixteen months. Couldn’t seem to make a living mining.”
“What made you come West?”
To Ross, the young man appeared to be on the underside of thirty.