by Win Blevins
I called again and got the answer again. But my growing up wasn’t far enough along yet to understand that one.
After dark the second evening, when we started the crossing of the Forty Mile Desert, was where she went crazy.
It was a hard crossing, but not so big a job as in earlier years. Now everybody knew the how-to. We carried all the water we could, for there wasn’t a drop. Walked all night, rested, and walked all day until the heat got bad. Found some shade and rested there, some of us slept.
Sun Moon spent that midday rest back in front of her altar, doing what she called a puja, I guess. Anyhow, off on her own way.
All afternoon, too, she never walked near me, nor near anyone else. She carried an invisible wall around her, and I knew better than try to go through.
Along about dark we rested and ate in the shade of some rocks. The idea was to get on to Carson Lake that night sometime, lest people and mules alike die of thirst. If you walked during the cool night, you didn’t sweat out as much moisture.
She sat out by herself again, and after a while I couldn’t stand it no longer. I gathered myself up and walked right over to her.
I’d kind of gone crazy in my own way already. Had been walking along in fantasies, pictures of her and me doing this and that, and mostly you know what. Between the desert sun and your mind you can get really hot.
She looked up at me wild. But I’d made up my mind I would speak. Heckahoy, I’d already set myself to cross the Pacific Ocean, climb the Himalaya Mountains, and otherwise go to the uttermost ends of the Earth for her. If my courage could move me halfway around the world for her, it surely could move my tongue.
I felt right foolish—proposing marriage to a person who won’t look at you does that. I stopped my pacing, shoved my hands in my pockets, put on my finest casual slouch, and spoke. “Sun Moon, I love you. Will you …?”
But I never got the big word out. She keeled over, flopped onto her back, and her eyes rolled up in her head.
Sir Richard put his hand on her forehead and said, “Fever. High fever.”
He poured the contents of his own canteen onto her hair and her shirt—a generous act in that dry stretch. Then he made a place for her to lie unconscious in a wagon and commanded Muley to get going. When Muley started to give him a mulish look, Sir Richard said, “Her life is at stake, man.”
Sir Richard and I clambered on, and Muley made those mules cover ground.
At Carson Lake we dipped her right in the lake, and she stirred a little for the first time.
Sir Richard said it wasn’t my proposal, or anything else we done, that made her crazy. It was fever. And it was. But later I wondered. Sun Moon had broken her vow of chastity, and she took her religious vows seriously. I think a certain sort of person would rather have a fever, which blanks the mind, than remember what she had done.
We left a note for the others and hustled those mules on toward Carson City. Sun Moon dozed most of the way. Sometimes she thrashed her body and especially her head around in a way that scared me. She lost color. She stayed hot. Though I didn’t know much about fevers, I knew she was in trouble.
A man on the road told us the nearest trustworthy sawbones was up in Virginia City. He’d lived in Carson City, but caught a fever himself, gold fever. Sir Richard ordered Muley to turn those mules up Six-Mile Canyon, and up Sun Mountain we went. An hour afore sundown on a hot day we rolled into Virginia City, queen of the Comstock.
I’d never seen a mining camp before, and was caught off guard by the smell.
Heckahoy, I know smell isn’t the word. It’s a feeling, a sense, an atmosphere that fizzes into you from all directions at once. Something rotten. Whatever in human beings was appetite, was lust, was naked, raw, coarse, it was here. Money, booze, money, whores, money, gambling, money, violence. I felt a chill. At the same time I was intrigued. That atmosphere is dicey, it’s loony, but it’s kinda fun, too.
Then I looked at Sir Richard and saw his eyes wide, his lips aquiver, his face delighted. I started to think, Madness, and then corrected myself. My friend had told us he was a lover of cities—the crowds of Delhi, Cairo, Alexandria, the hubbub, the smells of food, dogs, human bodies. The corruptions—liquors, hashish, opium, fleshpots, all manner of deceptions. It was only natural his eyes should feast and his senses should crave. Natural, and dangerous.
Sun Moon was better for the moment, and we could scout the place. Muley kept asking where to go, and Sir Richard kept saying, “Onward, man, onward—let us see the town.” Muley did. The layout was sloped steep, just like any mountainside. Some streets ran horizontal, others sharp up and down. Muley turned down the mountain and sort of rolled on down. Before long I smelled it and knew what it was before I even saw it. Though I hadn’t seen a Chinatown, I recognized the aroma of ginger, sandalwood, angelica, and spices too mixed to sort out. Soon I could see it—an open-air market with chickens hanging by their feet and many vegetables and spices, yellow-skinned people milling about.
I looked back at Sun Moon, and was glad to see her awake. She looked around at the joss house. She stared at the queer writings of the Chinese on a window. (Next to that stuff it said in English, “Chinese Restaurant.”) She cocked her ear toward the singsong of the language of people in the streets. Did she want to visit Chinatown, I wondered, so she could see folks of her own color? Buy the spices she liked on food? Or did she want to stay as far as she could from the kind that kidnapped her? She lay back in the wagon, her face a mystery to me.
The streets of Chinatown were narrow, and right quick Muley couldn’t go forward. He spent some time getting into a side street and then cracked the blacksnake over the heads of the mules. They pulled uphill, and pulled, and pulled, taking us…
“To the hotel,” said Sir Richard.
“Ain’t no hotel,” says I.
“There is,” answered Sir Richard.
“Then they ain’t gonna let me and Sun Moon in it.”
I had figured without the imperial arrogance of an officer of Her Majesty’s Army.
“I shall require a suite of three connecting rooms, please,” he said to the clerk at the desk.
The ends of the fellow’s mustache twitched. I was standing to the rear, instructed to keep my eyes down.
The clerk flicked his eyes at me like a comment. Back to Sir Richard, he said, “You can pass through the walls easy enough, they’re muslin.”
Sir Richard swept on. “My servants will manage the baggage.” Which was Sir Richard’s war chest.
Now the clerk caught up with things. “How long will you be staying?”
“Perhaps a week, perhaps a month,” he said carelessly, like he wasn’t accustomed to answering to any of the clerk’s ilk.
“A week in advance then?”
Sir Richard handed over some gold coins and I knew we were in.
“One of my servants requires a physician.”
The clerk shut his eyelids halfway, a peculiar mannerism, and nodded. “I’ll send the sawbones around.”
We helped Sun Moon through the lobby up the stairs with our arms under her shoulders. She collapsed onto a bed like clothes with nothing inside. I stared at her fretfully, but Sir Richard said, “If my experience is any guide, the worst is past.”
I pushed through the muslin and saw all our rooms, which were identical, cramped and bare. To think I’d imagined polished mahogany tables, marble fireplaces, ornate candelabra, brocaded chairs, and canopied four-posters.
I looked out window. Wagons jammed the street so tight they couldn’t move. It was the busiest place you ever saw, full of people of every size, shape, language, and accent, all walking and talking peculiarly fast. There was money afoot, and every man meant to grab a share.
We had come to the home of the Comstock Lode, biggest silver strike that ever was. Men had come from the world over to feed at this trough, and some women. It was another part of Flabbergastonia. Despite my worry about Sun Moon, I was oddly happy.
Dr. Reagan strode
in and started asking questions without a fare-thee-well. “How many days?” He was the spiffiest-looking doctor you ever saw, slicked-back gray hair, trim goatee, black coat, and white spats.
We counted on our fingers, and Sir Richard said, “Four.”
“How high has her fever been?”
“High, I’d judge,” answered Sir Richard.
“Chills?”
“Yes.”
“Has she complained of aches in the muscles and joints?”
“No.”
“Eruptions on the skin?”
“No.”
All the while the doctor was getting out some instrument with tubes that stuck in his ears and came together in a sort of coin at the other end. He leaned over Sun Moon, half-conscious on the bed, and started to reach inside her shirt.
She clasped her elbows across her bosom, and I clasped my fingers around Dr. Reagan’s elbow.
The doctor jerked his arm away, stood back up, and aimed his peculiar instrument at me. “This is a stethoscope. By amplifying volume,” he said, in a tone like explaining two plus two to a baby, “it permits me to hear the heart and lungs.”
“That’s true,” said Sir Richard. “It’s a standard practice. He needs to place it here and here,” indicating several spots around his upper breastbone.
The doctor glared at me. “Now may I examine her in private?”
We went into the next room. “Would he have reached inside the shirt of a white woman in front of us?” I asked.
“He would have asked us to leave,” said Sir Richard.
After about five minutes the doctor stuck his head through the cloth and waved. We gathered around her. She was sleeping again.
“Probably she is beyond the gravest danger,” said the doctor. “I cannot say what this fever is, there are so many in the West, and they haven’t been studied. They come and go unpredictably. One I’ve treated seems to last about a week, another a month, and another returns over and over.”
He picked up his little bag. “The prognosis is guarded. She needs rest. From time to time she may feel very well, and it would be good for her to go out into the fresh air and sunshine then. The most important part is this. After her fever has subsided, you must wait a week before continuing your journey. A week, to make sure it doesn’t return.” He looked at Sir Richard significantly.
“We understand,” said Sir Richard.
“That will be three dollars. I’d like to see her again in a week. Do you know how to keep a fever down?”
“Cool the patient with water or ice,” said Sir Richard, handing the doctor coins.
“If she has a crisis meanwhile, summon me immediately.” Pushing the cloth of the wall aside, he turned back and repeated, “Immediately.” Then he was gone.
There’s some people, the way they act, it just makes me want to shake my head and say, “White people.”
Soon as the doctor left, I says to Sir Richard, “It could be a long time. You don’t have to wait, you know. Sun Moon and me will be OK.”
I’m embarrassed, now, about saying that. I didn’t have two bits, and we’d have been on the street without a thing to eat. Beyond that, I was half-afraid of being left alone with Sun Moon, half-afraid of being left alone in Washo, and half-afraid of my own quest, which adds up to one and a half and means swamped. Luckily, Sir Richard had a heart half as good as his brain and saved me from my own foolishness.
“I wouldn’t think of it, my dear boy. I am devoted to the two of you.” He smiled. “Besides, Virginia City looks … appetizing.”
I didn’t like to think what appetizing might mean to Sir Richard.
Came a soft rap on the door jamb. Sir Richard let in one of the cleaning women. “I have hired Bridget to sit with Sun Moon,” says Sir Richard to me. “Will you permit me to take you to supper?”
We went to a fancy place called Nell’s. I was worried. Heckahoy, I’d never eaten in a restaurant before, and I half figured the place wouldn’t serve Indians, if they took me for an Indian. On the other hand, Harold had given me a bunch of new duds. The town seemed full of swarthy-skinned men who weren’t treated like Indians. It was worth the chance.
A young man with a bush on his upper lip seemed to follow us through the streets, came right in after us, and took a table nearby. I was less worried about him than myself and bluffing through.
The waitress trotted over without a raised eyebrow, give her credit, and asked did we want to order. Sir Richard even let me go first. “Ham steak, mashed potatoes, green beans, coffee, and pie,” I says. Welcome change from Muley and Carlson’s cooking clear across the Great American Desert, fried bacon and beans three times a day. Sir Richard ordered eggs, sausages, and potatoes, which he claimed was the only edible American dish.
Next the waitress goes to Bush Lip at the nearby table, he looks around, and orders loud and clear, “Yes, Ma’am, one baked horned toad. Two broiled lizards on toast, with tarantula sauce. Stewed rattlesnake and poached scorpions. Very nice and well done, ever’ bit of it.” Then he surveyed the room with a toothsome grin, meeting everyone’s eyes but ours.
Sir Richard’s eyes was a-popping. “He’s pulling our leg,” I says. Sir Richard could be naive about some things. Bush Lip’s loudness gave him away clean.
He turned and looked at us at last, his eyes full of mischief and devilment. And that is how I have after since thought of him, a man who sees the deviltry in life and revels in it. “I take it you gentlemen are new to Washo?” he says.
“Isn’t everyone?” says Sir Richard.
“Captain Burton, if I’m not misinformed.”
Sir Richard hesitates, and then answers, “There is truth in desk clerks. Sometimes.”
Bush Lip stood up and handed Sir Richard a card. “I’m with the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise,” he says. “May I interview you? My newspaper is interested in Washo’s distinguished visitors.”
“Of which I am scarcely one. I’m simply a British traveler.”
I suppose lying comes naturally to spies after a while.
“Our readers would like your impression of Washo land,” said Bush Lip.
“Why don’t you join us?” says Sir Richard.
Bush Lip grabbed a chair like a hawk attacking a mouse. Before sitting, he stuck out a big paw to each of us. “Sam Clemens,” he says. “I write a little.”
Now you may object to me marching in Samuel Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, author of boys’ adventure books, here in a Virginia City restaurant. First Sir Richard Burton, then Brigham Young, and now Mark Twain? Preposterous, you’re muttering.
I understand. But all along here, on every page, I am telling you both fact and truth. You know how Sir Richard came to be in the West in 1862. It’s well-known that Brother Brigham was king bee in the Deseret hive at the time we’re speaking of. And Sam Clemens was right there in Virginia, writing little bits for that very newspaper. You can look it up in his book Roughing It. Washo was like that. If this story followed the Comstock Lode along very far, you’d be surprised at the famous folks as would appear. Jenny Lind, the Swedish nightingale, for instance, Drew Barrymore, and Oscar Wilde, the Irish poet and playwright.
Right now our dinners came. Sir Richard was amused, silently, that Sam’s order turned out to be six eggs, fried potatoes, and toast with butter. “They’re fresh out of scorpions today,” says Sam.
“Dinner costs a dollar,” I says to him. “How can laboring men afford that?”
“A dollar?” says Sam. “A dollar? Why, in Washo we are never short of dollars. Other places they breathe air, here we breathe lucre. In Washo a fellow sets out of a morning possessed of a hangover and a bottled start on his next hangover. He wanders out unsteadily across the mountainside, tips sideways, tumbles three or four hundred feet, and wakes up with his nose in a vein that assays a thousand dollars a ton. That’s how our fair-city was founded. The drunk, name of Old Virginny, properly James Finney, said when he fell, ‘I baptize this ground Virginia.’”
I was struck by the way his telling worked. He didn’t just say words, he made them bob and weave. It made you want to hear what he was going to say next.
We chatted along through dinner. Since Sir Richard and I had just come across Nevada Territory via the Humboldt and the Carson Rivers, both of those streams petering out in desert sinks, Sam favored us with an explanation of how it happens that all the rivers of Nevada run not into the sea but into the sand. He told it in the manner of an old mountaineer or prospector, for Sam was a first-class mimic:
“The way it came about was in this wise: The Almighty, at the time he was creatin’ and fashionin’ this here yearth, got along to this section late on Saturday evening. He had finished all the great lakes, like Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and them—had made the Ohio, Missouri, and Mississippi Rivers, and, as a sort of windup, was about to make a river that would be far ahead of anything he had done yet in that line. So he started in and traced out Humboldt River, and Truckee River, and Walker River, and Reese River, and all the other rivers, and he was leadin’ of them along, calkerlatin’ to bring ’em all together in one big boss river and then lead that off and let it empty into the Gulf of Mexico or the Gulf of California, as might be most convenient. But as he was bringin’ down and leadin’ along the several branches—the Truckee, Humboldt, Carson, Walker, and them—it came on dark and instead of trying to carry out the original plan, he just tucked the lower ends of the several streams into the ground, whar they have remained from that day to this.”
Sir Richard grinned like only a connoisseur of tale-telling can grin. He’d found a kindred spirit, though he couldn’t admit to being a storyteller himself. “Perhaps you can also explain to us, then, the meaning and origin of the term Washo Zephyr.”
Clemens put on a pooh-poohing look. “Why, as you might guess from the name, Suh, it is a sort of breeze that comes hereabouts, particularly in the spring and fall. Its remarkable aspect is that it comes from the direction of the Pacific Ocean”—he held one arm toward the west—“deposits its moisture in California, and arrives here in the spirit of a dry drunk—lots of devilment but nary a balming drop of rain. In a devilish spirit it delights in going up vigorously, down with a vengeance, then round and round in whirlwinds, and at last from every point of the compass at once.