Roughing It
Genuine towed back behind a quartz wagon. The next day I loaned the
animal to the Clerk of the House to go down to the Dana silver mine, six
miles, and _he_ walked back for exercise, and got the horse towed.
Everybody I loaned him to always walked back; they never could get
enough exercise any other way.
Still, I continued to loan him to anybody who was willing to borrow him,
my idea being to get him crippled, and throw him on the borrower’s
hands, or killed, and make the borrower pay for him. But somehow nothing
ever happened to him. He took chances that no other horse ever took and
survived, but he always came out safe. It was his daily habit to try
experiments that had always before been considered impossible, but he
always got through. Sometimes he miscalculated a little, and did not get
his rider through intact, but _he_ always got through himself. Of course
I had tried to sell him; but that was a stretch of simplicity which met
with little sympathy. The auctioneer stormed up and down the streets on
him for four days, dispersing the populace, interrupting business, and
destroying children, and never got a bid—at least never any but the
eighteen-dollar one he hired a notoriously substanceless bummer to make.
The people only smiled pleasantly, and restrained their desire to buy,
if they had any. Then the auctioneer brought in his bill, and I withdrew
the horse from the market. We tried to trade him off at private vendue
next, offering him at a sacrifice for second-hand tombstones, old iron,
temperance tracts—any kind of property. But holders were stiff, and we
retired from the market again. I never tried to ride the horse any more.
Walking was good enough exercise for a man like me, that had nothing the
matter with him except ruptures, internal injuries, and such things.
Finally I tried to _give_ him away. But it was a failure. Parties said
earthquakes were handy enough on the Pacific coast—they did not wish to
own one. As a last resort I offered him to the Governor for the use of
the “Brigade.” His face lit up eagerly at first, but toned down again,
and he said the thing would be too palpable.
Just then the livery stable man brought in his bill for six weeks’
keeping—stall-room for the horse, fifteen dollars; hay for the horse,
two hundred and fifty! The Genuine Mexican Plug had eaten a ton of the
article, and the man said he would have eaten a hundred if he had let
him.
I will remark here, in all seriousness, that the regular price of hay
during that year and a part of the next was really two hundred and fifty
dollars a ton. During a part of the previous year it had sold at five
hundred a ton, in _gold_, and during the winter before that there was
such scarcity of the article that in several instances small quantities
had brought eight hundred dollars a ton in coin! The consequence might
be guessed without my telling it: people turned their stock loose to
starve, and before the spring arrived Carson and Eagle valleys were
almost literally carpeted with their carcases! Any old settler there
will verify these statements.
I managed to pay the livery bill, and that same day I gave the Genuine
Mexican Plug to a passing Arkansas emigrant whom fortune delivered into
my hand. If this ever meets his eye, he will doubtless remember the
donation.
Now whoever has had the luck to ride a real Mexican plug will recognize
the animal depicted in this chapter, and hardly consider him
exaggerated—but the uninitiated will feel justified in regarding his
portrait as a fancy sketch, perhaps.
CHAPTER XXV.
Originally, Nevada was a part of Utah and was called Carson county; and
a pretty large county it was, too. Certain of its valleys produced no
end of hay, and this attracted small colonies of Mormon stock-raisers
and farmers to them. A few orthodox Americans straggled in from
California, but no love was lost between the two classes of colonists.
There was little or no friendly intercourse; each party staid to itself.
The Mormons were largely in the majority, and had the additional
advantage of being peculiarly under the protection of the Mormon
government of the Territory. Therefore they could afford to be distant,
and even peremptory toward their neighbors. One of the traditions of
Carson Valley illustrates the condition of things that prevailed at the
time I speak of. The hired girl of one of the American families was
Irish, and a Catholic; yet it was noted with surprise that she was the
only person outside of the Mormon ring who could get favors from the
Mormons. She asked kindnesses of them often, and always got them. It was
a mystery to everybody. But one day as she was passing out at the door,
a large bowie knife dropped from under her apron, and when her mistress
asked for an explanation she observed that she was going out to “borry a
wash-tub from the Mormons!”
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In 1858 silver lodes were discovered in “Carson County,” and then the
aspect of things changed. Californians began to flock in, and the
American element was soon in the majority. Allegiance to Brigham Young
and Utah was renounced, and a temporary territorial government for
“Washoe” was instituted by the citizens. Governor Roop was the first and
only chief magistrate of it. In due course of time Congress passed a
bill to organize “Nevada Territory,” and President Lincoln sent out
Governor Nye to supplant Roop.
At this time the population of the Territory was about twelve or fifteen
thousand, and rapidly increasing. Silver mines were being vigorously
developed and silver mills erected. Business of all kinds was active and
prosperous and growing more so day by day.
The people were glad to have a legitimately constituted government, but
did not particularly enjoy having strangers from distant States put in
authority over them—a sentiment that was natural enough. They thought
the officials should have been chosen from among themselves from among
prominent citizens who had earned a right to such promotion, and who
would be in sympathy with the populace and likewise thoroughly
acquainted with the needs of the Territory. They were right in viewing
the matter thus, without doubt. The new officers were “emigrants,” and
that was no title to anybody’s affection or admiration either.
The new government was received with considerable coolness. It was not
only a foreign intruder, but a poor one. It was not even worth
plucking—except by the smallest of small fry office-seekers and such.
Everybody knew that Congress had appropriated only twenty thousand
dollars a year in greenbacks for its support—about money enough to run a
quartz mill a month. And everybody knew, also, that the first year’s
money was still in Washington, and that the getting hold of it would be
a tedious and difficult process. Carson City was too wary and too wise
to open up a credit account with the imported bantling with anything
like indecent haste.
There is something solemnly funny about the struggles of a new-born
Territorial government to get a start in this world. Ours had a trying
time of it. The Organic Act and the “instructions” from the State
Department commanded that a legislature should be elected at such-and-
such a time, and its sittings inaugurated at such-and-such a date. It
was easy to get legislators, even at three dollars a day, although board
was four dollars and fifty cents, for distinction has its charm in
Nevada as well as elsewhere, and there were plenty of patriotic souls
out of employment; but to get a legislative hall for them to meet in was
another matter altogether. Carson blandly declined to give a room rent-
free, or let one to the government on credit.
But when Curry heard of the difficulty, he came forward, solitary and
alone, and shouldered the Ship of State over the bar and got her afloat
again. I refer to “Curry—_Old_ Curry—Old _Abe_ Curry.” But for him the
legislature would have been obliged to sit in the desert. He offered his
large stone building just outside the capital limits, rent-free, and it
was gladly accepted. Then he built a horse-railroad from town to the
capitol, and carried the legislators gratis.
He also furnished pine benches and chairs for the legislature, and
covered the floors with clean saw-dust by way of carpet and spittoon
combined. But for Curry the government would have died in its tender
infancy. A canvas partition to separate the Senate from the House of
Representatives was put up by the Secretary, at a cost of three dollars
and forty cents, but the United States declined to pay for it. Upon
being reminded that the “instructions” permitted the payment of a
liberal rent for a legislative hall, and that that money was saved to
the country by Mr. Curry’s generosity, the United States said that did
not alter the matter, and the three dollars and forty cents would be
subtracted from the Secretary’s eighteen hundred dollar salary—and it
was!
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The matter of printing was from the beginning an interesting feature of
the new government’s difficulties. The Secretary was sworn to obey his
volume of written “instructions,” and these commanded him to do two
certain things without fail, viz.:
1. Get the House and Senate journals printed; and, 2. For this work, pay
one dollar and fifty cents per “thousand” for composition, and one
dollar and fifty cents per “token” for press-work, in greenbacks.
It was easy to swear to do these two things, but it was entirely
impossible to do more than one of them. When greenbacks had gone down to
forty cents on the dollar, the prices regularly charged everybody by
printing establishments were one dollar and fifty cents per “thousand”
and one dollar and fifty cents per “token,” in _gold_. The
“instructions” commanded that the Secretary regard a paper dollar issued
by the government as equal to any other dollar issued by the government.
Hence the printing of the journals was discontinued. Then the United
States sternly rebuked the Secretary for disregarding the
“instructions,” and warned him to correct his ways. Wherefore he got
some printing done, forwarded the bill to Washington with full exhibits
of the high prices of things in the Territory, and called attention to a
printed market report wherein it would be observed that even hay was two
hundred and fifty dollars a ton. The United States responded by
subtracting the printing-bill from the Secretary’s suffering salary—and
moreover remarked with dense gravity that he would find nothing in his
“instructions” requiring him to purchase hay!
Nothing in this world is palled in such impenetrable obscurity as a U.S.
Treasury Comptroller’s understanding. The very fires of the hereafter
could get up nothing more than a fitful glimmer in it. In the days I
speak of he never could be made to comprehend why it was that twenty
thousand dollars would not go as far in Nevada, where all commodities
ranged at an enormous figure, as it would in the other Territories,
where exceeding cheapness was the rule. He was an officer who looked out
for the little expenses all the time. The Secretary of the Territory
kept his office in his bedroom, as I before remarked; and he charged the
United States no rent, although his “instructions” provided for that
item and he could have justly taken advantage of it (a thing which I
would have done with more than lightning promptness if I had been
Secretary myself). But the United States never applauded this devotion.
Indeed, I think my country was ashamed to have so improvident a person
in its employ.
Those “instructions” (we used to read a chapter from them every morning,
as intellectual gymnastics, and a couple of chapters in Sunday school
every Sabbath, for they treated of all subjects under the sun and had