Roughing It
CHAPTER XXXIII.
I do not know how long I was in a state of forgetfulness, but it seemed
an age. A vague consciousness grew upon me by degrees, and then came a
gathering anguish of pain in my limbs and through all my body. I
shuddered. The thought flitted through my brain, “this is death—this is
the hereafter.”
Then came a white upheaval at my side, and a voice said, with
bitterness:
“Will some gentleman be so good as to kick me behind?”
It was Ballou—at least it was a towzled snow image in a sitting posture,
with Ballou’s voice.
I rose up, and there in the gray dawn, not fifteen steps from us, were
the frame buildings of a stage station, and under a shed stood our still
saddled and bridled horses!
An arched snow-drift broke up, now, and Ollendorff emerged from it, and
the three of us sat and stared at the houses without speaking a word. We
really had nothing to say. We were like the profane man who could not
“do the subject justice,” the whole situation was so painfully
ridiculous and humiliating that words were tame and we did not know
where to commence anyhow.
The joy in our hearts at our deliverance was poisoned; well-nigh
dissipated, indeed. We presently began to grow pettish by degrees, and
sullen; and then, angry at each other, angry at ourselves, angry at
everything in general, we moodily dusted the snow from our clothing and
in unsociable single file plowed our way to the horses, unsaddled them,
and sought shelter in the station.
I have scarcely exaggerated a detail of this curious and absurd
adventure. It occurred almost exactly as I have stated it. We actually
went into camp in a snow-drift in a desert, at midnight in a storm,
forlorn and hopeless, within fifteen steps of a comfortable inn.
For two hours we sat apart in the station and ruminated in disgust. The
mystery was gone, now, and it was plain enough why the horses had
deserted us. Without a doubt they were under that shed a quarter of a
minute after they had left us, and they must have overheard and enjoyed
all our confessions and lamentations.
After breakfast we felt better, and the zest of life soon came back. The
world looked bright again, and existence was as dear to us as ever.
Presently an uneasiness came over me—grew upon me—assailed me without
ceasing. Alas, my regeneration was not complete—I wanted to smoke! I
resisted with all my strength, but the flesh was weak. I wandered away
alone and wrestled with myself an hour. I recalled my promises of reform
and preached to myself persuasively, upbraidingly, exhaustively. But it
was all vain, I shortly found myself sneaking among the snow-drifts
hunting for my pipe. I discovered it after a considerable search, and
crept away to hide myself and enjoy it. I remained behind the barn a
good while, asking myself how I would feel if my braver, stronger, truer
comrades should catch me in my degradation. At last I lit the pipe, and
no human being can feel meaner and baser than I did then. I was ashamed
of being in my own pitiful company. Still dreading discovery, I felt
that perhaps the further side of the barn would be somewhat safer, and
so I turned the corner. As I turned the one corner, smoking, Ollendorff
turned the other with his bottle to his lips, and between us sat
unconscious Ballou deep in a game of “solitaire” with the old greasy
cards!
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Absurdity could go no farther. We shook hands and agreed to say no more
about “reform” and “examples to the rising generation.”
The station we were at was at the verge of the Twenty-six-Mile Desert.
If we had approached it half an hour earlier the night before, we must
have heard men shouting there and firing pistols; for they were
expecting some sheep drovers and their flocks and knew that they would
infallibly get lost and wander out of reach of help unless guided by
sounds.
While we remained at the station, three of the drovers arrived, nearly
exhausted with their wanderings, but two others of their party were
never heard of afterward.
We reached Carson in due time, and took a rest. This rest, together with
preparations for the journey to Esmeralda, kept us there a week, and the
delay gave us the opportunity to be present at the trial of the great
land-slide case of Hyde _vs_. Morgan—an episode which is famous in
Nevada to this day. After a word or two of necessary explanation, I will
set down the history of this singular affair just as it transpired.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
The mountains are very high and steep about Carson, Eagle and Washoe
Valleys—very high and very steep, and so when the snow gets to melting
off fast in the Spring and the warm surface-earth begins to moisten and
soften, the disastrous land-slides commence. The reader cannot know what
a land-slide is, unless he has lived in that country and seen the whole
side of a mountain taken off some fine morning and deposited down in the
valley, leaving a vast, treeless, unsightly scar upon the mountain’s
front to keep the circumstance fresh in his memory all the years that he
may go on living within seventy miles of that place.
General Buncombe was shipped out to Nevada in the invoice of Territorial
officers, to be United States Attorney. He considered himself a lawyer
of parts, and he very much wanted an opportunity to manifest it—partly
for the pure gratification of it and partly because his salary was
Territorially meagre (which is a strong expression). Now the older
citizens of a new territory look down upon the rest of the world with a
calm, benevolent compassion, as long as it keeps out of the way—when it
gets in the way they snub it. Sometimes this latter takes the shape of a
practical joke.
One morning Dick Hyde rode furiously up to General Buncombe’s door in
Carson city and rushed into his presence without stopping to tie his
horse. He seemed much excited. He told the General that he wanted him to
conduct a suit for him and would pay him five hundred dollars if he
achieved a victory. And then, with violent gestures and a world of
profanity, he poured out his grief. He said it was pretty well known
that for some years he had been farming (or ranching as the more
customary term is) in Washoe District, and making a successful thing of
it, and furthermore it was known that his ranch was situated just in the
edge of the valley, and that Tom Morgan owned a ranch immediately above
it on the mountain side.
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And now the trouble was, that one of those hated and dreaded land-slides
had come and slid Morgan’s ranch, fences, cabins, cattle, barns and
everything down on top of _his_ ranch and exactly covered up every
single vestige of his property, to a depth of about thirty-eight feet.
Morgan was in possession and refused to vacate the premises—said he was
occupying his own cabin and not interfering with anybody else’s—and said
the cabin was standing on the same dirt and same ranch it had always
stood on, and he would like to see anybody make him vacate.
“And when I reminded him,” said Hyde, weeping, “that it was on top of my
ranch and that he was trespassing, he had the infernal meanness to ask
me why didn’t I _stay_ on my ranch and hold possession when I see him a-
coming! Why didn’t I _stay_ on it, the blathering lunatic—by George,
when I heard that racket and looked up that hill it was just like the
whole world was a-ripping and a-tearing down that mountain
side—splinters, and cord-wood, thunder and lightning, hail and snow,
odds and ends of hay stacks, and awful clouds of dust!—trees going end
over end in the air, rocks as big as a house jumping ’bout a thousand
feet high and busting into ten million pieces, cattle turned inside out
and a-coming head on with their tails hanging out between their
teeth!—and in the midst of all that wrack and destruction sot that
cussed Morgan on his gate-post, a-wondering why _I_ didn’t _stay_ and
hold possession! Laws bless me, I just took one glimpse, General, and
lit out’n the county in three jumps exactly.
“But what grinds me is that that Morgan hangs on there and won’t move
off’n that ranch—says it’s his’n and he’s going to keep it—likes it
better’n he did when it was higher up the hill. Mad! Well, I’ve been so
mad for two days I couldn’t find my way to town—been wandering around in
the brush in a starving condition—got anything here to drink, General?
But I’m here _now_, and I’m a-going to law. You hear _me_!”
Never in all the world, perhaps, were a man’s feelings so outraged as
were the General’s. He said he had never heard of such high-handed
conduct in all his life as this Morgan’s. And he said there was no use
in going to law—Morgan had no shadow of right to remain where he
was—nobody in the wide world would uphold him in it, and no lawyer would
take his case and no judge listen to it. Hyde said that right there was
where he was mistaken—everybody in town sustained Morgan; Hal Brayton, a
very smart lawyer, had taken his case; the courts being in vacation, it
was to be tried before a referee, and ex-Governor Roop had already been
appointed to that office and would open his court in a large public hall
near the hotel at two that afternoon.
The General was amazed. He said he had suspected before that the people
of that Territory were fools, and now he knew it. But he said rest easy,
rest easy and collect the witnesses, for the victory was just as certain
as if the conflict were already over. Hyde wiped away his tears and
left.
At two in the afternoon referee Roop’s Court opened and Roop appeared
throned among his sheriffs, the witnesses, and spectators, and wearing
upon his face a solemnity so awe-inspiring that some of his fellow-
conspirators had misgivings that maybe he had not comprehended, after
all, that this was merely a joke. An unearthly stillness prevailed, for
at the slightest noise the judge uttered sternly the command:
“Order in the Court!”
And the sheriffs promptly echoed it. Presently the General elbowed his
way through the crowd of spectators, with his arms full of law-books,
and on his ears fell an order from the judge which was the first
respectful recognition of his high official dignity that had ever
saluted them, and it trickled pleasantly through his whole system:
“Way for the United States Attorney!”
The witnesses were called—legislators, high government officers,
ranchmen, miners, Indians, Chinamen, negroes. Three fourths of them were
called by the defendant Morgan, but no matter, their testimony
invariably went in favor of the plaintiff Hyde. Each new witness only
added new testimony to the absurdity of a man’s claiming to own another
man’s property because his farm had slid down on top of it. Then the
Morgan lawyers made their speeches, and seemed to make singularly weak
ones—they did really nothing to help the Morgan cause. And now the
General, with exultation in his face, got up and made an impassioned
effort; he pounded the table, he banged the law-books, he shouted, and
roared, and howled, he quoted from everything and everybody, poetry,
sarcasm, statistics, history, pathos, bathos, blasphemy, and wound up
with a grand war-whoop for free speech, freedom of the press, free
schools, the Glorious Bird of America and the principles of eternal
justice! [Applause.]
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When the General sat down, he did it with the conviction that if there
was anything in good strong testimony, a great speech and believing and
admiring countenances all around, Mr. Morgan’s case was killed. Ex-
Governor Roop leant his head upon his hand for some minutes, thinking,
and the still audience waited for his decision. Then he got up and stood
erect, with bended head, and thought again. Then he walked the floor
with long, deliberate strides, his chin in his hand, and still the