Roughing It
before anybody ever got a chance to strike a blow. He was always for
peace, and he would have peace—he could not stand disturbances. Pard, he
was a great loss to this town. It would please the boys if you could
chip in something like that and do him justice. Here once when the Micks
got to throwing stones through the Methodis’ Sunday school windows, Buck
Fanshaw, all of his own notion, shut up his saloon and took a couple of
six-shooters and mounted guard over the Sunday school. Says he, ‘No
Irish need apply!’ And they didn’t. He was the bulliest man in the
mountains, pard! He could run faster, jump higher, hit harder, and hold
more tangle-foot whisky without spilling it than any man in seventeen
counties. Put that in, pard—it’ll please the boys more than anything you
could say. And you can say, pard, that he never shook his mother.”
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“Never shook his mother?”
“That’s it—any of the boys will tell you so.”
“Well, but why should he shake her?”
“That’s what I say—but some people does.”
“Not people of any repute?”
“Well, some that averages pretty so-so.”
“In my opinion the man that would offer personal violence to his own
mother, ought to—”
“Cheese it, pard; you’ve banked your ball clean outside the string. What
I was a drivin’ at, was, that he never throwed off on his mother—don’t
you see? No indeedy. He give her a house to live in, and town lots, and
plenty of money; and he looked after her and took care of her all the
time; and when she was down with the small-pox I’m d——d if he didn’t set
up nights and nuss her himself! Beg your pardon for saying it, but it
hopped out too quick for yours truly.
“You’ve treated me like a gentleman, pard, and I ain’t the man to hurt
your feelings intentional. I think you’re white. I think you’re a square
man, pard. I like you, and I’ll lick any man that don’t. I’ll lick him
till he can’t tell himself from a last year’s corpse! Put it there!”
[Another fraternal hand-shake—and exit.]
The obsequies were all that “the boys” could desire. Such a marvel of
funeral pomp had never been seen in Virginia. The plumed hearse, the
dirge-breathing brass bands, the closed marts of business, the flags
drooping at half mast, the long, plodding procession of uniformed secret
societies, military battalions and fire companies, draped engines,
carriages of officials, and citizens in vehicles and on foot, attracted
multitudes of spectators to the sidewalks, roofs and windows; and for
years afterward, the degree of grandeur attained by any civic display in
Virginia was determined by comparison with Buck Fanshaw’s funeral.
Scotty Briggs, as a pall-bearer and a mourner, occupied a prominent
place at the funeral, and when the sermon was finished and the last
sentence of the prayer for the dead man’s soul ascended, he responded,
in a low voice, but with feelings:
“AMEN. No Irish need apply.”
As the bulk of the response was without apparent relevancy, it was
probably nothing more than a humble tribute to the memory of the friend
that was gone; for, as Scotty had once said, it was “his word.”
Scotty Briggs, in after days, achieved the distinction of becoming the
only convert to religion that was ever gathered from the Virginia
roughs; and it transpired that the man who had it in him to espouse the
quarrel of the weak out of inborn nobility of spirit was no mean timber
whereof to construct a Christian. The making him one did not warp his
generosity or diminish his courage; on the contrary it gave intelligent
direction to the one and a broader field to the other.
If his Sunday-school class progressed faster than the other classes, was
it matter for wonder? I think not. He talked to his pioneer small-fry in
a language they understood! It was my large privilege, a month before he
died, to hear him tell the beautiful story of Joseph and his brethren to
his class “without looking at the book.” I leave it to the reader to
fancy what it was like, as it fell, riddled with slang, from the lips of
that grave, earnest teacher, and was listened to by his little learners
with a consuming interest that showed that they were as unconscious as
he was that any violence was being done to the sacred proprieties!
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CHAPTER XLVIII.
The first twenty-six graves in the Virginia cemetery were occupied by
murdered men. So everybody said, so everybody believed, and so they will
always say and believe. The reason why there was so much slaughtering
done, was, that in a new mining district the rough element predominates,
and a person is not respected until he has “killed his man.” That was
the very expression used.
If an unknown individual arrived, they did not inquire if he was
capable, honest, industrious, but—had he killed his man? If he had not,
he gravitated to his natural and proper position, that of a man of small
consequence; if he had, the cordiality of his reception was graduated
according to the number of his dead. It was tedious work struggling up
to a position of influence with bloodless hands; but when a man came
with the blood of half a dozen men on his soul, his worth was recognized
at once and his acquaintance sought.
In Nevada, for a time, the lawyer, the editor, the banker, the chief
desperado, the chief gambler, and the saloon keeper, occupied the same
level in society, and it was the highest. The cheapest and easiest way
to become an influential man and be looked up to by the community at
large, was to stand behind a bar, wear a cluster-diamond pin, and sell
whisky. I am not sure but that the saloon-keeper held a shade higher
rank than any other member of society. His opinion had weight. It was
his privilege to say how the elections should go. No great movement
could succeed without the countenance and direction of the saloon-
keepers. It was a high favor when the chief saloon-keeper consented to
serve in the legislature or the board of aldermen.
Youthful ambition hardly aspired so much to the honors of the law, or
the army and navy as to the dignity of proprietorship in a saloon.
To be a saloon-keeper and kill a man was to be illustrious. Hence the
reader will not be surprised to learn that more than one man was killed
in Nevada under hardly the pretext of provocation, so impatient was the
slayer to achieve reputation and throw off the galling sense of being
held in indifferent repute by his associates. I knew two youths who
tried to “kill their men” for no other reason—and got killed themselves
for their pains. “There goes the man that killed Bill Adams” was higher
praise and a sweeter sound in the ears of this sort of people than any
other speech that admiring lips could utter.
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The men who murdered Virginia’s original twenty-six cemetery-occupants
were never punished. Why? Because Alfred the Great, when he invented
trial by jury and knew that he had admirably framed it to secure justice
in his age of the world, was not aware that in the nineteenth century
the condition of things would be so entirely changed that unless he rose
from the grave and altered the jury plan to meet the emergency, it would
prove the most ingenious and infallible agency for defeating justice
that human wisdom could contrive. For how could he imagine that we
simpletons would go on using his jury plan after circumstances had
stripped it of its usefulness, any more than he could imagine that we
would go on using his candle-clock after we had invented chronometers?
In his day news could not travel fast, and hence he could easily find a
jury of honest, intelligent men who had not heard of the case they were
called to try—but in our day of telegraphs and newspapers his plan
compels us to swear in juries composed of fools and rascals, because the
system rigidly excludes honest men and men of brains.
I remember one of those sorrowful farces, in Virginia, which we call a
jury trial. A noted desperado killed Mr. B., a good citizen, in the most
wanton and cold-blooded way. Of course the papers were full of it, and
all men capable of reading, read about it. And of course all men not
deaf and dumb and idiotic, talked about it. A jury-list was made out,
and Mr. B. L., a prominent banker and a valued citizen, was questioned
precisely as he would have been questioned in any court in America:
“Have you heard of this homicide?”
“Yes.”
“Have you held conversations upon the subject?”
“Yes.”
“Have you formed or expressed opinions about it?”
“Yes.”
“Have you read the newspaper accounts of it?”
“Yes.”
“We do not want you.”
A minister, intelligent, esteemed, and greatly respected; a merchant of
high character and known probity; a mining superintendent of
intelligence and unblemished reputation; a quartz mill owner of
excellent standing, were all questioned in the same way, and all set
aside. Each said the public talk and the newspaper reports had not so
biased his mind but that sworn testimony would overthrow his previously
formed opinions and enable him to render a verdict without prejudice and
in accordance with the facts. But of course such men could not be
trusted with the case. Ignoramuses alone could mete out unsullied
justice.
When the peremptory challenges were all exhausted, a jury of twelve men
was impaneled—a jury who swore they had neither heard, read, talked
about nor expressed an opinion concerning a murder which the very cattle
in the corrals, the Indians in the sage-brush and the stones in the
streets were cognizant of! It was a jury composed of two desperadoes,
two low beer-house politicians, three bar-keepers, two ranchmen who
could not read, and three dull, stupid, human donkeys! It actually came
out afterward, that one of these latter thought that incest and arson
were the same thing.
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The verdict rendered by this jury was, Not Guilty. What else could one
expect?
The jury system puts a ban upon intelligence and honesty, and a premium
upon ignorance, stupidity and perjury. It is a shame that we must
continue to use a worthless system because it _was_ good a thousand
years ago. In this age, when a gentleman of high social standing,
intelligence and probity, swears that testimony given under solemn oath
will outweigh, with him, street talk and newspaper reports based upon
mere hearsay, he is worth a hundred jurymen who will swear to their own
ignorance and stupidity, and justice would be far safer in his hands
than in theirs. Why could not the jury law be so altered as to give men
of brains and honesty and _equal chance_ with fools and miscreants? Is
it right to show the present favoritism to one class of men and inflict
a disability on another, in a land whose boast is that all its citizens
are free and equal? I am a candidate for the legislature. I desire to
tamper with the jury law. I wish to so alter it as to put a premium on
intelligence and character, and close the jury box against idiots,
blacklegs, and people who do not read newspapers. But no doubt I shall
be defeated—every effort I make to save the country “misses fire.”
My idea, when I began this chapter, was to say something about
desperadoism in the “flush times” of Nevada. To attempt a portrayal of
that era and that land, and leave out the blood and carnage, would be
like portraying Mormondom and leaving out polygamy. The desperado
stalked the streets with a swagger graded according to the number of his
homicides, and a nod of recognition from him was sufficient to make a
humble admirer happy for the rest of the day. The deference that was
paid to a desperado of wide reputation, and who “kept his private
graveyard,” as the phrase went, was marked, and cheerfully accorded.
When he moved along the sidewalk in his excessively long-tailed frock-