X.
Creede, Colo., April 20, ’92.Dear Fitz:—Yes, the surprises in this life are surprising. We opened a couple of surprise packages here last night.I was surprised the other day when Miss P. came into the office and asked my advice. Until lately she has endeavored to avoid me.Woman playing organ and man singingI think Harry has been watering my stock with the lady, and I am pleased to note that these young people occupya table at the Albany that seats two. Last Sunday, I drifted into the tent where they hold sacred services; it is called the Tabernacle. Miss Parsons was performing on a little cottage organ, while Harry stood near her and sang, “There’s a Land that is Fairer than Day.”Ah, yes, in the sweet by-and-by! Is there anything that holds so much for the trusting soul? In the sun-kissed over-yonder, there is rest for the weary. Always full and running over, there is no false bottom in the sweet by-and-by.Hope springs eternalIn the human breast,Faith to push the button—God will do the rest.I have begun to hope that Harry will love Miss Parsons. What he has done for her already has had a good effect. His society is better for her, just as the sunshine is better for the flowers than the atmosphere of a damp, dark cellar, where lizards creep o’er the sweating stones.Plenty of fellows here would love her, but for their own amusement. Not so with Harry. He is as serious as though he were in reality an Englishman. Yesterday the young lady was very much worried over a note she had received, and she showed it to me. It ended thus:Go, leave me in my misery,And when thou art alone,God grant that thou may’st pine for me,As I for thee have pone.It was signed “Harry,” and that’s what hurt her heart. I told her it wasTabor’s writing; that his first name was Harry, and she was glad.Barber ShopAs I write this, I look across the street to the barber-shop where Inez Boyd is having her hair cut short. Ye Gods! faded and then amputated! So will be her pure young life. Already the frost of sin has settled around her soul. Youth’s bloom has been blighted; her cheeks are hollow; her eyes have a vacant, far-away look. Her mind, mayhap, goes back to her happy home in Denver, where she used to kneel at night and say, “Now I lay me.”She has left her place at the restaurant, and with her partner, that “break away” creature with the yellow hair, is living in a cottage, taking their meals at the Albany.I must tell you now what Miss Parsons wanted advice about. She had very little to do in the office, and if she would act as cashier in the restaurant at meal time, two hours morning, noon and night, Mr. Sears would allow her ten dollars a week, and her board, or twenty dollars a week, in all. From 9 to 11, and 2 to 4, she could attend to Mr. Ketchum’s correspondence. There was still another job open. They wanted an operator across the street at the Western Union from 8P. M.until 12, when the regular night man came on to take theChroniclepress report. If she could take that, it would make her cash income twenty dollars above her board.I asked her what she intended to do from midnight till morning. She smiled, good-naturedly, and said she thought she would have to sleep some,otherwise she would have asked for a job, folding papers.I told her that it was all very proper if she could stand the long hours. She said she could always get an hour’s sleep after her midday meal, and in that way she would be able to hold it down for a while. I ventured to ask why she failed to reckon her “Sure Thing” salary when counting her cash income. “Oh,” she had forgotten. “Mr. Ketchum told her she would have to take her pay in stock.” I did not tell her how worthless that stock was, but I determined to have Mr. Ketchum attended to.Yesterday a quiet caucus was held in the rear of Banigan’s saloon, at which a committee of seven was appointed to wait upon Mr. Ketchum and inquire into the affairs of the Sure Thing Mining and Milling Company,the statement having been made in the morningChroniclethat the company had no legal existence.Man speaking to a groupHere come the surprises. In accordance with the arrangements made by the caucus at Banigan’s, the committee called last night at the office of the Sure Thing Mining Company and asked for Mr. Ketchum. That gentleman showed how little he knew of camp life, by ordering them from the room. The spokesman told him to sit down and be quiet. He would not be commandedto sit down in his own house, he said, as he jumped upon a table and began to orate on the freedom of America. At that moment one of the party, who is called “Mex” because he came from New Mexico, shied a rope across the room. It hovered around near the canvas ceiling for a second, then settled around the neck of the orator. “Come off the perch,” said Mex, as he gave the rope a pull and yanked the speculator from the table.That did the business. After that the operator only begged that his life be spared.“Now sir,” said the leader, “you will oblige us by answering every question put to you. If you tell the truth you may come out all right, if you lie you will be taking chances.”“We are the executive committee of the Gamblers’ Protective Associationand we are here to investigate your game. We recognize the right of the dealer to a liberal percentage, but we are opposed to sure thing men and sandbaggers.”“Is the Sure Thing Mining Company incorporated under the laws of Colorado?”“Well—it’s—un—”“Stop sir,” said the leader. “These questions will be put to you so that you can answer yes or no. I will say further that the committee will know when you tell the truth, so there’s a hunch for you an’ you better play it, see?”“Is the Sure Thing Mining Company incorporated?”“No.”“Is it true that you have taken money on account of stock to be issued?”“Well,—I have.”“Stop!”“Yes sir, it is true.”“Have you paid your stenographer?”“Yes sir.”“What in?”“Stock.”“How many claims do you own and what are they called, where located?”“One—Sure Thing. Bachelor Mountain.”“Shipped any ore?”“No.”“Any in sight?”“No.”“Ever have any assay?”“No.”“That’ll do.”“Gentlemen,” said the leader, “You have heard the questions and answers, all in favor of hangin’ this fellow say ‘aye.’”“Contrary ‘no.’”Three to three; the vote is a tie. I will vote with the ‘noes’ we will not hang him.“All in favor of turning him loose at the lower end of the Bad Lands say ‘aye.’”“Carried, unanimously.”“Mr. Ketchum, I congratulate you.”All this took place in Upper Creede, and about the time the committee were escorting Ketchum down through the gulch, Kadish Bula, the superintendent of the Bachelor, rushed into the Western Union office and handed a dispatch to Miss Parsons, asking her to rush it.After sending the message, Miss Parsons came to my office where Harry and I were enjoying a quiet chat, in which the two young women in whom I have become so interested, played an important part.“I beg your pardon,” she said with a pretty blush when she opened the door. “I thought you were alone.”Harry was about to leave when she asked him to remain.Woman speaking to two menWith a graceful little jump she landed on the desk in front of me, and looking me straight in the face she said:“I want to ask you a few questionsand I want you to answer me truthfully.”“Is the Sure Thing Mining Company any good?”“No,” said I, and she never flinched.“Is Ketchum’s location of the Sure Thing claim a valid one?”“That I cannot answer, for I don’t know,” said I.“Do you think Mr. Bula of the Bachelor would know?” was her next question.We both agreed that he ought to be excellent authority on locations in general, and especially good in this case, as theirs was an adjoining property.“How, and when, can a claim be relocated?” she asked with a steady look in my face.I asked her to wait a moment, and I called Mr. Vaughan. I go to him for everything that I fail to find in the dictionary.In a very few moments the expert explained to the young lady that a claim located in ’90 upon which no assessment work was done in ’91, was open for relocation in ’92.That was exactly what she wanted to know, she said, as she shot out of the door and across the street to the telegraph office.Before we had time to ask each other what she meant, a half dozen citizens walked through the open door.“We have just returned from Wason, where we went with Ketchum,” said the leader.“His game is dead crooked, and we told him to duck, and we want to ask about his typewriter, an’ see ’f she’s got any dough.”I explained that Miss Parsons was across the street, working in the telegraph office.“Miss Parsons,” said the leader as he entered the office, “we have just escorted your employer out of camp, and I reckon we put you out of a job; we want to square ourselves with you.”“Oh, I’m all right,” she said, glad to know that they hadn’t hanged the poor devil. “I am working half time at the restaurant and until midnight here.”Three men speaking to a womanWithout saying a word, the leader held out his hand to one of the men who dropped a yellow coin into it, another did the same, and before she knew what it meant, the spokesman stacked seven tens upon her table, said good-night, and they left the room.“Will you work for me for an hour or so,” said the girl as the night man entered the office. Of course he would, but he was disappointed. His life in the camp had been a lonely one till this beautiful woman came to work in the office. He had dropped in two hours ahead of time just to live in the sunshine of her presence.“There’s a tip for you,” she said as she flipped the top ten from the stack of yellows in front of the operator, dropped the other six into her hand-bag and jumped out into the night.Woman speaking to a man“Here I am again,” she laughed as she opened my door. “I want you to put that in your safe till morning;” and she planked sixty dollars in gold, down on my desk.“Bless you, Miss Parsons,” said I, “we don’t keep such a thing. We always owe the other fellow, but I’ll give it to Vaughan, he doesn’t drink.”“I want you and Harry to go with me,” she said, “and ask no questions. Put on your overcoats, there are three good horses waiting at the door.”In thirty minutes from that time, our horses were toiling up the Last Chance trail, and in an hour, we stood on the summit of Bachelor, eleven thousand feet above the sea.The scene was wondrously beautiful. Below, adown the steep mountain-side, lay the long, dark trail leading to the gulch where the arc lights gleamed on the trachyte cliffs. Around a bend, in the valley, came a silvery stream—the broad and beautiful Rio Grande, its crystal ripples gleaming in the soft lightof a midnight moon. Away to the east, above, beyond the smaller mountains, the marble crest of the Sangre de Christo stood up above the world.Riders entering trailTurning from this wondrous picture I saw the horses with their riders justentering a narrow trail that lay through an aspen grove in the direction of the Bachelor mine. Harry had secured a board from the Bachelor shaft-house and was driving a stake on the Sure Thing claim when I arrived.“So this is what you are up to Miss Parsons,” said I, taking in the situation at a glance.“Yes, sir,” she said, “I have written my name on that stake and I propose to put men to work to-morrow.”It was just midnight when we reached the telegraph office, and Miss Parsons showed us the telegram which Mr. Bula had sent: it read:“John Herrick,Denver Club, Denver:Got Amethyst vein. Sure Thing can be bought for one thousand, or can relocate and fight them; belongs to Ketchum. Answer.”“Well,” said Harry, “you’re all right.”“Now,” said Miss Parsons, “I want to find Mr. Ketchum and give him a check for one thousand and get a bill of sale or something to show.”We explained that Ketchum was at that time walking in the direction of Wagon Wheel Gap. Further, that unless she had that amount of money in the bank, she would be doing a serious thing to give a check.“Ah, but I have,” she said with a smile, as she pulled a bank-book from her desk. “My father wired a thousand dollars to the Miners’ and Merchants’ Bank for me a few days ago; the telegram notifying me it was there, came in your care, and I must apologize for not having told you sooner, but I was afraid you might ask me to give up my place, if you learned how rich I was.”“You are all right, Miss Parsons,” said I, “and I congratulate you—but there is no excuse for you wanting to give that scamp a thousand dollars.”“Then I must ask another favor of you,” she said. “I want ten men to go to work on the Sure Thing to-morrow.”At my request, Harry promised to have the men at work by nine o’clock, and as I write this I can hear the blasts and see the white smoke puffing from the Sure Thing claim. Just now I see Harry and the “Silver Queen” coming down the trail. They are riding this way; Harry is holding a piece of rock in his left hand; they are talking about it, and they both look very happy. Aye, verily, the surprises are surprising; hope springs eternal.Good-by,Cy Warman.
Creede, Colo., April 20, ’92.
Dear Fitz:—Yes, the surprises in this life are surprising. We opened a couple of surprise packages here last night.
I was surprised the other day when Miss P. came into the office and asked my advice. Until lately she has endeavored to avoid me.
Woman playing organ and man singing
I think Harry has been watering my stock with the lady, and I am pleased to note that these young people occupya table at the Albany that seats two. Last Sunday, I drifted into the tent where they hold sacred services; it is called the Tabernacle. Miss Parsons was performing on a little cottage organ, while Harry stood near her and sang, “There’s a Land that is Fairer than Day.”
Ah, yes, in the sweet by-and-by! Is there anything that holds so much for the trusting soul? In the sun-kissed over-yonder, there is rest for the weary. Always full and running over, there is no false bottom in the sweet by-and-by.
Hope springs eternalIn the human breast,Faith to push the button—God will do the rest.
Hope springs eternalIn the human breast,Faith to push the button—God will do the rest.
Hope springs eternal
In the human breast,
Faith to push the button—
God will do the rest.
I have begun to hope that Harry will love Miss Parsons. What he has done for her already has had a good effect. His society is better for her, just as the sunshine is better for the flowers than the atmosphere of a damp, dark cellar, where lizards creep o’er the sweating stones.
Plenty of fellows here would love her, but for their own amusement. Not so with Harry. He is as serious as though he were in reality an Englishman. Yesterday the young lady was very much worried over a note she had received, and she showed it to me. It ended thus:
Go, leave me in my misery,And when thou art alone,God grant that thou may’st pine for me,As I for thee have pone.
Go, leave me in my misery,And when thou art alone,God grant that thou may’st pine for me,As I for thee have pone.
Go, leave me in my misery,
And when thou art alone,
God grant that thou may’st pine for me,
As I for thee have pone.
It was signed “Harry,” and that’s what hurt her heart. I told her it wasTabor’s writing; that his first name was Harry, and she was glad.
Barber Shop
As I write this, I look across the street to the barber-shop where Inez Boyd is having her hair cut short. Ye Gods! faded and then amputated! So will be her pure young life. Already the frost of sin has settled around her soul. Youth’s bloom has been blighted; her cheeks are hollow; her eyes have a vacant, far-away look. Her mind, mayhap, goes back to her happy home in Denver, where she used to kneel at night and say, “Now I lay me.”
She has left her place at the restaurant, and with her partner, that “break away” creature with the yellow hair, is living in a cottage, taking their meals at the Albany.
I must tell you now what Miss Parsons wanted advice about. She had very little to do in the office, and if she would act as cashier in the restaurant at meal time, two hours morning, noon and night, Mr. Sears would allow her ten dollars a week, and her board, or twenty dollars a week, in all. From 9 to 11, and 2 to 4, she could attend to Mr. Ketchum’s correspondence. There was still another job open. They wanted an operator across the street at the Western Union from 8P. M.until 12, when the regular night man came on to take theChroniclepress report. If she could take that, it would make her cash income twenty dollars above her board.
I asked her what she intended to do from midnight till morning. She smiled, good-naturedly, and said she thought she would have to sleep some,otherwise she would have asked for a job, folding papers.
I told her that it was all very proper if she could stand the long hours. She said she could always get an hour’s sleep after her midday meal, and in that way she would be able to hold it down for a while. I ventured to ask why she failed to reckon her “Sure Thing” salary when counting her cash income. “Oh,” she had forgotten. “Mr. Ketchum told her she would have to take her pay in stock.” I did not tell her how worthless that stock was, but I determined to have Mr. Ketchum attended to.
Yesterday a quiet caucus was held in the rear of Banigan’s saloon, at which a committee of seven was appointed to wait upon Mr. Ketchum and inquire into the affairs of the Sure Thing Mining and Milling Company,the statement having been made in the morningChroniclethat the company had no legal existence.
Man speaking to a group
Here come the surprises. In accordance with the arrangements made by the caucus at Banigan’s, the committee called last night at the office of the Sure Thing Mining Company and asked for Mr. Ketchum. That gentleman showed how little he knew of camp life, by ordering them from the room. The spokesman told him to sit down and be quiet. He would not be commandedto sit down in his own house, he said, as he jumped upon a table and began to orate on the freedom of America. At that moment one of the party, who is called “Mex” because he came from New Mexico, shied a rope across the room. It hovered around near the canvas ceiling for a second, then settled around the neck of the orator. “Come off the perch,” said Mex, as he gave the rope a pull and yanked the speculator from the table.
That did the business. After that the operator only begged that his life be spared.
“Now sir,” said the leader, “you will oblige us by answering every question put to you. If you tell the truth you may come out all right, if you lie you will be taking chances.”
“We are the executive committee of the Gamblers’ Protective Associationand we are here to investigate your game. We recognize the right of the dealer to a liberal percentage, but we are opposed to sure thing men and sandbaggers.”
“Is the Sure Thing Mining Company incorporated under the laws of Colorado?”
“Well—it’s—un—”
“Stop sir,” said the leader. “These questions will be put to you so that you can answer yes or no. I will say further that the committee will know when you tell the truth, so there’s a hunch for you an’ you better play it, see?”
“Is the Sure Thing Mining Company incorporated?”
“No.”
“Is it true that you have taken money on account of stock to be issued?”
“Well,—I have.”
“Stop!”
“Yes sir, it is true.”
“Have you paid your stenographer?”
“Yes sir.”
“What in?”
“Stock.”
“How many claims do you own and what are they called, where located?”
“One—Sure Thing. Bachelor Mountain.”
“Shipped any ore?”
“No.”
“Any in sight?”
“No.”
“Ever have any assay?”
“No.”
“That’ll do.”
“Gentlemen,” said the leader, “You have heard the questions and answers, all in favor of hangin’ this fellow say ‘aye.’”
“Contrary ‘no.’”
Three to three; the vote is a tie. I will vote with the ‘noes’ we will not hang him.
“All in favor of turning him loose at the lower end of the Bad Lands say ‘aye.’”
“Carried, unanimously.”
“Mr. Ketchum, I congratulate you.”
All this took place in Upper Creede, and about the time the committee were escorting Ketchum down through the gulch, Kadish Bula, the superintendent of the Bachelor, rushed into the Western Union office and handed a dispatch to Miss Parsons, asking her to rush it.
After sending the message, Miss Parsons came to my office where Harry and I were enjoying a quiet chat, in which the two young women in whom I have become so interested, played an important part.
“I beg your pardon,” she said with a pretty blush when she opened the door. “I thought you were alone.”
Harry was about to leave when she asked him to remain.
Woman speaking to two men
With a graceful little jump she landed on the desk in front of me, and looking me straight in the face she said:
“I want to ask you a few questionsand I want you to answer me truthfully.”
“Is the Sure Thing Mining Company any good?”
“No,” said I, and she never flinched.
“Is Ketchum’s location of the Sure Thing claim a valid one?”
“That I cannot answer, for I don’t know,” said I.
“Do you think Mr. Bula of the Bachelor would know?” was her next question.
We both agreed that he ought to be excellent authority on locations in general, and especially good in this case, as theirs was an adjoining property.
“How, and when, can a claim be relocated?” she asked with a steady look in my face.
I asked her to wait a moment, and I called Mr. Vaughan. I go to him for everything that I fail to find in the dictionary.
In a very few moments the expert explained to the young lady that a claim located in ’90 upon which no assessment work was done in ’91, was open for relocation in ’92.
That was exactly what she wanted to know, she said, as she shot out of the door and across the street to the telegraph office.
Before we had time to ask each other what she meant, a half dozen citizens walked through the open door.
“We have just returned from Wason, where we went with Ketchum,” said the leader.
“His game is dead crooked, and we told him to duck, and we want to ask about his typewriter, an’ see ’f she’s got any dough.”
I explained that Miss Parsons was across the street, working in the telegraph office.
“Miss Parsons,” said the leader as he entered the office, “we have just escorted your employer out of camp, and I reckon we put you out of a job; we want to square ourselves with you.”
“Oh, I’m all right,” she said, glad to know that they hadn’t hanged the poor devil. “I am working half time at the restaurant and until midnight here.”
Three men speaking to a woman
Without saying a word, the leader held out his hand to one of the men who dropped a yellow coin into it, another did the same, and before she knew what it meant, the spokesman stacked seven tens upon her table, said good-night, and they left the room.
“Will you work for me for an hour or so,” said the girl as the night man entered the office. Of course he would, but he was disappointed. His life in the camp had been a lonely one till this beautiful woman came to work in the office. He had dropped in two hours ahead of time just to live in the sunshine of her presence.
“There’s a tip for you,” she said as she flipped the top ten from the stack of yellows in front of the operator, dropped the other six into her hand-bag and jumped out into the night.
Woman speaking to a man
“Here I am again,” she laughed as she opened my door. “I want you to put that in your safe till morning;” and she planked sixty dollars in gold, down on my desk.
“Bless you, Miss Parsons,” said I, “we don’t keep such a thing. We always owe the other fellow, but I’ll give it to Vaughan, he doesn’t drink.”
“I want you and Harry to go with me,” she said, “and ask no questions. Put on your overcoats, there are three good horses waiting at the door.”
In thirty minutes from that time, our horses were toiling up the Last Chance trail, and in an hour, we stood on the summit of Bachelor, eleven thousand feet above the sea.
The scene was wondrously beautiful. Below, adown the steep mountain-side, lay the long, dark trail leading to the gulch where the arc lights gleamed on the trachyte cliffs. Around a bend, in the valley, came a silvery stream—the broad and beautiful Rio Grande, its crystal ripples gleaming in the soft lightof a midnight moon. Away to the east, above, beyond the smaller mountains, the marble crest of the Sangre de Christo stood up above the world.
Riders entering trail
Turning from this wondrous picture I saw the horses with their riders justentering a narrow trail that lay through an aspen grove in the direction of the Bachelor mine. Harry had secured a board from the Bachelor shaft-house and was driving a stake on the Sure Thing claim when I arrived.
“So this is what you are up to Miss Parsons,” said I, taking in the situation at a glance.
“Yes, sir,” she said, “I have written my name on that stake and I propose to put men to work to-morrow.”
It was just midnight when we reached the telegraph office, and Miss Parsons showed us the telegram which Mr. Bula had sent: it read:
“John Herrick,Denver Club, Denver:Got Amethyst vein. Sure Thing can be bought for one thousand, or can relocate and fight them; belongs to Ketchum. Answer.”
“John Herrick,Denver Club, Denver:
Got Amethyst vein. Sure Thing can be bought for one thousand, or can relocate and fight them; belongs to Ketchum. Answer.”
“Well,” said Harry, “you’re all right.”
“Now,” said Miss Parsons, “I want to find Mr. Ketchum and give him a check for one thousand and get a bill of sale or something to show.”
We explained that Ketchum was at that time walking in the direction of Wagon Wheel Gap. Further, that unless she had that amount of money in the bank, she would be doing a serious thing to give a check.
“Ah, but I have,” she said with a smile, as she pulled a bank-book from her desk. “My father wired a thousand dollars to the Miners’ and Merchants’ Bank for me a few days ago; the telegram notifying me it was there, came in your care, and I must apologize for not having told you sooner, but I was afraid you might ask me to give up my place, if you learned how rich I was.”
“You are all right, Miss Parsons,” said I, “and I congratulate you—but there is no excuse for you wanting to give that scamp a thousand dollars.”
“Then I must ask another favor of you,” she said. “I want ten men to go to work on the Sure Thing to-morrow.”
At my request, Harry promised to have the men at work by nine o’clock, and as I write this I can hear the blasts and see the white smoke puffing from the Sure Thing claim. Just now I see Harry and the “Silver Queen” coming down the trail. They are riding this way; Harry is holding a piece of rock in his left hand; they are talking about it, and they both look very happy. Aye, verily, the surprises are surprising; hope springs eternal.
Good-by,Cy Warman.