Chapter II: Leadville

At the time when America was celebrating the centennial of her independence at Philadelphia the present site of Leadville was an elevated sage brush valley skirting the headwaters of the Arkansas at an altitude of many thousand feet above the sea level. The whole population of the valley would not exceed a score or so of souls, but in three years from that time a city of twenty-five thousand souls had sprung up.

This is a summary of my knowledge of the place for which I was bound, bent on making my fortune. In a little over forty-eight hours after leaving my native city I alighted on the platform of the Leadville station. I doubt if anything in the annals of the famous forty-niners in California, could equal this seething chaotic mass of humanity or rival the wildly grotesque appearance of this city of instantaneous growth.

Pandemonium let loose was the only comparison that seemed adequate to the situation. Houses there were none. Of sheds, shanties, tents, covered wagons and dens in the earth there were legions. The movements of the inhabitants of this outlandish city bore no resemblance to the earnest hurry and life of my native city, but resembled rather a universal desire on their part to catch a vanishing train or the wild effort to escape an avalanche or such a conflagration as had visited Chicago a few years before, some of the scenes of which were stamped ineffaceably on my mind.

I could scarcely keep my feet, much less any stable position where I might pause to view the ludicrous scene, but was borne irresistibly on toward the principal street of the city. I was, I protest, in no such hurry as the dog trot I was compelled to adopt would seem to indicate. Every one of the presumptuous builders of Babel were represented there and the scene struck me as being in a marked degree like the one my imagination had always pictured as immediately following the confusion of tongues. Men of different nationalities were endeavoring to make themselves intelligible to each other, gabbling, gesticulating, able often only to comprehend the choice store of profanity poured out on their stolid neighbor’s head because he could not interpret this jargon. Assay offices whose walls could not wholly exclude the daylight; stores whose shelves could be reached almost equally well from the outer as the inner side; saloons in endless reach, some of them consisting simply of a barrel and a few glasses in the open air with a board announcing its character nailed upon a post, beside the barrel--were everywhere in evidence. Passing along this street in the human current, I find residence buildings taking the place of the business block or board, as the case may be, and boarding houses taking the place of saloons. To one of the more respectable looking of these I applied for board and lodging, and found that for the modest sum of forty dollars a week I could be sumptuously boarded and luxuriously lodged. The proprietor, a big, red-faced fellow, in top boots and cowboy hat, assured me that their accommodations were strictly first-class, and conducted me to the sleeping apartment in the rear, which was a big lean-to shed, walled and roofed with a single course of unplaned boards, leaving little lines of daylight where the lumber purported to join. Bunks wide enough for two ran around the walls tier on tier; each pair of occupants were supplied with a pair of blankets, which, he assured me, was a luxury that no other place afforded, and which, later, I found to be correct, most of the lodgings being simply a spot of earth enclosed, where the lodger had the privilege of spreading his blankets on the ground, where saint and sinner, Yale College graduate and Mexican greaser lay down together to shiver the night away, having--as incongruous as were their former lives--one opinion in common, namely, that never before in their lives would they have considered it a fit enclosure for swine.

But the all-leveling mania for gold reconciled them to any kind of fare, and any or no shelter, just as circumstances might direct. The class of boarders at mine host’s inn was mainly of those who were engaged in ordinary business pursuits in the rickety, ridiculous segregation and exaggeration of the “wharf-rat” district of Chicago, called the city; merchants bent on doing business on the buy-for-a-dollar-and-sell-for-five-plan, lawyers scenting the battle of contending claimants from afar, assayers, surveyors, wet goodsmen, proprietors of faro banks and roulette wheels--a striking mass of humanity, representing every nation and affecting a style of dress that was a hybrid of the Spanish bull-fighters and Western cowboy cross--all were here. The supper hour, which was not far off when I arrived, brought all this motley group with a rush like the stampede of a Texas herd to feed voraciously on a meal of plain substantial mountain fare. Bread and butter, black coffee, fat bacon, and fried potatoes constituted the _menu_, which was regarded, I was told, as a great modern improvement on the rations provided before the railroad was completed, when provisions were freighted a long distance.

The landlord, disposed to be friendly and talkative, informed me that in those good old days flour had sold in camp as high as a dollar per pound, potatoes fifty cents per pound, eggs five dollars per dozen, meat five dollars per pound, and hay five hundred dollars per ton. Board was to be had at the low rate of ten to twenty-five dollars per meal, or three hundred and fifty to five hundred dollars per week. But the fabulous yield of silver on the Mosquito Range, he said, “wuz payin’ the fiddler,” when the New Discovery, the Vulture, and Carboniferous were yielding ore that ran two thousand and sometimes upward of three thousand ounces of silver to the ton, and there were a dozen mines in the camp that were putting out ore day after day, and week after week, estimated to be worth five dollars per shovelful. “How do they hold out at present?” I inquired, feeling my way toward a more vital question.

“Oh, purty fair, purty fair,” he said. “The Long Hannah and the Mosquito Belle, and the Vulture air all runnin’ smelters of thear own an’ cleanin’ up two or three thousand a day apiece. But,” he added, with a tremendous sigh, “we’ll never see sich rattlin’ times agin’.”

I then ventured to ask him if he happened to know anything of The Little Pittsburg Mine.

“To be sure, to be sure, up on Prayer Hill, must be ten thousand feet above the sea. Air up thar thinner ’n a snipe, mine no good, started in purtier ’n a picter, clean petered out, now, hardly raise the color any more. On the assessment list for some time, still workin’ her feeble-like. Any interest in her? Sorry. One of the bluest on the range at present. Belong in Chicago, did you say? Great place.”

So he rattled on in accompaniment to my supper, till a man who sat next me, attracted by the name of Chicago, began to pay his addresses to me.

“Mabbe you think I’m lyin’, young feller, but I see Chicago when there was only three stores, one blacksmith shop and one drug store there. I’m seventy year old last February, but I can remember like it was yesterday how she looked squatten there in the mud, and the shakes in the air so thick you could cut um with a knife. I was workin’ for Widdy Simpson on her claim that run up chuck to the town. I didn’t like the style of atmosphere they furnished there, so I began to get ready to go West. The widdy was anxious fur me to stay an’ work fur her, fur hands was mighty skeerce thar, and she showed me another government claim that was vacant and laid in the same delightful, stagnatin’ condition as hern, and mighty nigh as close to town. She advised me to stop an’ work fur her an’ build a shanty on the claim an’ hold it down, but I couldn’t see no policy in shakin’ my sides when I wuzn’t tickled, and had no faith in that bloomin’ pollywog pond no way, so I sloped; but it was a great mistake, for the widdy lived to see herself a millionaire an’ I might a’ bin a close second, but sich is life. Here I’ve bin a prospectin’ all my life and haven’t made enough to take me beck to Chicago. But,” he added, turning toward me, “I’m goin’ to strike her rich one of these days and don’t you furgit it.”

And he proceeded forthwith to inform me with a mysterious shake of his head that he knew where lay a ledge of gold-bearing quartz that was rich enough to make up for all the disappointment of missing his fortune at Chicago. A sheep herder, he said, whom he encountered in one of his prospecting trips in the Gunnison country, had showed him a block of quartz that he had picked up in a gulch while seeking to quench his thirst from a spring that burst out from its head. As he stooped over to drink he noticed the peculiar shape of the rock first, and picking it up, he found it still more peculiar in formation. So he had carried it with him to camp and produced it in evidence. The old prospector’s eyes had no sooner fallen upon the sample than he knew that it was fabulously rich in the yellow metal, and at once proposed to go halvers and look up the vein, if his herder-friend would conduct him to the spot where he had picked up the quartz. The proposition was accepted and my new acquaintance entertained me during the evening with a minute description of his search for the lead, luring him to the top of a high range, densely covered with fallen and standing trees and rocks, in such wild confusion that he could scarcely make his way through them. Sometimes he was just on the verge of success; then the trail would grow indistinct and be lost again. So he climbed the highest neighboring peaks looking for the lost trail, and invaded deep and almost inaccessible gorges to view the place from which he had started so hopefully in quest of the parent ledge, from which had been wrenched this potent declaration of its surpassing richness. But the ledge was so cunningly hidden that it eluded his keen scent day after day and throughout lengthening weeks, as he pursued the phantom through mountain fastnesses and lonely defiles, till his supplies were all gone, and he was forced to return to camp and seek employment. He was at present working out an assessment for The Little Pittsburg Mine. He said, “And just as soon as I can make a little raise I’ll strike her again, I’m bound to find her, that chunk of the yallar didn’t get there by no accident. Its just as certain to be there as the sun is to rise to-morrow, and I am just as certain to find her as soon as I can get the dust. Say boss,” he suddenly asked in a confidential tone, “you don’t want to grub-stake me for the half do you?” I looked at him in blank amazement; that was a term entirely new to me, and might mean anything from staking a game of cards for him, to burning with him at the stake as an offering to the gold divinity. “Don’t ketch on to minin’ camp lingo, hey? Well, you are a precious tenderfoot to be sure.”

Then he explained that in many cases prospectors spent nearly their whole time in remote mountain regions searching for gold and, of course, when they were unsuccessful, their means would soon become exhausted and then, returning to the nearest camp, they would propose to some merchant or mining expert that if provisions were furnished them to enable them to go on without interruption, they would give a half interest in any mine which they might find while the store of provisions lasted. There was something strikingly pathetic to me in the spectacle of an old man such as he, still lured on by the hope of suddenly amassing unlimited wealth. All the discouragements of a long life of failure were powerless to keep down the elastic hopes which inspired him; all the failures counted for nothing, all the privations and exposure were forgotten as he talked of the wealth almost in sight for both of us, if he could but spend a few weeks more in the Gunnison country. I was more interested at present, however, in gaining what information I could regarding my own forlorn hope, The Little Pittsburg, especially as he had mentioned that he was working upon it. I have since learned by experience and observation that few people come within the seductive influence of the mining camp without sooner or later absorbing the fever to discover the richest and most famous mine yet known, and during the progress of that hallucination he is as literally stark mad as a victim of mountain fever in his wildest ravings.

I felt the thrill of the old man’s words, but did not then know that it was the characteristic first symptoms of the disease, and till near the hour of midnight I listened as he discoursed of mines and mining operations, of life in Leadville, the crudest and wildest stages of life in the mountains, for months with no other companion than his pack mule, of narrow escapes from Indians, of not less blood-curdling accounts of losing his way in the mountains when provisions were almost exhausted, and the winter closing in on the higher altitudes; of winter life in Leadville, and other camps among the most motley, the most reckless, and withal, the most generous class of people on the face of the earth. He now indicated that it was his bedtime, and, as I had all the experience that one day could well utilize, our landlord filed us away by number on the shelves of his human mercantile establishment like legal documents, and left us to wink and blink at the stars that twinkled through the roof at us. But the first keen delight of inhaling the pure mountain air of the Rockies at such an elevation compensates for all minor inconveniences, and every breath was a new delight, and sleep was a repetition of boyhood’s perfect rest undisturbed by ugly dreams. Morning opens anew at each awakening; the bounding pulse and rosy hopes of a new world, the weariness, the discouragements, are all gone, and I can now understand something of the source of that wonderful buoyancy that keeps the poor prospector from despair.

After breakfasting on hot biscuit, fat bacon and coffee, I accompanied my venerable friend to inspect our valuable possessions, The Little Pittsburg. The old gentleman, to whom I will now, indulgent reader, if you will pardon the rudeness of delay, present you, my friend of a night, Abner Callaway, prospector and practical miner; by nativity a child of Illinois; by circumstances and training a cosmopolitan; in thought and intent, simple as a child; by creed, a follower of the golden rule. Short of stature, sturdy of build, limbs encased in the picturesque blue overalls tucked into high-top boots, supported by buckskin suspenders, flaming red flannel shirt with sleeves habitually rolled up to the elbows, and folded back from his burly chest at the neck in the shape of a V, showing a bosom hairy as Esau’s; cowboy hat with leathern band sheltering a good-natured, rubicund countenance in which you could but believe, the venerable expression heightened by a long white beard and locks of the same hue, falling to the shoulders, complete the picture of the man with whose destiny mine was to be wonderfully blended. But hold! I have given you his picture as he appears at rest. To prepare himself for action he produces a clay pipe, fills and lights it, and then the little human engine puffs away in active motion toward the theater of action for the day. Between puffs, he informs me, as we climb up and up till a queer feeling as if a heavy weight were attached to each foot begins to be noticed, and you realize that you are getting beyond the natural habitation of the animal known as man, that he had a few days’ work yet to perform on this claim, when he would be at liberty to pursue his own projects once more, the only hindrance being the want of sufficient means to make an extended prospecting trip, and as it was already June and the summer-time of opportunity, but brief in those elevated regions, he felt great anxiety to be at his labor of love again. You felt as he talked that he spoke with all the earnestness of strong conviction and persuaded you because he himself felt strongly, and not because of any element of the shark in his arguments. He might himself be deluded, but he was not seeking to delude you, but to convert you to the truth. He explained that his golden field of quest lay to the southward, well toward the mouth of the Gunnison in the Elk Mountains where the severities of the climate were not so great, nor the winters of enforced idleness so long. He waived all my efforts to turn the conversation upon our mine as a subject of not a moment’s importance compared with the one which dominated his life by day, and gave the text for glorious treasure-haunted dreams by night, so that by the time we reached our superb property in the region of the clouds, my mind was beginning to yield to the reasonings with which he besieged it, and I began to regard The Pittsburg as being, after all, of rather secondary importance. It is well that my mind had been thus prepared for the utter revulsion of feeling which took possession of it when I beheld what had been represented as valuable property, lacking only development. But it still lacked a good deal of that subtle fancy that enables one to see in a possession like ours anything more than an unsightly hole in the ground, upon which so much excavating must be done from time to time, to fulfill the law. I stood upon the brink of the pit and looked down into its unpromising depths with much the same feelings, I imagine, with which I should inspect the work of digging my own grave.

The old man cut off my bitter reflections by observing impressively, “Look ’e here, pard, I’m an old man an’ you’re but a kid. Let me take an old man’s privilege an’ advise you never again while you have breath in you, never put a dollar into a paper mine.” He showed me some specimens taken out the day before, and declared they were all right, way up ore in fact, but not enough of them. “Pinched right out; if she’d held out as she started you would be a millionaire now. Of course, there’s a ghost of a chance that she’ll come in agin’ all OK, but not likely.”

So I left him at his work, and went in search of the resident owners of the concern, whose whereabouts he pointed out. They were two brothers, Wilson by name, and they were at present working another claim of the same group on Prayer Hill. When I had introduced myself, and satisfied them, by recommendations which I carried, of my identity, and of the fact of my interest in the property, I was received very kindly. They had struck a rich vein in the claim they were working and were sanguine that The Little Pittsburg would yet come out all right. I paid my assessments to date, and got all the information possible in regard to the mine, which, when summed up, was that, if it failed to pan out, it would be the first and only one of that particular group that had done so. That the depth to which the shaft had reached was not yet sufficient for a final opinion on its value, and that in their judgment I would do well not to be in a hurry about disposing of my shares. This somewhat restored my spirits, and I began to consider what I should do pending a final test on our property, and I set about getting practical information to supplement my theoretical stock, which I found was a rather useless commodity without the ability to turn it to successful account. I had a wholesome horror of the task of looking for a job in the light of past experiences, but I had already learned enough of matters here to show me that conditions here were somewhat different from those I had encountered. Men stood but little on the formality of introductions or references, but accepted with easy philosophy the people and conditions that surrounded them. I had been encouraged by hearing, every working hour since my arrival, inquiries for help in various lines, and on returning to my boarding house at noon, my landlord said he had just had an inquiry for a clerk in one of the assay offices, and that he would introduce me at dinner to the proprietor, which he did, with the result that I obtained the position which was much to my present mind as it afforded the opportunities I desired for reducing my knowledge of minerals to practice.

Next morning I assumed my new duties, which I found interesting and agreeable, for they brought me in contact with the best mining ability, both practical and theoretical, that the world afforded, and I was eager to improve them and impatient to make my fortune, and return to my Mecca, toward which I worshiped day and night. Doubtless I committed the usual lover-like weakness of “sighing like a furnace,” but never the kindred one of writing a ballad to my mistress’ eyebrow, owing to the fact that in spite of my yearning passion I found it impossible to be poetical, and never in my life had been known to turn a single rhyme. I made but few acquaintances among the conglomerate population, where ex-ministers of the gospel lay down to rest, side by side, with blacklegs and professional gamblers, and that still more degraded specimen in his line of business, the “sure thing” man. He it was who blackened the fair fame of the professional in the latter’s opinion, and brought his honorable(?) profession into disrepute, and himself into unsavory prominence because an undiscriminating public insisted upon writing them down in the same category. His protest to me had much the same ring as that which the keepers of apothecary shops in Western States send forth, because some thoughtless and illogical persons insist on thinking of them when saloonists are mentioned, not because they ever stoop to the degrading business of selling a glass of liquor over the bar or counter--begging his pardon--but because they as good and law-abiding citizens choose to enjoy the legal right to sell it by the quart, gallon and jugful. While my city training had not made me over nice in moral distinctions, yet I confess to a somewhat creeping sensation when I saw a prominent druggist in Leadville kneeling at the altar in a prominent evangelical church to receive the solemn rites of ordination as an elder in said church, on a Sabbath morning, rise and hurry through with his noonday meal and away to his place of business to prepare several demijohns of whiskey for the outgoing stage bound for some mining camp beyond the railroad facilities.

But I have already stated that my researches into human nature since leaving the genial, exhilarating atmosphere of the schoolroom had tended to make me somewhat cynical; so I beg my readers not to mind me in the least, to merely regard this spleeny digression as another evidence that my mind has become soured by want of success, and that my present position on morals is owing rather to an abnormal condition of the liver than to firm principles.

Speaking of acquaintances, however, there was one whose influence had grown upon me, day by day, and who had seemed as assiduously bent on cultivating my friendship as I was flattered by his; for I had from the first hour I met him placed implicit confidence in our old friend of the flaming garment, nor have I to this hour found the smallest reason to change my opinion. Neither is this intended as a tribute to my acumen in reading human nature, but rather as a tribute to his open nature that presented no difficulties to the dullest reader. Of course, I inquired regularly as to the prospects of our mine, as he penetrated into the ledge, but the answers were rather unsatisfactory though on the whole he said the prospects were a little more cheering than when I first viewed my Golconda.

So the month of June had almost slipped away, and he would complete his job in two days more, when, one evening, he said the ledge was opening up again in fine shape and if she kept on as she promised now she would yet be a hummer. The next evening the reports were still more favorable, and The Little Pittsburg began again to become one of the themes among the knowing ones.

One day now remained of his allotted test work, and I waited in feverish anxiety for the old miner’s final report. As soon as office hours were over I hastened to our hotel to learn the results. Abner had not yet returned, but I did not have long to wait in suspense, and when he came he assured me with fatherly pleasure that I had struck it rich!

But my faith had been too rudely shattered once to soar very high on the subject of the strike. I began to have some offers for my interest that night, and the next morning I was waited upon by the Wilson brothers, who offered me ten thousand dollars for the shares owned by myself and uncle. I had been clothed with full power to negotiate and transfer his stock with mine in case I saw fit to sell, and, without waiting to seek the advice of my old friend, or hesitating a moment, I accepted the offer of what appeared to me quite a fortune. When I advised my old friend of my deal he rated me roundly, and called me some rather uncomplimentary names; said I needed a guardian, and that I could just as well have pocketed a cool hundred thousand as the paltry ten thousand. I tried to feel badly over my foolish transaction, but failed to feel any compunction at parting with a possession that had been from the first somewhat of a white elephant on my hands.