CHAPTER IX.

COMSTOCK’S MATRIMONIAL VENTURE.

A short time before he sold his mining interests in Virginia City, Comstock was smitten by the tender passion and made a venture in the matrimonial time. It appears that a Mormon from Salt Lake, a little sore-eyed fellow named Carter, landed at the diggings one day with his wife and all his worldly effects on board of a dilapidated wagon, drawn by a pair of sorry nags.

The man said he desired to go to work, and if he could find employment would take up his residence in the diggings.

Comstock looked upon the fair features of the wife, and his susceptible heart was touched—his soul went out toward her as she sat there in the end of the little canvas-covered wagon, mournfully gazing out from the depths of her calico sun-bonnet. Having charge of the Ophir mine, as superintendent, Comstock hired the man and set him to work, being determined to keep the woman in the camp.

The Mormon pair made their home in their wagon, and in the course of a week or two it was observed that Comstock spent most of his time in the neighborhood of the vehicle, was all the time hanging about it. Finally he was one day seen seated upon the wagon tongue, smiling upon all nature, with the Mormon wife engaged in combing his hair. The next morning both Comstock and the wife were missing. The hair-combing had meant business—showed the sealing of a compact of some kind. The pair had made a bee-line for Washoe Valley, where a preacher acquaintance of Comstock’s—one of the old settlers of the country—married them after the manner of the “Gentiles.”

The next day Comstock and bride went to Carson City, and while there receiving the congratulations of friends, the Mormon husband suddenly appeared upon the scene.

There was for a time a considerable amount of blowing on both sides, Comstock producing his certificate of marriage and asserting that it was the right he stood upon. Finally, to settle the difficulty, Comstock agreed to give the ex-husband a horse, a revolver, and $60 in money for the woman, and so have no more bother.

This was agreed to and Carter took the “consideration” and started off. After he had gone a distance of two or three hundred yards, Comstock shouted after him and told him to come back. When he had returned, Comstock demanded of him a bill of sale for his wife, saying that the right way to do business was “up and up;” he wanted no “after-claps”—didn’t wish to be obliged to pay for the woman a dozen times over.

Carter then made out and signed a regular bill of sale, which Comstock put in his wallet and then waved the man away.

In a few days Comstock had business at San Francisco. He left his bride at Carson City and started over the mountains. When he had reached Sacramento, word was sent him that his wife had run away with a seductive youth of the town, and that the pair were on their way to California by the Placerville route.

Comstock was all activity as soon as this news reached him. He engaged the services of half a dozen Washoe friends whom he found at Sacramento, and all hands hastened to Placerville, where they waited for the runaways, who were on foot, to come in.

In due season they arrived and were pounced upon. Comstock and his wife had a long talk in private.

At length Comstock made his appearance and told his friends that it was all right, there would be no more trouble, as his wife was sorry for what she had done and would now live with him right along and be a good wife to him. All congratulated “Old Pancake” upon having brought his affairs to a conclusion so satisfactory.

Wishing to bring forth his wife and have her tell his friends how good she was going to be in the future, Comstock presently went to the room in which he had left her. No wife was there! While Comstock had been talking with his friends and receiving their congratulations, his wife had climbed out of a back window and was off again with her young lover.

“To horse! to horse!” was then the cry, and soon Comstock’s friends had mounted and were away. Not a moment was to be lost if the fugitives were to be captured, and the pursuit began at once. Comstock himself was not idle. He went forth into the town and offered $100 reward for the capture and return of the runaways. He also went to a livery-stable and hired all the teams about the establishment, sending forth upon the search all who could be induced to go.

Most of those who accepted teams went off pleasure-riding, and would not have disturbed the runaways had they found them. One man who went out on the search, however, was a California miner who happened to be in Placerville “dead broke.” He wanted the reward, and when he started out he meant business.

The next day this man walked the runaways into Placerville in front of his six-shooter. Comstock was delighted, and at once paid the man the $100 reward. He then took his wife away to a secure place in the upper story of a building, and locked her up in a room in order to have another talk with her.

Meantime, his friends had charge of the young fellow who was making a business of stealing Comstock’s wife. They shut him up in a room at the hotel where they were stopping, and placed a man over him as a guard, until they could consult together in regard to what was to be his fate—at least this was what the young fellow was given to understand.

Soon after dark the guard told the young man that it had been decided to take him out and hang him. The guard pretended to regret that they were going to be so rough with the young fellow and finally told him that if he could manage to escape it would be all right. “Now,” said he, “I am going out to the bar to take a drink and if I find you here when I come back it will be your own fault.”

The young fellow was not found nor was he ever seen in the town again.

By practicing eternal vigilance, Comstock managed to keep his wife that winter, but in the spring, when the snow had gone off and the little wild-flowers were beginning to peep up about the rocks and round the roots of the tall pines, she watched her chance and ran away with a long-legged miner who, with his blankets on his back, came strolling that way.

Mrs. Comstock finally ceased to roam; she came to anchor in a lager-beer cellar in Sacramento.

The fate of Carter, the Mormon who sold his wife to Comstock, was tragic. After making the sale he mounted the horse he had received in part payment for his spouse, and crossing the Sierra Nevada Mountains by way of Hope Valley and the Big Trees, went down into California. There he fell in with an emigrant train and courted and married a young girl, all within a week. The next spring he came to Virginia City with his wife. He had lived there but a short time before his wife learned of his having sold a recent wife to Comstock, when she left Carter’s bed and board and sued for and obtained a divorce. She then married a Mr. Winnie, of Gold Hill.

At that time it was the fashion to take up mining ground in the names of women. Carter had caused some claims to be located in his wife’s name, and after she was divorced from him and married to Winnie, kept running to see her about these claims, wishing to get some share of them back. The frequent visits of Carter were not relished by Winnie, and he and Carter had several wars of words. At length, one day when Carter came and was bothering Mrs. Winnie about the mining ground, she went out and called in her husband, who was at work near at hand. As Winnie entered the house the battle was opened by Carter drawing his revolver and shooting three fingers off Winnie’s left hand. Winnie then turned loose with his six-shooter and killed Carter in his tracks. Some time after this, in a similar argument Winnie had a few fingers—less than half a dozen—shot off his right hand.

Winnie afterwards went to Honey Lake Valley, where his wife was thrown from a horse, dragged over the ground, and killed.

After Comstock’s wife ran away with the strolling miner he thought best to let her continue her travels unmolested. He opened a store at Carson City with the money received for his mining interests in Virginia City and also had a branch-store at Silver City, a town on Gold Cañon, about three miles below Gold Hill, which was laid out in the summer of 1859.

He soon broke up in the mercantile line, losing everything. He trusted everybody—all went to his stores and purchased goods without money and without price, and at last his old friends the Piute Indians came in and carried away the remnants. Comstock made them all happy, male and female, by passing out to them armfuls of red blankets and calico of brilliant hues.

His stock in the Carson store was as good as was seen in most trading establishments of the kind at that day, but his Silver City branch never amounted to much, the stock consisting principally, as the miners said, of blue cotton overalls, pick-handles, rusty bacon, “nigger” shoes, and “dog-leg” tobacco.

After losing all of his property, Comstock left Nevada and went to Idaho and Montana, through which countries he wandered and prospected for some years, always hoping that some day he should come upon a second Comstock lode. He was always ready to join every expedition that was fitted out to explore new regions, as the “big thing” seemed to him to be ever just ahead.

In 1870 he joined the Big Horn expedition in Montana, and this was his last undertaking. When near Bozeman City, on September 27th, 1870, he committed suicide by shooting himself in the head with his revolver. The Montana papers said it was supposed that he committed the act while laboring under temporary aberration of mind, and this was doubtless the case, as his was by no means a sound or well-balanced brain.