CHAPTER XI.
OLD VIRGINIA AND HIS STORIES.
Old Virginia used to tell of a terrible fight that took place one evening in Gold Hill. The stakes, he said, were two short bits (twenty cents). The fight lasted half an hour and was most stubbornly contested on both sides. The contest was, as he would here explain, between his appetite and his “drinketite.” He held stakes, and for a good while was unable to decide which had won. At last, however, drinketite got his opponent down and kept him down so long that he decided in his favor, and all three struck out for the nearest saloon—appetite grumbling at him all the way about his decision.
As has been already mentioned, Old Virginia was a great hunter. When not engaged in mining or prospecting, he was off in the hills with his gun; most generally alone wandering and philosophizing through the wilderness as he viewed the stupendous works of nature. He used to tell a story of a feast he once had in the desert regions of the Humboldt, which was quite amusing. It ran as follows:
OLD VIRGINIA’S FISHER STORY.
“In ’53, six or eight of us were out on a huntin’ trip and camped on the Humboldt River, down to’ards the sink of the same.
“We’d been havin’ miserable luck. Couldn’t strike any game and had ’bout devoured what grub we’d carried out with us when we left Johntown. This being the case, we nat’rally had to keep stirrin’ about to try to skeer up somethin’ that would do to eat. So, one afternoon, when the pot was ’bout empty, all hands struck out to try for something in the way of game; some goin’ one way and some another.
“Old Captain Crooks and one or two more, went off down the river, while the rest of our fellers struck back from the stream and kind o’ promiscuously diversified themselves out across the sand-hills and sage-brush flats in search of sage-hen and rabbits; you see we couldn’t expect to find big game in that section—deer, and antelope, and them sort of fellers.
“I finally went off up the river alone. I jogged along up the stream, ’bout half a mile, and then laid down in a big bunch of weedy-lookin’ bushes. As I was reposin’ thar in the silence, gazin’ up at the deep blue sky, I fell to ruminatin’ on the unsartainty of all things here below—on what is above, and why we are here.
“I had jist arrived at the conclusion that man can no more help bein’ born than a blade of grass can stay in the ground when spring comes; and, as the blade of grass can’t help fadin’ and dyin’ when winter comes on, so man goes out of the world with about as little say in the matter as when he comes into it.
“All of this I was a-thinkin’ about as I lay thar lookin’ up at the sky, half-way noticin’ a solitary raven as was a sailin about high above. I’d fixed it up that thar was a great head mind up in them blue heavens somewhar, as was a-seein’ to all matters for me and the grass, and that things was liable to work jist about as that mind willed, whether me and the grass made a fuss about it or not, when all at once I heerd a small racket, near me in some dry grass.
“Erectin’ myself cautiously, and peepin’ over the top of my clump of bushes, I seed a all-fired big skunk, rootin’ under the dry, matted grass near the brink of the river. He war lookin’ after mice, worms, bugs, grass-nuts, and sich like provender.
“I brought my gun to my shoulder and knocked the unsuspectin’ critter over so dead that he never kicked. He was jist as good game as I wanted—I wouldn’t have traded him for any number of blue-meated rabbits.
“Bein’ shot in jist the right spot, thar wasn’t a particle of smell about him. You see I’d knocked over many sich fellers back in Ole Virginney and knowed percisely whar to hold on him to do the work. Many’s the fine fat one I’d cooked and devoured! But it’s not every place whar they’ll eat skunk—it’s a thing that runs in streaks and through sartain settlements, as you may say.
“This was a prime feller! I think I never, in all my experience, killed a finer or fatter one. I shouldered my game and trudged back to the camp, which I found vacant. None of the boys had yet returned.
[Illustration: THE HAPPY BREAKFAST.]
“I sat down and skinned my skunk, then tuck and hid the skin in some low bushes, a few rods from camp, in order that none of the fellows might know the exact natur of the game I’d brought in.
“If they knowed it war a skunk, not one of ’em would eat a bite of it—some people’s so prejudiced, you know ’bout outside appearances and the little nat’ral peculiarities of birds and beast.
“Well, to’ards night, Captain Crook’s and all the fellers got into camp, and not one of them had killed a thing. They soon spied the fine plump animal I had hangin’ up on a stake, near camp, and wanted to know what for critter it war. I told ’em I didn’t know for sartin—the blame thing ruther headed my time, and I war convarsant with most of the four-footed quadrupeds perambulatin’ the present hemisphere; yet I reckon the thing might do to eat on a pinch.
“All hands now wanted to see the skin. I pretended to look for it, then told ’em I’d seed the dogs a worryin’ with somethin’ a bit ago’ and ruther guessed they’d drug the skin into the river.
“Captain Crooks seemed to be took with a idea. Says he: ‘Was it a kinder brownish-black lookin’ thing, with a kinder middlin’-like bushy tail?’
“‘What would it be apt to be if it was that way?’ says I.
“‘A fisher,’ says he.
“‘Is a fisher good to eat?’ says I.
“‘Yes, fisher’s bully eatin,’ says he.
“‘That’s the way its tail looked,’ says I.
“‘How about the color?‘ says he.
“‘Air fishers as good as rabbit?’ says I.
“‘Much bulleyer!’ says he.
“‘Then,’ says I, ‘you’ve guessed the color.’
“The old Captain then turned to the boys and said he knowed it was a fisher the moment he sot eyes on it, and he hadn’t seen one for goin’ on eleven year, now.
“Then he went to braggin’ so much about what good eatin’ fisher was, that the boys all got awful anxious to be tryin’ some of the critter.
“But the Captain said fisher warn’t good till it had first been well parboiled; that we must put him in the camp-kettle and bile him that night, then stew him down in a pan for breakfast.
“When we went to bed we left the fisher gently simmerin’ over the fire, and by mornin’ he was not only biled, but too much so—was biled to rags.
“The Captain looked a litle puzzled at this phernominon, but the boys said it was all the better.
“We fried as much of the animal as we could stack into two pans and had a reg’lar feast of fisher; as the fellers all believed the thing to be.
“Old Captain Crooks was delighted. He had his plate filled about five times, and told the boys, as all were squatted in a circle round about on the ground, how he used to have big times up in Wisconsin a catchin’ and a cookin’ of fishers.
“I’d finished my breakfast and started to go and ketch up my horse, when I came to the skunk skin, layin’ in the bushes whar I’d hid it away. An idea popped into my head. I looked at the great black-and-white, woolly hide, then at the ole Captain, who, with his knife and fork balanced acrost his fingers, was showin’ the boys how to set a trap for a fisher. He still had in his lap ’bout half a plate of greasy, steamin’ fisher stew, and the fellers was all still a shovelin’ in fisher, watchin’., between mouthfuls, the trap the Captain was fixen up for ’em.
“‘I’ll do it!’ says I, to myself. Pickin’ up the skin by ’bout six of the long white hairs in the end of the tail, I marched up to where all war squatted.
“Hy‘ar, fellers,’ says I, ‘blame me if hyar ain’t that dam fisher skin now!’
“Gentlemen, if I war to talk from now till next week I couldn’t do full justice to what follered! Old Captain Crooks was just raisin’ a forkful of stew to his mouth, when he ketched sight of that air skin. The fork dropped from his hand; his eyes bugged out like the horns of a snail, and a sort of convulsive shudder shook his whole animal system as he yelled: ‘Skunk, by all that’s stinkin’ and nasty!’
“‘Skunk, by thunder!’ howled all the rest in chorus.
“Sick! well, I needn’t mention what follered. But, fellers, that like ter cost me my life—that trick did. When them boys finally got convalescent and riz up and come for me, it was close papers for a time.
“Ole Captain Crooks picked one lock o’ hair out o’ my head before I had time to make the least explanation. It tuck awful hard swearin’ to make them fellers believe I had’nt never seed a skunk afore.”
Peter O’Riley, in the early days, when mining on Gold Cañon and along Six-mile Cañon, was an honest, hard-working, good-natured, harmless kind of man, yet when aroused displayed a most fierce and ungovernable temper. When he flew into a passion he was ready to do anything or use any kind of weapon that first came to hand. Even then, he showed, in this, signs of that insanity in which he ended his days. Many instances of his exhibitions of blind and furious rage are related by the early miners.
During these early days a sham duel was got up at Johntown between O’Riley and a young man named Smith, a miner working in Gold Cañon. As in most real duels, there was a woman in the case, a girl living up in Carson Valley. Both O’Riley and Smith found pleasure in the smile of the young girl in question, and the light of her eyes was as sunshine to their hearts. O’Riley was so much smitten that he would sometimes go and work all day on the farm of the father without money and without reward of any kind, other than the pleasure of being near the daughter during the time he was taking his meals. Such hard-working love as this must have been strong and honest. As O’Riley could neither read nor write the “boys” fixed up letters purporting to come from the girl, in which she expressed unbounded love for both men, but the trouble was that for the life of her she could not say which she most loved. At last there came a letter in which she said she had thought of a way of deciding the matter. O’Riley and Smith were to fight a duel, and her hand was to be the prize of the victor.
O’Riley was ready for this at once, for, as I have said, he was a man who was quite desperate when the deeper feelings of his nature were aroused, and Smith, though he pretended to dislike the proposition, finally agreed to stand up to the rack; there appearing to be no other way in which the difficulty could be settled.
It was left to the friends of the principals to make the necessary arrangements. These decided that as but one of the men could have the girl, the duel should be to the death. They therefore announced that the fight must be with double-barrelled shotguns, at twenty paces.
The appointed time arrived, and the rival lovers were placed in position, each armed with a shotgun. The guns were heavily charged with powder and paper-wads, but O’Riley, who was in downright earnest and thirsted for blood, supposed that all was on the square and that each barrel of both guns contained not less than nine revolver-balls.
At the word, both men fired; but O’Riley, who was determined to put his rival out of the way, turned loose with both barrels of his gun, firing his second barrel almost before the smoke had drifted away from the muzzle of the first.
Young Smith fell groaning to the ground, where his brother who was standing near with his left hand filled with the blood of a chicken, ran to him, crying: “Oh! my poor brother, my poor brother!” at the same time smearing his brother’s breast with the blood he held in his hand.
O’Riley was brought to the spot by his seconds, and while they were asking the seconds of the opposite side if their man had received satisfaction, the brother of the man lying on the ground suddenly drew his six-shooter, and shouting: “You have killed my brother, now I’ll have your life!” made at O’Riley, who ran like a deer for the house of a neighbor, where he knew a loaded shotgun was kept.
As he ran, the brother of the man supposed to be killed, occasionally fired his pistol, causing O’Riley to do some lively zigzaging, after the manner practiced by the Piute Indians under similar circumstances.
The farce of the duel having been carefully studied in all of its details, long before going upon the ground, and knowing that at this stage of its progress O’Riley would go for this shotgun, the boys had rammed tremendous charges into both barrels of the ponderous old family weapon, putting a number of paper wads down upon the powder.
Leaping into the house and getting possession of the gun, O’Riley rushed out and was about to make his way across Gold Cañon, when his pursuer, now dangerously near, blazed away at him again with his revolver.
O’Riley, standing on the brink of the cañon, wheeled about and let drive at his relentless pursuer. He had cocked both barrels of the gun and both went off together, the breech striking him full on the nose and mouth, sending him rolling fifteen or twenty feet to the bottom of the cañon. He landed in active retreat, however, and went up through the cañon like an antelope.
O’Riley made directly for the village of Franktown, distant twelve miles, over the mountain, and remained there some two weeks, though the Johntowners several times sent word to him to come back and work his claim—that he had not killed Smith, that all was right and the duel was only a sham affair.
But not a word of all this would O’Riley believe. He had seen his rival stretched upon the ground in his gore, had heard his dying groans, and was not to be fooled back to Johntown to be shot by the incensed Smiths or hanged by the miners of the camp.
[Illustration]
Taking with them young Smith, the man supposed to have been killed in the duel, a party of Johntowners went over to Franktown to see O’Riley. No sooner did the latter see that Smith was really alive than he flew into a terrible rage and it was all that the friends on both sides could do to prevent shooting that was not sham and bloodshed in earnest. Peace was finally made by young Smith agreeing to renounce all pretensions to the hand of the young lady.
Peter O’Riley, one of the discoverers of the Comstock lode, as has been stated, held his interest in the Ophir mine, longer than any of the original locators, and realized nearly $50,000. He seemed to be “fixed” for the remainder of his days. Being a man used to roughing it all the days of his life, his wants, both real and imaginary, were few. Had he placed his money at interest he could have taken his ease all the rest of his days. But he built a big stone hotel in Virginia City, and then allowed persons to persuade him that he was a great man, a man of financial genius, who should make himself felt in the stock-market. As he could neither read nor write, he was obliged to find persons to do that part of the business for him. He and his assistants then speculated—speculated until one day “poor old Pete” found himself with pick, shovel, and pan, on his back, again going forth to prospect; as we have seen Comstock wandering in unrest through the wilds of Montana.
Being a spiritualist and having always the latest advices from the ghosts of the departed, in regard to mines and all else worth knowing about, O’Riley did not find it necessary to wander as far as to Montana. The spirits pointed out a place in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, where they said was stored up far more gold and silver than in the whole Comstock lode.
The place shown O’Riley by the spirits was nothing more than a bed of rotten granite. Here he toiled alone at running a tunnel—worked for two or three years—under all manner of difficulties.
The ground in which he was at work was full of water, and caves frequently occurred in his tunnel. The work of many weeks was often lost in a moment by a cave, which crushed in his timbers and drove him back almost to where he first began; but the spirits said there was a whole mountain of silver and gold ahead, and he believed them and persevered.
[Illustration: GUIDED BY SPIRITS.]
He was without money but not without friends. One and another of his friends among the old settlers, purchased for him what he required in the way of provisions and tools. As he worked alone in his dark tunnel, month after month, far under the mountain, the spirits began to grow more and more familiar. They swarmed about him, advising him and directing the work. As he wielded pick and sledge, their voices came to him out of the darkness which walled in the light of his solitary candle, cheering him on; voices from the chinks in the rocks whispered to him stories of great masses of native silver at no great distance ahead, of caverns floored with silver and roofed with great arches hung with stalactites of pure silver and glittering, native gold.
The spirits talked so much with him in his tunnel under the mountain, and had made themselves so familiar then, that at last they boldly conversed with him under the broad light of day, and in the city as well as in the solitude of the mountains. He was heard muttering to them as he walked the streets, and a wild and joyous light gleamed in his eyes as he listened to their promises of mountains of gold and caves of silver.
News at length came that O’Riley had been caved on and badly hurt; then that the physicians had pronounced him insane.
When he recovered from his hurt, he was anxious to return to his tunnel—the spirits under the mountain were calling to him—but he was sent to a private asylum for the insane, at Woodbridge, California, and in a year or two died there; the spirits to the last lingering about him and heaping on him reproaches for having left the golden mountains and silver caverns they had pointed out to him.
[Illustration]