almost asleep that night when it came to me, like a big bell ringing in the dark: with a union, if I could start it and run it and stop it when I chose, I could close down Virginia City tighter than the lid of hell, and stop that river of silver that was running east and furnishing the money to the North that they needed to win the war. I lay there so excited I couldn’t sleep, because that would make it all right about my being here, and I could write Annapolis, and my leaving Sacramento wouldn’t be something I had to be ashamed of any more. I waited as long as I could, but it was still dark when I ran down C Street and over to Gold Canyon, where he and two or three friends had their shacks. He was frying his beans when I got there, and showed his teeth and laughed when I told him about changing my mind, even if he had no idea what my reasons were. He took me over to the Dakota then, which was the mine he worked in, to get a job, because of course I couldn’t organize any union unless I had a job in the mines. We lined up in front of the timekeeper’s window, outside the stockade, us and the twenty or thirty that wanted jobs that day, and after a while Trapp came out, the foreman that needed men.
He was a big, heavy-set man, and there was a lot of talk about him as he went down the line, feeling muscles and looking at hands and feet and teeth, like we were a bunch of mules at a stock auction. He came from Ohio, one man said, but had been a slave dealer in Memphis up to 1858, when he did things that were too much even for that place, and when a couple of mulatto girls died in his barracks he got run out and came west. Even the mine-owners couldn’t stand him, and he kept getting fired, but could always get a new job because though he treated the miners bad he could get out the ore, and there was generally somebody that needed him. He picked about a dozen of us and took us inside, and the timekeeper fixed us up with overalls, tools, hat, and candles, and booked us with them, around fifty dollars, and then we were brought in to the owner and the superintendent. The owner was named Hale, and he was a little man around fifty with a pale skin, black mustache, and expensive clothes, that looked like a dignified rat. The super was a big rawboned man named Lew Williams that was dressed in corduroys and talked with a brogue. He made us a speech and said he came up from the face of the rock himself, back in Cardiff, Wales, and asked nothing from a man but good work, in return for which he expected to give him fair treatment. Then he shook hands all around, but when he came to me asked my name. “And what part of the world do you come from, Duval?”
“Annapolis, Md.”
“And what did you do there?”
“Went to college, mostly.”
“Ah, the naval school?”
“No. There’s a college there too, St. John’s.”
“And you took the diploma?”
“Yes sir. A.B.”
“But you worked as well as studied?”
“I was a page for the legislature a couple of sessions. Then, when I was in college, I worked a bugeye three summers.”
“A bug—?”
“It’s a boat. Pointed at both ends, raked masts, leg-o’-mutton rig, centerboard. Really, it’s an oversize, decked-over canoe. In the ocean they’d slide all around, but in the bay, with the board coming up for the sandbars, they handle all right. The oyster-men use them, and my boat I rented to naval officers when they felt like a sail down the bay for some fishing. They said it was fishing. From where
I stayed, at the tiller, it sounded more like poker-playing.”
“And whisky-drinking, no doubt.”
“Plenty of that.”
“What’s your weight, my lad?”
“One eighty, sir.”
“Drop in and see me, Duval.”
Going to the cage, the rest of them had plenty to say about teacher’s pet and the boy on the burning deck, but Paddy shook my arm and I let them get away with it.
They tell you Virginia was laid out for hell but the devil’s health couldn’t stand it,
He was a big, heavy-set man, and there was a lot of talk about him as he went down the line, feeling muscles and looking at hands and feet and teeth, like we were a bunch of mules at a stock auction. He came from Ohio, one man said, but had been a slave dealer in Memphis up to 1858, when he did things that were too much even for that place, and when a couple of mulatto girls died in his barracks he got run out and came west. Even the mine-owners couldn’t stand him, and he kept getting fired, but could always get a new job because though he treated the miners bad he could get out the ore, and there was generally somebody that needed him. He picked about a dozen of us and took us inside, and the timekeeper fixed us up with overalls, tools, hat, and candles, and booked us with them, around fifty dollars, and then we were brought in to the owner and the superintendent. The owner was named Hale, and he was a little man around fifty with a pale skin, black mustache, and expensive clothes, that looked like a dignified rat. The super was a big rawboned man named Lew Williams that was dressed in corduroys and talked with a brogue. He made us a speech and said he came up from the face of the rock himself, back in Cardiff, Wales, and asked nothing from a man but good work, in return for which he expected to give him fair treatment. Then he shook hands all around, but when he came to me asked my name. “And what part of the world do you come from, Duval?”
“Annapolis, Md.”
“And what did you do there?”
“Went to college, mostly.”
“Ah, the naval school?”
“No. There’s a college there too, St. John’s.”
“And you took the diploma?”
“Yes sir. A.B.”
“But you worked as well as studied?”
“I was a page for the legislature a couple of sessions. Then, when I was in college, I worked a bugeye three summers.”
“A bug—?”
“It’s a boat. Pointed at both ends, raked masts, leg-o’-mutton rig, centerboard. Really, it’s an oversize, decked-over canoe. In the ocean they’d slide all around, but in the bay, with the board coming up for the sandbars, they handle all right. The oyster-men use them, and my boat I rented to naval officers when they felt like a sail down the bay for some fishing. They said it was fishing. From where
I stayed, at the tiller, it sounded more like poker-playing.”
“And whisky-drinking, no doubt.”
“Plenty of that.”
“What’s your weight, my lad?”
“One eighty, sir.”
“Drop in and see me, Duval.”
Going to the cage, the rest of them had plenty to say about teacher’s pet and the boy on the burning deck, but Paddy shook my arm and I let them get away with it.
They tell you Virginia was laid out for hell but the devil’s health couldn’t stand it,
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