sank down till they came to
the main lode, an' then there was the discovery o' what that 'blue
stuff,' which we'd bin throwin' away, was really worth; from them two
causes came the Washoe gold-rush. You never saw anythin' like that,
not even in the Klondike. It was maddenin' for me to stand by an'
watch these men, who'd come from a thousand miles east an' west, just
t' handle the pickin's o' the wealth which I had once possessed an'
hadn't had the sense to know about. They lived in tents, an' huts, an'
holes in the hillsides, an' paid seventy-five cents for a pound o'
flour, in the hopes that, when the summer 'ad come, they might get a
chance to prospect.

"Before winter 'ad gone, they was leadin' strings o' mules across the
mountains, on blankets spread above the snow, that they might get
provisions in an' prevent us from starvin'. An' I, the feller as
they'd come to rob, had to sit still an' watch it all.

"Before the roads were fit for travel, all the world was journeyin'
towards us. There were Irishmen, pushin' wheelbarrows; an' Mexicans
with burros; an' German miners, an' French, an' English, an' Swedes,
ploddin' through the mud across the Sierras with their tools upon
their backs; there were organ-grinders an' Jew pedlars, an' women
dressed as men, all comin' to Virginia City to claim the gold which I
'ad lost. I sat every day idly watchin' their approach, an' I hated
them. I'd begun to believe in the Mormon's curse, an' to let things
slide. There didn't seem to be much sense in stakin' out a new
claim--if I made another fortune, I felt certain that I'd surely lose
it all.

"Along wi' the adventurers an' prospectors came desperadoes, who
intended to make their fortune at the gun's point, by shootin'
straight! There was the Tombstone Terror, an' the Bad Man from Bodie,
an' Sam Brown, the greatest bully o' them all. One night a half-witted
feller asked him how many men he'd chopped. 'Ninety-nine,' says Sam,
'an' you're the hundredth.' He seizes him by the neck an' rips him to
pieces wi' his bowie-knife. Then he lay down an' went to sleep on the
billiard table, while the father gathered up what remained o' his son
from the floor.

"An' there was El Dorado Johnny, who, whenever he was goin' to shoot a
man, bought a new suit o' clothes an' had a shave, an' got his hair
cut an' his boots polished so that, in case there was any mistake, he
might make a handsome corpse. These were some o' the men that I lived
among,