NEVADA HOTEL,
CAMP OF MOONBEAMS.
DEAREST MAMMA,--When you hear of all I have to tell you you will wonder I can write so quietly. But I will make myself, and keep everything in its place, so that you get a clear picture.
We started early yesterday morning in the private car, for a junction, or terminus (I am not sure which) called Hot Creek,--everyone in the best of spirits after a send off from all our friends. Marcus Aurelius's face to welcome us on board was enough to rejuvenate anyone, simply a full moon of black and white smiles, and I am sure he is the first person Merecdes has confided her love affair to, for he seems to watch over her and Gaston like a deus ex machina.
Nelson and I sat out on the observation veranda again, and he told me many things of all this land, and how often the poor adventurers coming out West will climb on to the irons under the trains, and then cling for countless miles, chancing hideous death to be carried along; and how, sometimes, they will get lost and die of starvation. And just then, in the grimmest country of absolutely arid desert valley, between highish barren hills, we saw a beautiful lake of blue water with green trees reflected in it, and when I looked at Nelson his eyes were sad. Nothing could have seemed more cool or refreshing; it made one long to jump out of the train and go and bathe, for now, though still early in the spring, it is getting very hot. "It is nothing but a mirage," Nelson said. "There is no water there and no trees. It comes and goes in this part of the desert according to the state of the atmosphere, and it has been the cause of many a poor fellow's end." How treacherous, Mamma! How cruel of Nature to treat her children so! And then he put his head back and pulled his hat over his eyes.
"A mirage," he said, like one dreaming. "Guess it's often like life." And then he told me of the curious effect it had had upon his imagination the first time he had seen it, when alone with his burros, prospecting; how it seemed to say to him to make a reality of green and prosperity out of the parched world, and how his thoughts always returned there when he had successes, and he dreamed of a day when he should rest a little by just such a lake. "To rest my soul," he said, "if I have any; to rest it with someone I should love."
And, as once before, the Senator broke in upon us with his cheery, charming voice, "Guess you two are talking like high-flown poet coons," he said, "and there is breakfast to be thought of, and happy things like that." And then as Nelson went in front he stepped back and put his kind hand under my chin, and raised it and looked straight into my eyes.
"Little daughter," he said, "little friend, p'raps your heart's aching for someone over the sea, but don't make his heart ache, too, now. Promise me." And of course I won't, Mamma, and of course I promised. Isn't it a queer world? And all mirage, as Nelson said. Well, now let us get on and laugh and be gay. An eleven o'clock breakfast was our usual fun; you can't imagine such a well arranged party, never a jar or disagreement, like, I am sure, we should be having if there were Englishwomen. In a flock Americans are infinitely more agreeable to deal with. I expect it is in the blood, having had to spend such quantities of time, all women together, while the men are away.
The moment we finished our food we drew up at our destination, and in this wilderness there was a telegraph station and a few shanties, but it could all be lit by electric light! The most strong, paintless, hardy looking automobiles were awaiting us, into which we climbed, a very close pack. The maids and valets had all been left behind at Osages--think of asking Agnes to really rough it, even if there had been room! So we had all to attend to the luggage, and were only allowed a teeny hand bag each, with a nighty and comb and brush in it. Our hair and faces were already grey with dust, and all sense of appearance had been forgotten.
I sat between Lola and Nelson, with the little Vinerhorn and the secretary in front of us, while the Senator was next our chauffeur, whom they addressed as "Bob"--a friend, not an employe. The rest of the party squashed into the other motors and so we started, ours leading over a track, not a road; the sage brush had been removed, that was all, and there were deep ruts to guide us. We flew along with a brilliant blue sky overhead, high hills which presently grew mountainous on either side, and what seemed an endless sea of greenish drab scrub before. Once or twice we passed tired, weary-looking men plodding on foot, and I did wish we could have picked them up and helped them along; but there was not an inch of room. The ruts were so extremely deep that I certainly should have been pitched out but that Nelson held me tight. Mr. Vinerhorn frowned so when he held Lola, too, that he was obliged to leave her alone, and I am sure she must have had a most uncomfortable journey. I suppose this little Randolph has picked up that selfish jealous trait in England with his clothes, only thinking of
his emotions, not his wife's comfort, quite unlike kind Americans. After about an hour we began to go up the steepest hills on the winding track, and got among pine trees and great boulders, up and up until the air grew quite chill; and then as we turned a sharp corner the most unique scene met our view. I told you before I can't describe scenery, Mamma, but I must try this, because it was so wonderful, and reminded me of the pictures in Paradise Lost illustrated by Dore, when the Devil looks down on that weird world.
A grey-sand, flat place far below us, about fifty miles across, surrounded by mountains turning blue in their shadows in the afternoon light--it might have been a supremely vast Circus Maximus or giants' race course, and there was the giant towering above the rest, with a snow cap on his head, peeping from between the lower mountains. It seemed it could not be possible we could descend to there, but we did, the track getting more primitive as we went on, and once on the edge of a precipice we met a waggon and team of eight mules driven by a Mexican with a cracking whip, and getting past might have tried your nerves, but no one notices such things in a country of this sort!
Every atom of food for Moonbeams has to be drawn over this ninety miles of desert by waggons or mule carts, and every drop of water comes in six miles from the camp. What splendid pluck and daring to wrest gold from the earth under such circumstances! What general would fight an enemy so far from his food supply?
We seemed to be no time being raced and shaken over the flat sand basin, meeting and passing more teams on the way, and twice a petrol and drink station of one board shed, and a man with a jolly Irish face and a gun openly in his belt, to attend to it. We had no breakdowns, and just at sunset got into the one and only street of Moonbeams. But there were no stone houses or anything but sheds of one storey, generally, and more often rows of tents. The Moonbeams is not three months old! So quickly do these places grow when a rush for newly discovered rich gold is made. We had passed quantities of "claims" on the way; piles of stones like little cairns marking their four corners; and I wonder if in five hundred years the socialists of that day will scream and try to demonstrate that the descendants of those brave adventurers have no right to their bit of land, but should give it up to them, who only talk and fume and do no work upon it.
Everyone was in from the mines, which are all close, shafts sticking up from every hill and heaps of broken rock and earth rising like mole hills. The straggling street was full of men, and I should not think in the world there can be a collection of more splendid looking humanity--all young and strong and wholesome. The Senator says life is so impossibly difficult here that only those in the best of health can stand it, and to face such chances requires the buoyancy and hope of youth. Whatever the cause they were all lovely creatures, just like our guardsmen, numbers tall and slender and thin through, and many of them might have been the Eton eleven or Oxford eight, and all with the insouciance and careless grace I have already told you of.
You know what I mean by "thin through," Mamma: that lovely look of narrow hips and slender waist and fine shoulders, not padded and not too square, and looked at sideways not a bit thick; the chest, not the tummy, the most sticking out part, and the general expression of race horses. You would have to melt off layers of hips and other bits of most of the Eastern American, and then alter the set of their bones to get them to resemble any of these. And yet I suppose they are all Americans, too, drifted here from other States; but they look so absolutely different; I expect they are not the conglomeration of all nations who have emigrated, like in New York, but the original pure stock. Or can it be the life after all? In any case it is too attractive, and I wish you could see them, Mamma?
They welcomed the Senator and his party as friends, and as we went at walking pace they conducted us to the hotel. And it was a hotel!!! Think of one long, long board barn of two storeys high, not finished quite, being built, with kind of little rabbit hole rooms off each side of a long passage on both floors, in some the boards not meeting, so that you can see into the next person's apartment, or into the open air as the case may be, and in all, if a knot is out of the wood, a peep hole! The flimsiest door not fitting, with the number of each room printed on a bit of paper and fastened on with a tack; furniture consisting of a rickety iron bed, a box that has been a packing case for a table, another for a washstand, a rough single chair, sometimes a rocking chair, and all crowned by a looking-glass that makes half your nose in one part of your face, and one eye up in your forehead--too deliciously comic. It was all very clean, except the bed clothes, but we won't speak of them; their recollection shivers me.
Octavia and Tom had one room at the very end, and the rest of our party had to scatter where we could, as numbers were taken, and it was difficult to get even enough to go round. Mine was a very grand one, because it had newspapers pasted on the boards partition, but it was very deceptive, because one could not at once discern the knots and cracks, and anyone might surprise one by poking a finger through in unexpected places. Gaston had the next on my right, and Mercedes and Columbia the one beyond him, and I did wonder, under the circumstances, which of us he would peep at. I felt it would be me, because Mercedes and Columbia being jeune filles, and he being a Frenchman, they would be sacred. Nelson and the Senator together had a rather larger one on my left, and that side my newspapers were torn, but I felt no apprehension. The chivalry of American men is temptation proof.
Downstairs there was a bar and gambling saloon in one, with a sort of hall place, a few feet square, but no dining room or any place for food. It was merely a shelter from outside air. One had to trot along the street to another shed called a restaurant, for meals.
How we laughed and the fun we had over it all! Nothing has delighted us so much. Only Randolph Vinerhorn doesn't like it, but he is afraid to say it before the Senator, though I heard him grumbling from across the passage to Lola because he has not got his valet to shave him! Tom, of course, is just as happy as we are. How I
love an adventure, Mamma! Did you ever? And if you could see Tom in his flannel shirt and his shabbiest old grey suit, and a felt slouch hat, you could not tell him from one of these lovely miners. Octavia says she is getting in love with him again on account of it. Her one unfortunately had to stay in Osages, but the one with the beautiful teeth has come in his place.
We couldn't wash or brush up much because we had only each either a cracked pudding dish or an old cake tin to wash in, but we did our best and started off for our dinner. Three of the most prominent young mine owners had invited us to a feast, and when we got to the tent in which it was held we found that was the chief restaurant, and lots of miners were already there at different tables.
Ours was a long one in the middle and much grander than the rest, because it had a bit of marbled white oil cloth on it for a cloth. The dears all the people were, and the kind generous spirit to ask us to a feast when food was so scarce and expensive! And fancy, Mamma, in the middle was a bouquet of yellow daisies, and they were worth their weight in gold--yellow daisies brought over ninety miles of desert, and how many hundred miles of train!
None of the people at the other tables took the slightest notice of our party; beyond a friendly greeting to those they knew, they did not even glance our way; think of the beautiful manners, and the difference, too, if these had been rough men of any other country in an eating house. I tell you these Westerners are a thing apart for courtesy and respect to women--a lesson to all the world; and the food was not at all awful, and we had the best of champagne! while the tent was lit by electric light, and had a board floor and benches for seats. We were so gay at dinner, and while we were finishing, news came, I do not know how, that the desperado, Curly Grainger, and his comrades, were in the camp. The man next me told me, and I never thought to tell Nelson, who was at my other side, which was foolish, as events proved.
After it, when they had made some speeches to bid us all welcome, we went out to see the sights--principally a private gambling saloon where they were playing extremely high, about seven men intent on poker, some with green shades over their eyes of talc, which gave the strangest livid glow on their faces, and made them look like dead men. After each round a felt-slippered bar-tender would slip in and give them all drinks in small glasses--rum and milk and different things--and I am sure one of the desperadoes was playing, his villainous face was in such contrast to the others.
Their revolvers were all up on a shelf, because, as the proprietor told us, "They so often got to shootin' one another when they played as high as that," he found it "more conducive to a peaceable evenin' if their guns were handed out before they began!" How such things must add to the excitement of a game, Mamma!
The lowest stake was one thousand dollars and some had twenty-five thousand dollars in front of them. There was a queer intent ominous hush, and we watched in silence for a while, and then went to a most quaint sort of theatrical entertainment--songs and dances going on, the most primitive stage at one end, while a bar and drinks were at the other. We only stayed about five minutes, because it did not seem quite the place for girls, although everyone treated us with the most scrupulous respect, instantly hushing their jokes as we approached, and making way for us like courtiers for foreign royalties in a drawing-room. And when we got out in the street there appeared to be some excitement in the air. Hundreds of men were loitering about or talking in groups, and the Senator, much to our disappointment, made us go back to the hotel. It was only about half past nine o'clock, and we thought to go to bed an extremely dull proceeding. But we did not like to question or argue, and obediently went upstairs. And when the Senator and Nelson saw us safely in our rooms, with the secretary and Mr. Vinerhorn left to be a sort of guard to us, they all went out again to show Tom more sights.
Everything was perfectly quiet; the hotel is against the mountain and rather away from the main and only regular street.
Then, left to ourselves we felt just like naughty children, obliged to get into some mischief, and when Mercedes suggested we should change all the numbers on the doors, it seemed a nice outlet for us! Octavia had gone to her room, or, she says, she would not have let us, and Lola and her Randolph had retired, too, while the secretary had gone down to the bar, so there was no one to prevent us. It was, of course, very naughty of us, Mamma, and I dare say we deserved all that followed, but it was a funny idea, wasn't it? The only ones we did not change were our own two; everyone else's in the hotel, and there were about thirty-six rooms altogether, we mixed all up and then we scampered in to bed!
There were only little oil lamps here, the electric lights not having been fixed yet, and when I piled all the bed clothes on the floor and rolled myself up in the quilt, I was off to sleep in a minute.
It did not seem very long afterwards when drunken footsteps came up the passage and woke me up, and then a fumbling at the Senator's door and frightful swearing because the key would not fit. The creature, whoever it was, was perfectly furious, and one could hear him muttering "29, yes it's 29," and then fearful oaths, and at last, with a shove, he wrenched down the crazy door and got into the room and I suppose was too sleepy or drunk to notice it was not his own, and retired to the Senator's bed! Because I could hear him snoring next me through the cracked partition.
A little while after, in the still of night air, there was a distant murmur of voices, and then some shots rang out. It was a grim, sinister sound, and in about ten minutes running feet were heard, and two or three men came up the passage. They banged at Lola's door; hers had been 24 and was now 201. They cursed and swore and demanded to come in, and at last a voice said, "I'm Curly Grainger," and then some terrible oaths. "Open this minute, Jim; we've done for two of 'em, but they've got Bill, and you must come and bail him out."
No answer, of course, as Lola was crouching terrified in bed, Randolph just as frightened, I suppose, while even through the Vicomte's room I could hear Columbia and Mercedes giggle, and I, too, for a minute felt inclined to laugh, it seemed too dramatic to be real. But the voices got menacing and then the excitement began! With the most dreadful language they just kicked down the door, intending to pull "Jim" out of bed, I suppose, and when they saw it was one of the strangers' rooms, I suppose the idea came to them they might do a little robbery as well.
Suddenly there was a rush of feet and more men came up the stairs. I got out of bed, wondering what would be best to do, when I heard Lola shriek and a shot in the passage. So I felt I must go to her help and opened the door, and such a scene, Mamma! There were seven of the most awful looking men you ever saw, the ones who, I told you, had come into the dance hall at Osages. Among them Lola and Randolph in night clothes, were already lined up against the wall, with their hands above their heads. While one brute stood at the end of the passage pointing his gun at them, one of the others was rifling their room, others had kicked down the girls' door and one was at the end by Octavia's. None of the other people, miners of sorts, except one man's wife, had come in yet, as it was not more than half past ten o'clock! She was soon pulled out, too, and one brute seized me and roughly threw my hands up while he held a gun to my head. I did feel very frightened, Mamma, but it was all so terribly exciting, it was quite worth while. I wish I had had a revolver. I would have used it in a minute. As it was I just watched from under the brute's arm. Every door was broken down then, and as noiselessly as they could they ransacked each room. If we had attempted to scream they would have shot us dead. The girls were speechless with terror, only Octavia looked a contemptuous tragedy queen in her white nighty, and the miner's wife had a face of petrified rage; she wasn't a bit frightened, either. Then up the stairs ran the secretary and the proprietor's wife, a kind amusing old woman. She had evidently seen this sort of hold up before (it is called a "hold up," Mamma), for she called out: "Don't be afraid, ladies, dears, they won't hurt you if you don't yell"; and then she bolted down the stairs again like a rabbit to get help, while my brute turned his attention from me for a minute to fire after her. She had got past the turn of the stairs, but he caught the secretary in the ankle, and he fell with a groan on the floor.
It was an unpleasant situation, wasn't it, Mamma, six women in nightgowns with their hands above their heads, Randolph an object of misery with his pink silk pyjamas torn, and the secretary lying in a pool of blood, unconscious, by the stairs, while two wretches covered the whole party with their revolvers!
It seemed an eternity before the men had finished ransacking the rooms, swearing terribly at finding so little there; and then they came out and made for the door at the end, which had an outside staircase leading on to the mountain. At last a noise of voices like distant thunder was heard getting nearer and nearer, and before they could kick that door down and escape, Nelson and Tom dashed up the stairs, their revolvers in their hands; and the last coherent thing I remember was seeing Nelson take instant aim and shoot the man who was holding the gun to my head as he had his finger on the trigger to shoot me; and if Nelson had given him a second more to aim he would have blown my brains out; but being so quick, Nelson's bullet must have reached him as he fired at me, for his shot went off through the roof. As the brute fell, there seemed to be a general scrimmage, but the rest got off through the end door, which they at last broke down, just as the Senator and the Vicomte and the other miners came up the stairs. Wasn't it thrilling, Mamma? I would not have missed it for worlds, now it is over.
I suppose the bullet which killed my assailant grazed a scrap of my shoulder, or perhaps it was his gun going off did it, anyway I felt it wet. The next instant I was in Nelson's arms, being carried into my room. His face was again like death, and he bent over me.
"My God, have I hurt you?" he said in an agonised voice. "My darling, my lady, my love----" But I don't feel as if I ought to tell you the rest of his words, Mamma. They burst from him in the anguish of his heart, and he is the dearest, noblest gentleman, and I feel honoured and exalted by his love.
I reassured him as well as I could. I told him I was not really hurt at all, only a little grazed, and I helped him to soak up the blood with my handkerchief, and then for a few minutes I felt faint and can't remember any more.
I don't suppose I could have been stupid for more than five minutes, but when I came to, Octavia was there with a quilt pinned over her nightgown, and she and the Senator were bathing my shoulder, and even that little cut hurt rather and I fear will leave a deep scar.
The poor secretary had his ankle broken, but otherwise was unhurt, and nobody minded at all about the man Nelson had killed. They only wished he had exterminated more of them. And Tom and the Vicomte are having the time of their lives, for as soon as dawn broke they joined the Sheriff with a posse, aided by the state police in pursuit of the escaped desperadoes, and as the
Moonbeams Chronicle prints it today, "A general round up of bad men is in progress."
Fancy us having the luck to come in for all this, Mamma, and to see the real thing! The Senator had only been joking, he said, when he had promised us that, as all this sort of excitement is a thing of the past in camps, which are generally perfectly orderly now; and he thought by making us go to bed he was causing us to avoid seeing even a little quarrelling in the streets.
None of the dear real miners would have touched us, and by some strange chance not one of the men of our party had heard that the famous desperadoes were arrived in the town. They will all be lynched if they are caught, of course, so I can't help rather hoping they will get away. Perhaps it would be a lesson to them, and I hate to think of any more people being killed. But, of course, if Nelson had not had the nerve to fire, just like William Tell, the man would have blown my brains out, and as you know, Mamma, I have always despised mawkish sentiment, and I would rather he was dead than me, so I shan't let myself think a thing more about it, only to be deeply and profoundly grateful to Nelson for saving my life.
We are going back to Osages this afternoon, and now I must stop, dearest Mamma.
Your affectionate daughter,
ELIZABETH.