The Comstock Club Part 1

The Comstock Club.

by Charles Carroll Goodwin.

CHAPTER I.

"The pioneer! Who shall fitly tell the story of his life and work?

"The soldier leads an a.s.sault; it lasts but a few minutes; he knows that whether he lives or dies, immortality will be his reward. What wonder that there are brave soldiers!

"But when this soldier of peace a.s.saults the wilderness, no bugles sound the charge; the forest, the desert, the wild beast, the savage, the malaria, the fatigue, are the foes that lurk to ambush him, and if, against the unequal odds, he falls, no volleys are fired above him; the pitiless world merely sponges his name from its slate.

"Thus he blazes the trails, thus he fells the trees, thus he plants his rude stakes, thus he faces the hards.h.i.+ps, and whatever fate awaits him, his self-contained soul keeps its finger on his lips, and no lamentations are heard.

"He smooths the rugged fields, he turns the streams, and the only cheer that is his is when he sees the grain ripen, and the flowers bloom where before was only the frown of the wilderness. When over the trail that he has blazed, enlightenment comes joyously, with unsoiled sandals, and homes and temples spring up on the soil that was first broken by him, his youth is gone, hope has been chastened into silence within him; he realizes that he is but a back number.

"Not one in a thousand realizes the texture of the manhood that has been exhausting itself within him; few comprehend his nature or have any conception of his work.

"But he is content. The shadows of the wilderness have been chased away; the savage beast and savage man have retired before him; nature has brought her flowers to strew the steps of his old age; in his soul he feels that somewhere the record of his work and of his high thoughts has been kept; and so he smiles upon the younger generation and is content.

"May that contentment be his to the end."

It was an anniversary night in Pioneer Hall, in Virginia City, Nevada, one July night in 1878, and the foregoing were the closing words of a little impromptu speech that Alex Strong had delivered.

A strange, many-sided man was Alex Strong. He was an Argonaut. When the first tide set in toward the Golden Coast, he, but a lad, with little save a pony and a gun, joined a train that had crossed the Missouri and was headed westward.

The people in the company looked upon him as a mere boy, but, later, when real hards.h.i.+ps were encountered and sickness came, the boy became the life of the company. When women and children drooped under the burdens and the fear of the wilderness, it was his voice that cheered them on; his gun secured the tender bit of antelope or grouse to tempt their failing appet.i.tes; his songs drove away the silence of the desert.

He was for the company a lark at morn, a nightingale at night.

Arriving in California, he sought the hills. When his claim would not pay he indicted scornful songs to show his "defiance of luck." Some of these were published in the mountain papers, and then a few people knew that somewhere in miner's garb a genius was hiding. Amid the hills, in his cabin, he was an incessant reader, and with his books, his friction against men and in the study of nature's mighty alphabet, as left upon her mountains, with the going by of the years he rounded into a cultured, alert, sometimes pathetic and sometimes boisterous man, but always a shrewd, all-around man of affairs.

When we greet him he had been for several years a brilliant journalist.

He had jumped up to make a little speech in Pioneer Hall, and the last words of his speech are given above.

When he had finished another pioneer, Colonel Savage, was called upon.

He was always prepared to make a speech. He delighted, moreover, in taking the opposite side to Strong. So springing to his feet, he cried out:

"Too serious are the words of my friend. What of hards.h.i.+ps, when youth, the beautiful, walks by one's side! What of danger when one feels a young heart throbbing in his breast!

"Who talks of loneliness while as yet no fetter has been welded upon hope, while yet the unexplored and unpeopled portions of G.o.d's world beckon the brave to come to woo and to possess them!

"The pioneers were not unhappy. The air is still filled with the echoes of the songs that they sung; their bright sayings have gone into the traditions; the impression which they made upon the world is a monument which will tell of their achievements, record their st.u.r.dy virtues and exalt their glorified names."

As the Colonel ceased and some one else was called upon to talk, Strong motioned to Savage and both noiselessly sought some vacant seats in the rear of the hall.

Colonel Savage was another genius. He was a young lawyer in New York when the first news of gold discoveries in California was carried to that city. He, with a hundred others, chartered a bark that was lying idle in the harbor, had her fitted up and loaded, and in her made a seven months' voyage around the Cape to San Francisco. He was the most versatile of the Argonauts. Every mood of poor human nature found a response in him. At a funeral he shamed the mourners by the sadness of his face; at a festival he added a sparkle to the wines; he could convulse a saloon with a story; he could read a burial service with a pathos that stirred every heart, and so his life ran on until when we find him he had been several years a leading member of a brighter bar than ever before was seen in a town of the size of Virginia City.

He was a tall, handsome man, his face was cla.s.sical, and all his bearing, even when all unbent, was that of a high-born, self-contained and self-respecting man.

Strong, on the other hand, was of shorter statue; his face was the perfect picture of mirthfulness; there was a wonderful magnetism in his smile and hand-clasp; but when in repose a close look at his face revealed, below the mirthfulness, that calm which is the close attendant upon conscious power.

As they reached their seats Alex spoke:

"You were awfully good to-night, Colonel."

"Of course; I always am. But what has awakened your appreciation to-night?"

"I thought my speech was horrible."

"For once it would require a brave man to doubt your judgment," said the Colonel, sententiously.

"I was sure of it until I heard you speak; then I recovered my self-respect, believing that, by comparison, my speech would ring in the memories of the listeners, like a psalm."

"You mean Sam, the town-crier and bootblack. His brain is a little weak, but his lungs are superb."

"I believe you are jealous of his voice, Colonel. But sit down: I want to tell you about the most unregenerate soul on earth."

"Proceed, Alex, only do not forget that under the merciful statutes of the State of Nevada no man is obliged to make statements which will criminate himself."

"What a comfort that knowledge must be to you."

"It often is. My heart is full of sympathy for the unfortunate, and more than once have I seen eyes grow bright when I have given that information to a client."

"The study of that branch of law must have had a peculiar fascination to you."

"Indeed, it did, Alex. At every point where the law draws the s.h.i.+eld of its mercy around the accused, in thought it seemed made for one or another of my friends, and, mentally, I found myself defending one after the other of them."

"Did you, at the same time, keep in thought the fact that in an emergency the law permits a man to plead his own cause?"

"Never, on my honor. In those days my life was circ.u.mspect, even as it now is, and my a.s.sociates--not as now--were so genteel that there was no danger of any suspicion attaching to me, because of the people I was daily seen with."

"That was good for you, but what sort of reputations did your a.s.sociates have?" asked Alex.

"They went on from glory to glory. One became a conductor on a railroad, and in four years, at a salary of one hundred dollars per month, retired rich. One became a bank cas.h.i.+er, and three years later, through the advice of his physicians, settled in the soft climate of Venice, with which country we have no extradition treaty. Another one is a broker here in this city, and I am told, is doing so well that he hopes next year to be superintendent of a mine."

"Why have you not succeeded better, Colonel, financially?"

"I am too honest. Every day I stop law suits which I ought to permit to go on. Every day I do work for nothing which I ought to charge for. I tell you, Alex, I would sooner be right than be President."

"I cannot, just now, recall any one who knows you, Colonel, who does not feel the same way about you."

"That is because the most of my friends are dull, men, like yourself.

But how prospers that newspaper?"

"It is the same old, steady grind," replied Alex, thoughtfully. "I saw a blind horse working in a whim yesterday. As he went round and round, there seemed on his face a look of anxiety to find out how much longer that road of his was, and I said to him, compa.s.sionately: 'Old Spavin, you know something of what it is to work on a daily paper.' I went to the shaft and watched the buckets as they came up, and there was only one bucket of ore to ten buckets of waste. Then I went back to the horse and said to him: 'You do not know the fact, you blissfully ignorant old brute, but your work is mightily like ours, one bucket of ore to ten of waste.'"