All the papers were kind in the morning; my appetite
returned; I had a abundance of money. All’s
well that ends well.
CHAPTER LXXIX.
I launched out as a lecturer, now, with great boldness.
I had the field all to myself, for public lectures
were almost an unknown commodity in the Pacific market.
They are not so rare, now, I suppose. I took
an old personal friend along to play agent for me,
and for two or three weeks we roamed through Nevada
and California and had a very cheerful time of it.
Two days before I lectured in Virginia City, two stagecoaches
were robbed within two miles of the town. The
daring act was committed just at dawn, by six masked
men, who sprang up alongside the coaches, presented
revolvers at the heads of the drivers and passengers,
and commanded a general dismount. Everybody
climbed down, and the robbers took their watches and
every cent they had. Then they took gunpowder
and blew up the express specie boxes and got their
contents. The leader of the robbers was a small,
quick-spoken man, and the fame of his vigorous manner
and his intrepidity was in everybody’s mouth
when we arrived.
The night after instructing Virginia, I walked over
the desolate “divide” and down to Gold
Hill, and lectured there. The lecture done, I
stopped to talk with a friend, and did not start back
till eleven. The “divide” was high,
unoccupied ground, between the towns, the scene of
twenty midnight murders and a hundred robberies.
As we climbed up and stepped out on this eminence,
the Gold Hill lights dropped out of sight at our backs,
and the night closed down gloomy and dismal.
A sharp wind swept the place, too, and chilled our
perspiring bodies through.
“I tell you I don’t like this place at
night,” said Mike the agent.
“Well, don’t speak so loud,” I said.
“You needn’t remind anybody that we are
here.”
Just then a dim figure approached me from the direction
of Virginia—a man, evidently. He
came straight at me, and I stepped aside to let him
pass; he stepped in the way and confronted me again.
Then I saw that he had a mask on and was holding
something in my face—I heard a click-click
and recognized a revolver in dim outline. I pushed
the barrel aside with my hand and said:
“Don’t!”
He ejaculated sharply:
“Your watch! Your money!”
I said:
“You can have them with pleasure—but
take the pistol away from my face, please. It
makes me shiver.”
“No remarks! Hand out your money!”
“Certainly—I—”
“Put up your hands! Don’t you go
for a weapon! Put ’em up! Higher!”
I held them above my head.
A pause. Then:
“Are you going to hand out your money or not?”
I dropped my hands to my pockets and said:
Certainly! I—”
“Put up your hands! Do you want your head
blown off? Higher!”
Copyrights
Roughing It from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
