White men charged three or four dollars a “load”
for sawing up stove-wood. The Secretary was
sagacious enough to know that the United States would
never pay any such price as that; so he got an Indian
to saw up a load of office wood at one dollar and
a half. He made out the usual voucher, but signed
no name to it—simply appended a note explaining
that an Indian had done the work, and had done it
in a very capable and satisfactory way, but could
not sign the voucher owing to lack of ability in the
necessary direction. The Secretary had to pay
that dollar and a half. He thought the United
States would admire both his economy and his honesty
in getting the work done at half price and not putting
a pretended Indian’s signature to the voucher,
but the United States did not see it in that light.
The United States was too much accustomed to employing
dollar-and-a-half thieves in all manner of official
capacities to regard his explanation of the voucher
as having any foundation in fact.
But the next time the Indian sawed wood for us I taught
him to make a cross at the bottom of the voucher—it
looked like a cross that had been drunk a year—and
then I “witnessed” it and it went through
all right. The United States never said a word.
I was sorry I had not made the voucher for a thousand
loads of wood instead of one.
The government of my country snubs honest simplicity
but fondles artistic villainy, and I think I might
have developed into a very capable pickpocket if I
had remained in the public service a year or two.
That was a fine collection of sovereigns, that first
Nevada legislature. They levied taxes to the
amount of thirty or forty thousand dollars and ordered
expenditures to the extent of about a million.
Yet they had their little periodical explosions of
economy like all other bodies of the kind. A
member proposed to save three dollars a day to the
nation by dispensing with the Chaplain. And
yet that short-sighted man needed the Chaplain more
than any other member, perhaps, for he generally sat
with his feet on his desk, eating raw turnips, during
the morning prayer.
The legislature sat sixty days, and passed private
tollroad franchises all the time. When they
adjourned it was estimated that every citizen owned
about three franchises, and it was believed that unless
Congress gave the Territory another degree of longitude
there would not be room enough to accommodate the
toll-roads. The ends of them were hanging over
the boundary line everywhere like a fringe.
The fact is, the freighting business had grown to
such important proportions that there was nearly as
much excitement over suddenly acquired toll-road fortunes
as over the wonderful silver mines.
