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.

CHAPTER XXVI.