Chapter 10

A few days later, Baldy and I started for California. We stopped at a number of small towns en route to Houston, went to Galveston for a week or more, and then to San Antonio. I had not been feeling well for several days. One morning a pleasant-faced, middle-aged woman, whom I had begged for food, was preparing a meal for me as I sat at her kitchen table when suddenly I had a chill and my teeth began to chatter. She knew what was the matter and insisted that I go into a small bedroom off the kitchen, take off my clothes, and go to bed. She called a doctor, who told me I had malaria and prescribed quinine in large doses. She nursed me through my illness, which lasted about ten days. Her name was Mrs. Boyd, and she ran a boarding house. When I asked her why she was so considerate of me, a total stranger, she told me that her sister had a boy about my age who had become a tramp; but from the way she cried when she spoke of him I have always been inclined to believe he was her own son. I stayed on for several days doing chores for her; and the morning I left, I placed a twenty- and a ten-dollar bill under a plate on the kitchen table. Going into the parlor where she was sweeping, I bade her goodbye and thanked her for what she had done for me. She cried a bit, kissed me on the cheek, and closed the door softly after me as I went down the steps. I'm sure she watched me from the parlor window until I was out of sight. I wrote to her from Denver several times, and she wrote to me. About three years later I received a joyful letter from her telling me that her "sister's boy" had returned home a year previously, gotten married, and settled down. What a grand world this would be, I thought, if there were more Mrs. Boyds in it!

Although it was winter, it was quite warm in San Antonio. When I went into the barroom of the Hotel Maverick for my favorite drink, a tall glass of lemonade, I saw above the bar a pair of steer horns that amazed me. The bartender told me that they measured 12 feet from tip to tip, but I think that he stretched it a foot or two.I went to the Alamo Plaza and saw the historic adobe in which Sam Houston was beseiged, and then went on a hunt for Baldy. I was unable to locate him, and concluded that he had gone on to California alone. Instead of following him, I decided to go home to Denver and spend the rest of the winter with my mother. It is only five or six hundred miles from San Antonio to Denver, but I was more than two weeks in making it. A blizzard struck the Texas panhandle, and I was snowed in at Quanah and again at Childress. At each of these towns I had to remain several days while the snowplows cleared the tracks.

I stayed at Denver until spring, and then went East again. I didn't like begging as well as peddling, and as the phoney jewelry racket was played out, I ventured into the patent medicine line. I had encountered a man who was selling a "Magic Catarrh Cure", one whiff of which would cause violent sneezing. I bought a bottle and took it to a druggist to find out what it contained, and he told me it was oil of mustard or oil of horseradish, he didn't know which. Samples of each, which he let me smell, seemed to be identical in potency. As the oil of mustard was the cheaper,I bought a small quantity, as well as two dozen corked glass vials and a pint of alcohol. I put ten drops of the oil into each vial and filled them with alcohol. The mixture resembled the sample that I had bought from the peddler, except that mine was cloudy. I took a good sniff of one of the vials, and it nearly knocked me over. I experimented with weaker solutions, and finally hit on the expedient of putting two drops of the oil into an empty vial and then stuffing the vial with absorbent cotton. This worked fine; one could take a good sniff at the mouth of the vial without pain, though it would still cause tears to flow. I made up a better spiel than the peddler had given me, as I guaranteed that my product would cure not only catarrh but coughs, colds, hay fever, influenza, and laryngitis.

I worked hard all day the first day and sold only six or seven vials at fifty cents each, but I learned two things -- one, that I was charging too much, and the second, that my product needed a label; two labels, in fact, one bearing the name of the product and the second, directions for its use. I decided to plunge. and had a thousand labels printed which read:
DR. CARVER'S
Cough,Cold, and Catarrh Cure
Price, One Dollar

I also had a thousand labels printed which gave directions for use; I think my printing bill came to four dollars. The one-ounce vials were too small, and I bought a gross of two-ounce square-shouldered dark brown bottles which gave my white labels outstanding prominence.

I filled and labeled two dozen bottles and went across the river to Kansas City, Kansas, where I sold them all in about five hours, getting fifty cents for a few and twenty-five cents each for the rest. The "Price, One Dollar" on the label was a big factor in promoting sales, especially among the negroes, to whom most of my sales were made. I was glad to have found a promising racket again, and stuck around Kansas City for two weeks. No one bothered me, and I even sold some of my stuff to policemen. At that time, few cities had laws regulating peddlers, and the Pure Food and Drugs Act was unheard of. I dressed well, bought a handsome leather case that would hold six or seven dozen of my bottles, and confined my operations to the larger towns. I sold to all classes, in stores, offices, and homes, where- and whenever I could find somebody to listen to my spiel and sniff my cureall. People in those days judged the potency of a medicine by its taste or odor; the more disagreeable it was, the more potent it was considered to be. I represented myself as being a direct agent of Dr. Carver, who had the welfare of humanity at heart in permitting his product to be sold at less than the established price. I varied that statement with others which I thought equally convincing, and became a first-class salesman, plus one hell of a liar. At any rate, I unconsciously acquired an insight into the psychology of selling, which proved handy in later years.

Though I traveled alone and on the cushions most of the time, I did not neglect my tramping friends. I sought them at known tramp hangouts and in the jungles, where I liberally shared my earnings with them just because I liked them. Why? God knows. Most of them were drunken sots; yet many of them, when sober, gave evidence of having been well educated, and a few were the intellectual equals of any man I have ever known. Practically all were introverts, and few ever spoke of their earlier lives.

That summer I worked all over the midwestern states, and In August I started south again. In Cairo I sold nearly one hundred bottles in a day when I came across about three hundred negroes who were repairing damage done to the banks of the river by flood waters the previous spring. The people of Memphis, Nashville, Vicksburg, and Mobile, both white and black, bought freely, and when I reached New Orleans I had saved nearly a thousand dollars, most of which I sent to mother. I covered all the larger towns in Texas and then went to Mexico, making all of the principal cities but few sales. The Germans were my best customers, as most of them understood English. From Mexico City I went to Vera Cruz, where I secured passage on a two-masted coastal lugger that took me to Aransas Pass, Texas. From there I went by rail to San Antonio; I called at Mrs. Boyd's home, but was told that she was away on a visit for a few days.

I went to El Paso, and a day or two later I encountered the meanest man I have ever met. It was in May of 1893 when I left El Paso at night en route to California. I was riding on a freight train, and when it made its first stop to take on water a shack spotted me and I was ditched. There was a telegraph station there, and when I asked the operator what time the next train would come through, he didn't answer but came out of the office with a revolver in his hand and ordered me to get going down the tracks. I started walking west, but stopped at the water tank about seventy-five feet from the station to get a drink. I didn't get it. I hadn't been stopped for more than a few seconds when I heard myself being called all the so-and-so's in creation, and then I heard the report of a gun being fired. I started running, stumbled and fell, got up and ran again. When I had gone about two hundred yards I remembered that I had left my sample case beside the water tank, but I didn't go back for it.

I think it was about midnight when I started walking, and it was hot. I had lacerated my hands and knees when I fell, and my knees hurt at every step; but I kept on through the night, hoping to come to a town where I could find relief. I found none, and by nine or ten o'clock I fell beside the tracks, unable to take another step. It was insufferably hot, and the sun seemed to draw every bit of moisture out of my body. There was no shade anywhere except for that afforded by a two-foot pile of railroad ties close by. I managed to reach them, but was too weak to lift and place them in a position to form a shelter. I lay beside them and watched a couple of trains pass, but was unable to signal them, and I doubt if they would have stopped had I done so.

When the sun went down, a breeze sprang up and it turned cooler. I got to my feet and sat on the ties for an hour or so and then started walking again, but I was so stiff and lame that every step was agony. I kept going at a snail's pace, and about one o'clock in the morning I had to stop and rest. I must have gone to sleep, for I awoke about an hour later to the crash of thunder and it began to rain heavily. That rain saved my life. My tongue was sore and swollen, my feet were so badly swollen that I had to cut away most of the uppers of my shoes, and I am sure that another day in the blazing sun would have finished me. I soaked a clean handkerchief in the rain and squeezed water into my mouth, but I couldn't seem to get enough of it.

The rain didn't last long, but it freshened me and I started on again. About six o'clock I saw a small frame shack not far from the tracks, and made my way to it. A couple of dogs came at me on the run, barking and snarling, but thank God they didn't bite, for I could have offered no resistance. A Mexican woman came to the door of the shack and, seeing my condition, led me inside and made me lie down on an old mattress placed on the floor. She gave me water and later a tortilla, but I couldn't eat it; my mouth was too sore. I slept most of the day and when I awakened, she gave me more water and some goat's milk. She could speak only a few words of English, but I gathered that her husband was a sheepherder. If so, he must have had his sheep at some distance from where he lived, for ten square miles of that God-forsaken desert couldn't have pastured more than a dozen sheep.

The dogs became friendly, and I petted them. I learned that Deming, New Mexico was only about three miles away, and about six o'clock I decided to get going again. I offered the woman a five-dollar bill, but she wouldn't accept it, nor would she take a smaller amount. When I urged it upon her, she put her hands behind her back and seemed to be angry, turning loose a torrent of Spanish to show her displeasure. When I said "muchas gracias" and offered my hand, she smiled and shook hands with me, and I left her standing in the doorway as I resumed my journey.

I was much stronger now, and although quite lame I reached Deming about nine o'clock, where I went to a hotel and sent for a doctor. I managed a bath, with the porter's assistance, and when the doctor came he dressed my lacerated hands and knees, put me on a milk and raw egg diet, and told me to stay in bed for several days. He charged me only two dollars for his call and bandages, and seemed to do that reluctantly. What a different world today!

I stayed in Deming about a week. I was unable to buy what I required to make up more of my catarrh remedy there, so I headed for Phoenix, Arizona via freight and blind baggage. At Maricopa Junction I bought a ticket over the jerk line to Phoenix. I was unable to get what I wanted there, but I met two prospectors who were going to the Hassayampa River, about fifty miles north of Phoenix, to try and locate some placer mines. They painted such a glowing picture of their chances of finding hidden pockets of gold that I decided to go with them.

One of them lacked about fifty dollars of having enough for his outfit, so I loaned it to him. I also spent about a hundred dollars on my outfit, which included a burro and a 30-30 Savage rifle. I knew we had about forty miles of desert to cross, but despite my recent experience it held no terrors for me; my two companions were old desert rats who had been over the trail several times before. We did most of our traveling in the early morning and late evening, as it was very hot in the daytime. There were water holes about every ten miles except for one stretch of twenty miles of very sandy desert, which we crossed in one night.

We were four days making the trip. The Hassayampa River was smaller than I had imagined it would be, although the river bed was large enough to carry twenty times as much as water as was in it. Mat, the oldest of my two companions, told me that in March and April the river overflowed its banks.

We went upstream about three miles from where we first struck the river and made camp under a clump of aspen trees. There was plenty of good grazing land between the river and the nearby mountains, and for the first few days we hobbled our burros and turned them loose. After a few days, hobbling was no longer necessary; burros seldom wander more than a mile from a human habitation, and invariably return to it at nightfall.

Mat and John, the younger man, took me down to the river at the mouth of a gully that emptied into it, and taught me how to wash sand and gravel in a gold pan. I was clumsy at first, but soon got the knack of swishing the water around in the pan without washing out the black sand. They had a six-foot steel bar whci they drove down into the sand, trying to locate bedrock, on top of which the richer sands were to be found. When they didn't strike bedrock at fouf feet, they would pull out the bar and try another spot.

After several tries. they located a ledge about three feet down. We set to work with shovels and dug a hole to within six inches of the rock, where the gravel began to get coarser. We shoveled as much of the coarse sand and gravel as we could get into our three pans, and went to the river to pan them out. When the coarse gravel was removed by hand, we panned the balance down to black sand, and I was delighted to see small flecks of gold scattered here and there through the sand. We picked the gold out of the sand with fine tweezers. There wasn't much, the largest piece being about half the size of a grain of wheat. Mat weighed all that we had recovered on a small balance, and estimated that our combined take was about a dollar and a quarter. As we had already put in over two hours' hard work digging and panning, it was a foregone conclusion that we wouldn't get rich at that rate; so we tried another gulch, where we had a little better luck.

I stayed with them until August, when my supplies ran out, and then started out for Prescott with one-third of our take. I sold it in Prescott for two hundred twenty dollars. I figured I had averaged about three dollars a day for actual time worked, but I was not disappointed; I had enjoyed the life in the open, and I resolved to return there the following summer. I didn't ask John for the return of the fifty dollars I had loaned him, nor did he offer it when we said goodbye. I think he had forgotten it entirely. At any rate, I counted the experience I had gained as being worth it, for I had formed a theory regarding dry gulch placer mining which was borne out in practice later. I cached my tools along the trail to the Congress mine and rode my burro to Prescott, where I sold it for five dollars more than it had cost me.

I reached Denver in the latter part of August and stayed with my mother for a few days, after which I jumped to Chicago to see the World's Fair. Two weeks of that sufficed me, and I returned to Denver and worked at barbering until the following March. Then I lit out for Prescott again, determined to put the theory I had evolved into practice.

I had noticed the previous summer that the farther we got from the river, the richer the pockets became; also, the depth of sand to bedrock was considerably less. It was out of the question to carry the scrapings from a bedrock ledge to the river by hand, so I took with me half a dozen canvas ore sacks. I bought two burros at Prescott, paying ten dollars more for each than I had received for the first one. I packed all the grub I could onto one of the burros and rode the other, as it was about eighty miles to the river. I picked up the tools I had cached and made the Hassayampa in about five days, where I made camp at the same spot Mat had picked the year before. The river was quite high this time, and at first I feared that a cloudburst in the mountains might wash me out; but a glance across the river reassured me, for it was a good twenty feet lower than the bank I was on.

I had arrived too early to work the gulches I had worked before, as they were still carrying off melted snow from the mountains. The days were pleasant and the nights cold, so I just played lazy Indian for about six weeks, watching myself and the burros grow fat and occasionally riding one of them into the hills in search of outcroppings of gold-bearing ore.

When the first of the gullies became dry enough to work, I rode about a mile toward the hills and started prospecting for bedrock. I found a place where a ledge of rock crossed the gully, and it was not more than two feet from the surface. I dug a large hole down to the ledge, but was disappointed to find that it sloped toward the river. That meant that but little gold would be found in the surface gravel for the gold, being heavier than its sand, would move downstream until it met an obstruction, behind which it would lodge in a "pocket". I spent a backbreaking day trying to locate a rise in the ledge, withoug success. I finally filled two ore sacks with sand and gravel from the surface of the ledge, loaded them onto the burro, and returned to camp. I panned them out the next morning, securing about two dollars worth of gold dust.

I followed the same procedure throughout the summer. In one gulch I found three small pockets from which I panned about three hundred dollars worth of gold, and when I returned to Prescott in September I sold a little over six hundred dollars worth of dust. I had had to go to Congress twice for food, at which times I met other prospectors who were not doing nearly as well as I had done. I had at least proved my theory correct. I sold my burros, taking a twenty-dollar loss, gave my tools to an old prospector, and returned to Denver as a paid passenger.

I remained in and around Denver for the next four years. I learned the machinist, painting, and steam-fitting trades, at which I worked most of the time. I also tried several other occupations, one being motorman and conductor on the Montclair branch of the Denver Tramway Company. I thought I was through with tramping for the rest of my life and intended to settle down and get married; but these intentions proved to be another case of "The best-laid plans of mice and men...", etc.

I had learned to dance during that period, and I must have fallen in and out of love with at least half a dozen girls. I had, and took advantage of, every opportunity to prove that what Judge Ben Lindsay said about the immorality of Denver's young women was true. I think he underestimated the proportion of those that could be had for the asking, but I don't think that Denver was any worse than other cities in that respect; he just happened to be in a self-created position to uncover such indiscretions, and did not hesitate to tell his constituents about them. By far most of the girls were seeking marriage, and took that loose means of attaining their ends. That they were eventually successful is beyond question, and I haven't a doubt that most of them made excellent wives.

In January of 1898 I fell hard for the daughter of a railroad man. She was a very pretty brunette, shapely, and with a superabundance of what the world now calls "it". We went together for about three months. Although I had good reason to know that she was not a virgin, I was so much in love with her that I proposed marriage, to which she gladly consented. She set the wedding day for the first week in June and although our relations were intimate, I impatiently awaited the day I could legally call her my own. I shall refer to her here as Ella (not her real name).

About the middle of May I was sent to install some mining machinery at a mine near Central City, where I expected to stay ten days. When I got there I found that the heavy cast iron base of one of the machines machines had become cracked in shipping. As it would mean a week's delay in getting another I returned to Denver, where I arrived about 8 P. M. I went home, cleaned up and changed clothes, and then phoned the D. & R.G. Railroad Company's dispatcher to find out if my sweetheart's father was at home. I learned he was at Pueblo and would not return until noon the next day. He was a widower, and Ella kept house for him. She had given me a key to the front door so that I could slip into her room on the nights her father was away, and I did so this night at about ten o'clock. I tiptoed to her room in order to surprise her, and succeeded admirably. When I snapped on her bedroom light, what I saw drove me into a furious rage. I pulled her companion out of the bed and pounded him unmercifully with my fists. I let go of him and straddled Ella's body with my knees on the bed, while I cuffed her face from side to side with my open hands. I was crying and calling her every unmentionable name I had ever heard. She didn't cry out, but lay there glaring at me with hatred in her blazing black eyes. for a minute or two, and then burst into tears and begged me to forgive her. I still sat astride her, and suddenly I broke into uncontrollable laughter. I felt weak and lay down beside her and laughed spasmodically until I became exhausted and fell asleep with her body close to mine and her arm under my head.

That sleep probably kept me from going insane. When I awoke at daylight I had a terrific headache and every bone and muscle in my body ached. She told me that her boy friend had left when I started slapping her. I thought I had killed him and would find him on the floor beside the bed, and was relieved to know he was alive. She told me that he had seduced her a year before, and that he had pleaded so hard for one last embrace before our marriage that she hadn't the heart to refuse him. She told me that she loved only me and God knows I wanted to believe her, but I couldn't when I recalled the hatred in her eyes when I slapped her. I left her in tears and went home and told the unlovely story to my mother, who did her best to console me. For several days I was on the verge of making up with the girl I loved, and once had the urge to commit suicide. Mother was worried for fear I would do something desperate, and fed me large doses of potassium bromide to calm my nerves. She suggested that I go on a tramping trip again, and the next day I left for California to resume a tramping career that lasted for nearly five years without interrruption. Better men than I have been made tramps by the infidelity of women.