第92章

However, as I grew better acquainted with the business and learned the run of the sources of information I ceased to require the aid of fancy to any large extent, and became able to fill my columns without diverging noticeably from the domain of fact.

I struck up friendships with the reporters of the other journals, and we swapped "regulars" with each other and thus economized work."Regulars"are permanent sources of news, like courts, bullion returns, "clean-ups"at the quartz mills, and inquests.Inasmuch as everybody went armed, we had an inquest about every day, and so this department was naturally set down among the "regulars." We had lively papers in those days.My great competitor among the reporters was Boggs of the Union.He was an excellent reporter.Once in three or four months he would get a little intoxicated, but as a general thing he was a wary and cautious drinker although always ready to tamper a little with the enemy.He had the advantage of me in one thing; he could get the monthly public school report and I could not, because the principal hated the Enterprise.

One snowy night when the report was due, I started out sadly wondering how I was going to get it.Presently, a few steps up the almost deserted street I stumbled on Boggs and asked him where he was going.

"After the school report."

"I'll go along with you."

"No, sir.I'll excuse you."

"Just as you say."

A saloon-keeper's boy passed by with a steaming pitcher of hot punch, and Boggs snuffed the fragrance gratefully.He gazed fondly after the boy and saw him start up the Enterprise stairs.I said:

"I wish you could help me get that school business, but since you can't, I must run up to the Union office and see if I can get them to let me have a proof of it after they have set it up, though I don't begin to suppose they will.Good night.""Hold on a minute.I don't mind getting the report and sitting around with the boys a little, while you copy it, if you're willing to drop down to the principal's with me.""Now you talk like a rational being.Come along."We plowed a couple of blocks through the snow, got the report and returned to our office.It was a short document and soon copied.

Meantime Boggs helped himself to the punch.I gave the manuscript back to him and we started out to get an inquest, for we heard pistol shots near by.We got the particulars with little loss of time, for it was only an inferior sort of bar-room murder, and of little interest to the public, and then we separated.Away at three o'clock in the morning, when we had gone to press and were having a relaxing concert as usual--for some of the printers were good singers and others good performers on the guitar and on that atrocity the accordion--the proprietor of the Union strode in and desired to know if anybody had heard anything of Boggs or the school report.We stated the case, and all turned out to help hunt for the delinquent.We found him standing on a table in a saloon, with an old tin lantern in one hand and the school report in the other, haranguing a gang of intoxicated Cornish miners on the iniquity of squandering the public moneys on education "when hundreds and hundreds of honest hard-working men are literally starving for whiskey." [Riotous applause.] He had been assisting in a regal spree with those parties for hours.We dragged him away and put him to bed.

Of course there was no school report in the Union, and Boggs held me accountable, though I was innocent of any intention or desire to compass its absence from that paper and was as sorry as any one that the misfortune had occurred.

But we were perfectly friendly.The day that the school report was next due, the proprietor of the "Genessee" mine furnished us a buggy and asked us to go down and write something about the property--a very common request and one always gladly acceded to when people furnished buggies, for we were as fond of pleasure excursions as other people.In due time we arrived at the "mine"--nothing but a hole in the ground ninety feet deep, and no way of getting down into it but by holding on to a rope and being lowered with a windlass.The workmen had just gone off somewhere to dinner.I was not strong enough to lower Boggs's bulk; so I took an unlighted candle in my teeth, made a loop for my foot in the end of the rope, implored Boggs not to go to sleep or let the windlass get the start of him, and then swung out over the shaft.I reached the bottom muddy and bruised about the elbows, but safe.I lit the candle, made an examination of the rock, selected some specimens and shouted to Boggs to hoist away.No answer.Presently a head appeared in the circle of daylight away aloft, and a voice came down:

"Are you all set?"

"All set--hoist away."

"Are you comfortable?"

"Perfectly."

"Could you wait a little?"

"Oh certainly--no particular hurry."

"Well--good by."

"Why? Where are you going?"

"After the school report!"

And he did.I staid down there an hour, and surprised the workmen when they hauled up and found a man on the rope instead of a bucket of rock.

I walked home, too--five miles--up hill.We had no school report next morning; but the Union had.