Returning to the room where I had dined, I parted with Pat Bryant, quitting him, in Western fashion, after a good “trade” or “swop.” He had taken a fancy to the bigger of my two revolvers. He was going to breed cattle in Oregon, he told me, and thought it might be useful for shooting his wildest beasts by riding in the Indian manner, side by side with them, and shooting at the heart. I answered by guessing that I “was on the sell;” and traded the weapon against one of his that matched my smaller tool. When I reached Virginia City, I inquired prices, and was almost disappointed to find that I had not been cheated in the “trade.” A few minutes after leaving the “hotel” at Austin, and calling at the post-office for the mails, I again found myself in the desert--indeed, Austin itself can hardly be styled an oasis: it may have gold, but it has no green thing within its limits. It is in canyons and on plains like these, with the skeletons of oxen every few yards along the track, that one comes to comprehend the full significance of the terrible entry in the army route-books--“No grass; no water.” Descending a succession of tremendous “grades,” as inclines upon roads and railroads are called out West, we came on to the lava-covered plain of Reese‘s River Valley, a wall of snowy mountain rising grandly in our front. Close to the stream were a ranch or two, and a double camp, of miners and of a company of Federal troops. The diggers were playing with their glistening knives as diggers only can; the soldiers--their huge sombreros worn loosely on one side--were lounging idly in the sun. Within an hour, we were again in snow and ice upon the summit of another nameless range. This evening, after five sleepless nights, I felt most terribly the peculiar form of fatigue that we had experienced after six days and nights upon the plains. Again the brain seemed divided into two parts, thinking independently, and one side putting questions while the other answered them; but this time there was also a sort of half insanity, a not altogether disagreeable wandering of the mind, a replacing of the actual by an imagined ideal scene. On and on we journeyed, avoiding the Shoshoné and West Humboldt Mountains, but picking our way along the most fearful ledges that it has been my fate to cross, and traversing from end to end the dreadful Mirage Plains. At nightfall we sighted Mount Davidson and the Washoe Range, and at 3 A.M. I was in bed once more--in Virginia City. CHAPTER XIX. VIRGINIA CITY. “Guess the governor‘s consid‘rable skeert.” “You bet, he‘s mad.” My sitting down to breakfast at the same small table seemed to end the talk; but I had not been out West for nothing, so explaining that I was only four hours in Virginia City, I inquired what had occurred to fill the governor of Nevada with vexation and alarm.