Deadwood, at that time, was like all the frontier mining towns. Saloons,
gambling houses and dance halls comprised the business of the place.
The gulch was dotted with miners’ cabins and dug-outs. There were a few
stores, restaurants, and a bank, but as yet the town had not started a
“regular” graveyard. The news of our fight soon spread up and down the
gulch and many were the willing hands that offered their services in the
burial of James Morgan, our teamster. They dug his grave on the
hillside, where afterwards more than five thousand men were buried. They
either fell from the deadly pneumonia, or from the bullets of each other
in quarrels. When Morgan’s grave was ready to be filled, some one
suggested that a chapter from the Bible should be read, but none of us
knew where to ask for one, in all Deadwood. Presently a boy said, “I
will find one,” and he soon returned with a young lady, who proved to be
his sister. He handed the book to our bronzed captain of the mule train;
he shook his head. Then someone asked her to read it. When she began,
those grim frontiersmen bared their heads, and I fancied I saw the tears
gather on more than one bronzed cheek as she knelt upon the frozen clay
and offered up a prayer for the dead teamster’s soul.
The adventurous spirits from far and wide were flocking to this new
Eldorado. Wild Bill, the famous scout, Captain Jack Crawford, Texas
Jack, and other equally noted scouts and Indian fighters, were there.
They sought gold and adventure alike, only for the pleasure it would
bring.
III.
BLACK HILLS DAYS.
I knew Doc Kinnie was not a civil engineer, but he had a plan which
looked good, and as I was almost broke, I consented to help him work it.
There was a horseshoe bend in the creek which might be drained for
placer mining by tunneling through in a narrow place. I talked up the
project with some of the boys, and they agreed to dig the tunnel while
Doc did the civil engineering. Day after day they dug and blasted rock,
while Doc stood around looking wise and encouraging the work. In about a
month they were practically through to the other side of the creek. Then
they began to call for Doc’s measurements and calculations. “Never mind,
you are not through yet,” he would say, “I will let you know when to
stop digging.”
“But we can hear the water rushing,” they would say.
[Illustration: General George A. Custer (page 21).]
“You fellows can’t tell anything about it. Sounds of rushing water are
always carried a long distance by rocks.”
“But we are not in the rocks now, we are in a clay bank.”
“Clay does the same thing; keep on digging.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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