Silverado

“ Both of these have perished, leaving not a stick and scarce a memory behind them. Tide after tide of hopeful miners have thus flowed and ebbed about the mountain, coming and going, now by lone prospectors, now with a rush. Last, in order of time came Silverado, reared the big mill, in the valley, founded the town which is now represented, monumentally, by Hanson's, pierced all these slaps and shafts and tunnels, and in turn declined and died away.
"Our noisy years seem moments in the wake
Of the eternal silence." ”

“ NO one could live at Silverado and not be curious about the story of the mine. We were surrounded by so many evidences of expense and toil, we lived so entirely in the wreck of that great enterprise, like mites in the ruins of a cheese, that the idea of the old din and bustle haunted our repose. Our own house, the forge, the dump, the chutes, the rails, the windlass, the mass of broken plant ”

“ The floor was thick with débris—part human, from the former occupants; part natural, sifted in by mountain winds. In a sea of red dust there swam or floated sticks, boards, hay, straw, stones, and paper; ancient newspapers, above all—for the newspaper, especially when torn, soon becomes an antiquity—and bills of the Silverado boarding-house, some dated Silverado, some Calistoga Mine. ”

“ He entered by a round hole, more neatly pierced than a man could do it with a gimlet, and he seems to have spent his life in cutting out the interior of the plank, but whether as a dwelling or a store-house, I could never find. When I used to lie in bed in the morning for a rest—we had no easy-chairs in Silverado—I would hear, hour after hour, the sharp cutting sound of his labours, and from time to time a dainty shower of sawdust would fall upon the blankets. There lives no more industrious creature than a bore. ”

“ He took me to his back door, whence, as from every point of Calistoga, Mount Saint Helena could be seen towering in the air. There, in the nick, just where the eastern foothills joined the mountain, and she herself began to rise above the zone of forest—there was Silverado. The name had already pleased me; the high station pleased me still more. I began to inquire with some eagerness. It was but a little while ago that Silverado was a great place. The mine—a silver mine, of course—had promised great things. There was quite a lively population, with several hotels and boarding-houses ”

“ In our rule at Silverado, there was a melancholy interregnum. The queen and the crown prince with one accord fell sick; and, as I was sick to begin with, our lone position on Mount Saint Helena was no longer tenable, and we had to hurry back to Calistoga and a cottage on the green. By that time we had begun to realize the difficulties of our position. We had found what an amount of labour it cost to support life in our red canyon ”

“ All the time we were there, mill and mill town showed no sign of life; that part of the mountainside, which is very open and green, was tenanted by no living creature but ourselves and the insects; and nothing stirred but the cloud manufactory upon the mountain summit. It was odd to compare this with the former days, when the engine was in full blast, the mill palpitating to its strokes, and the carts came rattling down from Silverado, charged with ore. ”

“ And now all gone—all fallen away into this sunny silence and desertion: a family of squatters dining in the assayer's office, making their beds in the big sleeping room erstwhile so crowded, keeping their wine in the tunnel that once rang with picks.
But Silverado itself, although now fallen in its turn into decay, was once but a mushroom, and had succeeded to other mines and other flitting cities. Twenty years ago, away down the glen on the Lake County side there was a place, Jonestown by name, with two thousand inhabitants dwelling under canvas, and one roofed house for the sale of whisky. ”

“ The road crosses the ridge, just in the nick that Kelmar showed me from below, and then, without pause, plunges down a deep, thickly wooded glen on the farther side. At the highest point a trail strikes up the main hill to the leftward; and that leads to Silverado. A hundred yards beyond, and in a kind of elbow of the glen, stands the Toll House Hotel. We came up the one side, were caught upon the summit by the whole weight of the wind as it poured over into Napa Valley, and a minute after had drawn up in shelter, but all buffeted and breathless, at the Toll House door. ”

“ Meanwhile, in this altered night, we proceeded on our way among the scents and silence of the forest, reached the top of the grade, wound up by Hanson’s, and came at last to a stand under the flying gargoyle of the chute. Sam, who had been lying back, fast asleep, with the moon on his face, got down, with the remark that it was pleasant “to be home.” The waggon turned and drove away, the noise gently dying in the woods, and we clambered up the rough path, Caliban’s great feat of engineering, and came home to Silverado. ”

“ Life out of doors, besides, under the fierce eye of day, draws largely on the animal spirits. There are certain hours in the afternoon when a man, unless he is in strong health or enjoys a vacant mind, would rather creep into a cool corner of a house and sit upon the chairs of civilization. About that time, the sharp stones, the planks, the upturned boxes of Silverado, began to grow irksome to my body ”

“ He palms dull goods upon them, for they dare not refuse to buy; he goes and dines with them when he is on an outing, and no man is loudlier welcomed; he is their family friend, the director of their business, and, to a degree elsewhere unknown in modern days, their king.
For some reason, Kelmar always shook his head at the mention of Pine Flat, and for some days I thought he disapproved of the whole scheme and was proportionately sad. One fine morning, however, he met me, wreathed in smiles. He had found the very place for me—Silverado, another old mining town, right up the mountain. ”

“ Both were plenty in our Silverado. The stones sparkled white in the sunshine with quartz; they were all stained red with cinnabar. Here, doubtless, came the Indians of yore to paint their faces for the war-path; and cinnabar, if I remember rightly, was one of the few articles of Indian commerce. Now, Sam had it in his undisturbed possession, to pound down and slake, and paint his rude designs with. But to me it had always a fine flavour of poetry, compounded out of Indian story and Hawthornden’s allusion:
“Desire, alas! ”

“ Anywhere else, you took your life in your right hand when you came within a yard and a half to peer over. For at any moment the dump might begin to slide and carry you down and bury you below its ruins. Indeed, the neighbourhood of an old mine is a place beset with dangers. For as still as Silverado was, at any moment the report of rotten wood might tell us that the platform had fallen into the shaft; the dump might begin to pour into the road below; or a wedge slip in the great upright seam, and hundreds of tons of mountain bury the scene of our encampment. ”

“ It inspired me to draw pictures, and day after day, month after month I used to draw its people on the smooth surface of the pine boxes that brought dry goods to the town, and, strangely, many of them I mounted on fiery Arabian steeds, and the strangest part of Silverton is that it never releases me a day from its hold. A day never passes that I don’t hurry over its streets and see its last remaining pioneers, and in my vision replace those that have gone. ”

“ Mears could always think up something novel and smart. He had already put out the silver and gold passes and had devised the railroad bicycle but now he wanted to do something special in the way of a passenger coach for this run. He bought an old narrow gauge sleeper from the D. & R. G., that had been used on the run from Pueblo via Salida to Alamosa after 1890 and is thought to have been one of those that came to Durango and Silverton From ’81 to ’83. He had it painted a bright green, put the words in gold, “Silverton Northern Railroad” over the windows and named it the “Animas Forks”. ”

“ The dusty, stinking, sun-scorched waggons, open one to another, with the stench of hot unwashed flesh, and the clouds of dust driven through the unglazed windows, seemed to Don Silverio a hell of man's own making, and in remembrance his empty quiet room, with its vine-hung window, at Ruscino, seemed by comparison a lost heaven.
To think that there were thousands of men who travelled thus, every day of every year, in every country, many of them from no obligation whatever, but from choice! ”

“ From Durango, the metropolis of the San Juan, to Silverton the scenery is of surpassing grandeur and beauty. The railroad follows up the course of the Animas River (to which the Spaniards gave the musical but melancholy title of "Rio de las Animas Perdidas," or River of Lost Souls) , until the picturesque mining town of Silverton is reached. ”

“ In our province we are so aloof from all movement, so remote in our seclusion, so moss-grown in our antiquity, so wedded to the past, to old customs, old habits, old ways of act and thought, that the modern world shocks us as impious, odious, and intolerable."
"Sir," said Don Silverio with his most caustic smile, "if you are here to sing the praises of modernity, allow me to withdraw from the duet. I venture to ask you, as I asked you this morning, one plain question. To whom is Adone Alba, to whom are my people of Ruscino, to appeal against the sequestration?" ”

“ Fairfax interrupted curtly.
“Then Silverside and the women are on the island ... with the blacks?” She turned to Connor. “We must arm and go ashore at once,” said she. 'I think that I know where the women are hiding. Keowa Harry took me once to a cave which he had found on the other side of the crater while hunting goats. He said at the time that if we should ever need a refuge it would be a perfect place, as there is a sort of labyrinth inside. The women knew of the place.” She looked at me. “Did Silverside tell you why Cullom was so anxious to destroy him?” ”

“ There was every class of people in Silverton but negroes; there were Chinamen, and Indians lived there in small numbers; but, for some strange reason, no coons. The founders of Silverton were all old pioneers that came mostly in 1851, and most of them came from Ohio and Illinois.
No city, no matter what size, could have the glare and good times that the people of Silverton enjoyed. But the main population were highly educated people, and very prosperous, as they are to this day. The population still varies, owing to what’s coming off in town. ”

“ Hawkyard stepped in at the door, remaining close to it, and said, "Go and stand against the opposite wall, George Silverman. As far off as you can. That'll do. How do you feel?"
I told him that I didn't feel cold, and didn't feel hungry, and didn't feel thirsty. That was the whole round of human feelings, as far as I knew, except the pain of being beaten.
"Well," said he, "you are going, George, to a healthy farm-house to be purified. Keep in the air there as much as you can. Live an out-of-door life there, until you are fetched away. ”

“ Small danger that ye will wi' the lagoon swarmin' as it does wi' sharks. My black boys will ferret out Silverside, and ask no better sport. When I have the craychure where he can do no more mischief, then we will consider the pearls ... and other things.” He shot a look at Jean Berdou. “No doubt brither Gaston and I can come to terms,” said he. Jean did not answer. Cullom hove himself to his feet, stepped to a state-room door, and flung it open.
“Ye may berth here,” said he. “There are two bunks, and friend Antonio will not be needin' the one nor the other, thanks to that reptile Silverside. ”

“ Here we can speak at our ease; yonder at the municipality, there may be always some eavesdropper."
"Most worshipful, what I said is matter well known to the whole countryside; all the valley can bear witness to its truth," replied Don Silverio, and he proceeded to set forth all that he knew of Adone and Clelia Alba, and of their great love for their lands; he only did not mention what he believed to be Adone's descent, because he feared that it might sound fantastical or presumptuous. Nearly three hundred years of peasant ownership and residence were surely titles enough for consideration. ”

“ He didn't belong in Iowa Province.
Somewhere, out there in the cities of the Twelve Empires, maybe in the radiation-blasted caves of the Old World, perhaps in the remote fastness of the unknown Antarctican empire, life was waiting for him.
Not here. Not in Iowa.
As always, a cold shudder ran through him and he let his head wobble as the sickness swept upward. He swayed, tightened his grip on the plough, and forced himself grimly back into the synthetic mood of security that was his one defense against the baseless terror that tormented him.
The farm is good, he thought. ”

“ Jack kept faithfully at it, unmindful of defeats, often chagrined when he missed some easy opportunity. Not improbably he might have failed altogether if he had been riding an ordinary horse, or if he had to try roping from a fiery mustang. But Silvermane was as intelligent as he was beautiful and fleet. The horse learned rapidly the agile turns and sudden stops necessary, and as for free running he never got enough. Out on the range Silvermane always had his head up and watched; his life had been spent in watching; he saw cattle, riders, mustangs, deer, coyotes, every moving thing. ”

“ Suddenly Miguel turned. "Where are you from?" he asked. His voice was deep, resonant, commanding.
"Iowa Province. I was a farmer."
"Oh? Then what might you be doing in my lands?"
Kesley saw that he had blundered. Farmers, normally, did not take pleasure jaunts to South America. He tried to repair the damage. "I was on a buying tour. I was down here for cattle, and grain, and—"
Miguel chuckled. "Enough, please. One does not have to be an Immortal to see through your lies." He pulled out a chair and sprawled his big form down. Smiling strangely, he said, "You can speak the truth. ”