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runs in three sections coupled together with three-foot tongues, all twelve wheels higher than a man’s head, and the freight piled as high as a two-story house. They were run by different companies, each company with a different color, so of course the mules had tassels on their bridles the company’s color, and when you saw twenty of them hustling a wagon along, all matched for color and size, all slicked up till you could see your face in their hide, all with harness oiled black and buckles polished yellow, all with sleigh bells jingling over their hames, and all with a muleteer in the saddle, cracking his whip and singing like hell, it was a sight. There were stagecoaches in a trot going uphill and a dead run going down, with drunks hollering inside and messengers outside taking potshots at bears. There were thousands of sheep, cattle, and pigs going on foot, and when they met mules it was war, but they gave what they got, I’ll say that for them. There were hombres on horseback and occasionally one on foot, all headed for the Washoe country, all after those silver bricks they were digging out of Mount Davidson.
    My coach was an Overland, and we’d stop at one of the stables that ran for a mile outside of every town and change horses, then jog in to the hotel to pick up passengers and let them off. So I had two chances to get down and look around, specially at coaches going by on the road, to see if she might be in one. But all I saw was sports and drunks and women with paint on. I stopped for the night in Carson, made Virginia the next day, and put up at the International. Then I kept on like I had in Sacramento, looking in hotels, saloons, dance halls, and gambling places, every place I could think of.
    In a bar that night a Union recruiting sergeant went up to a big, good-looking man at the bar and began to talk about signing him up. The man listened awhile and then he turned around and said: “How many times have you give me this spiel?”
    “Three or four times, I guess.”
    “And how many times have I told you no?”
    “Jack, there’s a war going on.”
    “Then here’s something that maybe you don’t know: I’m paying for your goddam war, or at least a big part of it, with this silver mine I’ve got, and if you haven’t been told about it, suppose you stop by my office tomorrow and I’ll show you a letter from your own Secretary of the Treasury begging me to keep my output up and assuring me that I’m doing more to help win this war right where I am than I would be in command of five regiments.”
    “All right, Governor, now I know.”
    “That was when I volunteered.”
    “No need to get sore.”
    “Have a drink, and from now on let me alone.”
    I pricked up my ears at that, and next day when I inquired around I found it was all true and everybody in town seemed to know about it. The silver from the Comstock Lode went down in a steady stream to the mint in San Francisco, and gold and paper came back. It wasn’t just thousands, it was millions and hundreds of millions. I knew I had found out something then, something that would make this trip all right, even to Annapolis. I packed and caught the night stage for Carson, so I’d lose no time getting back to my post and reporting about it.
    Going out of Virginia, we passed the big omnibus that ran between Virginia and Gold Hill, a place about a mile south, and out of the back door I saw the flutter of a skirt, black silk with white dots. I didn’t ask my money back, or even wait. I had the driver stop, get out my carpetbag, and let me down. Then I ran after the omnibus, carrying my bag. At C and Union it stopped and she got out. I called, but she didn’t hear me and turned the corner. When I got there I was just in time to see her turning into D, down the hill. I ran down, and saw her going into a house. I ran up to it, and had my hand on the bell to pull it before I noticed the light over the door. But then I knew why her eyes made me feel so