by Grant Allen
When I came to that, all alone among my biscuit-boxes, I burst out laughing. Why, my whole hut itself wasn’t big enough for the piano even to stand in!
As soon as I’d finished the letter, I went out, rather shamefaced, to see the boys again. I didn’t dare to tell them the story about the piano. I knew how they’d laugh at me and at the dear old mater. But I took it for granted the confounded thing would never get farther than Carson City at the very outside. The bare idea of bringing it right through to the Pike was just too ridiculous!
The dear old mater had precious little notion what sort of place the Pike was, if she thought a piano would be much in demand there.
CHAPTER II.
THE GRAND PIANO.
Be still, sad heart! and cease repining;
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;
Thy fate is the common fate of all,
Into each life some rain must fall,
Some days must be dark and dreary.”
— LONGFELLOW.
ABOUT a week later I was loafing around at the corner by the Columbia saloon, waiting for any odd job that might happen to turn up — they wanted extra hands sometimes at the crushing-works if the ore was rich, and I was never too proud to do anything useful — when all of a sudden I heard a thundering noise down the street in the direction of the grocery store; a noise as if heaven and earth were coming together, as Chickenpicken says in the good old nursery book. The boys had all turned out en masse, and were cheering like mad, and waving their hands, and laughing as I never saw human beings laugh in this world before, outside a lunatic asylum.
And something or other big was obstructing the roadway.
“What’s up?” I called out to Joe Ashley, the bartender, who was standing down street a bit, looking after the cooperage.
“Dunno,” Joe answered, shading his eyes with his hand and staring straight in front of him. “Seems like a box coming up the road. The darnedest big box that ever came into the Pike, I should say, by the look of it. There’s six mules to draw it; six mules, Indian file. Well, this is civilization, an’ no mistake. The other day we landed a United States mail; and now, bless me, if this ain’t a cottage grand, imported into the settlement!”
“A what?” I cried, growing pale with fright; for I had a sort of presentiment all at once of the trouble before me.
“A cottage grand!” says Joe. “A pianny, don’t you catch on? The boys must be preparing a surprise for old Wesley. Well, this is civilization and no mistake.
To think I should live to see a cottage grand arriving in triumph, with six mules in single file, into the streets of Cooper’s Pike City.” He said “streets” in the plural from pure force of habit, I reckon, for there was only the one, bar the stakes and the bullet-holes.
Well, I did just tremble when I knew what it was. I set out for the front, as you can readily conjecture, with all my legs, and never drew rein, metaphorically speaking, till I came right up to the spot where the boys were cavorting, cheering, and hooraying.
“Hello, Freke!” they cried out, as I ran up to them breathless. “Here’s a little present your girl’s been sending you from Old England, most likely. A small souvenir for you to wear around your neck in a locket. It’s taken five days to come across by the trail from Carson City.”
You can just judge of my chagrin, gentlemen, when I looked at that huge, big, lumbering box, and read on the side in plain English letters, “From Broadwood & Co., London. Piano, with care. This side up. To be kept dry. Howard Freke, Esq., Main Street, Cooper’s Pike, Nevada.”
I could have thrown myself under the wheels with rage and shame. How on earth could the mater ever have made such a fool of me?
“Where do you wish it delivered, mister?” the driver in charge asked me, with a broad grin on his stupid mug.
“Delivered!” I cried, fuming. “The Lord knows where. Deliver it where you like, and then go home. There isn’t a private house in the Pike big enough to hold it.”
“Then what are we to do with it?” says the driver, quite jauntily.
“Do with it?” says I. “Why, plump it down right here! I guess it won’t much matter obstructing the traffic.”
“Well, there’s a trifle to pay on it, for freight and customs duty,” says the driver, with a smile, pulling out a Union Pacific Railroad Company’s form. “Let’s see. This is it. Howard Freke, Cooper’s Pike City: to collect — three hundred and forty-seven dollars.”
I sat down on the ground in blank despair. I tore my hair. I almost cried in my agony. Three hundred and forty-seven dollars, indeed! And I hadn’t three hundred and forty cents to my blessed name. This was worse than beggary. It was bankruptcy, insolvency, disgrace, ruin!
“I haven’t got it!” I cried. “Take the nasty thing back. It isn’t for me. I don’t want your piano. It must be for another gentleman of the same name. You may return it, post free, by the next delivery, this side up, to Broadwood & Company, London.”
Well, the boys began to see I was really riled, and that the affair was beginning to take a serious turn for me. The boys are a genuine good-natured lot, when one comes to know them; and I fancy they’d somehow taken a sort of liking to me, because I was young and unsophisticated, and knew a trifle about dressing wounds, and could sing them a sentimental song in the evenings sometimes, when they were in the right mood, and wrote letters home for some of the rougher lot who couldn’t write themselves, to their wives or sweethearts. You mayn’t believe it, gentlemen, but Cooper’s Pike was so rough in those days that even a rejected medical student was a sort of a kind of civilizing element. It was Joe the bartender who began it. “Boys,” said he, “it ain’t right the burden of the first pianny that ever came into Cooper’s Pike City should fall on the shoulders of a single green youngster; especially as he don’t happen to have the costs of freight lying handy in his pocket, which is an accident that may happen to any gentleman any day in a fresh community. Now, this is an opportunity that may not again occur. We’ve got a pianny to-day actually in our midst; and we’ve a talented fellow-citizen, Howard Freke, of England, who knows how to play on it. What I propose is this, that we get up a subscription to pay for the freight on the instrument, and that we put it in the saloon, where Howard Freke can discourse sweet music to us while we take our liquor evenings. Those who are in favor of this notion, put their dollars in the hat; those who are against it, stand aside in a row, so that we may know which of the inhabitants are darned Eastern skunks and which are generous, free-handed, Nevadan gentlemen.”
Well, the boys caught on to it with regular mining enthusiasm. Joe dropped in a dollar, just to start the game, as it were; and Wesley Smith, the saloon-keeper, followed with ten, for he saw it meant good business for the liquor-trade interest. In a quarter of an hour, Joe’s idea had panned out rich; they’d subscribed enough to discharge that impossible debt, as it seemed to me at first; and they’d handed over the money in due form to the Union Pacific driver. Then they all joined hands, and escorted the piano home to the saloon, where it was solemnly opened with proper celebration, and installed in the place of honor over against the fireplace. Nothing would do for the boys after that but I must sit down then and there and play them “Hail, Columbia.” I didn’t know the score, to speak of, bat the boys are never very particular about an accompaniment; and when I’d finished, they encored it like mad; and then I gave them “God save the Queen,” by way of making an international event of it. After that, they stood drinks all round to the driver and his men, and voted a feed of com to the mules, and solemnly declared the piano public property, for the benefit of the citizens of Cooper’s Pike City.
At the end of it all, just as the fun of the joke was beginning to subside, and the company was half-inclined to disperse to its own huts, a sudden thought struck Joe, the bartender.
“Why, boys,” he called out, standing on a chair to make himself heard, “it just occurs to me, we’ve never pay for this pianny itself at all. All we’ve done is t
o pay the freight of it. We ought to get up another subscription to buy the instrument from our talented friend Freke, and present it in perpetuity to this city. I reckon you wouldn’t get a pianny like that for a cent less than three hundred dollars.”
I confess I’d never thought of that point of view myself. I was so precious glad to have got out of my scrape that the value of the piano, as an article of merchandise, never even occurred to me.
“Oh, don’t mind the cost,” said I, getting up on another chair in my turn, and growing rather red. “That’s all right. So far as the original price of the thing’s concerned, I don’t mind making a free gift of it to the city.”
It was my first free gift to the Pike, and I felt rather proud of it.
The boys, however, were too generous to take it. They wanted to send round the hat again, and subscribe for the purchase. Still, I was sort of ashamed to receive their cash, after all their kindness; so at the end of ten minutes’ talk we effected a compromise. Wesley Smith, the saloon-keeper, had got a corner lot — same where the Central Gas office stands to-day; and he proposed to throw it in with a month’s board as payment in full for the grand piano. I didn’t want to haggle, as between gentlemen, so I accepted the offer. I became the owner before night of that corner lot, with the papers all duly signed, sealed, and delivered; and that was the beginning, gentlemen, of the Cooper’s Pike manufacturing interest.
Yes, sir, that’s so; you’ve not been misinformed. It was I that gave San Quentin Park to the city, and that presented the Free Public Library and Museum to the Mechanics’ Institute. Oh no, that’s nothing. I don’t look upon it as generosity at all; I call it simple justice. You see, it was all luck that started me in life; I had no more right to it than anybody else, by nature; and I hold it all now in trust for society. Whatever I give ain’t exactly what you can call a free gift, is it? It’s rather in the nature of a sort of restitution, don’t you see? A kind of rendering to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s — giving back the people their own, for their own sole use and benefit.
CHAPTER III.
THE CORNER LOT.
We live in deedst not years; in thoughts, not breaths,
In feelings, not in figures on the dial.
We should count time by heart-throbs.
He most lives Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best.”
— PHILIP BAILEY.
YOU don’t see what that corner lot had to do with the manufacturing interest in the city, don’t you? Well, that was rather a curious little incident, too. It’s worth telling; and it’s part of the same story. It just came about this way, pretty much, I take it.
When the piano was safely housed and set up in the Columbia saloon, under Wes. Smith’s charge, but as public property, the boys decided that I ought at least to retain the packing-case. A lot of good timber like that, ready shaped and planed, was worth something on a Pike, I can tell you. And as I’d been rather down on my luck lately, and the boys liked me because I could play them a lively tune, evenings, and looked after the two men that were hurt when the roof fell, they volunteered to help me build a better hut out of it, on that corner lot of three and a half acres. Wesley Smith bought the other lot off me for an extension of the saloon to hold the piano; and the boys undertook to raise me a house where the rain wouldn’t drip through, and to pave it well with rubble from the diggings.
Why, yes, we built the house; and though it’s me that says it, as oughtn’t to say it, a tidier hut you never saw in any new diggings. We were all rather proud of that hut, as a specimen of Nevadan architecture. The evening it was finished, I invited as many of the boys as could get in to partake of square drinks all round, on the strength of my week’s work as a help at the crushing. The boys turned up, you may be sure, in full force, and my one room was packed as tight as the four walls could hold, so that some of us actually bulged out of the window. But we had a high old time of it for all that, singing and jollifying, till the room got so hot we could hardly stand it.
“There’s a precious queer smell in this hut,” one of the boys said at last, sniffing up a little high-toned; “seems to me, Freke, there must be something or other gone wrong with your main drainage.”
Well, I laughed at that, for, of course, drainage of any sort was an idea we hadn’t struck as yet on the Pike; but, just to make things pleasant, and keep up the joke, I answered naturally, “No, it isn’t drains, Pete; it’s a leakage in the gas-pipes you smell, I fancy.”
“By George!” says Pete, sniffing the air again, “now you come to say the word, I believe it is gas I smell. The gas is most certainly escaping somewhere.”
As he spoke, every man-jack of us held his nose in the air, and sniffed instinctively after him. I can see it now: such a picture of aristocratic high-sniffing noses, all poised in a row, prospecting around, and all critically investigating, you never saw in your born days. It was a thing to remember. And well may I remember it. Then we all of us turned, and looked at one another with blank faces of surprise. There was no denying it. We couldn’t say what tricks the boys might have been playing us. But there, in that one-horse town of cheap kerosene lamps, and dear at that, as clear as the human nose could tell us, I assure you, gentlemen, the gas was escaping.
Joe Ashley, the bartender, was the first to speak. “Yes, sir. It’s gas, and no mistake,” he said, looking scared, for we all of us felt there was something mysterious and just a wee bit uncanny about it.
“The march of intellect’s something reeley surprising,” Pete put in, looking around. “Last week it was a pianny. The week afore, it was mails. This week, it’s gas-works.”
But most of us were a good deal too thunderstruck by that time for joking. We took the thing seriously. You see, in those days, we were hardly prepared for miracles to take place in the nineteenth century. We’d been taught that the age of miracles was past. I went down on my hands and knees, and began to examine the floor narrowly, having a vague sort of notion, don’t you understand, that the gas-pipes would naturally run underground, as they always do in civilized countries. In a minute, sure enough, I detected the leak. A tiny jet of gas was forcing itself up through a hole in the floor, as distinct as ever you smelt a leakage of gas in a London lodging-house.
I struck a match, and lighted the jet. It burnt clear and beautiful, with a full bright flame, as fine as ever you saw in a London burner.
We looked at one another, and never said a word. When I read in Keats afterwards about Cortez and his men, “Silent, upon a peak in Darien,” it brought back to me exactly how we all looked at one another at the moment of that discovery.
We’d none of us ever heard of natural gas before: it was a new thing then; but in a second, we all took in the importance of the find. We’d struck it rich; of that we felt certain. The boys began prodding with knives and sticks all over the floor, and poking a match to the jets; and whereever they prodded the gas came out, a burst of it at once, till the hut was a perfect Fourth of July illumination. The fact was, all that lot, and many another lot in Cooper’s Pike, was a natural gas reservoir. But nobody’d happened to build before on one of the spots where the gas oozed out; and as long as it oozed in the open air, it was so slight a quantity, for the most part, that you never perceived it. If it hadn’t been for the accident of my sticking my hut above a small vent, and filling my room so full of people that night that we got half suffocated, I don’t suppose the gas would ever have been discovered, and Cooper’s Pike would still be a town of some two hundred inhabitants.
As it was, however, we rose to the situation. We began prospecting at once. We found the best outlets were on my corner lot, though there were others in other parts of the city almost as good; and before the week was out we had to exploit them. Nothing like it was ever seen even here in the West. The capital was subscribed like water, and in rather less than no time the Cooper’s Pike Natural Gas Supply Association, of which I am president, was ready to supply families or commercial firms with gas in any quan
tities at reasonable rates; for cooking, lighting, house-warming, smelting, engineering, mining, and manufacturing purposes. So rapid a revolution you never saw. In three months our population numbered five thousand souls, and Main Street had already the airs and graces of a fashionable city.
You see, we made the gas do just everything. It does just everything still. It lights the house, it cooks the dinner, it warms the parlor, it turns the mill, it heats the engine-boiler, it crushes the ore, it works the factory, and it runs the mayor and town council bodily. There’s nothing on earth done in this city to-day but, if you look into it closely, the natural gas does it. We base ourselves entirely on natural gas. If the gas were to go out, we’d go out like a candle. The city arms are three gas taps, proper, on a field, vert; and the motto runs, “With it, we stand; without it, we totter.”
So, after all, I owed everything in the end to my dear old mater’s blunder about the grand piano. If it hadn’t been for that, I should never have owned the corner lot, and never have become president of the Cooper’s Pike Natural Gas Supply Association.
Of course I grew to be rich, Western fashion, right off. Without an effort of my own, the money began to tumble in bewilderingly. That’s why I say I owe it all to the public. Not but what I manage to live comfortably on it myself too. I allow myself a trifle for the trouble of management. I bought a new lot, right here where we sit, and fixed up a house on it — not the one you see, but its respectable predecessor; for naturally I’ve gone on getting richer and richer ever since, as the city developed. Still, even the first house was a very convenient one, and I found myself at once a person of great importance in Nevada generally.
