“Slade was a matchless marksman with a navy revolver. The legends say that one morning at Rocky Ridge, when he was feeling comfortable, he saw a man approaching who had offended him some days before–observe the fine memory he had for matters like that–and, “Gentlemen,” said Slade, drawing, “it is a good twenty-yard shot–Iʼll clip the third button on his coat!” Which he did. The bystanders all admired it. And they all attended the funeral, too.”

Credits: Johnny Vandenberg as Slade.

“One assayer got such rich results out of all specimens brought to him that in time he acquired almost a monopoly of the business. But like all men who achieve success, he became an object of envy and suspicion. The other assayers entered into a conspiracy against him, and let some prominent citizens into the secret in order to show that they meant fairly. Then they broke a little fragment off a carpenterʼs grindstone and got a stranger to take it to the popular scientist and get it assayed. In the course of an hour the result came–whereby it appeared that a ton of that rock would yield $1,184.40 in silver and $366.36 in gold!”

Credits: Scott Reeves as the assayer.

“I had made of myself a tolerable printer, under the impression that I would be another Franklin some day, but somehow had missed the connection thus far. There was no berth open in the Esmeralda Union, and besides I had always been such a slow compositor that I looked with envy upon the achievements of apprentices of two yearsʼ standing; and when I took a “take,” foremen were in the habit of suggesting that it would be wanted “some time during the year.”

Credits: Chic DiFrancia as the Printer. Press courtesy of the 4th Ward School Print Shop.

“At night, by the camp-fire, we played euchre and seven-up to strengthen the mind–and played
them with cards so greasy and defaced that only a whole summerʼs acquaintance with them
could enable the student to tell the ace of clubs from the jack of diamonds.”

Credits: Gregory Lintz as the gambler

“I learned then that Jim Blaineʼs peculiarity was that whenever he reached a certain stage of intoxication, no human power could keep him from setting out, with impressive unction, to tell about a wonderful adventure which he had once had with his grandfatherʼs old ram–and the mention of the ram in the first sentence was as far as any man had ever heard him get, concerning it. He always maundered off, interminably, from one thing to another, till his whisky got the best of him and he fell asleep. What the thing was that happened to him and his grandfatherʼs old ram is a dark mystery to this day, for nobody has ever yet found out.

Credits: Scott Reeves as Jim Blane

“

“And while upon this subject I will remark that once in Star City, in the Humboldt Mountains, I took my place in a sort of long, post-office single file of miners, to patiently await my chance to peep through a crack in the cabin and get a sight of the splendid new sensation–a genuine, live Woman! And at the end of half of an hour my turn came, and I put my eye to the crack, and there she was, with one arm akimbo, and tossing flap-jacks in a frying-pan with the other. And she was one hundred and sixty-five [Being in calmer mood, now, I voluntarily knock off a hundred from that.--M.T.] years old, and hadnʼt a tooth in her head.”

Credits: Steph as the old woman. Makeup by Kari Vandenberg.

“Three months of camp life on Lake Tahoe would restore an Egyptian mummy to his pristine vigor, and give him an appetite like an alligator. I do not mean the oldest and driest mummies, of course, but the fresher ones. The air up there in the clouds is very pure and fine, bracing and delicious. And why shouldnʼt it be?–it is the same the angels breathe.”

Credits: McAvoy Lane as Mark Twain. Canoe courtesy of Tahoe Maritime Museum.

“This was all we saw that day, for it was two oʼclock, now, and according to custom the daily “Washoe Zephyr” set in; a soaring dust-drift about the size of the United States set up edgewise came with it, and the capital of Nevada Territory disappeared from view.Still, there were sights to be seen which were not wholly uninteresting to new comers; for the vast dust cloud was thickly freckled with things strange to the upper air–things living and dead, that flitted hither and thither going and coming, appearing and disappearing among the rolling billows of dust–hats, chicken and parasols sailing in the remote heavens; blankets, tin signs, sage-brush and shingles  a shade lower; door-mats and buffalo robes lower still; shovels and coal scuttles on the next grade; glass doors, cats and little children on the next; disrupted lumber yards, light buggies and wheelbarrows on the next; and down only thirty or forty feet above ground was a scurrying storm of emigrating roofs and vacant lots.

It was something to see that much. I could have seen more, if I could have kept the dust out of my eyes.”

“I had been a private secretary, a silver miner and a silver mill operative, and amounted to less than nothing in each, and now– What to do next?

I yielded to Higbieʼs appeals and consented to try the mining once more.”

Credits: Lamar Baxla as the miner

“Slade was captured, once, by a party of men who intended to lynch him. They disarmed him, and shut him up in a strong log-house, and placed a guard over him. He prevailed on his captors to send for his wife, so that he might have a last interview with her. She was a brave, loving, spirited woman. She jumped on a horse and rode for life and death. When she arrived they let her in without searching her, and before the door could be closed she whipped out a couple of revolvers, and she and her lord marched forth defying the party. And then, under a brisk fire, they mounted double and galloped away unharmed!”

Model & Makeup Artist: Kari Vandenberg