The Laramie Republican

OLD COMSTOCKER'S CLOSE CALL.

"The profession where I have practiced it for the past twenty years," said one old Comstocker, "has at times what you may call its excitements. Players out there are likely to carry guns and use them. Of course first and last, I've seen a lot of shooting, and done a little myself, by way of not wanting to be put out of the game. But it wasn't a shooting affair that came the nearest doing for me. It was when they were taking out carloads of bullion on the Comstock and every game in town was running three eight-hour shifts of dealers and look-outs, that a young German came up against a game I was dealing. He lost. He came back several times, and so I asked same questions from men who would know, and they told me he was an assayer, employed by the bonanza mines. He was working in the assay shop at the mills, not the mines, and as I knew he could get away with about all the bullion he wanted and not be checked in it for a month or two, anyway, I didn't want his trade. I told him so one day when I met him outside the game, and he went clear crazy mad. He wanted to fight me with swords, like they do, I was told, in the foreign parts school where he was educated. I just pushed him away, and told him I was acting for his good, and went home, just having gone off watch. There is no use telling you gentlemen how a man will stick to a faro table when he wins. If they only knew enough to quit! Well, when I went on watch again, there was the German-Harker was his name-playing, and he was walled nearly out of sight by $20 checks-he had none smaller. He was thousands ahead of the game when I took the box, and, of course, I couldn't tell him to quit. It would look like the game had thrown up its tail. So he played on, sneering at me a good deal, which we have to take that sort of thing easy, of course. Then he began to lose. He played in all he was to the good and more than a thousand of his own money. He went broke, and when he left the table he was crazy again, and said he deserved to lose for being such a fool as to play after I'd taken the box. Of course, if a sane man had accused me of not playing level there would have been a remark or two from my side of the table, but I allowed it to go as it lay, he not being responsible. I was morally certain that Harker was tapping the bullion as it passed through the assay office, but it wasn't my game to tell stories, and I didn't, contenting myself with giving orders that he was not to be let into the game again. They told me he swore revenge for that. It was about a week later that a friend of mine came up from the Bay-meaning San Francisco-and of course I took him through the mines, which was the regular thing to do. We went down the Ophir shaft, and got off at a station several hundred feet above the lowest workings, on a station where there were some workings that visitors are always taken to. When we left the cage and stepped on the station, I noticed several men there who were not working, but the light was too dim for me to see any of them plainly, and for that matter I didn't think about the others, when the man who was to guide us came up and started off with us on a drift to the south. I did notice that one of the other men followed us, but it meant nothing to me, and perhaps would not if I had known that it was Harker. I knew he visited the underground workings a great deal. Well, we were stumbling and slipping along the hot, wet drift, the guide first, my friend second, and I third, when suddenly my candle was knocked out of my hand. I might have hit my hand against a timber or a bit of broken logging from the side, but whatever it was gave it a rap, knocked the candle down, and it splashed in the water between the sill timbers at my feet. I stooped to pick it up and it was some time before I found it. When I straightened up I was in perfect darkness, for my friends must have turned off at a cross-cut, and the man who was following had either passed on or turned off back of me. I recalled then that I had missed the glimmer of his candle for some time. Well, it wasn't just the pleasantest game in the world to be up against, for the dark was not like other dark; it was thick, black, close dark. I fooled around in my pockets for a match for some time, until I remembered that I was wearing clothes kept for visitors, and of course there were no matches. Then I concluded I'd yell out for the guide, but I wondered which way to call. I felt on with my hands to get the run of the drift, and was mighty puzzled by finding three sets of walls-that is, back and forward on the drift, and off to a right angle, too. That made me feel a little nervous, for I knew enough about underground work to know that the right angle walls might be only a chamber of the drift from which a winze had been sunk, and if so I would be standing near the mouth of that winze, which might drop a hundred or 200 feet to a sump of hot water. Gentlemen, I confess there was something more than heat made the sweat roll off my face just then, and I was not just fit to take it calmly when a voice near me said, 'I am going to push you down the winze.' I recognized the voice as Harker's, but there was something in it that told me I was dealing with a maniac. 'I knocked your candle out of your hand; I waited till your friends got out of earshot, and now it will amuse me to trip you and tumble you down that winze.' I don't claim any more courage than the average run of men. I've had to face men with guns-yes, and men with knives, which is a hundred times worse, and I've done it without showing fear even if I felt some. But this was a different kind of game. I couldn't even see the madman, couldn't even locate him, before, behind, or at my side. I did strike out, and split my knuckles on the timbers, while he, hearing me, laughed. I couldn't reach him, couldn't see him; couldn't tell from which side he was going to attack me, or when, or how! Now, it don't do a man any good to lie about such a thing, and I'll admit I was so frightened that at first I couldn't speak, and when I could, I begged the man to begin his attack, or I'd go as crazy as him. He laughed at this as if he was enjoying the play, and I guess he was, but he couldn't resist the bigger fun of putting me in the winze. Suddenly he sprang on my back, and we both went down, he on top, and as I threw my hands out I felt the timbers of the little sheave, or windlass, over the mouth of the winze. That gave me one advantage-I knew what direction to fight from, and I fought. I do not know how long it was that we struggled in silence about the hot mouth of that winze, sometimes with nearly half my body in it, sometimes dragging myself clear of its edge and nearly forcing him into the hole. I could hear rocks which we loosened fall and splash into the water far below, and I felt myself losing strength both from the struggle and because of the stifling gases which came up and out of the grave into which we each tried to crush the other. He was a maniac, I probably little better, as we, clutched held in each other's arms, tossed and plunged about there on the brink of the winze. At last I discovered by his actions that he had an advantage which would surely make him the winner in the end, for, in order to put me in the winze he was willing to go, too, while I had to fight both to put him in and to keep out myself. I had braced my feet against the windlass and was making one last effort to throw him off, when, with a crash, the windlass collapsed and fell into the winze. That, I knew, meant all up with me, for it had been those timbers which had guided me. I think I would not have worked much longer if I had not heard my friends calling. They came just in time to keep us both out of the winze. They grabbed us as we were slipping in. I suppose you do have a good deal of excitement here, but it is probably of another kind.-New York Journal.