A. C. CLEVELAND.

 

            Honorable A. C. Cleveland, while yet a boy, went to California from the state of Maine. California had a great many fighters at that time. Cleveland went to one of the southern counties where fighters abounded. Coming from Maine, they thought at first he was an easy victim. After six months he could not get a quarrel unless he forced it.

            His career in that respect always reminded me of S. S. Prentiss, who went from Maine to Mississippi. At that time everyone fought in Mississippi. It was not long until Prentiss had occasion to fight a duel with he who afterwards became Senator Foote. He was lame and walked with a cane. The second of Foote objected to his leaning on the cane while the duel was on, at which he threw it away, saying, 'I can lick Foote on one leg."

            Some boys had climbed trees nearby, and during the preliminaries for the duel Prentiss looked to them and said : "Boys, look out! Foote shoots mighty wild."

            But later Mississippi took Prentiss to its arms, and most Mississippi boys at this date believe that he was to the manor born in that state.

            Mr. Cleveland early went to Nevada, when Nevada was not altogether a Sunday School. In his early days he had some few little difficulties, but he learned later to restrain himself.

            His first business in Nevada was contracting, hauling timbers up from the flank of the Sierras to Virginia City for the mines. He had a contract with the Gould and Curry to supply that mine with timbers, and had a good many teamsters in his employ, whom he paid every month. One pay day he went to the office to draw the needed money to pay his men, whereupon the clerk in the office said to him : "Mr. Cleveland, So and So, one of your teamsters, has asked me to hold out his wages that he may collect them here."

            Cleveland said, "All right." But when he went away.

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thinking over the matter, he became angry. The more he thought of it the more angry he became. The habit of teamsters was to go from Carson City up into the mountains, get their load of timber, and bring it down to Carson City ; then the next day haul it to Virginia City.

            Cleveland knew the hour when the teamsters came in and so went out on the road on foot to the outskirts of Carson to meet this particular teamster. He came in due time. He was not riding the near wheel mule, as was the custom, but was up on top of the load of timbers, ten feet above the street, driving the mules with a single rein, as was the habit. Cleveland stopped him and said :

            "You got your money all right, did you?''

            "Oh, yes," said the man.

            "Well," said Cleveland, "do you know what I think of you?"

            "No. I haven't the least idee," was the reply.

            ''Well," said Cleveland, "I think if you will come down off that load that I can whip you to a standstill in about two minutes and a half."

            "Is that so?" said the teamster.

            "Yes, it is," said Cleveland.

            "In that case," said the teamster, "I will be damned if I come down."

            This disarmed Cleveland entirely. Waiting a minute he looked up and said, "Well, would you come down to take a drink?"

            "Why," said the man, "that is different." Whereupon they were sworn friends for life.

            The writer of this had the honor of once sitting in a state convention in Carson City with Mr. Cleveland. There was a contesting delegation down from Virginia City, and the men who had charge of the hall stationed the two delegations on different sides. It was the old capitol building, which was built in the form of a cross. The delegations from Virginia City were on either end of one arm of this cross, and the rest of the convention in the center between them. The contesting delegation got control of the convention and placed

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Judge Hayden of Dayton in the chair. The regular delegation was very angry. The contesting delegation was made up in great part of natural fighters. One of them, a distinguished one, took up his position in front of the speaker's desk. It was a clear case that Hayden had been promised protection no matter how he ruled. This particular delegate was named Riff Williams, or at least he was known by that name. He stood with his profile to the audience, the mildest-faced gentleman that anyone ever looked at ; but he was indifferently picking his teeth with a fifteen-inch bowie knife which to some people in the hall looked ominous as it was a new tooth pick that they were not familiar with as a tooth pick.

            As the proceedings went on, the anger increased. Hayden was most arbitrary in his rulings and no appeal was permitted from them. When the crucial time seemed near I whispered to Cleveland, saying : "Cleve, when this row starts, which side are you going to assimilate with?"

            He whispered back, "I don't know. As I was coming into the hall someone dropped a derringer in my pocket, but he did not tell me which way he wanted me to shoot."

            The difficulty was finally quelled by a few humorous remarks of an outside delegate.

            Cleve lived in Carson a good many years ; married there, was elected to the state senate and made a fine reputation for his ability and his perfect fairness, and for the clear sagacity he manifested in handling all cases. Later he moved to White Pine county, bought a great tract of land and settled down to ranching and stock-raising.

            For this he was perfectly equipped. He knew the business and was personally perhaps the best horseman in Nevada.

            He went to a friend one day and said : "What has _____ against you?'

            The friend said : "I have no idea in the world. We have been good friends for several years in Nevada."

            "Well," Cleveland said, "he is talking about you."

            'Well," the friend said, "he has no cause. I never had any business with him, none whatever, and he is either laboring under a mistake or he is just mean on general principles."

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            Cleve went to the man and told him, and said : "I would not follow that up, because _____ is not a bad man, and people here will believe him."

            But he kept up his talk and a few days later was on a bender and met Cleveland in town. He said : "Come and take a drink."

            "No," Cleveland said. "I don't drink."

            The man, himself in his cups, rudely caught Cleveland by the shoulder and said :

            "Ah! None of that. Come in and have a drink."

            Whereupon Cleveland shot him through one arm, badly wounding him. A few clays later the other friend said to him : "Cleve, why did you shoot _____?"

            He said : "He talks too much. That's all."

            In a little while Cleveland's ranch became the stopping place for all passersby, partly because it was a great place to stop and partly because Cleveland had no charges for travelers at his ranch. He planted a great many trees. They grew rapidly and the birds from all over that part of Nevada came and made their happy homes in them. Cleveland gave the word that no gun should be fired around the place lest it frighten the birds. They must have heard of it, for with each year more and more birds came, until the concert from them -- from lark, from robin, from oriole, from wren, and the rest -- was a genuine oratorio from daylight to dark, and when the night came the sage thrashers and mocking birds took up the refrain and kept it up till morning.

            One clay when Cleveland was absent, two or three hunters came along just at dark and camped. They had the hospitalities of the home, the supper, the beds, the breakfast. In the morning they began to get out their guns. Cleveland had a Chinese cook whom he had had for many years, and the Chinaman became as much absorbed in the place as Cleveland himself was. Cleveland being absent, the Chinaman thought it his duty to look out, so he went to them and said:

            'What you do dem guns?"

            One of the men said : "We are going to kill some of these birds."

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            The Chinaman replied, "Not muchee. You no shoot 'em birds."

            "'Why can't we shoot the birds?" said one of the men.

            "You shootee one dese birds, old man he come home he play hell with you!"

            They put up their guns.

            As Cleveland grew old, he grew more self-contained, but one day a man came along, stopped and got his dinner, and during the meal and afterward hurled anathemas at a certain gentleman in Nevada whom he did not like. He finally wound up by wishing that the man was there that he could settle with him.

            "Settle how?" asked Cleveland.

            He said : "I would beat him to death if he was here."

            At which Cleveland said : "Do you know what you are saying ? Do you know that that man you are talking about is something of a fighter?"

            "It does not matter. If he was here I would beat him to death."

            "Well," said Cleveland, "it is against my religious principles to have a difficulty with a man that is, any serious difficulty but that man you are talking about is a friend of mine and if you are entirely sure that you are anxious for a fight today, I'll take the risk of getting in that friend's place."

            That was a different matter. The man lost his desire for a fight in a moment.

            He was for a long time one of the prominent men of Nevada, and once was a candidate for governor and should have been elected except that he was running against another man as popular as himself. Governor Sparks, and the majority was for Sparks.

            For a long time he acted as the attorney of the Virginia & Truckee railroad to watch legislation in Carson, that nothing could be gotten through that was hostile to the road.

            Finally he went to Carson, when the legislature met. but was seized with a terrible cold, the clay before the meeting, which swiftly developed into pneumonia, and he lay at death's door until the session was over. He returned by Salt Lake,

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and was for a few clays under a physician's care. I met the physician and asked him if Cleveland was all right, and he replied : "He is going to get up and go home, but he will not live three years.

            Two years later, one Saturday night, he went to a little house near his main residence, where the hired help congregated, asked the boys for a newspaper or two and went to the house. Within five minutes one of the boys followed him. He was sitting in a chair holding the newspaper, and with one hand on the table, evidently reaching for his spectacles. But he was stone dead.

            He was a man of wonderful ability, a man with a heart bigger than his breast; a man quick of temper, but just and generous to all. He was my friend, without a moment's disagreement, for forty years. He did as much as any other one man to make Nevada a state and to keep it glorified. There was hardly a man, woman or child in the state that did not know him ; there was not one who was not a mourner when he died.