LITTLE STORIES OF THE WEST   593

 

[J. H. Cradlebaugh, Ragtown of Nevada, Sunset, October 1905]

 

Ragtown of Nevada

            OUTSIDE of a few ranches in Ruby valley and the little dug-out or palisade stage stations, the first sign of civilization after leaving Salt Lake was Ragtown. The rags were in evidence, but the town was mostly brevet. It consisted of a stage station, a general store and a so-called hotel, the two latter being owned and operated by Ase Kenyon and his partner. The Carson river flowed by the place, probably because it couldn't avoid it, but its waters had lost their purity and were of the shade of boarding-house tea from the absorption of alkali.

            East of Ragtown, in those early days, lay the forty-mile desert, which the immigrants usually crossed in the night, and the road across this dreary waste was marked by the bleaching bones of cattle worn out with their weary journey, and denied entrance to the promised land whose eastern border could be seen fifty miles away defined by the névés and snowy minarets of the grand old Sierras.

            The fauna of Ragtown consisted of lank jackrabbits, side-winder rattlesnakes, horned toads and Idaho crickets, the latter gaudily dressed with alternate black and yellow stripes around their fat bodies, the convicts of the insect world. Its flora was rags, rags of every color and of every hue; every kind and quality and texture here in gay commingling gave a gaudy touch to the otherwise dead gray landscape; for here the immigrant took a bath, and, in honor of the green slopes of the Sierras that gladdened his tired eyes, changed his raiment.

            Ase Kenyon, who was the principal owner of this variegated flower garden, was a well-known character. He had the reputation of using the truth with more parsimonious economy than any man on the coast, not even barring Honey Lake Smith, the mighty prevaricator of Never Sweat valley.

            Kenyon and his partner grew fat financially by assisting tired immigrants on their way. This they did by trading one yoke of fat work cattle for three yoke of worn-out ones. These they would turn out on the range for a few months until they were in good condition and then trade them again. It will be seen that with three trades a year the profit would be about 3,000 per cent, unless, indeed, the point was passed where profit ceased and larceny began.

            As I have said, they ran a store and furnished the raiment that made the shedding of rags possible. They also sold a brand of whisky manufactured in Salt Lake, known as "Valley Tan." It was said by those who had sampled it, and survived, that a man who would take two drinks of it and not go back to his wagon and whip his wife was a coward. Of course, Kenyon and his compadre

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were out for the best of it, but they didn't always get it.

            One morning Kenyon saw an outfit approaching the station and rode down to meet it. The driver was a little, sore-eyed, flat-chested Missourian who had four yoke of poor cattle and a big, rotund better half. Ase asked if he had anything to trade or sell, and the little fellow pointed wearily back over the desert to where two oxen stood by the road, and remarked that there were a couple of steers he had to leave, but they ought to come in by night. Kenyon offered ten dollars for them which, after some demur, was accepted, he passing over a "twenty" and getting ten in change, and then Kenyon rode out over the range.

            In an hour or so the outfit reached the store, and the partner, tackling the Missourian for a trade, was sold the same two oxen at the same price, ten dollars. The woman made some purchases at the store, digging, with much fumbling, a twenty-dollar piece from the toe of a long woolen stocking and getting some twelve dollars in change, and then the pair drove on.

            When Kenyon came home toward evening he remarked he would go out and drive in his cattle, and then it was discovered how the Missourian had doubled out on them. They both laughed and Ase rode out to the cattle to drive them in. He did not do so, however, for he found the immigrant had propped a couple of dry carcasses on their feet, broadside on to the station. Kenyon's partner took it as a joke, saying that any one who could rob him was welcome to the goods, but Kenyon was mad, and swore that he would have his money back.

            Next morning he saddled his mustang and caught his man twelve miles up the river. He was sore but said all he wanted was his own, so the good wife, with many sighs and much untying of string, produced another twenty from the stocking, got ten in change, and they said good-by. Two days later the partners discovered that every twenty-dollar piece the woman had given them was a counterfeit. "And just think," said Ase, "that I followed that gimlet-eyed side-winder twelve miles to give him ten dollars more for doing me up." "Well!" he added, "if he don't steal the Golden Gate before he is in California three months, it will be because the government takes it in at night."

            When we reached Ragtown I followed the general custom, and proceeded to shed. My father bought me a pair of brown-jean pants, men's size, and as I was only nine years old, with more beam than keelson, they were the whole thing. I razeed them above the knees, buttoned them up close under my arms, put on a pair of shoulder straps, and burst into full feather, the queerest looking sage chick that ever appeared in full décolleté in the great basin, either before or since that time. My father remarked, with a grim smile, that I reminded him of the lilies-of-the-valley. I did not know wherein lay the resemblance then, but many years after, when I had left the land of sage-brush and discovered the Bible, I knew his mind couldn't grasp the idea of Solomon being dressed that way.

J. H. CRADLEBAUGH.