{"id":15319,"date":"2017-10-22T04:14:38","date_gmt":"2017-10-22T08:14:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bonanzabrand.info\/library\/?p=15319"},"modified":"2025-09-25T15:41:03","modified_gmt":"2025-09-25T19:41:03","slug":"night-watch-by-cheaux","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bonanzabrand.info\/library\/?p=15319","title":{"rendered":"Night Watch (by Cheaux)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Summary:\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>Musings of Deputy Clem Foster on his city and the Cartwrights.<\/p>\n

Rated:\u00a0 K+<\/p>\n

Word Count: 1366<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Some time ago I posted a challenge for authors to make Virginia City a character in a story.\u00a0 \u00a0I\u00a0 recently uncovered my own effort languishing in a WIP folder.\u00a0 \u00a0Those dear readers old enough may recognize the rhythm of the opening.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Night Watch<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This is the city . . . Virginia City, Nevada. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The town sits on land older than the mountains, deserts, and canyons surrounding it. \u00a0Land that existed long before man stumbled upon the mineral deposits that lay far beneath the surface and before the discovery of the Comstock Lode made some men wealthy and broke others\u2014not just their bones but their spirit. <\/span><\/p>\n

I work here. \u00a0My name is Clem Foster. \u00a0I carry a badge. \u00a0The boss is Roy Coffee. \u00a0<\/span>Before him, Virginia City had its share of odd sheriffs, including one who had a reputation for empanelling unusual juries like the one made up entirely of midgets, or the one where every man was at least six and a half feet tall and all were cross-eyed!<\/span><\/p>\n

Night\u2019s a peaceful time in most towns, but not here\u2014and especially not during a bonanza. \u00a0The mines run three shifts and Virginia City is open 24 hours a day. \u00a0If they\u2019re not sleepin\u2019 or eatin\u2019, 20,000 people\u2014mostly unmarried men\u2014gotta have a place to go and that\u2019s usually to the saloons in town. \u00a0\u00a0<\/span>Dan DeQuille over at the Territorial Enterprise calls saloons the dining rooms and bedrooms of Virginia City. \u00a0There are over a hundred of them more than willing to supply food, drink and a cot to sleep it off, all for a price. <\/span><\/p>\n

Two bits will buy a drink in one of the better establishments like the Delta, Silver Palace, Sawdust Corner, or Dan O\u2019Connell\u2019s on C Street. \u00a0The less fancy places farther down the slope toward Gold Hill and Silver City only charge one bit for a watered down beer. \u00a0In Virginia City, nothing sells for less than a dime. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This week I\u2019m on night watch. \u00a0My patrol area is C Street from the Divide out to the cemetery, up to B Street, and back to the Divide. \u00a0Several boarding houses line the north end of B, all of which are double or triple rented. \u00a0<\/span>\u00a0Pay for a double and you\u2019ll get a bed for 12 hours and then someone else sleeps in the same bed for the next 12. \u00a0A man renting a triple only gets 8 hours between the sheets. \u00a0Room and board comes with two meals–breakfast and dinner. \u00a0Linens changed weekly. \u00a0Roy meets the stages to see who\u2019s coming and going. \u00a0I hit Boarding House row when the mines change shifts to see who\u2019s sleeping where. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Mining is the lifeblood of the town. \u00a0One way or another, everyone here has some connection to the ore coming out of the ground either as owners, investors, miners, merchants, bankers, or teamsters or as those in the service industries like waiters, shop clerks, blacksmiths, swampers, and yes, soiled doves. \u00a0Some men, like Ben Cartwright, live on the eastern slope of the Sierras, on ranches that supply beef to the restaurants and lumber to the mines for the square set timbering that makes all this possible. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

One thing\u2019s for certain, whether you live on the Comstock or near it, Virginia City makes an indelible impression, for better or worse. \u00a0Take Ben\u2014in the early days he hated Virginia City. Thought it was a den of iniquity and fought like the devil to keep Joe, his youngest son, at home. Ben doesn\u2019t pull punches about his abhorrence of the town in those days.\u00a0 He told me,\u00a0<\/span>\u201cThere was nothing here. \u00a0No trees. \u00a0No grass. \u00a0No water. \u00a0Just bare mountains and zephyr winds. \u00a0But most of all what bothered me was again seeing the worst in people just like I did at Sutter\u2019s Mill. \u00a0Scheming, vicious crooks, squandering their own lives in pursuit of an easy buck, and ruining the lives of those they bilked. \u00a0I didn\u2019t want my boys to have any part in it. \u201d <\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Ben\u2019s oldest son Adam keeps his thoughts to himself and seems more bemused by the fact that the city seduced his kid brother the first time he viewed the painted buildings which were at once both gaudy and beautiful.\u00a0 Joe saw the town as a place of boundless optimism and good cheer. \u00a0Never mind today\u2019s borrasca, tomorrow would bring a bonanza. \u00a0To him, the magic of Virginia City was the indomitable spirit of its citizens who refused to let bad luck get them down. \u00a0They laughed off defeat, played audacious practical jokes on one another, and dug deep into their pockets to help the widows and orphans. \u00a0<\/span>\u201cJoe’s right,\u201d <\/span><\/i>Adam said,<\/span> \u201cwhat other town heals the broken, takes care of the injured and sick, chases the blues away, and rewards anyone who can find new ways to bring ore to the surface.\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Adam was one of those men who helped improve mining, but his heart wasn\u2019t really in it. \u00a0In addition to possessing a wealth of minerals, Virginia City had acquired status as the best theater town between Chicago and San Francisco. \u00a0World-class acts performed at Maguire\u2019s (later renamed Piper\u2019s) Opera House. \u00a0People like Charles Dickens, Thomas Bower, Adah Menken, Lily Langtry, and Edwin Booth. \u00a0I think Piper\u2019s is one of the reasons Adam stayed in these parts as long as he did. \u00a0But eventually, even culture couldn\u2019t overcome his disillusionment with the wild west.<\/span><\/p>\n

To be fair, Virginia City does have a reputation of being violent, but that\u2019s an exaggeration in my opinion. \u00a0The truth is there\u2019s only one or two murders a week. \u00a0Of course, there are also the assorted stabbings, muggings, burglaries, stagecoach robberies, bloody accidents, runaway freight wagons, and suicides over fortunes lost and lives ruined. \u00a0But it\u2019s a damn shame he left the way he did, instead of working to improve life on the Comstock the way his Pa and brothers did.\u00a0 Like Hoss, for example, especially in winter.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

Not much snowfall here compared to the Sierras, but brutally cold with the zephyr winds blowing.\u00a0 Hay and grain for the horses is impossible to come by at any price.\u00a0 A lot of folks just turn their drays loose to forage for themselves rather than see them starve.\u00a0 Hoss never comes to town during the winter without a wagon load of feed to scatter in the canyons for those poor critters.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Cartwrights were minor players in the Utah Territory in the early days. \u00a0After the discovery of gold and silver, the population exploded, and in 1861 the United States saw fit to separate Nevada from Utah. \u00a0The new Nevada Territorial Legislature then established nine counties and Virginia City became the Storey County seat. \u00a0By that time Ben Cartwright had become an influential figure despite the fact that he owned no property here, which was a problem for some of the town\u2019s citizens. <\/span><\/p>\n

See, the Ponderosa Ranch straddled Washoe and Ormsby Counties, but didn\u2019t reach as far as Storey. \u00a0That is, until Joe convinced Hoss to go in with him to buy their father 10 acres of worthless dry lake bed at the south end of Washoe Lake. \u00a0Roy says Ben nearly had apoplexy over that little transaction until Joe pointed out that the parcel sat squarely in the middle of the intersection of Washoe, Ormsby and Storey Counties, thus giving Ben Cartwright legal standing in all three. <\/span><\/p>\n

A few years later the drought ended and water from the Sierras again flowed freely into the lake restoring the shoreline to what it had once been, creating new fishing grounds and habitats for wildlife. \u00a0And thus was born a new Joe Cartwright scheme to make money by renting boats to fishermen. \u00a0Whoever heard of such a thing?<\/span><\/p>\n

Guess Adam was right. \u00a0In many ways Joe personifies Virginia City. \u00a0He\u2019s full of optimism and high spirits, ever ready to turn a borrasca into a bonanza, always looking for new ways to achieve the impossible.<\/span><\/p>\n

The End<\/span><\/p>\n

October 2017<\/span><\/p>\n

Sources: \u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

History of the Big Bonanza<\/span> by Dan DeQuille<\/span><\/p>\n

History of the Comstock Lode<\/span> by Grant H. Smith<\/span><\/p>\n

Virginia City and the Big Bonanza<\/span> by Ronald M. James and Susan A. James<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Tags:\u00a0 Clem Foster<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Summary: Musings of Deputy Clem Foster on his city and the Cartwrights.<\/p>\n

Rated:\u00a0 K+ Word Count: 1238<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":13074,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"template-full-width-post.php","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":""},"categories":[23,40],"tags":[372],"class_list":["post-15319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-drama","category-challenges","tag-tmoac","wpcat-23-id","wpcat-40-id"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/bonanzabrand.info\/library\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/Family-3.jpg?fit=272%2C320&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bonanzabrand.info\/library\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bonanzabrand.info\/library\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bonanzabrand.info\/library\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bonanzabrand.info\/library\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bonanzabrand.info\/library\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15319"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bonanzabrand.info\/library\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15319\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bonanzabrand.info\/library\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13074"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bonanzabrand.info\/library\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bonanzabrand.info\/library\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bonanzabrand.info\/library\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}