Chapter XXI - Page 2

citizens, at the stage-office and on the
way up to the Governor's from the hotel--among others, to a Mr. Harris,
who was on horseback; he began to say something, but interrupted himself
with the remark:

"I'll have to get you to excuse me a minute; yonder is the witness that
swore I helped to rob the California coach--a piece of impertinent
intermeddling, sir, for I am not even acquainted with the man."

Then he rode over and began to rebuke the stranger with a six-shooter,
and the stranger began to explain with another. When the pistols were
emptied, the stranger resumed his work (mending a whip-lash), and Mr.
Harris rode by with a polite nod, homeward bound, with a bullet through
one of his lungs, and several in his hips; and from them issued little
rivulets of blood that coursed down the horse's sides and made the animal
look quite picturesque. I never saw Harris shoot a man after that but it
recalled to mind that first day in Carson.

This was all we saw that day, for it was two o'clock, 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, chickens 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.

But seriously a Washoe wind is by no means a trifling matter. It blows
flimsy houses down, lifts shingle roofs occasionally, rolls up tin ones
like sheet music, now and then blows a stage coach over and spills the
passengers; and tradition says the reason there are so many bald people
there, is, that the wind blows the hair off their heads while they are
looking skyward after their hats. Carson streets seldom look inactive on
Summer afternoons, because there are so many citizens skipping around
their escaping hats, like chambermaids trying to head off a spider.

The "Washoe Zephyr" (Washoe is a pet nickname for Nevada) is a peculiar
Scriptural wind, in that no man knoweth "whence it cometh." That