Mr. Denny and a mining claim—A wholesale killing averted—Stories of shooting escapades.

Any one seeing Mr. Denny (the vice-president and biggest stockholder of our company) now would think him only a quiet man of affairs, yet some years ago he was known as one of the finest fighting men of New Mexico or Colorado. While working a prospect he had near Silver City, New Mexico, he decided to study law, did so successfully, and was called to the bar; but his ideas of practice were peculiar. He was employed by a mining company to protect a mining claim that was in litigation and which the opposing parties were about to take possession of while court was not in session. He put in an injunction of his own devising; he laid in a stock of provisions and water, built a barricade of dynamite boxes in the mouth of the tunnel, took up his position with a Winchester, and defied the sheriff and posse to oust him till the case could be tried; and the sheriff, not seeing any way to dissolve the injunction, left him strictly alone. Later, the court found for his clients. 283In the same city he had heard that an Italian named Carrera had made some slanderous remarks about him. Though this Carrera weighed nearly 200 lbs. and Denny at that time only about 125 lbs., he went up to the former’s office with a paper for him to sign, retracting what he had formerly said. Carrera refused, and Denny beat him till he signed. Then Denny took the document to the office of the daily paper and asked them to publish Carrera’s free and full retractation. But as the document had accumulated much blood during the progress of negotiations, the editor refused to publish it on the ground that “Carrera did not sign that of his own free will and volition.” “Sure he did,” said Denny; “I made him.”

Silver City had the reputation of being a camp in which more men were killed than any other in the United States. On one occasion a young fellow was shot in a billiard hall and was laid upon one of the tables to pass away in comfort. He had been what is known as a “grandstander” all his life (playing to the gallery), and as he lay there dying he suddenly raised himself on his elbow and said to the assembled crowd, "Boys, ain’t I dying brave"—a grandstander to the last!

Kingston, New Mexico, was divided into two factions, Denny at the head of one and a man named Bill Langly at the head of the other. One day Denny was walking 284down the street, and happened to be unarmed, when Bill Langly stepped out of a saloon and emptied his pistol at Denny across the street. Denny, who was walking towards Bill when he started shooting, did not increase his pace by the fraction of a second, but calmly walked on past Langly down to the blacksmith’s shop that Harry Carter owned at the time. Though Bill was a good shot he had been drinking, and so missed Denny with all six shots. Just as Harry Carter, who had heard and seen the shooting, ran out with a Winchester, which he handed to Denny, the sheriff came and arrested Langly. Denny walked out into the middle of the road, dropped on his knee, and, just as he was about to shoot, a woman happened to step into the line of fire; by the time she moved out of the way Langly and the sheriff had turned the corner and were out of sight. That woman unconsciously averted a wholesale killing, for while Denny knelt in the street some of the opposing faction had him covered from the door of a saloon, and Harry Carter and some of Denny’s friends were covering these men from the doorway of the smithy.

Denny does not forget the friends of his days of poverty now that he is a millionaire, for though Harry Carter has been working here as yard foreman it is simply of his own wish, because he preferred to feel independent. 285But Harry knows that his wife and children are provided for, no matter what may happen to him. Denny has offered to start him in business, but he does not care for this. Another friend and old-time partner is Tom Grand, whom I mentioned before as being down here prospecting for Denny. He is doing so under the following terms: Denny pays all expenses, and will put up the money necessary to develop any mine that is found, and the proceeds will be divided evenly. This also leaves a man feeling fairly independent, more so than if he were a mere pensioner.

Grand is a very good friend of mine, and as nice a man as one would wish to meet anywhere, yet he has the record of having killed three men in fights and seriously wounded four others; and at one time he was hunted over the hills of New Mexico by the state militia. He was generally very quiet, though full of fun, and I never could get him to tell me of any of his shooting scrapes, but on one occasion I saw even a drunken man realise that he was a bad man to fool with. A party of us were standing talking in front of the railway station in Guadalajara when a man we all knew came along just drunk enough to be aggressive, and began to make himself objectionable. Tom Grand had just come in from the mountains, and the clothes he had on were rough and dusty, 286and this attracted Mr. Drunk. He walked up to Tom and said, “My heaven, Grand, you look tough” (i.e. rough and dirty). “Yes,” said Tom, putting his face close up to the other, "and I\'m just as tough as I look" (i.e. bad customer). The other understood the play on the words and the look on Tom’s face, and backed away full of apologies and did not bother us any more.

The life some of these prospectors lead would kill any man who was not made of iron and had not courage to spare. Tom Grand was telling me of one experience of his when he was opening up a tunnel one winter all by himself, forty miles from the nearest habitation. It was 15° F. below zero, and he could find nothing to burn but sage brush. Any one who knows or has seen sage brush can imagine what a delightfully cheerful fire it would make! Then the loneliness would drive most men crazy. On another occasion Grand, Denny, and another man were up in Colorado prospecting in the Grand Canyon, when the third man fell over the bluff to a ledge 150 feet below. They had no means of getting up the body for burial, and all they could do was to lower a red blanket by strings till it covered the body; and so they had to leave him, trusting that nothing would touch the body for fear of the blanket. It is hard to get these men to talk of the past—they live in the present 287and the future. Harry Carter once told me of a narrow escape he had years ago at Kingston, New Mexico. I was mentioning a case of a policeman and he said, “Why, I had just such a thing happen to me.” He had got ............