West of Washoe Read Online Free PDF Page A

incentive to stay here and get the job done night after night. The Enterprise furnishes up to ten gallons of beer from Chauncey’s Saloon next door.”
    “Ten gallons per day? ”
    Scrivener nodded. “Gets pretty hot and dry in that composing room on summer nights. It also helps fire the imaginations of some of my reporters when they’re writing up their articles. Makes for some very creative prose.”
    Ross whistled softly. “A lot of men I know would like to have a job with those fringe benefits.”
    “Helps make up for the marginal pay. Keeps some of the more wild-eyed ones from plunging over their heads into stocks, or quitting and going off prospecting themselves…especially now that all the good ore deposits are owned by big companies. No more surface placer mining where a man can sluice out the gravel and come up with anything more than a few grains of gold. The silver ore is hundreds of feet underground. Hard-rock miners make a better salary than my men, but it’s tough, dangerous work, and they generally don’t live as long.”
    The two men walked into the large room with the high ceiling. One of the men in an ink-stained apron came over to Scrivener, holding a wet proof sheet, and said something that Ross didn’t catch. The editor glanced at the sheet.
    “Don’t rewrite the head. Reduce the type to make it fit,” the editor said.
    The man nodded, and moved away.
    “I’ll look for you in the morning,” Ross said, reachingfor the door handle. The twilight had deepened to dusk and C Street was lighted by the glow from several dozen stores and saloons.
    Silhouetted against the lamplight of many businesses, a lone horseman came galloping down the street, weaving in and around the wagon and horse traffic. The rider held a flaming torch in one hand, wind whipping the flames over his shoulder.
    Ross opened the door and stepped out onto the boardwalk. He heard thrumming hoofs just as the horse veered to his side of the street, nearly galloping up onto the sidewalk. Ross instinctively dived sideways. The rider’s extended arm came up, flinging the blazing torch end over end. It crashed through one of the tall front windows of the newspaper office, and the interior of the room burst into flame.
    Ross ducked flying particles of glass, then sprang into the street, yanking his Colt. Thumbing back the hammer, he brought up the weapon and held his breath. Steady…don’t hit anyone else, he thought. Horse and rider were receding down the darkened street when Ross fired. The Navy Colt bucked and roared, a yellow tongue of flame darting from the long barrel. He fired again, and saw the rider reel in the saddle just before a bend in the street screened him from view.
    “Somebody get the sheriff!” he yelled, holstering his gun and dashing back inside where the entire staff was fighting the fire. The torch had struck a container of type cleaner and the flames were licking up the wall.
    “Fossett!” Scrivener hissed as he grabbed up a cuspidor and flung its contents on the blaze. One of the compositors had been splashed with the burning liquid and his co-workers were rolling him in a coat to smother the flames.
    Ross snatched up a heavy container of sand near the door and, face averted from the heat, threw it at the base of the blaze near the wall. The flames instantly dropped, but the fire still burned. Thank God the inside of the wall was rough brick with no paneling or wallpaper.
    A fire bell clanged somewhere outside, apparently summoning a volunteer fire company.
    One of the men ran to the edge of the flames, kicking bales of paper out of the way. Another grabbed up two small buckets of beer and flung them on the burning wooden floor.
    Ross stripped off his coat, doused it with beer, and began beating the edges of the spreading flames.
    It was less than ten minutes, but it seemed like a stretch in purgatory before the clanging of an approaching bell signaled the arrival of the horse-drawn fire wagon. The