I felt listless.
“Oh, it’s the altitude,” Beth said. “I felt the same way when we first arrived.” True, at sea level the air pressure is 14.7 pounds to the square inch, or 30 inches of mercury. We lived at an elevation at which the air pressure was only 9.5 pounds or 19.4 inches of mercury, and the low pressure kept one’s lungs working much faster to obtain the necessary amount of life-giving oxygen.
Yet the continued fast beat of my heart was annoying and the feeling in my chest was difficult to describe. It felt burning, yet icy cold. I had to slow down my walking pace. And my cold feet! Nothing helped until I saw a picture in a mail order catalogue, the standby of everyone in the Basin, of felt shoes which I sent for immediately. They fitted inside my arctics and were comfortable and warm. My foot problem was solved. But I had another one as troublesome.
Occupants had to tunnel out after heavy snowfalls.
Due to the thin, cold, dry air my lower lip split down the middle. It was painful and bled profusely, especially during extreme cold weather. I tried every known remedy except one which old-timers assured me was the only cure. Ear wax! I couldn’t bring myself to use it. So long as we lived up there my lip never healed and to this day a lump of thickened skin remains where the crack was.
Thirty years after we left our home in the clouds, I had occasion to be examined by a physician dwelling at an elevation of only 1,700 feet. He did not know where I had lived.
“You are in perfect condition,” he assured me, “but you have an astonishing high count of red blood corpuscles. Astonishing,” he repeated, “but nothing to worry about.”
“What would cause that?” I asked him.
“It’s hard to say, but sometimes living in very high altitudes will build up such a condition.”
I soon overcame the discomfort of cold feet and high altitude, but bread making was the bane of my existence.
“It’s very easy,” said Mrs. Matson. “There are nine of us and I have no trouble keeping enough bread on hand.”
“It’s simple,” said Beth. Kate Botkin agreed. Attractive Mrs. Driscoll, wife of the chief steward of the boardinghouse, added, “Oh my, yes. It’s nothing at all to make bread, and my four children keep me busy at it.”
Surely I could make bread if I followed their instructions. Patiently, carefully and often they described the different steps: soaking cakes of compressed yeast in potato water, determining the proper temperature at which it must be kept, and on mixing day, adding the proper amount of fresh potato water, flour, lard, sugar, and salt. Each one had her own method of mixing but all were happy with the results.
“Thanks, I understand now. I’ll get it this time,” I replied every time.
But usually when baking day arrived, no bubbles greeted my gaze. The yeast would be dead and I would hurry to borrow a new starter, a mixture of yeast and potato water kept constantly on hand, alive but not active. All my attempts failed and my generous friends supplied the bread for George’s lunch basket. I sent for a bread-making machine—a bucket equipped with a hand-cranked mixer to knead the dough. Surely this would end my troubles.
Confidently I mixed a batch in the new machine and went to bed. Next morning when I lifted the cover from the bucket the dough was no higher than it was the night before. There was no use baking it and I wept as I threw away more flour, lard, sugar, salt, and yeast. But on the next attempt I was delighted to find the dough near the top of the bucket. I molded it in loaves, let them stand the required time, and baked them. The bread came out golden brown, tempting, the wonderful aroma of freshly baked bread throughout the house. I couldn’t resist cutting a warm slice for myself. What a disappointment! I almost cried. The loaf was nothing but a mass of holes with a webbing of dough, resembling genuine Swiss cheese. How would George ever eat the stuff, I wondered. One answer, he had to for there was no other bread for him.
I was one bride who couldn’t boil an egg. Only after repeated trials were our frozen eggs boiled long enough to be palatable. It was hard for me to realize that water boiled at only 190 degrees and to determine the additional time required to boil an egg.
Salad dressing was another Waterloo. If it were a degree too cold the oil would not mix with the egg. Many messy mixtures of eggs, oil and vinegar were wasted, and I did so love mayonnaise!
At home in California I had made delicious cakes and decided to use one of my mother’s recipes. I mixed the batter with great care and put it in the oven for the required time to bake. The result—it remained battery!
I tried a pot roast and we eagerly anticipated dinner. It was browning beautifully and a savory odor came from the pot. George loved meat, and with his strenuous work, required much of it. But alas! No knife we possessed would cut that roast.
One day I said, “All miners eat beans. Do you like beans, George?”
“Yes, of course,” he answered, always amiable about my experiments and probably hopeful of a triumph. So for two whole days I boiled beans. They neither swelled nor softened but remained as hard as marbles.
Most of my days were spent perusing the Rocky Mountain Cookbook, mixing recipes, washing dishes, in a desperate endeavor to set before my husband appetizing meals from our limited larder. I learned to cook the hard way, but it took time. Yet, never during all the years did George ever complain or criticize my efforts.
While I was learning my job, he was learning the different steps in milling gold ore in that sixty stamp mill of the Tomboy. His first job was assistant to the amalgamator, Osborn, who had grown old in that one position.
After the ore had been crushed it was washed over copper plates covered with amalgam, a sticky mixture of gold and quicksilver. Excess amalgam was removed from the plates and stored in the office safe until there was enough to charge the retort furnace where the quicksilver was recovered and the gold prepared for melting into bars.
Gold ore has been found running as high as $70,000 to $80,000 a ton. Though the Tomboy never reached that high in gold content, pockets had been found which assayed from $10.00 to $15.00 a pound. In such rich rock the gold shows plainly. Precautions were taken against theft in such veins, but it was difficult to watch the men and easy for them to sneak out small, valuable pieces. Reports disclosed that from one mining town alone the express companies shipped $100,000 more cash each year than was reported by the mines.
One morning, as I went to get the mail, I saw several grim-faced men standing near the Finn’s shack. I wondered if an accident had befallen our taciturn neighbors. In this small community everyone was concerned about the welfare of the miners.
It wasn’t many hours before the story, which the company tried hard to keep quiet, had spread from one to another and I was able to piece together several bits of it. Early that morning, Tom Sullivan, a big, good-looking Irishman with curly red hair and vivid blue eyes, was standing by the shaft house about ready to go off duty. He was the night watchman with many responsibilities. It was his duty to wander over the property with eyes and ears alert to anything out of the ordinary—theft, sabotage, fire hazards, danger of slides—and to be at the shaft house at four in the morning to notice anything suspicious among the night crew coming up from the mine. Tom had found no trouble that night and was ready for his rest. One miner after another greeted the well-liked guard. “Hi, Tom, how’r you?” “Fine, how’s it below?” “Hello, Tom.” “How’s the ol’ mule that
