The daily morning journal and courier., 1896-07-31
CARELESS JOHN WILSON.
His Particular Delight Was in Showing

Los Angeles, Cal, July 4.--'I have been in nearly every mining camp in the United States west of the Mississip-' pi river and in all mining sections tn Mexico. and have, of course, seen some of the toughest frontier life anywhere" said J. M. Howard, an old-time miner from Tombstone, Ariz., at the hotel the other evening. "Such characters as Wild Bill Yellowstone Jack and the dozens of others who have been famous in flash literature for an apparent reck- lessness of human life and daredevil deeds, have been known to me person. ally. But the most ultra-reckless of them all, and the most indifferent man to his own safety ever came across, was little, squeaky-voiced, bashful teamster named John Wilson. I never can forget that fellow, and neither will the hundreds of men who were com pelled to work about him.
 "Wilson was at work for a mining company in Alpine county, in central California, in 1S77 Nitro-glycerine was used to loosen the gold quartz in the hard, rocky sides of the mountain. There were lot of men in camp who passed for bold, reckless and fearless fellows, and each would have made good character for sanguinary dime novel. But when any of them was of fered fifty or sixty dollars week and
 found just to drive the nitro glyce- rine wagon from the railroad station,
 five miles away, to the mining camp
 every other day, it was amusing to
 Ian ha 1xa
 preferring to work like Trojan ten
 hours a day down in the quartz mine
 for five dollars a day The road
 through the mountains was hard and
 rocky, and every one knew that if ever
 a man literally took his life in his
 hands 1t was the one who carted nitro
 glycerine over that mountain road.
 John Wilson happened to hear that
 man was wanted at bang-up good
 pay and easy work to haul the explo-
 sive and he came forty miles post
 haste to the superintendent of the mine
 to get the job He was told all about the
 awful risk he took, and was informed it was possible that an imperceptible jar of his wagon on that road at any time might blow him and his horses into eternity but that made no differ
 ence with Wilson. He wanted the job
 He soon became known among all the miners in that part of California as Devil Jack, and it was fit name for him. lie had chum named Bill Soggs, who was almost as reckless as Jack. l
 have seen him and Bill play catch with
 cans of glycerine they were unloading, the dropping of one of which to the ground would more than likely have
 wiped out of existence every person | around the diggings.
 l Tt got so that whenever Jack Wilson had a load of nitro glycerine to unload 1 at the camp, everybody else, except Bill Soggs, took to the. woods or hid be- 1 hind the camp buildings and stayed there until the stuff was out of their custody. Once Devil Jack held a great can of glycerine above his head and l let a drunken miner named Paterson l throw ten stones at it. from a distance l of thirty feet, on bet of twenty dol 1 lars that he couldn't hit the can once l out of the ten times. This was at Smiths diggings, and the whole camp watched the insane proceeding from a | stones hit Jack on the arm, not two | inches below the can, and knocked it 1 out of his hand. He caught the can, l though, before it reached the ground, or the throwing match would have end- l ed there and then with the burial of l such bits of Jack and the miner as could be found, and they would have been exceedingly few and small. The i latter came close to the can several | times during the trial, but failed to hit 1 it. and Jack won his bet.
 "Of course, the owners of the mine | would not allow such internal disre- 1 gard of human life as that to go on
 without reprimand Devil Jack was | hauled up before the superintendent
 and directors at once, and given good | talking to, but when he at once quit | his job of hauling nitro glycerine and
 no one else could be hired to take Jacks place at double the pay, why, the old teamster had to be reinstated.
 Every one around the camp used to l hold his breath and wish the day was
 over when Jack was due at the mines with his load of explosive. I always |
 mile from camp when he hove into the | settlement.
 Tn those days the woods all through
 the mountain mining regions were full of wild animals, and it wasn't an un- common sight to see bear or Neva- | da lynx or a catamount proving
 around the camps or isolated villages. | The lynx was frequently very aggres-
 sive and bold, and it was greatly feared
 by the miners and workers on the out | side of the camps. More than once
 men had been attacked by lynxes, and
 James Carter was so badly hurt in fighting one off that had jumped from a | tree upon him. as he was driving | through a. piece of woods, that he died
 of his injuries. One day Devil Jack
 was on his way to a well with load of
 nitro o-glycerine cartridges, and he
 picked the road through what was known as Sonway's woods. Bill dis covered a Nevada lynx stealing along | through the branches of the trees at one side of the road and keeping even with the wagon He called Jacks at | tention to the animal, and Jack said it was watching for chance to attack them, but declared that if it followed l them as far as Rodney's Gulch he
 would get rid of the dangerous beast. | "Rodney's Gulch was a gap in the woods, a ravine twenty feet wide and as many deep. The lynx did follow the
 men as far as the opening, and Jack 1 .+o,.,,o.1 lie ,.,ayop The Jvpy cro11cbod