The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1904-12-18
THE DEMON IN THE CANYON


70 StaNu SOOu IOr any OF dy
storiesi Still. some Of what I con-
sidered his most outrageous. lies after
ward received strong and unexpected
confirmation. For instance, the man
CT ia which he earned his sobriQuet
cf Hydraulic" Smith / thought was
lure fable. but no less a man than his
former employer said that it was fact
T. every essential. Smith got his front
name while working in a big hydraulic
camp in Idaho. He was nozzlemau-
One day i'm an unusually merry mood
Re turned the monitor loose on a
q ovid Of Cinnamon who were working
over taHings.
And if ever you saw felt shoes and
Iigtails flying in the air twas then"
said Hy. at looked for all the world
like Old Faithful had spouted in poll
Parrot cage. ] don't know why 1 done
fl, no more than the man IN the moon
Il was one of them idees that takes
hold of you and gets put through be-
fore you can more'n reelize you're
thinking Of it-but it was the greatest
success of its kind ever see. We had
q 200-foot head Of water and a six-inch
stream, and I might say that there
was a yaller haze Of Cinnamon in the
atmosphere for the next ten seconds. I
TIped one Charley-boy right over the
top of tool shed.
''Well. our boss was a mighty kind
hearted man, and when that crowd of
splitting. foaming, gargling, gobbling
Cinnamon went TO him and begun to
pour out their troubles like several
packs Of frecrackers going Off to oncet,
waving all the arms and legs 1 hadn't
Knocked out Of commission, he was het
VI. considerable. He never waited to
hear my side OF the story, but Just
/, s,,E1
Up to the hooks; he read me my pedi-
gree from Adams wife's sister down TO
now, and there wasn't a respectable
person in IT, according to him.
I didn't like IL, and made a swipe
Tor him with a shovel; but he was too
soOple for me, and OF all the lickings I
ever got, that is the one 1 don't want
tC remember the most. he did a sort
Of double-shuffle fandango on my back,
while he brought my legs into the ar
Gument with a sluice rake.
When he asked me if I had had
enough 1 told him I thought it would
Co for the present, because, as a matter
of fact. If all L had more than enough
WAS money in the bank, 1 wouldn't
have done no more work for the rest
Of my days.
80 then he calls me up and gives
me my time. and l must say he treat
cd me square when he said goodbye.
You're the best darn man on
monitor lever that 1 ever did See SAYS
he, but anywheres else you're the fool
est combine Of small boy and daredev-
il, and some other queer thing that l
don't seem to be able TO find a name
for, that ever numbered this earth.
Now, get the - out Of this, and good
luck 10 you.
Il didn't feel a bit sorry for them
Chinamen-they'r only hairless mon
EeyS that don't even know enough to
wear their tails in the right place
TIER arithmetic proves that. It's reg
Glar monkey lingering. They haven't
any numbers that look like numbers at
al Suppose you want to multiply
twenty-five by thirty-six, Chinee sys-
TEN? First you put down a ROSTERS
loot track; that's twenty-five. Under
meath that goes the ground plan of a
small house; that's thirty-siX Then
you take an hour off and work cut the
sum with lot of little balls on wires:
then you put down the answer. and
what do you think it is2 Why it's a
map of Chicago after the frel Shucks!
and they call themselves men. I'd go
cid Job three bOils to his one rather
than have any Chinks around me-
Wei, the boys labeled me Hydraul-
prospecting. Took up with a Teller
named AgamemnOn Jones. Aggy was
big, fine-lOOHng man, with a chest
Ike a dry goods box and a set Of
whiskers that would start him in bust
ness anywhere They were the up-
standingest, nOblest. straightforward
est outfit of whiskers I most ever saw,
and how they came TO grow on Ag is a
mystery; but they stood him in many
e dollar. I tell YOU that,
He was man of pretty consider
2bie education in some ways, and he
could make you believe that today was
last Thursday a week ago if you
weren't on TO him. At this time he
was kind Of under a cloud, like myself,
and the way it came about was this:
He started an assay office when ne
FIRST struck the gulch, and he used to
bring in results according to the looks
Of the customer. If the man looked
tender around the feet Aggy'd knock it
10 him, and probably the shave-tail
would be so pleased that he would fork
out an extra ten; but If he was plainly
vented as one Of the boys there would
be just enough pay in the returns to
encourage him.
Next he took up engineering. He
hit a blame good job on Castle creek in
the Black Hills. The people wanted to
turn the creek through a tunnel, so
that they could work the bed, and
at this point It was rather an
easy business The stream made
a "U'' about three-quarters of a mile
long, the bottom prong being at least a
hundred and fifty feet below the water
level on the top One-a smashing good
1all-sO Aggy started in on the down
side to bore the hole up.
We'll, everything went lovely. He'd
come around with his plans and speci-
ficatiOns twice a day, and draw his
hundred once a week regular for his
great labOrs. At last, however. the
shift boss said they must be getting
pretty near water; he could hear it
roar through the face Of the tunnel, ne
Caid. But Aggy told MIN not to be
they weren't within forty foot Of
breaking through.
so at II they went again, as cheer
full as could be. and the next news they
got, down comes the face, and they
were being piped through four hundred
<Oot Of black, dark tunnel, trying to
guess what was up, humping and bang
ing against the walls and the whole
Ct Castle creek on top Of them
My Cinnamon weren't a circum-
stance. Aggy said they boiled out of
the lower end Of the tunnel where he
vas standing SO fast he couldn't recog-
Eize them. and as 4 matter OF fact.
three or four Of 'em were washed a
mile down the creek before they could
make land
''Aggy gathered that It was time to
move again, so he pulled back for Ida
no. There wasn't anybody really
Drowned except old Tom Oily. a cousin
Jack, whose only amusement in life
was to wear out his pants laying low
cor cmches ~ the stud poker game,
md Won co11lTr7ff rfuf,4T--