Page:Boys Life of Mark Twain.djvu/143

 "One week of this satisfied me. I resigned," is Mark Twain's brief comment.

The Humboldt reports had been exaggerated. The Clemens-Clagget-Oliver-Tillou millionaire combination soon surrendered its claims. Clemens and Tillou set out for Carson City with a Prussian named Pfersdorff, who nearly got them drowned and got them completely lost in the snow before they arrived there. Oliver and Clagget remained in Unionville, began law practice, and were elected to office. It is not known what became of the wagon and horses and the two dogs.

It was the end of January when our miner returned to Carson. He was not discouraged—far from it. He believed he had learned something that would be useful to him in a camp where mines were a reality. Within a few weeks from his return we find him at Aurora, in the Esmeralda region, on the edge of California. It was here that the Clemens brothers owned the 1,650 feet formerly mentioned. He had come down to work it.

It was the dead of winter, but he was full of enthusiasm, confident of a fortune by early summer. To Pamela he wrote:

I expect to return to St. Louis in July—per steamer. I don't say that I will return then, or that I shall be able to do it but I expect to you bet. . . . If nothing goes wrong, we'll strike the ledge in June.

He was trying to be conservative, and further along he cautions his sister not to get excited. 115