Free West of Washoe by Tim Champlin Page A

When the scandal blew wide open and details were picked up by all the big newspapers in the East, Midwest, and San Francisco, The Territorial Enterprise would be the most famous paper in the country.
    A portion of the brick front of the Enterprise building was still blackened with smoke. The tall, narrow window was boarded up. Inside, the pressroom, now cleaned and scrubbed, looked the same as before, or better.
    Scrivener’s office door was propped open. Inside, Ross found the editor frowning over a handful of copy.
    “Did I catch you at a bad time?”
    “Hell no! You’re a savior. Let’s go get a drink to settle my nerves.” He came out of his chair and around the desk.
    “What’s wrong?” Ross asked as they went out the door.
    “Been a bad day so far. The usual…copy late, and scribbled so I can hardly read it. Damned near everything I’ve gotten today needed to be rewritten. Pressmen said something’s broken on the platen. This is one of those days when I wonder why I ever wanted to become an editor.”
    Ross glanced at the rutted street of half-dried mud and plowed manure. “You know, for a city that makes noises about having the best of everything, you’d think they’d keep their streets in better shape.”
    Scrivener looked at the thoroughfare as if for the first time. “We keep it paved with a conglomerate of splintered planks, old boots, clippings of tinware, and playing cards. Especially playing cards. What the drunks don’t drop and the dealers don’t throw away, the Washoe zephyrs blow out of our two hundred saloons. When the hay gives out in winter, a lot of mules fatten up on playing cards. Works well, all around. Everything in Nature comes full circle and is renewed.”
    Ross chuckled.
    Four doors down, they turned into a saloon and stepped up to the bar. The editor ordered a Steamboat gin. “A holdover from my days as a compositor,” he said, sipping the clear liquid.
    “A Pilsner,” Ross said.
    Scrivener put down his glass. “Our old press is getting creaky. Sure would like to try out one of thosenew steam-powered presses. Joe Goodman is two-thirds owner of the paper. Don’t know if he’d want to spring for that kind of money,” Scrivener continued, apparently thinking out loud. Ross nodded, as if he could do something about the problems. “Press would have to be freighted over the mountains in pieces by ox teams and big wagons. You know, that old Washington hand press we’re using is the same basic design that’s been around since printing was invented. About time for something new, I’d say.”
    “You own one-third of the paper?”
    “Right. So I have a good idea of the finances, although we do have a bookkeeper.” He smiled. “We’re raking in piles of money with our advertising and the orders for all kinds of handbills and other printing jobs on the side. Virginia City has already seen several other papers come and go, like the Washoe Daily Evening Herald, The Occidental, Virginia Evening Bulletin, Daily Democratic Standard and several others I can’t recall at the moment. Even now, the Daily Old Piute , the Nevada Pioneer , and the Virginia Daily Union are publishing but, compared to The Territorial Enterprise , they’re no more trouble than flies to a lion. We take the lion’s share of the advertising, have the largest circulation, and edge out the others for any big news of the region. Even our editorials make the others look illiterate.” He swelled his chest with pride. “In spite of a few problems, there are worse things than being editor of such a publication.”
    “Like grubbing in a hole in the ground for silver,” Ross said.
    “Amen.”
    The men stood silently with their drinks and their thoughts while the supper crowd and miners going on night shift surged in and out of the room. The clinking of glassware and the rumble of conversations filled the space in the popular saloon. For the edification of patrons, the wall above the backbar was decorated with