Two miles from the Nevada Hot Springs, by riding the railroad trestles, my front wheel played me another one of its tricks and threw me down a twelve-foot embankment. Scrambling back to the trestle, I picked up my wheel with its handle-bars snapped in two. My photographic outfit was spilled and the camera broken. The most expert wheelman cannot ride over Western roads without his handle-bars. I sent Mrs. McIlrath ahead while I gathered up my belongings and pushing the wheel before me, I set out to walk to the section house at Desert, ten miles away. As I journeyed along the railroad tracks, bewailing my plight and rebelling at the three hours' tramp before me, I spied a rusty bolt in the road bed, and it occurred to me that it would prove a good substitute for my broken bars. I lashed it with wire in place and found it answered the purpose admirably. Slow riding was better than walking, but at that I did not make out so poorly, for I lumbered into the section house at Desert only fifteen minutes after Mrs. McIlrath had arrived. Our ride through Nevada was varied. For days, we sped along rough tracks, meeting none but illiterate laborers and camping at night upon the hard dirty floors, often without covering. Meal after meal we partook of without fork or spoon and in many instances, the only knife we had was rusted and mayhap coated with plug tobacco. Table linen, napkins, soap and even hair brushes were often total strangers to us. It seems that the men whom fate has decreed to work in these out-of-the-way places have for an object in life only a place of refuge from the elements. Then again maybe the day after our dinner had been eaten from a dry-goods box in such unpleasant surroundings, we would be at one of the famous health resorts or hunting lodges that abound in the West, and where everything is of the very best quality. The two extremes of life came under our observation within our 1,800 miles out of Chicago.
At Vista, in accordance with a number of telegrams sent us at various points, we were met by Prof. M. E. Wilson and wife on a tandem, heading a welcoming party sent out from Reno. All preparations for our stay in this charming city had been attended to by them before our arrival. Following an advance guard, with Mrs. Wilson and my wife ahead, the Professor and myself closing up the rear of the procession, the party rode down the main streets of Reno and drew up at the Riverside Hotel. A dinner fit for a king and sufficient for a regiment was on the table ready for us. Our hospitable friends, with an eye for our comfort and enormous appetites, declined to delay sitting down any longer than it would take for us to bathe our faces and hands. They remained for an hour or more after we had cleared the table, arranging trips for our entertainment on the next day. For the first time since leaving Chicago Mrs. McIlrath and I were so tired that when we retired we slept soundly until 1 o'clock in the afternoon of the next day. Likely as not we should have slept until the evening had we not been called by A. S. Bragg, editor of the Reno Gazette, and Miss Manning, a charming young lady, whom the editor had brought along as a companion for Mrs. McIlrath. With them we rode over the entire city, the two ladies going ahead, enabling the editor and myself to fall behind and indulge in a discussion of our favorite theme, "Shall it be gold, or free silver at 16 to 1?" July 20, with Professor and Mrs. Wilson we visited the famous mines of Virginia City, and this time we did not go upon bicycles. The Professor called for us in a carriage, whose horses were piloted by a reliable veteran, who had served his apprenticeship on the earlier stage coaches. The ride to Virginia City, up the side of a mountain, is fraught with danger. Only two weeks before our arrival there was a fatal accident, a couple of tourists and their horses being dashed over a precipice, and after I had arrived in San Francisco three weeks later, I learned of the deaths of two ladies and a gentleman, who had undertaken the same trip on horseback, and had met their end in precisely the same manner.