How Our Business Flourished

The firm of "Middleton & Wagner" had no reason to complain of slack business. From the day when we got the last of our stock from Leavenworth and were fitted up with a full line of building materials, together with the somewhat scanty stock of provisions and general merchandise which I had gathered from the trail, we had all the work we could handle, and I knew without Mr. Middleton's telling me that we were making handsome profits on all we sold, even though the cost of freighting the goods five or six hundred miles had been very heavy.

We received double, yes, treble, sometimes quadruple, what we had paid for our wares, and better still got the returns in cash, for there was no merchant in either Auraria or Denver who would have been so reckless as to give credit to those people who were shifting to and fro like a herd of stampeded cattle, having no regular abiding place.

One day the rush was all toward the mines, and again the tide turned eastward. People moved from one place to another restlessly, and we shopkeepers in the two settlements made rich profits from the gold madness, taking heed meanwhile that it did not attack us.

As time passed, house after house was built in Denver and Auraria. The dwellings were not such as would be found in the east. They were built, as a rule, of cottonwood logs, with only one story, no floors, and never a pane of glass among them all.

Many had what we called "mud and brush" roofs, which were made by laying the branches of trees over the logs, and plastering them thickly with mud, a method which required less labor than putting up a roof of sods.

As many of the miners had settled down in this location or that, where sufficient gold could be found to pay fair wages, our two settlements grew with amazing speed; but it caused me many a pang to see Denver increasing more rapidly than our own city.