Chapter 13
Section 13 of Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, Volume 3, Number 32, April 1922. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, Volume 3, Number 32, April 1922, by W. H. Fawcett. Whiz Bang Editorials The Bull is Mightier Than the Bullet
When we were a Soaky Nose kid in Grand Forks, North Dakota, our teacher taught us a poem headed, Abu Benadam, which went something like this, then count me among those who love his fellow men. It appears that old Abu Ben-Adam hadn't been listed among those in the angel's book of gold, having a sure ticket through St. Peter's gates,
and for that reason the old fellow merely wanted to be charted among the dead game sports, who were square to their fellows, who judged not that they be not judged, that being pure, to them all things were pure. The Abu Ben-Nadam legend concluded by the angel making a return the next night and listing this old-time legendary sport on page one of the Book of Gold. Riley Grennan, who died in April 1908 at Rawhide, Nevada, was one of these dead game sports,
And while we can't all be angels and see through the eyes of Billy Sunday or Dr. Crafts and lead the ordained exemplary life, we can take a tip from the life of Riley Grannon and be dead game sports, no matter what path in life we follow. Although it has been 14 years since he passed into the great beyond, his kindly deeds and noble character centralizes conversation on the Havana racetrack and at all other turf gatherings. Just a few brief explanatory remarks before we publish,
from an old issue of a Nevada newspaper, The Story of Granin's Burial. This dead game sport was a famous racetrack plunger, and his bets ran as high as 200,000 on a single race. And the following is respectfully dedicated to the gang. That bunch of carefree fellows who follow the lure of the turf. Riley Granin was one of them in life, and no greater tribute could be paid him than that found in the desire of the gang that these,
the last words spoken over his beer, should be preserved. None can read them without gleaning some inspiration, for they cannot fail to strike a harmonious chord Among the Heartstrings of the Coldest Soul, as chronicled by Gene C. Granger. Rawhide, Nevada, April 15, 1908. Half-shielded under an oilcloth blanket, lodged in a common express wagon,
the casket of Riley Grennan was carried recently down dusty Rawhide Avenue and along Nevada Street from the tented establishment of the camp's undertaker to an improvised memorial chapel, a variety theater at the rear of a saloon. There congregated a throng in silks and corduroys, women of metropolitan costumes, miners covered with high-grade grime, prospectors suntanned, brokers, bankers,
merchants, promoters, owners of saloons, bartenders, gamblers, rounders. Tears that were shed dropped from the eyes of all. Again, as always in mining camps, class forgotten, all men were equal. A solemn hush came down upon the little playhouse, where last night and tonight, jostling crowds drank and smoked while listening to doubtful wit from the course jesters, men and women, on a variety forum. Hovered about the beer of Riley Grennan,
racetrack plunger of national renown, was as solemn a group of sincere mourners as ever gathered to pay final tribute. Solos were offered by Mrs. Hendricks, once an actress of wide fame, now wife of the editor of a Rawhide Daily paper, and by Jack Bynes, miner of Alaska, and leaser of Rawhide. Punctuations came with resounding blasts from a score of mines on the mountains just above. Saloons were closed and the streets were silent throughout the service.
At its end, a solemn cortege trudged with the remains, destined by automobile to travel 30 miles to Schultz, there to go aboard the cars to Riley's brother in Kentucky. Unique beyond experience and dramatic beyond compare was the eulogy pronounced by H. W. Knickerbocker, once a clergyman, then a mine operator of Goldfield, later a rawhide pioneer, hardly orthodox but holy in keeping with the scene and the mute desires of the dead.
was the orator's appearance. The once pulpit exponent stood beside the lily-laden beer, his eyes bedimmed with tears, his voice choked with a fraternal emotion. He was shod in high boots and clothed in rough garb of a minor. A stenographic report of the eulogy follows, I feel that it is incumbent upon me to state that I now occupy no ministerial or pre-Latic position. I am only a prospector. I make no claims or moral merit, whatever, or to religious authority except it be the religion of the brotherhood of man.
I wish to be taken only as a man among men, feeling that I can shake hands and style as my brother the most humble of you all. If there may come from me a word of moral admonition, it springs not from a sense of moral superiority, only from the depths of my experience. Riley Grennan was born at Paris, Kentucky about 40 years ago. He cherished all the dreams of boyhood. Those dreams found their fruition in phenomenal success financial.
I'm told that from the position of a bellboy. In a hotel, he arose to be a celebrity of the worldwide fame. Riley Grannon was one of the greatest plungers the continent has ever produced. He died, day before yesterday, at Rawhide. That is a brief statement.
We have his birth and the day of his demise. Who can fill the interim? Not I. Who can tell his hopes and fears? Who knows the mystery of his quiet hours? Not I. Riley Granin was born in the sunny southland of Kentucky.
He died in rawhide. That is the beginning. That is the end. is there in this picture of what Ingersoll said at the grave of his brother, whether it be near the shore, or in mid-ocean, or among the breakers, at the last a rock must mark the end of one and all. Born where brooks and rivers run musically through prolific soil,
where magnolia gladiflora, like white stars, glow in a firmament of green, where lakes, the green words, and the softest summer breezes dimple the wavelets, where the air is resonant with the melody of a thousand sweet-voiced birds and redolent of perfume of blooming flowers. That was the beginning. Riley Grennan died in rawhide, where in winter the tops of the mountains are clothed in garments of ice, and in summer the blistering rays of the sun beat
down upon the skeleton of the desert. Is there in this a picture of universal life? Sometimes, when I look upon the circumstances of life, there comes to my lips a curse. I relate to you only my views. If these run counter to yours, believe that what I say is sincere. When I see the ambitions of man defeated, when I see him struggling with mind and body to accomplish his end, when I see his aim and purpose frustrated only by a fortuitous combination of circumstances
over which he can exert no control, when I see his outstretched hands about to grasp the flag of victory, and to seize instead the emblem of defeat. I ask, what is life? Dreams? Awakening? Death? Life is a pendulum, betwixt a smile and a fear. Life is but a momentary halt within the waste, and then the nothing we set out from. Life is a shadow, a poor player that struts, and then is heard no more. Life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound, signifying nothing.
Life is a child-blown bubble that but reflects the shadow of its environment and is gone. A mockery, a sham, a lie, a fool's vision. It's happiness, but dead sea apples. It's pain, the crunching of a tyrant's heel. Omar says it better when he says, We are but a moving row of magic shadow shapes that come and go around with a sunny, lumined lantern, held in midnight for the master of the shore, but helpless pieces of the game we
play on the checkerboard of night and day, hither and thither, moved or checks or slaves, and one by one back into the closet laid. The ball, no question, makes of eyes or nose, but here or there, as strikes the player goes. But he that tossed you down into the field,
he knows, he knows, he knows, but I don't. That's my mood. Not so with Riley Grannon. If I have gauged his character correctly, he accepted the circumstances surrounding him as the mystic officials to whom the universe had delegated its whole office concerning him. He took defeat and victory with equal equanimity.
He was a man of placid exterior. His meteoric past shows him invincible in spirit, and it is not irreverently that I proclaim him a dead game sport. When I use that phrase, I do so filling it as full of practical human philosophy as it will hold. Riley Grennan fully exemplified the philosophy of those fugitive verses. It is easy enough to be happy when life goes along like a song, but the man worthwhile is the man who will smile when everything goes wrong.
For the test of the heart is trouble, and it always comes with the years, and the smile that is worth the homage of each is the smile that shines through tears. There are those who will condemn him. They believe that today he is reaping the reward of misspent life. There are those who are dominated by medieval creeds. Them I am not addressing.
They are ruled by the skeleton hand of the past. They fail to see the moral side of a character lived outside their puritanical ideas. Riley Grennan's goodness was not of a type that reached its highest manifestation and ceremonious piety. It found its expression in the hand clasp of friendship. It found its voice in the word of cheer to a discouraged brother. His were deeds of quiet charity. His were acts
of manhood. Riley Grennan lived in the world of sport. My words are not minced because I am telling what I believe to be true. It was the world of sport, sometimes of hilarity, sometimes worse. He left the impress of his character upon us all, and through the medium of his financial power, he was able with his money to brighten the lives of all who knew him. He wasted his money, so the world says. But did it ever occur to you that the men and women of such class,
upon whom he wasted it, are yet men and women? A little happiness brought into their lives means as much to them as happiness carried into the lives of the straight and the good. If you can take one ray of sunshine into the nightlife and thereby carry a single hour of happiness, you are a benefactor. Riley Grennan did this. God confined not his sunbeams to the nourishing of potatoes and corn.
His scattering of sunshine was prodigal. Contemplate. He flings the auroral beauties round the cold shoulders of the north. He hangs the quivering picture of the mirage above the palpitating heart of the desert. He scatters the sunbeams like shattered gold upon the bosom of a myriad of lakes that gem the robe of nature.
He spangles the canopy of night with star jewels and silvers the world with the reflected beams from on high. He hangs the gorgeous crimson curtain of the Occident across the sleeping room of the sun. God wakes the koi maid of the morning to step timidly from her boudoir of darkness, to climb the steep of the Orient, to fling wide the gates of morning, and to trip o'er the landscape. Kitting the flowers in her flight, she arouses the world to herald, with their music,
the coming of her king, who floods the world with effulgent gold. These are wasted sunbeams. Are they? I say to you that the man or woman, who by the use of money or power, is able to smooth one wrinkle from the brow of human care, or to change one moan or sob into a song or to wipe away a tear and to place in its stead a jewel of joy is a public benefactor. Such was Riley Grennan. The time has come to say goodbye for the friends and loved ones not here
to say the word. Let me say goodbye, old man. We will try to exemplify the spirit of your life as we bear the grief at our parting. Words fail me here. Let those flowers, Riley, with their petaled lips and perfumed breath,
speak in beauty and fragrance these sentiments to tender for words. Goodbye. End of Section 13 Read by Jordan Wolf
Beacon, New York, October 2025
