August, late – Sam arrived at the Virginia City Enterprise, a “small rickety frame building at the corner of A Street and Sutton Avenue,” [Fatout, MT in VC 11] (later a large brick building on C Street) to take the job. According to Paine, Sam claimed he walked the 130 miles from Aurora and arrived in the afternoon of a “hot, dusty August day” and drawled to Denis E. McCarthy (1840-1885) one of the owners:
“My starboard leg seems to be unshipped. I’d like about one hundred yards of line; I think I am falling to pieces. I want to see Mr. Barstow, or Mr. Goodman. My name is Clemens, and I’ve come to write for the paper” [MTB 205]. Powers claims Sam’s first words at the Enterprise were, “Dang my buttons, if I don’t believe I’m lousy” [MT A Life 110].

William R. Gillis (Billy) (1840-1929) remembered a third, quite long, and different exchange in his 1930, Gold Rush Days with Mark Twain. Whatever Sam uttered, William Wright (1829-1898), no middle initial, according to Joe Goodman to Paine, Apr. 5, 1912, (The Twainian July-Aug 1956 p4), a celebrity known in ink as Dan De Quille (sometimes written as Dan De Quille) was appointed the task of getting Sam settled in town. Dan and Sam became fast friends and later roommates.
Note: As for Sam’s “Long Walk,” Such an effort seems out of character. The route would have taken Sam through Carson City; some traffic was on the road; it’s probable Sam got a lift for at least part of the journey. Fatout agrees:
“He always maintained that he was too hard up to afford stage fare, hence walked the whole way. But he was generally averse to walking when he could ride, and the road was well traveled by many ore wagons plying between Aurora and Carson City. It is hard to believe that sociable drivers did not offer him a lift” [MT in VC 7].
Fatout also lists the Enterprise reporters: Dan De Quille, Captain Joe Plunkett, Rollin M. Daggett (1831-1901), Charles A.V. Putnam (b.1823?), Howard P. Taylor “and others.” Joe Goodman, “a versatile writer with a reputation as a poet, handled his temperamental employees with a loose rein that was good for both staff and paper. The efficient business management of Dennis (Jerry) Driscoll (1823-1876) made profits roll in. Organization was more big-city than that of any other Western paper outside of San Francisco, and pungent writers gave the Enterprise a virility and humor that made it popular, prosperous, and influential” [11]. Note: Putnam’s reminiscence of the Enterprise days ran in the Salt Lake City Tribune, April 25, 1898.