Now Wealthy Police Reporter Hadn't Time to Call on All His Friends of the Old Days

Jack Bell was in Denver yesterday.

Denver usually knows when Jack Bell is in town, but this time he was in a hurry, and last night took a train for New York. The atmosphere has consequently dropped its threatened troubled expression and has resumed its normal calm.

Jack Bell is the former Denver police reporter whose flippant, fearless method of dealing with "bad men" gave them more thrills than the efforts of the entire police force. When the Nevada gold fields emerged from obscurity he dropped in there one day with unequalled nerve and composure. It proved profitable - so much so that he is now wealthy. If he had stayed in Denver a day he might not be so wealthy, for the musical clink of gold was always discordant to Jack Bell, and he disliked very much to have it around.

But he remained here just long enough to keep his friends busy at his expense and everything is quiet again.

Jack Bell left the staff of The Post to go farther westward, where the spirit of democracy is redolent. He liked the more strenuous life, where every man is a man only so long as he isn't afraid.

While here he told the interesting story of Robert Gillis, former Colorado convict, who is camped on the near side of a million-dollar bank roll in Nevada. It chanced that Bell dined with Gillis, Governor Sparks of Nevada and four ex-convicts in Reno several days ago, so he knows whereof he speaks.

Gillis is the son of Mother Gillis, proprietress of the "Hog Ranch," a resort in Denver which gave the police much trouble during its existence. He was sent to the penitentiary in 1902 with Neal Simmons, to serve five years for a holdup. He was used to it, for he had served two years following 1889, and in1892 he was sent up from Pueblo for a similar time for robbery.

Jack Bell is also the founder of Bellview, a new copper camp, which was named after him. Those who look upon Nevada as a gold and silver state, perhaps do not consider the fact that the copper authorities are counting upon it for a very large part of the future supplies of the red metal in this country. The expectations are divided in this respect between Nevada and Alaska, the two sections that are responsible more than any others for the increased gold production of the United States last year. At the present time this country's production of copper has been overtaken by the consumption and the supplies have fallen so low that the price of the metal has already reached 25 cents per pound, the highest record in a quarter of a century.

Yerrington, Buckskin and Bellview, three contiguous camps, near the border line of Douglas and Lyon counties, are receiving the attentions of the copper hunters, and while the country has been little more than prospected, the indications of copper are so remarkable that the leading copper men of the country, representing Heinze, Clark, Schwab, the Guggenheims and others, are all shying castors in that direction.

Jack Bell was plentifully supplied with copper samples, bornite and chalcopyrite, with beautiful specimens of carbonates.

"It sounds like a fairy story, this talking about Nevada, but thee is no doubt about there being the greatest mineral deposits there that have ever been discovered," said he. "Colorado is producing about $45,000,000 a year in the principal metals, but I expect to see Nevada go ahead of that record within a very few years. At this time the population is growing at a phenomenal rate, and I believe that there are no less than 15,000 working miners employed in the state.

"Every man in Nevada stands for what he is at the moment, and all men are equal, regardless of culture. Money flows like water, as it always does in wild mining countries. The other night at Reno a man placed $1,000 on the one spot of a roulette table and won $37,000. He immediately placed this total stake on the same number, but the house wouldn't let it stay. The next throw brought out the same number, and the player would have won $1,369,000 had his money not been thrust back to him. This is the biggest playing the world has ever known. I paid $4.50 for a quail at Goldfield. The men who are after wealth do not drink much there, but when they do, they drink nothing but champagne. Nevada is the best wine state in the Union today."