Nobody complained, for he was prodigiously popular, he had been a stage-driver in his early days in New York or New England, and had acquired the habit of remembering names and faces, and of making himself agreeable to his passengers.

As a politician this had been valuable to him, and he kept his arts in good condition by practice.

By the time he had been Governor a year, he had shaken hands with every human being in the Territory of Nevada, and after that he always knew these people instantly at sight and could call them by name.

The whole population, of 20,000 persons, were his personal friends, and he could do anything he chose to do and count upon their being contented with it.
Whenever he was absent from the Territory--which was generally--Orion served his office in his place, as Acting Governor, a title which was soon and easily shortened to "Governor." He recklessly built and furnished a house at a cost of twelve thousand dollars, and there was no other house in the sage-brush capital that could approach this property for style and cost.
When Governor Nye's four-year term was drawing to a close, the mystery of why he had ever consented to leave the great State of New York and help inhabit that jack-rabbit desert was solved: he had gone out there in order to become a United States Senator.

All that was now necessary was to turn the Territory into a State.