1873
WESTWARD
The _Russia_ (Captain Cook), the crack ship of the Cunard line which
carried me to America in the month of March, 1873, would not find much
grace in the eyes of the rich men who brave the dangers of the sea in
what are called “the floating palaces” of this twentieth century. There
were no conservatories, no swimming-bath, no marble architecture. On
the other hand, there was a greater sense of security. I have sailed in
one of these giant modern liners many stories (not decks!) high, and
I confess to having been appalled at the thought of what must be the
confusion in a panic on board a labyrinthine ship where a silken clue
is needed, even in a calm, to find the way to the dining-saloon. Oliver
Montagu, who afterwards commanded the Blues, was my travelling companion.
We spent ten delightful days in New York, forced to leave it all too
quickly, but carrying away with us memories of lavish hospitality and
kindness, busy, eager men, dainty dames and damsels, the preciousness of
whose beauty would have adorned far less gorgeous apparel than what they
were clad in; abundance of worldly goods, fine jewels, and a profusion of
flowers thrown out as a defiance to climate.
The one thing that seemed lacking at that time was any expression of the
highest forms of art. The Pierpont Morgans, Wideners, Fricks and others
have long since filled up that gap. But of the glories of New York it is
not for me to speak here. Our business there was to have what New York
itself calls a “lovely time”; that was _our_ business, and the kindness
of other people made it _their_ pleasure. The objects of our journey lay
farther afield, and so we followed Horace Greely’s famous bit of advice,
“Go West, young man, go West!”
On board the _Russia_ we had made friends with one of our shipmates,
Tom Nickalls, a very leading member of the Stock Exchange, a first-rate
sportsman and cheery companion, and he joined us in our expedition into
the Wilds. As a child he had known Chicago, which we were anxious to see;
he had still some friends or connections there, and it did not take much
persuasion on his part to induce us to call a halt.
The resurrection of Chicago was certainly the most colossal achievement
of human endeavour that ever I witnessed. It was on the 8th of October,
1871, if the legend be true, that Biddy Maloney’s cow, whisking her tail,
upset a lamp in a wooden shed in de Koven Street and started the great
fire. A fierce wind was blowing from the west, a long, hot summer had
dried into tinder the wooden buildings and lumber yards, and in a few
minutes the flames were raging beyond the power of man to control them.
Between that Sunday night and Tuesday morning an area of nearly three
and a third square miles was reduced to a heap of ashes. The winter was
near when building would be impossible. The most that could be done was
the work of clearance. Then, from the four winds of heaven, were blown
builders, carpenters, masons, bricklayers, glaziers. The statistics of
the building that began the first day that the frost was out of the
ground, the 15th of April, 1872, and ended on the 1st of December of the
same year, are simply amazing.
Excluding Sundays and counting two hundred working days, it was computed
that for each hour of each day of eight hours there was completed one
brick, stone or iron building of twenty-five feet frontage and from four
to six stories high. Was such a thing possible? Well, we arrived in the
spring of 1873, before the new building season was in full blast, and we
saw those buildings—that miracle—the Phœnix risen from its ashes.
When we had all taken our places in the omnibus and were just moving off,
bound for St. Louis, a rough man got in, carrying a small carpet bag—all
his luggage. “Whar does this hyar conveyance connect?” he asked. “It’s
bound for the St. Louis train.” “Waal! that’s not my road, but I guess
it don’t much signify.” “Why, where are you going to?” “Waal! I guess I’m
bound to go to the end of the rope, anyways,” said the man, changing his
quid with the utmost unconcern. There you have the true pioneer spirit
of America which opens up and fertilizes the limitless wilderness. Men
such as this who started years ago, without plan or prospect, “bound to
go to the end of the rope,” are now rolling in wealth, lords of countless
herds, exporters of grain, owners of rich mines, lumber kings, what not?
Strong thews and sinews, but above all a stout heart, must these men
have. Only think of what is implied by “the end of the rope.” No house
to live in, no friend, perhaps not even a dog, to speak to; food coarse
and often scanty; exposure by day and by night to sun and rain, wind,
snow and frost; cattle straying or attacked by wild beasts; thieving,
murdering and scalping Indians; a life of peril and exhausting labour; a
cutting of all home-ties; a dearth of all home news; fever and sickness
untended and uncared for. That is “the end of the rope.” Who shall say
that the man who succeeds—the survival of the fittest—has not earned his
success? But how many are bound to go under?
There was a very pleasant American gentleman in the same carriage with
us, with whom we made good friends. I had by that time learned enough of
the American language to say, offering him a cigar, “Do you use tobacco,
sir?” “Yes, sir,” he replied, politely accepting the offer, “I do. For I
smoke and I snuff and I chew; and if it had pleased Heaven to decree that
there should be a fourth way of using tobacco, I guess I should have used
it that way also.” It is always comforting to see such respect paid to
the decrees of Heaven.
St. Louis is, as cities go in America, quite venerable. Founded by the
Louisiana Fur Company in 1764, it was just ninety-nine years old at
the time of our visit. We had to spend a day there in order to deliver
certain letters, which were to procure us facilities for hunting further
West, and a most amusing day it proved to be. Our cicerone was a local
gentleman who had been warned of our coming, and was kindness itself.
Only one thing he expected in return, and that was boundless, literally
boundless, admiration of St. Louis and all that was in it. In our
secret hearts we were not much impressed; wealth, dinginess and dust
struck as the chief features of the city; but our friend found subject
for self-gratification even in the dust. “There, sir!” he seemed to say,
“I’ll trouble you to show me such dust as this in any of your played-out
old European cities.” He offered us refreshment in the shape of a bottle
of “Imperial,” a light, sparkling wine rather like perry. “This, sir, is
some of our native prŏdūce. How do you find it compare with the vintages
of Champagne? I am told that it is greatly admired at Paris, sir.” We
vowed that no such wine had been tasted since the days of Noah.
Our friend was gratified. In America the word good is insufficient;
you must say that everything is the best; less praise is an insult and
an ignorant insult at that. One thing he admitted that St. Louis had
never been able to achieve. They could defeat Reims and Épernay, but a
champagne bottle they could not make; some element was wanting which
would enable their glass to stand the pressure. So a roaring trade was
done in secondhand bottles from Europe.
We drove through the city and into the suburbs, composed for the most
part of neat little villas, some detached, some semi-detached, standing
in tiny gardens. Standing before a clean little white house with green
shutters, and adorned at the entrance with some plaster of Paris
statuary, our cicerone said: “These are the residences of our rich
townsmen. How do they compare with the mansions of your aristocracy in
London?” I was foolish enough to say that they seemed to me a little
small. He smiled a smile of pity at the insular jealousy of the Old World.
It appears that there was living at St. Louis an English gentleman named
Shaw, who, having made a beautiful garden, offered it to the town on
condition that it should be kept up at the public expense. The City
Fathers objected to this condition. “Yes, sir, they are skinflints,” said
our friend; “what we want here is about one hundred and fifty first-class
funerals, then we should get along fine.”
In the evening he dined with us and came to see us off at the station,
where he presented each of us with a large octavo volume of three
hundred and thirteen pages entitled, “St. Louis, the Future Great City
of the World, by L. N. Reavis. Fourth edition.” The book is full of
quotations of speeches by men of more or less, chiefly less, eminence in
which the audiences of St. Louis had been flattered to the top of their
bent. “Voices,” Mr. Reavis calls them, “prophetic voices.” I cannot
resist copying a choice bit culled from Mr. Reavis’ own writing: “And if
it be true, as I hope to establish, that St. Louis is destined to be the
great city of the world, the all-directing head and central moving heart
of the accumulated civilization of the great family of man, the facts of
her history will in time be sought for, by citizens and writers, with
an eagerness and a zeal never before called out by the interests of any
other city—not even of Jerusalem nor of Rome. Henceforth St. Louis must
be viewed in the light of her future, her mightiness in the Empire of the
world, her sway in the rule of States and nations. Her destiny is fixed.
Like a new-born Empire she is moving forward to conscious greatness, and
will soon be the world’s magnet of attraction. Here will be reared great
halls for art and learning; here will congregate the great men and women
of future ages; here will be represented some Solon and Hamilton, giving
laws for the higher and better government of the people; here will be
represented some future great teachers of religion, teaching the ideal
and the spiritual development of the race, and the higher allegiance of
man to the Angel-world; here will live some future Plutarch, who will
weigh the great men of his age; here some future Mozart will thrill the
strings of a more perfect lyre; here some future Rembrandt, through his
own ideal imagination, will picture for himself more perfect panoramic
scenes of nature’s lovely landscapes,” etc., etc.
We thanked our kind friend. The engine shrieked and we rolled away from
the future great city of the world into outer darkness, illuminated at
intervals by the blaze of burning forests.
We spent a day at Kansas City, not from choice, but because there
was no connecting train to take us on to Fort Wallace, which was our
destination. Kansas City, on the Missouri river, just below the mouth
of the Kansas river, was at that time a thriving town risen five and
twenty years earlier out of a howling wilderness and already boasting a
population of forty thousand and representing a capital of some twenty
million dollars.
Mr. Reavis, the author I have just quoted, says: “Its splendid buildings,
its many railways, its increasing wealth and sleepless enterprise,
challenge the admiration of the East as well as of the West.” A shot
fired from a long bow indeed! After reading such a description it was
startling to see pigs picking up a luxurious living off the plentiful
garbage strewn in that magnificent street the Broadway. The pigs were
very real,—the splendid buildings, creations of Mr. Reavis’ fancy which
must have been stimulated by hashish, for the deepest draughts of the
rather thin “Imperial” would hardly account for such flights as this.
“In the development of the great West, with its fertility of soil and
boundless natural resources, Kansas City is bound to play a prominent
part. She will grow with the growing country, increasing every day in
wealth and power; she will wear the golden crown and royal purple, and
be hailed Queen City of the Missouri Valley.” The prophecy was delivered
forty years ago. I hope it may have come true, and that the descendants
of the pigs of those days may now be suitably housed, grunting in
comfortable sties.
There was not much to do by way of killing time, so we wandered off at
haphazard towards the wood-crowned bluffs round the town; our steps, as
luck would have it, led us to Westport, a tiny village which was the
original trading camp from which Kansas City sprang. The sun was hot, the
road deep-rutted and dusty like the roads in the North of China round
about Peking. To our joy when we reached the village we saw “Lager Bier”
posted up over a little bar-room, so we went in thirsty and rather bored.
The place was kept by the oldest inhabitant, a very aged German of whom
nothing was to be seen save only a portentously thick red nose; the rest
of him was hidden by a grey military great coat and cap, which seemed to
grow out of a great shock mass of grizzled hair and snuffy beard, that
probably no comb or brush had disturbed for years.
Below the nose was a voice coming from no visible opening, and the voice
uttered a jumble of German and English, most perplexing. The room, dirty,
shabby, squalid, was hung round with portraits of the old Emperor
Wilhelm, Fritz the Crown Prince, Bismarck—rude representations of German
triumphs, ending in the surrender of his sword by the Emperor Napoleon.
At the back was a door, opening for company’s sake into a shop next door,
kept by another old German, a gunsmith by trade, as dirty and snuffy as
his mate. When the two old gaffers found that we could speak to them in
their mother tongue, how pleased they were! Immediately their tongues
began to go like mill-clacks, telling us of the old days when they came
out as pioneers, and drove a roaring trade with the Indians. The old
gunsmith assured us that he might have retired upon a comfortable fortune
long ago, but he had stuck to Westport like a limpet to its rock. He had
become used to the rough outpost life, in which he had grown old, so he
set up his son in trade, and rubbed on as before in the days when the
young out-growth of Kansas City “noch nicht anzudenken war.”
Presently the two old fellows grew more confidential and let out what was
probably their true reason for remaining here, belief in the existence
of a hidden treasure somewhere hard by, a treasure all in gold buried by
the early traders, Mexicans and borderers, under terror of attack from
the Indians. Happy the man who should light upon that treasure! For him
there would be no more living by the sweat of his brow under the curse of
the first sin, but a restoration to a garden of Eden with trees bearing
sausages for fruit, streams flowing with Lager Bier, the air laden with
the perfume of never-extinguished canaster.
There is to me something infinitely touching in the memory of these two
old cronies, wrapped in one another, hugging their friendship, their dirt
and their superstitious belief in the hidden gold. They had well passed
the allotted span of life when I saw them—they must have been long since
gathered to their fathers. Which went first? How fared it with the other?
Kansas City was proud of its press. There were four daily papers
published in English and one in German. I cannot honestly say that,
whether regarded from the point of view of literature or as providers
of news, they could claim any merit worthy of “The Queen City of the
Missouri Valley.” Their columns were in the main stuffed with abuse
of each other and a certain amount of padding of the giant gooseberry
order. Their powers of vituperation were remarkable. The _Kansas City
Times_, speaking of a rival, says: “For a low down, contemptible and
insignificant journalism we award the palm to the _Kansas City Journal_.
Its editor’s lack of decency is only equalled by his mental poverty.” The
_Topeca Commonwealth_, speaking of a Mr. Griffin, says, “He is a dirty
liar, a malicious libeller and a large-sized and highly-scented skunk—Mr.
Griffin has not been heard from yet on this somewhat pointed argument.”
Buffalo hunting—I suppose I ought to say Bison hunting, but I keep to the
name made famous by Buffalo Bill and others—was one of the chief objects
of our expedition. The Kansas and Pacific Railway hung out most tempting
pictures of sport in the Wild West—all their stations had buffalo heads
as advertisements with prodigious pictures of railway trains charging
herds of myriads—“verra awkward for the coo.” In the afternoon, Mr.
Weston, an Englishman in the employ of the railway, came to see us.
It was early in the year for the trek northwards of the herds which had
migrated to the South before the winter. However, Mr. Weston sent a
telegram of inquiry down the line, and the happy answer came back from
Fort Wallace, “Buffalo been seen within forty miles of this place.” So to
Fort Wallace we determined to go.
We started at nightfall and ought to have reached Fort Wallace in about
twenty-four hours, but the line was obstructed by the breaking down of
a goods train, so we had to undergo some thirty-two hours of very real
discomfort, in the company of rowdy gamblers, the curse of those days
in the West, women of no doubtful character and squalling children. The
spitting of the gamblers was a fine art. During the day-time there was
no consolation of fine scenery, for we were travelling through that most
dismal wilderness the blooming prairie—of the night the less said the
better.
Travelling through the desert was something which no one will ever see
again. The march of civilization has created a revolution in the whole
aspect of the West. Cities have sprung up, farm steadings have been
built, and the vast expanse which I have seen black with the wandering
buffalo is now covered with waving crops. The buffalo has been improved
off the face of the earth, only bred here and there in artificial
reserves as a curiosity.
Forty years ago, in that dismal waste, at distances of about forty miles,
were log huts occupied by one man, where the engine pulled up to drink;
between them not a dwelling—not a tree—a few sage bushes—a sort of dwarf
cactus—hardly a blade of grass—the abomination of desolation. How in
this wilderness, this boundless desert with a round horizon, animal life
contrived to sustain itself was a mystery. Vast herds, probably millions
of buffaloes, travelled north from Mexico in summer and back again south
in the autumn. There were antelopes and coyotes (a sort of wolf), skunks,
squirrels, here and there horses that had run wild; of birds—larks,
vultures, blackbirds with glorious yellow breasts, prairie chickens, wild
ducks. Then there were the pretty little prairie dogs, the tiny owls and
the rattlesnakes—the three said to live together in amity in the same
holes. The beasts and birds had company, the lonely railway man in the
log hut had but himself and his thoughts.
Governor Lowe, who was British Minister at Peking, told me a capital
story of how the famous Senator Wade, who was Senator for Ohio,
travelling West found at one of these solitary huts an Ohio man, who at
once recognized him, shook him by the hand and said, “Why, Mr. Senator, I
am right pleased to see you!” The Senator thanked him for his welcome and
answered, “But what in the name of wonder are you doing here?” “Well, Mr.
Senator, I’m going to tell you. This is going to be one of the greatest
cities in the world.” The Senator failed to see the possibilities of that
one log hut in the wilderness. “Yes, sir! There is a river runs about
seven miles from here, and we air calculating to divert the course of
that river and bring it along here. Then we shall get a few first-class
families from East and West to come and locate here and this will become
a great town, giving the go-by to New York, San Francisco, and may be
even to London and Paris. All that is wanted here, sir, is a little water
and good society.” “Yes,” answered the witty Senator, “and the same
remark applies equally to Hell.” The “We” of the solitary eremite speaks
volumes. In it lies the keynote of American confidence and success.
It was freezing hard at 5.30 in the morning of the 25th when we left
that miserable train with its unholy crew of undesirables, having had
to pass a second night on board instead of comfortably in Mr. Ruggles’
excellent inn at Fort Wallace. He was sitting up for us, for we had
warned him of our coming; he struggled out of that yawny state of coma
which is engendered by a night of arm-chair and tobacco and showed us
to our rooms. A few pails of ice-cold water washed away the memories of
those two wretched nights, and a delicious breakfast of milk, new laid
eggs and buffalo steaks made new men of us. Mr. and Mrs. Ruggles were
really delightful people. She, poor lady! was a very different person
from the landlady whom one would imagine presiding over a prairie hotel.
What a strange life for a highly educated lady, whose mind had been
formed by travel and stored with memories of London, Paris, Venice,
Florence, Rome! That she should turn cateress for a rough crowd of
engineers, navvies, teamsters and hunters! We were truly in a land of
surprises where your tavern-keeper may be a polished gentleman and the
chief of the State an ignorant boor. After breakfast we held a council
of war, Mr. Ruggles being the chief spokesman. After some debate we
agreed by his advice to enter into negotiations with one Mr. Dodge, the
boss of an “outfit” about thirty miles off, to which he was going to
send out a team with flour for his men—in that “outfit” there was the
unique advantage of a small tent—in any other we should have to lie under
the stars; a glance at a frozen fountain which the sun’s rays had not
yet been able to melt decided us. The tent was the great lure, and we
determined to join Mr. Dodge’s outfit if he would have us. Mr. Ruggles
soon settled that for us, and at ten o’clock, having crammed a few
necessaries into a bag and put our rifles together, we started under the
convoy of Andy Phillips, teamster, hunter, and partner in some sort with
Mr. Dodge.
By this time a whole troop of idlers, hunters and navvies had crept out
of sundry very dirty blankets and buffalo robes in which they had been
huddled in back rooms and outhouses, and we had to run the gauntlet of a
volley of chaff as we sallied forth. “What will you take for your skins?”
“What’s your contract for heads?” They did not believe in us nor in our
smart-looking Rigby rifles. It is astonishing how suspicious men of a
certain class are of cleanliness; dirt alone is to them workmanlike. The
last thing I heard was: “Wal! Wal! Wal! Damn me if them fellers don’t
think they’re gwine to hunt bufflers! Wal! Wal! Wal!” The contemptuous
way in which this was said was greeted with loud applause and laughter.
Our way lay for a while eastward along the line of the railway, and then
we struck off north on to the open prairie.
Andy Phillips, our teamster, was a character. A small, wiry man, dressed
in a flannel shirt worn so long that it had become a second skin; an old
coat many sizes too big for him, tied together at the breast by a bit of
string, the sleeves being rolled up so as to give his hands a chance of
coming out; a rusty old billycock hat, much indented and of uncertain
brim. The fierce sun and wind and frost, weather and dirt, had tanned
man and clothes to one uniform neutral tint; no human being could say
what might once have been the colour of either. In conversation he did
not shine, but when directly challenged to give an opinion he had an
oracular way of delivering short, jerky sentences, prefaced by a turn of
his quid and a spit, which was very imposing. There was no temptation to
talk, though, for the cart was springless and the prairie not as smooth
as a billiard table, so we were most mercilessly jolted and pitched about
whenever the mules broke into the semblance of a trot.
Very amusing were the prairie dogs, quaint little beasts living in
townships of small mounds, arranged like ant-hills, with so much method
and regularity that one might fancy that each little colony had its
mayor, municipal officers, laws, ordinances and rules of etiquette. As we
drew near, the inhabitants—tiny yellow beasts something between squirrels
and weasels—would turn out in strength, taking their stands each on the
top of his house, with tails most impertinently cocked, barking, yapping,
scolding with absurd little voices to warn us off; but as soon as the
cart came close to the village, there was universal panic and _sauve
qui peut_; the braggarts with one consent would take headers into their
holes; not a prairie dog to be seen until we reached the next township,
where the same comedy of threats, rage and terror would be played anew.
For many miles we jolted along without seeing anything in the way of game
to shoot at, but at last we came within a few hundred yards of a couple
of antelope. Their backs were turned to us and they were feeding up wind,
so Oliver got down and tried to stalk them, but there was not covert
enough to hide a shrew-mouse, let alone a big Blue well over six feet;
one of them curled round and caught a sight of him as he was crawling up,
and they galloped away into space.
The only chance of getting near to the pretty, shy creatures would be
when the nature of the ground, where the prairie is cut up into divides
by dry water-courses (canyons), would enable the hunter to creep up to
them unseen, or bring him upon them suddenly without his having had any
previous inkling of their whereabouts. Although the eye stretched to the
bounds of a round horizon, the irregularities of the prairie sometimes
hid objects close by, or on the next divide.
In this way, later in the day, Oliver got another chance at an antelope;
it was a long and difficult shot, and though he made practice good enough
to draw a note of admiration even from the undemonstrative Andy, he was
unsuccessful. As for me, the only chance I had all day was at an old grey
wolf-coyote, who was lumbering along at that awkward, shuffling pace
which seems so slow and is so fast. He was more than two hundred yards
off and both my bullets struck the ground so close to him that he gave a
great terror-stricken jump each time;—unfortunately very near does not
count at any game. We stopped for our mid-day meal at a creek where we
found a pool of stagnant water from which we scared half a dozen mallard;
we had some bread and cold meat, and Mr. Dodge had thrown into the cart
a can or two of preserved strawberries and oysters—the former tasted of
tin and sugar, the latter of tin and salt, but friend Andy enjoyed them
mightily.
As soon as the mules had fed and rested, Andy gave the signal for a
move. “Now then, you fellers! If you’re ready I’m a-gwine to move on,
and I guess we’ll beat the sun an hour.” The further we advanced in the
prairie, the more frequent became the carcases of dead buffaloes, some
already blanched skeletons, others more recently killed, torn and mangled
by wolves and vultures. Even had economic and agricultural reasons
not determined their extermination, there would probably have been few
buffaloes left by now.
The slaughter was on a huge scale. Old bulls and young, even cows heavy
in calf were slain mercilessly, often in places where the skins could not
be removed, so that the massacre was profitless and without excuse. The
hunters seemed to be bent on killing the goose that laid the golden egg.
A good bull’s skin was worth two dollars, a cow’s skin one dollar; to-day
I am told that a bison’s head in good condition is worth a huge sum to
decorate the walls of some sporting club in the West.
Our day was not quite blank, for Oliver shot a jackass rabbit, a sort of
big hare with huge, flapping ears; the expanding bullet made mince-meat
of it, but we picked up the pieces and were thankful for them at
supper-time. Towards the end of the day Oliver’s keen eyes spied some
huge black lumps in the distance—buffalo! We were mad to go after them,
but Andy looked at the herd and then looked at the sun, which by this
time was low in the heavens, turned his quid in his mouth, and saying,
“I guess a man feels pretty bad if he’s lost on this yar prairer after
dark,” whipped up his mules and drove on. Next day, when I was being led
on for mile after mile by a herd, I knew how wise he had been. But at the
time I hated him and his prudence; I thought he lacked keenness. Andy not
keen! I soon had occasion to know better.
The day was fast waning when we reached the camp. How the same word
may mean different things! In the East the camp used to mean three or
four luxurious tents comfortably carpeted and furnished with iron beds
and arm-chairs, pitched under the shade of trees by a running stream,
a bustling dragoman ready to conjure tea, coffee, cigars, anything and
everything out of his saddlebags. Here a fire of dried buffalo dung near
a creek of muddy water full of little red worms; the air poisoned by the
smell of drying hides, out of which one, rather better seasoned than the
others, would serve as a bed. The boasted tent turned out to be nothing
more than a bit of torn canvas stretched on three poles, open to the four
winds of heaven. This was our “camp” in the West.
By and by “the boys” came in from hunting; a tatterdemalion crew, ragged,
unkempt and very, very dirty; it would be difficult to imagine a rougher,
wilder-looking lot. Throwing down their rifles on the iron-hard ground
as if they rather wished to break them, they set to work to prepare
supper, taking little or no notice of us. There was Captain Vogel, the
boss of the outfit, Prairie Bill, his partner, Mexico Bill and two minor
satellites who spoke not, and apparently had no names worth mentioning.
The dung fire was quickly made up again; one man set to work to make
damper in a skillet; another cut some lumps of buffalo flesh off a
huge carcase and threw them into a frying-pan; a third boiled some
roughly-ground coffee in the foul water of the creek—this, with the
fragments of Oliver’s jackass-rabbit, constituted our feast. No whisky
or other spirits, for the hunters only drank when they went into a
settlement to spend and gamble away their hard-earned money. Then, to use
their own expression, they would “make the place howl.”
As the pannikin of coffee went round, our hosts became more communicative
and began telling us hunting stories garnished with all that wealth of
imprecation for which the language of the Wild West is justly famous.
One story of Prairie Bill’s I jotted down in my pocket-book that night.
Prairie Bill was a tall, active fellow, as lean as a lath, all wire and
muscle, with keen, beadlike, black eyes and an impudent little snub
nose—a regular dare-devil. Looking at him I felt half tempted to believe
that his story might be true. By way of preface he swore steadily for
several seconds, and having thus relieved his mind, he spat furiously,
and was then in trim to proceed.
“If you fellers want to hear how I once killed a bloomin’ buffler,
blarm me to most etarnal smash if I don’t tell yer.” (oath). “I’d been
a-follerin’ a herd all the ruddy day without gettin’ near enough for a
shot, when all on a sudden a big bull drops astarn and looks me in the
face. Wal! I fired and hit him, and darn me if I didn’t plug him seven
times out of my Spencer rifle without killin’ him.” (Many oaths.) “When
the big brute see as I hadn’t got a shot left, darned if he didn’t put
his ruddy head down and come bang at me.” (More oaths.) “Guess I felt
considerable mean, you bet! But there warn’t no time for thinkin’, and
as he comes a tearin’ up, ready to give me Hell, I steps on one side,
and ketchin’ hold of his mane, swings myself on to the back of him.”
(Oaths of attestation.) “Wal! there I was, darn me, a-ridin’ on the ruddy
buffler across the ruddy prairer. What did I do then? Why I pulled out my
old knife and kep’ a-stickin’ of him in his ruddy neck till he dropped
down as dead as General Washin’ton. And next day darned if me and the
Captain here didn’t skin him.”
Prairie Bill ended as he had begun, with a long volley of oaths. His
mates joined in, swearing in sympathetic chorus—all except Captain Vogel,
whom I never heard utter an oath.
The night became cruelly cold; if we sat to the leeward of the fire the
smoke and dung ashes were blown into our noses and eyes; if we faced it
our backs were frozen; our legs were cramped sitting tailor fashion, and
altogether we were so uncomfortable that we soon were glad to turn in.
We lay down dressed as we were on hides stretched over the hard, frozen
ground, with our rifle-cases for pillows. The camp dogs barked, and the
men grunted, muttered and snored. Sleep was fitful; we were all rather
crusty and dismally uncomfortable, for we were huddled together under
that imposture of a tent, packed as tight as a box of figs.
There was no temptation to play the sluggard and I rose as soon as the
first streaks of daylight tinged the blackness of the east. On my way to
the camp fire I met Andy Phillips, trembling with excitement. He had been
along the creek to look after his mules, which had been so badly tied up
the night before by Mexico Bill that they had strayed. He had not found
them, but he had seen a herd of buffalo. When he saw me he hurried up
and hissed out laconically, “Bufflers t’crik!” “Do you think we can get
at them?” “Guess we kin.” I ran back for my rifle and off we started. As
we went along Andy told me that in the herd which he had seen there were
several very fine old bulls; they had come down to the creek to drink at
a point about a mile and a half off, and he did not think they would move
far away. So we got down into the winding creek, which in most places was
quite dry, the banks being high enough to hide us; so Andy felt confident
that I should get a shot. I was by no means sure of myself, though, for
I was nervous and in a fever of excitement, madly eager to get a head,
and my hands were numbed and stiff from the blistering cold iron of the
rifle.
When we reached the spot indicated by Andy I could almost hear the
beating of my own heart. Very cautiously we crawled up the bank and
peered over. Not a sign of a buffalo to be seen! I was greatly vexed, not
thinking for the moment of the inequality of the levels of the divides,
and forgetting that the whole herd, not having been disturbed, could
hardly be more than half a mile off at most. “The critturs is bound to
be close by, anyways,” whispered Andy as he marched off again up the
creek. He knew the sort of ground and stopped at a place where the bank
commanded a view of the next divide, and sure enough there the herd was,
thirty or forty great awkward, shaggy, black monsters, quietly feeding
about five hundred yards off. Luckily the creek here took a sharp turn
which enabled us to get within closer range, the wind not betraying us,
and when next we put our noses over the bank the nearest beasts were not
much more than a hundred and fifty yards from us.
As we were watching them the biggest bull, a fine old fellow with a huge
black mane and a long goat’s beard, detached himself from a bunch of
cows and stood stretching himself and cocking his tail. There he stood,
broadside on to me, a glorious chance. “Take the old chap as is a-cockin’
his tail,” Andy whispered in my ear, but there was no need of the hint;
before the words were well out of his mouth the rifle had spoken and the
dull thud that followed told that the bullet had struck home. “He has it,
by the Lord!” shouted Andy. No apathy about him now! The old bull bowed
to the shot, took a pace or two to the front, then turned to the right,
tottered for a couple of seconds, sank down, and rolled over stone dead,
shot through the heart. The rest of the herd, when they saw their chief
stricken, gathered round him for a few moments, as is their wont at the
sight of blood, and when the prairie rang with the noise of his fall, an
almost metallic sound, trotted slowly off, Andy sending a parting shot
after them in vain.
As for me, I was too much excited over my first buffalo to think of
firing a second shot. I ran up to get a close look at him. We measured
the distance; one hundred and seventy yards. Andy, highly delighted at my
success, made short work of cutting off the head, which now hangs in my
hall at Batsford. We were now pretty hungry and went back to breakfast in
great glee. How good the muddy coffee and the tough buffalo steak tasted!
When we reached the camp we found that the others had naturally
breakfasted and started. Oliver with Prairie Bill as his aide-de-camp,
Tom Nickalls under the guidance of young Mexico. It was just as well for
the latter that he was out of the way when Andy turned up, or there would
have been an explosion in the matter of those strayed mules. Captain
Vogel had stayed behind for me.
My second campaign under Captain Vogel was very different from the first.
We had to face our quarry on the open prairie, stalking was out of the
question, trickery and deceit the only means of getting near the poor,
stupid brutes. We had to play at being buffaloes. It was not a difficult
game. The two men sticking so close together as to show no daylight
between them, and hunching their backs, had to lead a horse equally close
behind them. The innocent simplicity of the bison was quite taken in
by the stratagem, and even in the springtime, when the beasts were the
most suspicious, the hunter had no difficulty in getting to within two
hundred yards of his prey, provided the wind were right. Should the herd
be puzzled, they would not move off except for a little way—slowly and
stopping from time to time. When they stopped the men must stop too. By
degrees the beasts would become more familiar, and so it was generally
easy to get a shot at from one hundred to one hundred and fifty yards. In
the late summer and autumn they would allow themselves to be approached
quite near, so that the hunters could shoot them as easily as cows in a
byre.
Captain Vogel was a small, lean man, not strongly built but toughened
by hard work and a strenuous life. Long elf-locks of fair, sun-bleached
hair fell over his shoulders; his beard was thick and tangled. He had
bright blue eyes which always seemed to be looking into the distance—a
hunter’s eyes. His features were regular and showed breeding. He was clad
in a nondescript suit of grey rags and a battered old wideawake; his
arms were a heavy three-barrelled rifle, the only one of its kind that
I ever saw—and a hunting-knife. A strange man, as gentle as a woman, a
paragon alone among the hunters of the West, for he neither swore, nor
smoked, nor chewed, nor drank spirits, nor gambled; not even when resting
during a holiday in some town. As his name implied, he was of German
origin, but he had no knowledge of his birth tongue, though he remembered
hearing his father and mother speak it when he was a child. Born in the
Eastern States he came West many years ago, a sickly youth, condemned by
the doctors, and took to hunting in search of health. He found it in the
keen air of the prairie. Now sickness and pain were strangers to him, and
fatigue had lost its power over him. His little three-year-old mare, his
solitary pet, followed him about like a dog. His one ambition was to set
up as a farmer somewhere in the Wild Country when he should have saved
money enough.
In 1873 times were not so good for the hunters as they had been. A year
ago a bull’s skin was worth three dollars and a cow’s two; now prices
had gone down. A bull’s skin only fetched two dollars and a cow’s one.
He calculated his expenses at a dollar and a half a day, and he and his
partner, Prairie Bill, could each reckon on six dollars a day profit. He
would soon have made his little pile, for he banked all his money instead
of gambling. Were his parents alive? Had he any friends left? He did
not know; it was long years since he had had a letter. He could give no
address; here to-day and there to-morrow, a wanderer on the face of the
earth. Last year he fell in with a man from his old neighbourhood, but
the man was too drunk to understand or to tell him anything, and the next
morning he had gone away nobody knew whither, vanished into space. With
such talk we went our way into the prairie to play at being buffaloes.
We had not gone very far when we spied a large herd in the distance;
they were moving towards us, evidently having been disturbed, for every
now and then they would turn to look behind them. It is the unwritten
law of the prairie that no man shall interfere with a herd that is being
followed by another hunter, so we stood still and watched. In a few
minutes we saw Oliver and Prairie Bill come over the horizon and on to
the same divide with the buffaloes; then there was a general stampede and
Oliver, leaping on to his horse, gave chase.
Captain Vogel was much excited and annoyed, for in his judgment his
partner had bungled the hunt badly. All of a sudden the hindmost beasts
of the flying herd stopped, and Oliver, jumping off as quick as thought,
dropped a cow just as she was galloping off again. It was a pretty sight,
made all the more so by the mirage which threw a mist over the distance.
It was like a vision seen in a dream; a ghostly hunter pursuing phantom
buffaloes over a desert shrouded in the dim mystery of an opalescent haze.
After the death of Oliver’s cow the herd broke into two divisions, the
one trekking off to the south, with Oliver and Prairie Bill after them,
the other moving northwards; it would have been no breach of etiquette
had we followed these, but they were a long way off—a mile or more—and
Captain Vogel preferred going forward in the hope of finding a herd that
had not been “skeered.” For some three or four miles we travelled wearily
on under a blazing sun, our feet sinking in the dry, hot dust, without
seeing anything. At last a change in the level brought us in sight of
five huge old bulls lying down about four or five hundred yards away,
and close to them, on the left, three antelopes peacefully feeding. Here
was a rare piece of luck! I would rather have one antelope than all five
bulls, so we crept slowly on towards the left, but we did not dare try to
get very near lest they should take fright and gallop off. We halted at
between two and three hundred yards from them and lay down, waiting for
one to turn his side to me.
After what seemed an age of suspense, the psychological moment came. I
drew a long breath, took a very deliberate aim, and pulled the trigger.
To my bitter disappointment the bullet just grazed the antelope high in
the shoulder. Two inches lower and I should have had my trophy. In an
instant the three pretty creatures were skimming like swallows over the
horizon. I was glad to think that my intended victim was only scratched.
Startled by the crack of the rifle the five buffaloes struggled up
in their ungainly fashion and looked uneasily about them, but seeing
nothing that they considered dangerous—for the clever little mare knew
her business too well to budge an inch, and we were acting our strange
part most convincingly—they only shuffled lazily a few paces off, we in
pursuit, slackening our pace when they turned, hurrying when they went
forward. In this way we soon came within easy shot, and I dropped the
biggest of the five, the great clumsy creature rolling over and over and
raising a cloud of dust. We both thought that he would get up again, but
having watched him for a minute or two and seeing his legs stiffen, we
accounted him dead and went on after his mates, who had pursued their
slow course, in no wise affected by his fate. Just as I was preparing for
a second shot we heard a terrific noise and there was the big bull whom
we had left for dead coming on at full gallop in the best of health, with
his head down, snorting and blowing up the dust, which looked like smoke
coming in two volumes out of his nostrils.
We knelt down and prepared to receive cavalry, thinking that he was going
to charge us; but his only thought was to rejoin his faithless friends,
and the five monsters, now thoroughly frightened, fled into the mirage
and we saw them no more. The mirage was very baffling; it was one of the
difficulties of the hunter. In the first place, for some unexplained
reason, it made all the beasts very wild, and in the second it made a
field glass useless. This, however, did not affect the native hunters;
like the Indian shikari they preferred to trust to their own eyes and
were afraid to use a glass lest they should weaken their eagle sight.
On the furthest divide that we reached we found an enormous herd; the
prairie was black with them. Captain Vogel reckoned that there must have
been over two thousand heads. Playing the same game I shot three fine
bulls without difficulty or adventure. Two others, for which we could not
stop, would be gathered next day. Vogel shot very badly, not killing a
single beast, but he said himself that he did not pride himself so much
on shooting as on getting up to game; of that craft he certainly was a
master. I could not help thinking that his wonderful old three-barrelled
shooting-iron had something to do with the missing. One old bull led us
a fine dance, making us follow mile after mile without ever giving us a
broadside chance. Further and further on we followed him until at last
we had to give him up as a bad job, for we were between ten and twelve
miles from camp and we had twisted and turned in so many windings that
Vogel declared that he did not know where we were. A terror! We were
parched with thirst and my feet were sore from walking in the hot dust.
There were, of course, no landmarks, so we had to guess at our homeward
route with the help of the sun and my pocket compass.
A long, anxious tramp brought us to a divide where Vogel recognized some
carcases which he had skinned the week before; close by he knew of a
puddle of water at which he and the mare drank luxuriously; I could not!
It was full of live insects and green vegetable matter, so I preferred to
carry the leather which had once been my tongue into camp rather than run
the risk of that poisonous draught. Four or five miles more brought us
into camp where Tom Nickalls was blazing away with his rifle at a prairie
chicken which was fool enough to stop until a lucky shot cut its head
off. Oh! the joy of a drink of almost clean water out of Tom’s flask!
Captain Vogel and I were the last to come into camp. On comparing notes
we found that our bag consisted in all of nine buffalo—not counting the
two of mine that Vogel would be sure to find and skin the next day.
Oliver had killed four, Tom Nickalls one, I four. Not a bad piece of
work, as even the hunters were obliged to confess, and they are not given
to paying compliments. Our guns were greatly praised. Prairie Bill, with
picturesque and highly ornate additions, declared that they had only one
fault, and that was that they did not belong to him.
Andy, mourning over his mules, not yet found, stopped in the midst of
a torrent of abuse addressed to young Mexico, to swear that “them guns
shoots wicked.” “You may bet your pile on that,” said Captain Vogel. The
men said, however, that our rifles were too light for their use in the
autumn time, when the big slaughter takes place. At that time they needed
weapons with plenty of weight of metal so that they should not heat
readily. That great sportsman and rifleman, Lord Elcho (the late Lord
Wemyss), once laughed at my Rigby as being too heavy. I wonder what he
would have said to Captain Vogel’s three-barrelled cannon.
After all, this buffalo hunting was tame sport; one day of it, just for
the novelty of the thing, was all very well, but neither of us would
have cared for a renewal of the experience. The vast dreariness of the
prairie offered no charm of scenery, none of the poetry of deer-stalking
celebrated by Scrope. The American bison, fierce as he looked, was not
a savage, revengeful enemy like the Indian buffalo; even when wounded
he rarely turned upon his man. Hunting the creatures on horseback, and
pistolling the master bull, which was the sport of the United States
officers garrisoning the outlying forts, must have been fine fun. But for
that we had not the necessary mounts. Had I had another day I should have
confined myself to going after antelope; that, at least, was an exciting
sport, needing great wariness and patience.
For the first time in my life I on this day saw a herd of wild
horses—perhaps I ought to say “horses run wild,” for we are told that
there is no such thing as an indigenous American horse, so these
must have been runaways, even though their savage state might have
been decades or even centuries old. They followed us cautiously at a
respectful distance, attracted, probably, by the charms of the good
little mare. Mean-looking animals they were, in the poorest of condition;
their manes and tails floating wildly in the wind; one, at least, must
have been a recent recruit escaped from some ranche, as the saddle galls
on his back proved. Horses that have once been broken in and have gone
back to savagery and liberty are, so the hunters told me, the shiest of
all.
Another sight new to me was that of the “sun-dogs”; luminous clouds with
prismatic colours hanging round the sun like beautiful satellites, a sure
sign of coming storms and foul weather.
Round the camp fire that night the battles of the day were fought over
again, but the main talk was about Indians. For the last week or two all
America had been ringing with the murder of General Canby and the Peace
Commissioners by the Modoc Indians of the lava beds on the borders of
California and Oregon; but the news, already stale even in Europe, had
not yet reached the prairie, and we were the first to tell the story to
the hunters. They were fiercely indignant, but far more so against the
Government than against the Modocs. Even the wildest men, the men like
Prairie Bill who held that “an Indian was never in his proper place till
he was six feet underground,” were bound to admit that the Government
treated them shamefully. The policy adopted at that time was, as the
march of civilization advanced, to keep driving them back further and
further on to reservations, as the parcels of land allotted to them
were called. In return for the rich territory of which they were robbed
the Government supplied them with blankets, arms, ammunition and other
necessaries, which were distributed by the “Indian Agents.”
There were few warmer berths in the gift of the ministry than that of an
Indian Agent. There were practically no limits to his powers of robbery,
and right good or bad use he made of his opportunities, charging for
first-class double blankets and supplying the poor Indian starvelings
with half blankets of the thinnest and meanest description; and so it
was with all other stores. In a few years the agent was a rich man. The
Indians knew they were being swindled, but there was no redress, and one
fine day there would come a day of reckoning such as we were discussing.
Then the soldiers must be called out to wreak vengeance which is not
consummated until many valuable lives have been lost; for what chance
have drill and discipline and regular troops against the cunning of
savages fighting on the vantage ground of such a stronghold as the lava
beds. “Why don’t they call out the hunters?” said Prairie Bill; “guess
we’re used to trackin’ varmin!”
Wherever there were gathered together ten men who live by honest labour,
whether they were merchants in New York, miners in California, farmers
or hunters on the prairie, one heard the same abuse of the Government,
the same tale of bribery, extortion and corruption. These men, with whom
we were talking, were rough and wild and uncouth, but they were not bad
fellows, as Mr. Ruggles testified, and they earned their bread hardly and
honestly by the sweat of their brows. Nay more! They had a fair right to
complain, for they were the most likely men to suffer by the policy of
a Government which provoked the savages by robbery, and then furnished
them with arms to avenge their outrages. It was the scalp of the hunter
and not that of the Minister at Washington that was in peril. The Indian
agent was surely one of the most striking products of universal suffrage.
The beautiful “sun-dogs” were true prophets; the wind got up in the night
and beat fiercely upon us as we lay under our tattered awning; towards
the dawn the rain came down and soaked us through and through. Tired
as we were after our long tramp through the dust of the desert sleep
was impossible. The break of day was a relief. No news of Andy’s mules.
He had been after them all the day before, but found no trace of them;
perhaps he had not sworn quite sufficiently at young Mexico. We were
obliged to start and there was nothing for it but to borrow Vogel and
Prairie Bill’s horses, Andy hoping that as his beasts were in the habit
of travelling backwards with skins and forwards with stores, they might
have made tracks home to their stables. By this time we had become quite
friendly with our hunters and they bade us a touching farewell. I often
thought of them afterwards. Did Vogel ever succeed in stocking a farm?
What became of that reckless but very attractive scamp, Prairie Bill? And
young Mexico, what was his fate?
When we reached Fort Wallace with two heads and having accounted for
eight other beasts, for Tom Nickalls shot one on the way home, the
hunters and loafers who had chaffed us so unmercifully on our departure
changed their tune. No praise was too high for us, we became heroes, and
our once despised rifles were passed round, handled and admired by every
idler about the place.
Mr. and Mrs. Ruggles were delighted at our success. They too had had a
little excitement during our absence, for a thief had broken into the
house and stolen all Mrs. Ruggles’ jewellery and trinkets, keepsakes
which are more valuable than ever in this dreary banishment. The man had
got in through the window of Oliver’s room and happily not noticing some
of our boxes, in which there were a few articles of more or less value,
made straight for the poor lady’s apartment. In these parts a man had to
take the law into his own hands. Ruggles soon found out who was missing
from the settlement, and starting by the next train caught the rogue at
a station down the line. Revolver in hand Ruggles offered him his choice
between disgorging and having his brains blown out. He chose the former,
so all was recovered save a dollar or two, which had been spent in drink.
The thief was a man well connected, who had gone down in the world,
wrecked by drink and debauchery, and was now a navvy on the railroad.
Towards eight o’clock in the evening the train carried us westward.
We afterwards learned from United States officers that our expedition
had been a little imprudent. The Sioux Indians, though not absolutely on
the war-path, were in an uncomfortable state of ferment. The news of the
Modoc massacre had spread among the tribes in the same mysterious manner
that tidings spread through the bazaars of India, and there was a general
feeling of uneasiness. At no time would it be pleasant, as we knew from
our hunter friends, to meet Indians on the plain; at any rate they would
try to steal, a game at which they were very successful, especially when
the booty consisted of horses or cattle belonging to white men. All’s
well that ends well. We saw no Sioux, our scalps were tight upon our
heads, and there is a certain tinge of pleasure in the idea of having
incurred an even remotely possible danger!
April 28th.—Could there be a more delightful change after the dreary
monotony of the desert than to lift one’s eyes on waking to the radiant
snows of the Rocky Mountains?
We were hardly prepared to find Denver City so pleasant a place, and,
above all, so quiet and orderly; for in the Eastern States we had been
led to believe that we should find one of those wild, lawless settlements
of the West—models from which Bret Harte painted “The Luck of Roaring
Camp” and other masterpieces, in which the six-shooter makes such a show.
Indeed, in a New York paper I read an advertisement which ran as follows:
“An hotel with bullet-proof walls has recently been erected at Denver
City, so that a gentleman can sit and listen to the shooting going on in
the next room without being incommoded by any feeling of danger.”
The East was in those days very hard upon the West, and, as I thought,
very unjustly; for there were vigilance committees everywhere, and Judge
Lynch—an obvious necessity in wild young communities—made short work of
sweeping out ruffians who misbehaved themselves. Indeed, the West might
boast that whereas the Tombs, the famous prison at New York, was full of
murderers, who might or might not be punished as politics might dictate,
in Denver or Virginia City justice marched with no lame or uncertain
foot.
We found a capital hotel, kept by one Charpiot, a Frenchman; gifted
with the genius of his race for cooking and serving things nicely, he
was known to fame as the Delmonico of the West; we had not been fed so
well since we left New York. What a pretty little town it was! Now I
suppose it has grown out of all recollection, but at the time of which I
am writing (1873) it had but twelve thousand inhabitants. However much
it may have spread it must still have its glorious view of the Rockies,
with the famous Pike’s Peak as the chief feature. The air was so pure and
clear that though the great chain was fifteen miles off the mountains
seemed quite close, as though a man might walk there under the hour.
Although the town only began to be built in 1853 it was already a
bustling, thriving little place. I wrote in my journal: “Being the centre
of a rich agricultural and mineral district it does a brisk trade, and as
the prosperity of Colorado is developing itself with giant strides Denver
City is likely to continue its rapid growth.” I fancy that I might have
worded my prophecy more strongly.
We found the town in a fever of excitement. President Grant with his wife
and daughter had arrived and there was to be a grand reception in the
evening at the house of Governor McCook, where the President was staying.
But the great attraction was the advent of a number of Indians who had
come in from their “reservation” to see the great Father. Their chief,
old George Washington, as he called himself, was a small, thick-set old
man, with a most villainous expression, heightened by dabs of blue, red,
and yellow paint, which gave quite a fiendish look to his cruel mouth
and cunning little bear’s eyes. Long, straight elf-locks of coarse black
hair parted in the middle, and the parting painted vermilion, fell over
his shoulders. He wore a chimney-pot hat, decorated with red and yellow
streamers, a short blue coat with military buttons; necklaces and other
ornaments of coloured beads; two revolvers; leather trousers with tassels
all down the sides; such was the noble savage of Fenimore Cooper, the
modern representative of Uncas and Chingachgook, as I saw him.
His crew were as ugly and evil-looking as their chief. Some carried bows
and arrows in leathern quivers slung at their backs; not one was without
a revolver. Looking at their stunted, shapeless bodies, it was hard to
say whether they were men or women—“bucks or squaws” as an American
would put it. When we came upon them in one of the chief streets they
were bartering furs. The man in the shop said they were quite harmless.
“Harmless, yes,” said a bystander; “so’s snakes when their teeth is
drawn. But I kinder guess it’s the sort of harmless you don’t want to be
too near when you ain’t got a six-shooter about you.”
* * * * *
April 29th.—When we left Denver City President Grant, with Mrs. Grant
and the Princess Royal, as the American wags called her, was in the
train, and for glory’s sake a crowd had assembled at Cheyenne to salute
the great man, soldiers and an ear-racking band being on the platform.
The President was no doubt a man who had rendered signal service to his
country, but he was not of the quality which would find favour with the
culture of Boston or the refinement of New York. The more delicately
strung of his countrymen looked upon him as common and boorish. The
second Duke of Wellington used to tell a good story of him. The Duke
always felt it due to the name of his illustrious father, when any famous
warrior came to England, to offer him an entertainment at Apsley House.
When General Grant came to England he was accordingly invited there to
dinner. When he arrived and saw the portrait of the great Duke, he could
find nothing more appropriate to say than: “Ah! I have commanded more
Divisions than that man ever commanded Regiments, and yet what a lot of
talk there has been about him.” “Yes,” answered the Duke in his droll,
dry way, “I believe he was considered a meritorious person in his day.”
The second Duke was really a very witty man, and the fun of his
conversation was enhanced by his rather grotesque appearance, and his
humorous manner. Alfred Montgomery used to imitate him, as he well knew,
but they loved one another dearly, and the Duke cared not one whit. One
day at luncheon at Lady Dorothy Neville’s Mr. Edmund Yates was present.
Alfred being mentioned, naturally the guests began telling stories of his
wit. Yates turned round to the Duke and said: “You know, Mr. Montgomery
is very fond of mimicking your Grace.” The Duke answered: “Yes! I know
it, but let me give you a bit of advice, Mr. Yates. Don’t _you_ try to
mimic a gentleman!” The Duke was a most admirable note writer. He told
me how once Lady Dorothy Neville wrote to him saying that she was about
restoring the dear little church at Danksfee, and was asking her friends
to help; so, feeling sure that he would wish to do something for the
church in which he had so often worshipped, she had put down his name for
one hundred pounds. The answer was characteristic. He, too, was restoring
the church at Strathfieldsaye, and knowing that Lady Dorothy would wish
to contribute in memory of old days he had put down her name for one
hundred pounds. “In the circumstances no money need pass between us.”
But I am wandering and must hasten back to Cheyenne. We had some trouble
with our luggage, but when that was disposed of and we had had luncheon
we started for Ogden and Salt Lake City. It took us thirty-five hours to
reach Ogden.
The first part of the journey was dull enough, spinning through the
everlasting monotony of prairie, with glimpses of antelopes and wrathful
prairie dogs. We turned into bed rather early and next day found
ourselves in the midst of the lovely wild scenery of the Rocky Mountains,
great crags towering over the line with terrifying threats, as if the
shaking of the train must bring them down upon us. In places great falls
of snow had been tunnelled through, and the gorges were spanned by crazy
wooden bridges that rocked under the long chain of cars. The line was
high up among the snows, laid at giddy heights some eight thousand feet
above sea-level.
It was an Indian country, so there was a good deal of what Prairie Bill
would have called “poison” about. The curious-looking creatures, wrapped
in their shoddy blankets, hung about the railway stations, impassive,
unnoticing, impenetrable, as little moved as if they had been corpses by
all that was going on around them. Had they any feelings? Perhaps, but
they never showed them. At Ogden we changed into the Salt Lake train.