California—At Home Again—Great Changes. Moral.
APPENDIX. A.—Brief Sketch of Mormon History B.—The Mountain Meadows
Massacre C.—Concerning a Frightful Assassination that was never
Consummated
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
1. THE MINERS’ DREAM
2. ENVIOUS CONTEMPLATIONS
3. INNOCENT DREAMS
4. LIGHT TRAVELING ORDER
5. THE “ALLEN”
6. INDUCEMENTS TO PURCHASE
7. THE FACETIOUS DRIVER
8. PLEASING NEWS
9. THE SPHYNX
10. MEDITATION
11. ON BUSINESS
12. AUTHOR AS GULLIVER
13. A TOUCH STATEMENT
14. THIRD TRIP OF THE UNABRIDGED
15. A POWERFUL GLASS
16. AN HEIRLOOM
17. OUR LANDLORD
18. DIGNIFIED EXILE
19. DRINKING SLUMGULLION
20. A JOKE WITHOUT CREAM
21. PULLMAN CAR DINING-SALOON
22. OUR MORNING RIDE
23. PRAIRIE DOGS
24. A CAYOTE
25. SHOWING RESPECT TO RELATIVES
26. THE CONDUCTOR
27. TEACHING A SUBORDINATE
28. JACK AND THE ELDERLY PILGRIM
29. CROSSING THE PLATTE
30. I BEGAN TO PRAY
31. A NEW DEPARTURE
32. SUSPENDED OPERATIONS
33. A WONDERFUL LIE
34. TALL PIECE
35. HERE HE COMES
36. CHANGING HORSES
37. RIDING THE AVALANCHE
38. INDIAN COUNTRY
39. A PROPOSED FIST FIGHT
40. FROM BEHIND THE DOOR
41. SLADE AS AN EXECUTIONER
42. AN UNPLEASANT VIEW
43. UNAPPRECIATED POLITENESS
44. SLADE IN COURT
45. A WIFE’S LAMENTATIONS
46. THE CONCENTRATED INHABITANT
47. THE SOUTH PASS
48. THE PARTED STREAMS
49. IT SPOILED THE MELON
50. THE CAYOTE AND THE RAVEN
51. “DON’T COME HERE ...
52. “THINK I’M A FOOL ...
53. THE “DESTROYING ANGEL...
54. EFFECTS OF “VALLEY TAN”
55. ONE CREST
56. THE OTHER
57. THE VAGRANT
58. PORTRAIT OF EBER KIMBALL
59. PORTRAIT OR BRIGHAM YOUNG
60. THE CONTRACTORS BEFORE THE KING
61. I WAS TOUCHED
62. THE ENDOWMENT
63. FAVORITE WIFE AND D.4
64. NEEDED MARKING
65. A REMARKABLE RESEMBLANCE
66. THE FAMILY BEDSTEAD
67. THE MIRACULOUS COMPASS
68. THREE SIDES TO A QUESTION
69. RESULT OF HFGH FREIGHTS
70. A SHRIVELED QUARTER
71. AN OBJECT OF PITY
72. TAIL-PIECE
73. TAIL-PIECE
74. GOSHOTT INDIANS HANGING AROUND
75. THE DRIVE FOR LIFE
76. GREELEY’S RIDE
77. BOTTLING AN ANECDOTE
78. TAIL-PIECE
79. CONTEMPLATION
80. THE WASHOE ZEPHYR
81. THE GOVERNOR’S HOUSE
82. DARK DISCLOSURES
83. THE IRISH BRIGADE
84. RECREATION
85. THE TARANTULA
86. LIGHT THROWN ON THE SUBJECT
87. I STEERED
88. THE INVALID
89. THE RESTORED
90. OUR HOUSE
91. AT BUSINESS
92. FIGHT AT LAKE TAHOE
93. “THINK HIM AN AMERICAN HORSE”
94. UNEXPECTED ELEVATION
95. UNIVERSALLY UNSETTLED
96. RIDING THE PLUG
97. WANTED EXERCISE
98. BORROWING MADE EASY
99. FREE RIDES
100. SATISFACTORY VOUCHERS
101. NEEDS PRAYING FOR
102. MAP OF TOLL ROADS
103. UNLOADING SILVER BRICKS
104. VIEW IN HUMBOLDT MOUNTAINS
105. GOING TO HUMBOLDT
106. BALLOU’S BEDFELLOW
107. PLEASURES OF CAMPING OUT
108. THE SECRET SEARCH
109. “CAST YOUR EYE ON THAT ...
110. “WE’VE GOT IT”
111. INCIPIENT MILLIONAIRES
112. ROCKS-TAIL-PIECE
113. “DO YOU SEE IT?”
114. FAREWELL SWEET RIVER
115. THE RESCUE
116. “MR. ARKANSAS ...
117. AN ARMED ALLY
118. CROSSING THE FLOOD
119. ADVANCE IN A CIRCLE
120, THE SONGSTER
121. THE FOXES HAVE HOLES-TAIL-PIECE
122. A FLAT FAILURE
123. THE LAST MATCH
124. DISCARDED VICES
125. FLAMES-TAIL-PIECE
127. IT WAS THUS WE MET
128. TAKING POSSESSION
129. A GREAT EFFORT
130. REARRANGING AND SHIFTING
131. WE LEFT LAMENTED
132. PICTURE OF TOWNSEND’S TUNNEL
133. QUARTZ MILL
134. ANOTHER PROCESS OF AMALGAMATION
135. FIRST QUARTZ MILL IN NEVADA
136. A SLICE OF RICH ORE
137. THE SAVED BROTHER
138. ON A SECRET EXPEDITION
139. LAKE MONO
140. RATHER SOAPY
141. A BARK UNDER FULL SAIL
142. A MODEL BOARDING HOUSE
143. LIFE AMID DEATH
144. A JUMP FOR LIFE
145. “STOVE HEAP GONE”
146. INTERVIEWING THE “WIDE WEST”
147. WORTH A MILLION
148. MILLIONAIRES LAYING PLANS
149. DANGEROUSLY SICK
150. WORTH NOTHING
151. THE COMPROMISE
152. ONE OF MY FAILURES
153. TARGET SHOOTING
154. AS CITY EDITOR
155. THE ENTIRE MARKET
156. A FRIEND INDEED
157. UNION-TAIL-PIECE
158. AN EDUCATIONAL REPORT
159. NO PARTICULAR HURRY
160. VIEW OF VIRGINIA CITY AND MT. DAVIDSON
161. A NEW MINE
162. TRY A FEW
163. PORTRAIT OF MR. STEWART
164. SELLING A MINE
165. COULDN’T WAIT
166. THE GREAT “FLOUR SACS” PROCESSION
167. TAIL-PIECE
168. A NABOB
169. MAGNIFICENCE AND MISERY
170. A FRIENDLY DRIVER
171. ASTONISHES THE NATIVES
172. COL. JACK WEAKENS
173. SCOTTY BRIGGS AND THE MINISTER
174. REGULATING MATTERS
175. DIDN’T SHOOK HIS MOTHER
176. SCOTTY AS S. S. TEACHER
177. THE MAN WHO HAD KILLED HIS DOZEN
178. THE UNPREJUDICED JURY
179. A DESPERADO GIVING REFERENCE
180. SATISFYING A FOE
181. TAIL-PIECE
182. GIVING INFORMATION
183. A WALKING BATTERY
184. OVERHAULING HIS MANIFEST
185. SHIP-TAIL-PIECE
186. THE HEROES AND HEROINES OF THE STORY
187. DISSOLUTE AUTHOR
188. THERE SAT THE LAWYER
189. JONAH OUTDONE
190. DOLLINGER
191. LOW BRIDGE
192. SHORTENING SAIL
193. LIGHTENING SHIP
194. THE MARVELLOUS RESCUE
195. SILVER BRICKS
196. TIMBER SUPPORTS
197. FROM GALLERY TO GALLERY
198. JIM BLAINE
199. HURRAH FOR NIXON
200. MISS WAGNER
201. WAITING FOR A CUSTOMER
202. WAS TO BE THERE
209. THE MONUMENT
205. WHERE IS THE RAM-TAIL-PIECE
205. CHINESE WASH BILL
206. IMITATION
207. CHINESE LOTTERY
208. CHINESE MERCHANT AT HOME
209. AN OLD FRIEND
210. FAREWELL AND ACCIDENT
211. “GIMME A CIGAR”
212. THE HERALD OF GLAD NEWS
213. FLAG-TAIL-PIECE
214. A NEW ENGLAND SCENE
215. A VARIABLE CLIMATE
216. SACRAMENTO AND THREE NODES AWAY
217. “FETCH HER OUT ...
218. “WELL IF IT AINT A CHILD ...
219. A GENUINE LIVE WOMAN
220. THE GRACE OF A KANGAROO
221. DREAMS DISSIPATED
222. THE “ONE HORSE SHAY” OUTDONE
223. HARD ON THE INNOCENTS
224. DRY BONES SHAKEN
225. “OH! WHAT, SHALL I DO!...
226. “GET OUT YOUR TOWEL MY DEAR”
227. “WE WILL OMIT THE BENEDICTION...
228. SLINKING
229. A PRIZE
230. A LOOK IN AT THE WINDOW
231. “DO IT STRANGER”
232. THE OLD COLLEGIATE
233. STRIKING A POCKET
234. TOM QUARTZ
235. AN ADVANTAGE TAKEN
236. AFTER AN EXCURSION
237. THE THREE CAPTAINS
238. THE OLD ADMIRAL
239. THE DESERTED FIELD
240. WILLIAMS
241. SCENE ON THE SANDWICH ISLANDS
242. FASHIONABLE ATTIRE
243. A BITE
244. RECONNOITERING
246. LOOKING FOR MISCHIEF
247. A FAMILY LIKENESS
248. SIT DOWN To LISTEN
249. “MY BROTHER, WE TWINS”
250. EXTRAORDINARY CAPERS
251. A LOAD OF HAY
252. MARCHING THROUGH GEORGIA
253. SANDWICH ISLAND GIRLS
254. ORIGINAL HAM SANDWICH
255. “I KISSED HIM FOR HIS MOTHER”
256. AN OUTSIDER
257. AN ENEMY’S PRAYER
258. VISITING THE MISSIONARIES
259. FULL CHURCH DRESS
260. PLAYING EMPIRE
261. ROYALTY AND ITS SATELLITES
262. A HIGH PRIVATE
263. A MODERN FUNERAL
264. FORMER FUNERAL ORGIES
265. A PASSENGER
266. MOONLIGHT ON THE WATER
267. GOING INTO THE MOUNTAINS
268. EVENING
289. THE DEMENTED
270. DISCUSSING TURNIPS
271. GREELEY’S LETTER
272. KEALAKEKUA BAY AND COOK’S MONUMENT
273. THE GHOSTLY BUILDERS
274. ON GUARD
275. BREAKING THE TABU
276. SURF BATHING
277. SURF BATHING A FAILURE
278. CITY OF REFUGE
279. THE QUEEN’S ROCK
280. TAIL-PIECE
281. THE PILLAR OF FIRE
282. THE CRATER
283. BROKE THROUGH
284. FIRE FOUNTAINS
285. LAVA STREAM
286. A TIDAL WAVE
287. TRIP ON THE MILKY WAY
288. A VIEW IN THE TAO VALLEY
289. MAGNIFICENT SPORT
290. ELEVEN MILES TO SEE
291. CHASED BY A STORM
292. LEAVING WORK
293. TAIL-PIECE
294. OUR AMUSEMENTS
295. SEVERE CASE OF STAGE FRIGHT
296. MY THREE PARQUETTE ALLIES
297. SAWYER IN THE CIRCLE
298. A PREDICAMENT
299. THE BEST OF THE JOKE
300. THE END
CHAPTER I.
My brother had just been appointed Secretary of Nevada Territory—an
office of such majesty that it concentrated in itself the duties and
dignities of Treasurer, Comptroller, Secretary of State, and Acting
Governor in the Governor’s absence. A salary of eighteen hundred dollars
a year and the title of “Mr. Secretary,” gave to the great position an
air of wild and imposing grandeur. I was young and ignorant, and I
envied my brother. I coveted his distinction and his financial splendor,
but particularly and especially the long, strange journey he was going
to make, and the curious new world he was going to explore. He was going
to travel! I never had been away from home, and that word “travel” had a
seductive charm for me. Pretty soon he would be hundreds and hundreds of
miles away on the great plains and deserts, and among the mountains of
the Far West, and would see buffaloes and Indians, and prairie dogs, and
antelopes, and have all kinds of adventures, and may be get hanged or
scalped, and have ever such a fine time, and write home and tell us all
about it, and be a hero. And he would see the gold mines and the silver
mines, and maybe go about of an afternoon when his work was done, and
pick up two or three pailfuls of shining slugs, and nuggets of gold and
silver on the hillside. And by and by he would become very rich, and
return home by sea, and be able to talk as calmly about San Francisco
and the ocean, and “the isthmus” as if it was nothing of any consequence
to have seen those marvels face to face.
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What I suffered in contemplating his happiness, pen cannot describe. And
so, when he offered me, in cold blood, the sublime position of private
secretary under him, it appeared to me that the heavens and the earth
passed away, and the firmament was rolled together as a scroll! I had
nothing more to desire. My contentment was complete.
At the end of an hour or two I was ready for the journey. Not much
packing up was necessary, because we were going in the overland stage
from the Missouri frontier to Nevada, and passengers were only allowed a
small quantity of baggage apiece. There was no Pacific railroad in those
fine times of ten or twelve years ago—not a single rail of it. I only
proposed to stay in Nevada three months—I had no thought of staying
longer than that. I meant to see all I could that was new and strange,
and then hurry home to business. I little thought that I would not see
the end of that three-month pleasure excursion for six or seven
uncommonly long years!
I dreamed all night about Indians, deserts, and silver bars, and in due
time, next day, we took shipping at the St. Louis wharf on board a
steamboat bound up the Missouri River.
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We were six days going from St. Louis to “St. Jo.”—a trip that was so
dull, and sleepy, and eventless that it has left no more impression on
my memory than if its duration had been six minutes instead of that
many days. No record is left in my mind, now, concerning it, but a
confused jumble of savage-looking snags, which we deliberately walked
over with one wheel or the other; and of reefs which we butted and
butted, and then retired from and climbed over in some softer place;
and of sand-bars which we roosted on occasionally, and rested, and then
got out our crutches and sparred over.
In fact, the boat might almost as well have gone to St. Jo. by land, for
she was walking most of the time, anyhow—climbing over reefs and
clambering over snags patiently and laboriously all day long. The
captain said she was a “bully” boat, and all she wanted was more “shear”
and a bigger wheel. I thought she wanted a pair of stilts, but I had the
deep sagacity not to say so.
CHaPTER II.
The first thing we did on that glad evening that landed us at St. Joseph
was to hunt up the stage-office, and pay a hundred and fifty dollars
apiece for tickets per overland coach to Carson City, Nevada.
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The next morning, bright and early, we took a hasty breakfast, and
hurried to the starting-place. Then an inconvenience presented itself
which we had not properly appreciated before, namely, that one cannot
make a heavy traveling trunk stand for twenty-five pounds of
baggage—because it weighs a good deal more. But that was all we could
take—twenty-five pounds each. So we had to snatch our trunks open, and
make a selection in a good deal of a hurry. We put our lawful
twenty-five pounds apiece all in one valise, and shipped the trunks
back to St. Louis again. It was a sad parting, for now we had no
swallow-tail coats and white kid gloves to wear at Pawnee receptions in
the Rocky Mountains, and no stove-pipe hats nor patent-leather boots,
nor anything else necessary to make life calm and peaceful. We were
reduced to a war-footing. Each of us put on a rough, heavy suit of
clothing, woolen army shirt and “stogy” boots included; and into the
valise we crowded a few white shirts, some under-clothing and such
things. My brother, the Secretary, took along about four pounds of
United States statutes and six pounds of Unabridged Dictionary; for we
did not know—poor innocents—that such things could be bought in San
Francisco on one day and received in Carson City the next. I was armed
to the teeth with a pitiful little Smith & Wesson’s seven-shooter,
which carried a ball like a homoeopathic pill, and it took the whole
seven to make a dose for an adult. But I thought it was grand. It
appeared to me to be a dangerous weapon. It only had one fault—you
could not hit anything with it. One of our “conductors” practiced
awhile on a cow with it, and as long as she stood still and behaved
herself she was safe; but as soon as she went to moving about, and he
got to shooting at other things, she came to grief. The Secretary had a
small-sized Colt’s revolver strapped around him for protection against
the Indians, and to guard against accidents he carried it uncapped. Mr.
George Bemis was dismally formidable. George Bemis was our
fellow-traveler.
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We had never seen him before. He wore in his belt an old original
“Allen” revolver, such as irreverent people called a “pepper-box.”
Simply drawing the trigger back, cocked and fired the pistol. As the
trigger came back, the hammer would begin to rise and the barrel to turn
over, and presently down would drop the hammer, and away would speed the
ball. To aim along the turning barrel and hit the thing aimed at was a
feat which was probably never done with an “Allen” in the world. But
George’s was a reliable weapon, nevertheless, because, as one of the
stage-drivers afterward said, “If she didn’t get what she went after,
she would fetch something else.” And so she did. She went after a deuce
of spades nailed against a tree, once, and fetched a mule standing about
thirty yards to the left of it. Bemis did not want the mule; but the
owner came out with a double-barreled shotgun and persuaded him to buy
it, anyhow. It was a cheerful weapon—the “Allen.” Sometimes all its six
barrels would go off at once, and then there was no safe place in all
the region round about, but behind it.
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We took two or three blankets for protection against frosty weather in
the mountains. In the matter of luxuries we were modest—we took none
along but some pipes and five pounds of smoking tobacco. We had two
large canteens to carry water in, between stations on the Plains, and we
also took with us a little shot-bag of silver coin for daily expenses in
the way of breakfasts and dinners.
By eight o’clock everything was ready, and we were on the other side of
the river. We jumped into the stage, the driver cracked his whip, and we
bowled away and left “the States” behind us. It was a superb summer
morning, and all the landscape was brilliant with sunshine. There was a
freshness and breeziness, too, and an exhilarating sense of emancipation
from all sorts of cares and responsibilities, that almost made us feel
that the years we had spent in the close, hot city, toiling and slaving,
had been wasted and thrown away. We were spinning along through Kansas,
and in the course of an hour and a half we were fairly abroad on the
great Plains. Just here the land was rolling—a grand sweep of regular
elevations and depressions as far as the eye could reach—like the
stately heave and swell of the ocean’s bosom after a storm. And
everywhere were cornfields, accenting with squares of deeper green, this
limitless expanse of grassy land. But presently this sea upon dry ground
was to lose its “rolling” character and stretch away for seven hundred
miles as level as a floor!
Our coach was a great swinging and swaying stage, of the most sumptuous
description—an imposing cradle on wheels. It was drawn by six handsome
horses, and by the side of the driver sat the “conductor,” the
legitimate captain of the craft; for it was his business to take charge
and care of the mails, baggage, express matter, and passengers. We three
were the only passengers, this trip. We sat on the back seat, inside.
About all the rest of the coach was full of mail bags—for we had three
days’ delayed mails with us. Almost touching our knees, a perpendicular
wall of mail matter rose up to the roof. There was a great pile of it
strapped on top of the stage, and both the fore and hind boots were
full. We had twenty-seven hundred pounds of it aboard, the driver
said—“a little for Brigham, and Carson, and ’Frisco, but the heft of it
for the Injuns, which is powerful troublesome ’thout they get plenty of
truck to read.”
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But as he just then got up a fearful convulsion of his countenance which
was suggestive of a wink being swallowed by an earthquake, we guessed
that his remark was intended to be facetious, and to mean that we would
unload the most of our mail matter somewhere on the Plains and leave it
to the Indians, or whosoever wanted it.
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We changed horses every ten miles, all day long, and fairly flew over
the hard, level road. We jumped out and stretched our legs every time
the coach stopped, and so the night found us still vivacious and
unfatigued.
After supper a woman got in, who lived about fifty miles further on, and
we three had to take turns at sitting outside with the driver and
conductor. Apparently she was not a talkative woman. She would sit there
in the gathering twilight and fasten her steadfast eyes on a mosquito
rooting into her arm, and slowly she would raise her other hand till she
had got his range, and then she would launch a slap at him that would
have jolted a cow; and after that she would sit and contemplate the
corpse with tranquil satisfaction—for she never missed her mosquito; she
was a dead shot at short range. She never removed a carcase, but left
them there for bait. I sat by this grim Sphynx and watched her kill
thirty or forty mosquitoes—watched her, and waited for her to say
something, but she never did. So I finally opened the conversation
myself. I said:
“The mosquitoes are pretty bad, about here, madam.”
“You bet!”
“What did I understand you to say, madam?”
“You BET!”
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Then she cheered up, and faced around and said:
“Danged if I didn’t begin to think you fellers was deef and dumb. I did,
b’gosh. Here I’ve sot, and sot, and sot, a-bust’n muskeeters and
wonderin’ what was ailin’ ye. Fust I thot you was deef and dumb, then I
thot you was sick or crazy, or suthin’, and then by and by I begin to
reckon you was a passel of sickly fools that couldn’t think of nothing
to say. Wher’d ye come from?”
The Sphynx was a Sphynx no more! The fountains of her great deep were
broken up, and she rained the nine parts of speech forty days and forty
nights, metaphorically speaking, and buried us under a desolating deluge
of trivial gossip that left not a crag or pinnacle of rejoinder
projecting above the tossing waste of dislocated grammar and decomposed
pronunciation!
How we suffered, suffered, suffered! She went on, hour after hour, till
I was sorry I ever opened the mosquito question and gave her a start.
She never did stop again until she got to her journey’s end toward
daylight; and then she stirred us up as she was leaving the stage (for
we were nodding, by that time), and said:
“Now you git out at Cottonwood, you fellers, and lay over a couple o’
days, and I’ll be along some time to-night, and if I can do ye any good
by edgin’ in a word now and then, I’m right thar. Folks’ll tell you’t
I’ve always ben kind o’ offish and partic’lar for a gal that’s raised in
the woods, and I am, with the rag-tag and bob-tail, and a gal _has_ to
be, if she wants to _be_ anything, but when people comes along which is
my equals, I reckon I’m a pretty sociable heifer after all.”
We resolved not to “lay by at Cottonwood.”
CHAPTER III.
About an hour and a half before daylight we were bowling along smoothly
over the road—so smoothly that our cradle only rocked in a gentle,
lulling way, that was gradually soothing us to sleep, and dulling our
consciousness—when something gave away under us! We were dimly aware of
it, but indifferent to it. The coach stopped. We heard the driver and
conductor talking together outside, and rummaging for a lantern, and
swearing because they could not find it—but we had no interest in
whatever had happened, and it only added to our comfort to think of
those people out there at work in the murky night, and we snug in our
nest with the curtains drawn. But presently, by the sounds, there seemed
to be an examination going on, and then the driver’s voice said:
“By George, the thoroughbrace is broke!”
This startled me broad awake—as an undefined sense of calamity is always
apt to do. I said to myself: “Now, a thoroughbrace is probably part of a
horse; and doubtless a vital part, too, from the dismay in the driver’s
voice. Leg, maybe—and yet how could he break his leg waltzing along such
a road as this? No, it can’t be his leg. That is impossible, unless he
was reaching for the driver. Now, what can be the thoroughbrace of a
horse, I wonder? Well, whatever comes, I shall not air my ignorance in
this crowd, anyway.”
Just then the conductor’s face appeared at a lifted curtain, and his
lantern glared in on us and our wall of mail matter. He said: “Gents,
you’ll have to turn out a spell. Thoroughbrace is broke.”
We climbed out into a chill drizzle, and felt ever so homeless and
dreary. When I found that the thing they called a “thoroughbrace” was
the massive combination of belts and springs which the coach rocks
itself in, I said to the driver:
“I never saw a thoroughbrace used up like that, before, that I can
remember. How did it happen?”
“Why, it happened by trying to make one coach carry three days’
mail—that’s how it happened,” said he. “And right here is the very
direction which is wrote on all the newspaper-bags which was to be put
out for the Injuns for to keep ’em quiet. It’s most uncommon lucky,
becuz it’s so nation dark I should ’a’ gone by unbeknowns if that air
thoroughbrace hadn’t broke.”
I knew that he was in labor with another of those winks of his, though
I could not see his face, because he was bent down at work; and wishing
him a safe delivery, I turned to and helped the rest get out the
mail-sacks. It made a great pyramid by the roadside when it was all
out. When they had mended the thoroughbrace we filled the two boots
again, but put no mail on top, and only half as much inside as there
was before. The conductor bent all the seat-backs down, and then filled
the coach just half full of mail-bags from end to end. We objected
loudly to this, for it left us no seats. But the conductor was wiser
than we, and said a bed was better than seats, and moreover, this plan
would protect his thoroughbraces. We never wanted any seats after that.
The lazy bed was infinitely preferable. I had many an exciting day,
subsequently, lying on it reading the statutes and the dictionary, and
wondering how the characters would turn out.
The conductor said he would send back a guard from the next station to
take charge of the abandoned mail-bags, and we drove on.
It was now just dawn; and as we stretched our cramped legs full length
on the mail sacks, and gazed out through the windows across the wide
wastes of greensward clad in cool, powdery mist, to where there was an
expectant look in the eastern horizon, our perfect enjoyment took the
form of a tranquil and contented ecstasy. The stage whirled along at a
spanking gait, the breeze flapping curtains and suspended coats in a
most exhilarating way; the cradle swayed and swung luxuriously, the
pattering of the horses’ hoofs, the cracking of the driver’s whip, and
his “Hi-yi! g’lang!” were music; the spinning ground and the waltzing
trees appeared to give us a mute hurrah as we went by, and then slack up
and look after us with interest, or envy, or something; and as we lay
and smoked the pipe of peace and compared all this luxury with the years
of tiresome city life that had gone before it, we felt that there was
only one complete and satisfying happiness in the world, and we had
found it.
After breakfast, at some station whose name I have forgotten, we three
climbed up on the seat behind the driver, and let the conductor have our
bed for a nap. And by and by, when the sun made me drowsy, I lay down on
my face on top of the coach, grasping the slender iron railing, and
slept for an hour or more. That will give one an appreciable idea of
those matchless roads. Instinct will make a sleeping man grip a fast
hold of the railing when the stage jolts, but when it only swings and
sways, no grip is necessary. Overland drivers and conductors used to sit
in their places and sleep thirty or forty minutes at a time, on good
roads, while spinning along at the rate of eight or ten miles an hour. I
saw them do it, often. There was no danger about it; a sleeping man
_will_ seize the irons in time when the coach jolts. These men were hard
worked, and it _was_ not possible for them to stay awake all the time.
By and by we passed through Marysville, and over the Big Blue and Little
Sandy; thence about a mile, and entered Nebraska. About a mile further
on, we came to the Big Sandy—one hundred and eighty miles from St.
Joseph.
As the sun was going down, we saw the first specimen of an animal known
familiarly over two thousand miles of mountain and desert—from Kansas
clear to the Pacific Ocean—as the “jackass rabbit.” He is well named. He
is just like any other rabbit, except that he is from one third to twice
as large, has longer legs in proportion to his size, and has the most
preposterous ears that ever were mounted on any creature _but_ a
jackass.
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When he is sitting quiet, thinking about his sins, or is absent-minded
or unapprehensive of danger, his majestic ears project above him
conspicuously; but the breaking of a twig will scare him nearly to
death, and then he tilts his ears back gently and starts for home. All
you can see, then, for the next minute, is his long gray form stretched
out straight and “streaking it” through the low sage-brush, head erect,
eyes right, and ears just canted a little to the rear, but showing you
where the animal is, all the time, the same as if he carried a jib. Now
and then he makes a marvelous spring with his long legs, high over the
stunted sage-brush, and scores a leap that would make a horse envious.
Presently he comes down to a long, graceful “lope,” and shortly he
mysteriously disappears. He has crouched behind a sage-bush, and will
sit there and listen and tremble until you get within six feet of him,
when he will get under way again. But one must shoot at this creature
once, if he wishes to see him throw his heart into his heels, and do the
best he knows how. He is frightened clear through, now, and he lays his
long ears down on his back, straightens himself out like a yard-stick
every spring he makes, and scatters miles behind him with an easy
indifference that is enchanting.
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Our party made this specimen “hump himself,” as the conductor said. The
secretary started him with a shot from the Colt; I commenced spitting at
him with my weapon; and all in the same instant the old “Allen’s” whole
broadside let go with a rattling crash, and it is not putting it too
strong to say that the rabbit was frantic! He dropped his ears, set up
his tail, and left for San Francisco at a speed which can only be
described as a flash and a vanish! Long after he was out of sight we
could hear him whiz.
I do not remember where we first came across “sage-brush,” but as I have
been speaking of it I may as well describe it.
This is easily done, for if the reader can imagine a gnarled and
venerable live oak-tree reduced to a little shrub two feet-high, with
its rough bark, its foliage, its twisted boughs, all complete, he can
picture the “sage-brush” exactly. Often, on lazy afternoons in the
mountains, I have lain on the ground with my face under a sage-bush, and
entertained myself with fancying that the gnats among its foliage were
liliputian birds, and that the ants marching and countermarching about
its base were liliputian flocks and herds, and myself some vast loafer
from Brobdignag waiting to catch a little citizen and eat him.
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It is an imposing monarch of the forest in exquisite miniature, is the
“sage-brush.” Its foliage is a grayish green, and gives that tint to
desert and mountain. It smells like our domestic sage, and “sage-tea”
made from it taste like the sage-tea which all boys are so well
acquainted with. The sage-brush is a singularly hardy plant, and grows
right in the midst of deep sand, and among barren rocks, where nothing
else in the vegetable world would try to grow, except
“bunch-grass.”—[“Bunch-grass” grows on the bleak mountain-sides of
Nevada and neighboring territories, and offers excellent feed for
stock, even in the dead of winter, wherever the snow is blown aside and
exposes it; notwithstanding its unpromising home, bunch-grass is a
better and more nutritious diet for cattle and horses than almost any
other hay or grass that is known—so stock-men say.]—The sage-bushes
grow from three to six or seven feet apart, all over the mountains and
deserts of the Far West, clear to the borders of California. There is
not a tree of any kind in the deserts, for hundreds of miles—there is
no vegetation at all in a regular desert, except the sage-brush and its
cousin the “greasewood,” which is so much like the sage-brush that the
difference amounts to little. Camp-fires and hot suppers in the deserts
would be impossible but for the friendly sage-brush. Its trunk is as
large as a boy’s wrist (and from that up to a man’s arm), and its
crooked branches are half as large as its trunk—all good, sound, hard
wood, very like oak.
When a party camps, the first thing to be done is to cut sage-brush; and
in a few minutes there is an opulent pile of it ready for use. A hole a
foot wide, two feet deep, and two feet long, is dug, and sage-brush
chopped up and burned in it till it is full to the brim with glowing
coals. Then the cooking begins, and there is no smoke, and consequently
no swearing. Such a fire will keep all night, with very little
replenishing; and it makes a very sociable camp-fire, and one around
which the most impossible reminiscences sound plausible, instructive,
and profoundly entertaining.
Sage-brush is very fair fuel, but as a vegetable it is a distinguished
failure. Nothing can abide the taste of it but the jackass and his
illegitimate child the mule. But their testimony to its nutritiousness
is worth nothing, for they will eat pine knots, or anthracite coal, or
brass filings, or lead pipe, or old bottles, or anything that comes
handy, and then go off looking as grateful as if they had had oysters
for dinner. Mules and donkeys and camels have appetites that anything
will relieve temporarily, but nothing satisfy.
In Syria, once, at the head-waters of the Jordan, a camel took charge of
my overcoat while the tents were being pitched, and examined it with a
critical eye, all over, with as much interest as if he had an idea of
getting one made like it; and then, after he was done figuring on it as
an article of apparel, he began to contemplate it as an article of diet.
He put his foot on it, and lifted one of the sleeves out with his teeth,
and chewed and chewed at it, gradually taking it in, and all the while
opening and closing his eyes in a kind of religious ecstasy, as if he
had never tasted anything as good as an overcoat before, in his life.
Then he smacked his lips once or twice, and reached after the other
sleeve. Next he tried the velvet collar, and smiled a smile of such
contentment that it was plain to see that he regarded that as the
daintiest thing about an overcoat. The tails went next, along with some
percussion caps and cough candy, and some fig-paste from Constantinople.
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And then my newspaper correspondence dropped out, and he took a chance
in that—manuscript letters written for the home papers. But he was
treading on dangerous ground, now. He began to come across solid wisdom
in those documents that was rather weighty on his stomach; and
occasionally he would take a joke that would shake him up till it
loosened his teeth; it was getting to be perilous times with him, but he
held his grip with good courage and hopefully, till at last he began to
stumble on statements that not even a camel could swallow with impunity.
He began to gag and gasp, and his eyes to stand out, and his forelegs to
spread, and in about a quarter of a minute he fell over as stiff as a
carpenter’s work-bench, and died a death of indescribable agony. I went
and pulled the manuscript out of his mouth, and found that the sensitive
creature had choked to death on one of the mildest and gentlest
statements of fact that I ever laid before a trusting public.
I was about to say, when diverted from my subject, that occasionally one
finds sage-bushes five or six feet high, and with a spread of branch and
foliage in proportion, but two or two and a half feet is the usual
height.
CHAPTER IV.
As the sun went down and the evening chill came on, we made preparation
for bed. We stirred up the hard leather letter-sacks, and the knotty
canvas bags of printed matter (knotty and uneven because of projecting
ends and corners of magazines, boxes and books). We stirred them up and
redisposed them in such a way as to make our bed as level as possible.
And we _did_ improve it, too, though after all our work it had an
upheaved and billowy look about it, like a little piece of a stormy sea.
Next we hunted up our boots from odd nooks among the mail-bags where
they had settled, and put them on. Then we got down our coats, vests,
pantaloons and heavy woolen shirts, from the arm-loops where they had
been swinging all day, and clothed ourselves in them—for, there being no
ladies either at the stations or in the coach, and the weather being
hot, we had looked to our comfort by stripping to our underclothing, at
nine o’clock in the morning. All things being now ready, we stowed the
uneasy Dictionary where it would lie as quiet as possible, and placed
the water-canteens and pistols where we could find them in the dark.
Then we smoked a final pipe, and swapped a final yarn; after which, we
put the pipes, tobacco and bag of coin in snug holes and caves among the
mail-bags, and then fastened down the coach curtains all around, and
made the place as “dark as the inside of a cow,” as the conductor
phrased it in his picturesque way. It was certainly as dark as any place
could be—nothing was even dimly visible in it. And finally, we rolled
ourselves up like silk-worms, each person in his own blanket, and sank
peacefully to sleep.
Whenever the stage stopped to change horses, we would wake up, and try
to recollect where we were—and succeed—and in a minute or two the stage
would be off again, and we likewise. We began to get into country, now,
threaded here and there with little streams. These had high, steep banks
on each side, and every time we flew down one bank and scrambled up the
other, our party inside got mixed somewhat. First we would all be down
in a pile at the forward end of the stage, nearly in a sitting posture,
and in a second we would shoot to the other end, and stand on our heads.
And we would sprawl and kick, too, and ward off ends and corners of
mail-bags that came lumbering over us and about us; and as the dust
rose from the tumult, we would all sneeze in chorus, and the majority of
us would grumble, and probably say some hasty thing, like: “Take your
elbow out of my ribs!—can’t you quit crowding?”
Every time we avalanched from one end of the stage to the other, the
Unabridged Dictionary would come too; and every time it came it damaged
somebody. One trip it “barked” the Secretary’s elbow; the next trip it
hurt me in the stomach, and the third it tilted Bemis’s nose up till he
could look down his nostrils—he said. The pistols and coin soon settled
to the bottom, but the pipes, pipe-stems, tobacco and canteens clattered
and floundered after the Dictionary every time it made an assault on us,
and aided and abetted the book by spilling tobacco in our eyes, and
water down our backs.
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Still, all things considered, it was a very comfortable night. It wore
gradually away, and when at last a cold gray light was visible through
the puckers and chinks in the curtains, we yawned and stretched with
satisfaction, shed our cocoons, and felt that we had slept as much as
was necessary. By and by, as the sun rose up and warmed the world, we
pulled off our clothes and got ready for breakfast. We were just
pleasantly in time, for five minutes afterward the driver sent the weird
music of his bugle winding over the grassy solitudes, and presently we
detected a low hut or two in the distance. Then the rattling of the
coach, the clatter of our six horses’ hoofs, and the driver’s crisp
commands, awoke to a louder and stronger emphasis, and we went sweeping
down on the station at our smartest speed. It was fascinating—that old
overland stagecoaching.
We jumped out in undress uniform. The driver tossed his gathered reins
out on the ground, gaped and stretched complacently, drew off his heavy
buckskin gloves with great deliberation and insufferable dignity—taking
not the slightest notice of a dozen solicitous inquires after his
health, and humbly facetious and flattering accostings, and obsequious
tenders of service, from five or six hairy and half-civilized
station-keepers and hostlers who were nimbly unhitching our steeds and
bringing the fresh team out of the stables—for in the eyes of the
stage-driver of that day, station-keepers and hostlers were a sort of
good enough low creatures, useful in their place, and helping to make
up a world, but not the kind of beings which a person of distinction
could afford to concern himself with; while, on the contrary, in the
eyes of the station-keeper and the hostler, the stage-driver was a
hero—a great and shining dignitary, the world’s favorite son, the envy
of the people, the observed of the nations. When they spoke to him they
received his insolent silence meekly, and as being the natural and
proper conduct of so great a man; when he opened his lips they all hung
on his words with admiration (he never honored a particular individual
with a remark, but addressed it with a broad generality to the horses,
the stables, the surrounding country _and_ the human underlings); when
he discharged a facetious insulting personality at a hostler, that
hostler was happy for the day; when he uttered his one jest—old as the
hills, coarse, profane, witless, and inflicted on the same audience, in
the same language, every time his coach drove up there—the varlets
roared, and slapped their thighs, and swore it was the best thing
they’d ever heard in all their lives. And how they would fly around
when he wanted a basin of water, a gourd of the same, or a light for
his pipe!—but they would instantly insult a passenger if he so far
forgot himself as to crave a favor at their hands. They could do that
sort of insolence as well as the driver they copied it from—for, let it
be borne in mind, the overland driver had but little less contempt for
his passengers than he had for his hostlers.
The hostlers and station-keepers treated the really powerful _conductor_
of the coach merely with the best of what was their idea of civility,
but the _driver_ was the only being they bowed down to and worshipped.
How admiringly they would gaze up at him in his high seat as he gloved
himself with lingering deliberation, while some happy hostler held the
bunch of reins aloft, and waited patiently for him to take it! And how
they would bombard him with glorifying ejaculations as he cracked his
long whip and went careering away.
The station buildings were long, low huts, made of sundried, mud-colored
bricks, laid up without mortar (_adobes_, the Spaniards call these
bricks, and Americans shorten it to ’_dobies_). The roofs, which had no
slant to them worth speaking of, were thatched and then sodded or
covered with a thick layer of earth, and from this sprung a pretty rank
growth of weeds and grass. It was the first time we had ever seen a
man’s front yard on top of his house. The building consisted of barns,
stable-room for twelve or fifteen horses, and a hut for an eating-room
for passengers. This latter had bunks in it for the station-keeper and a
hostler or two. You could rest your elbow on its eaves, and you had to
bend in order to get in at the door. In place of a window there was a
square hole about large enough for a man to crawl through, but this had
no glass in it. There was no flooring, but the ground was packed hard.
There was no stove, but the fire-place served all needful purposes.
There were no shelves, no cupboards, no closets. In a corner stood an
open sack of flour, and nestling against its base were a couple of black
and venerable tin coffee-pots, a tin teapot, a little bag of salt, and a
side of bacon.
By the door of the station-keeper’s den, outside, was a tin wash-basin,
on the ground. Near it was a pail of water and a piece of yellow bar
soap, and from the eaves hung a hoary blue woolen shirt,
significantly—but this latter was the station-keeper’s private towel,
and only two persons in all the party might venture to use it—the stage-
driver and the conductor. The latter would not, from a sense of decency;
the former would not, because he did not choose to encourage the
advances of a station-keeper. We had towels—in the valise; they might as
well have been in Sodom and Gomorrah. We (and the conductor) used our
handkerchiefs, and the driver his pantaloons and sleeves. By the door,
inside, was fastened a small old-fashioned looking-glass frame, with two
little fragments of the original mirror lodged down in one corner of it.
This arrangement afforded a pleasant double-barreled portrait of you
when you looked into it, with one half of your head set up a couple of
inches above the other half. From the glass frame hung the half of a
comb by a string—but if I had to describe that patriarch or die, I
believe I would order some sample coffins.
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It had come down from Esau and Samson, and had been accumulating hair
ever since—along with certain impurities. In one corner of the room
stood three or four rifles and muskets, together with horns and pouches
of ammunition. The station-men wore pantaloons of coarse, country-woven
stuff, and into the seat and the inside of the legs were sewed ample
additions of buckskin, to do duty in place of leggings, when the man
rode horseback—so the pants were half dull blue and half yellow, and
unspeakably picturesque. The pants were stuffed into the tops of high
boots, the heels whereof were armed with great Spanish spurs, whose
little iron clogs and chains jingled with every step. The man wore a
huge beard and mustachios, an old slouch hat, a blue woolen shirt, no
suspenders, no vest, no coat—in a leathern sheath in his belt, a great
long “navy” revolver (slung on right side, hammer to the front), and
projecting from his boot a horn-handled bowie-knife.
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The furniture of the hut was neither gorgeous nor much in the way. The
rocking-chairs and sofas were not present, and never had been, but they
were represented by two three-legged stools, a pine-board bench four
feet long, and two empty candle-boxes. The table was a greasy board on
stilts, and the table-cloth and napkins had not come—and they were not
looking for them, either. A battered tin platter, a knife and fork, and
a tin pint cup, were at each man’s place, and the driver had a queens-
ware saucer that had seen better days. Of course this duke sat at the
head of the table. There was one isolated piece of table furniture that
bore about it a touching air of grandeur in misfortune. This was the
caster. It was German silver, and crippled and rusty, but it was so
preposterously out of place there that it was suggestive of a tattered
exiled king among barbarians, and the majesty of its native position
compelled respect even in its degradation.
There was only one cruet left, and that was a stopperless, fly-specked,
broken-necked thing, with two inches of vinegar in it, and a dozen
preserved flies with their heels up and looking sorry they had invested
there.
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The station-keeper upended a disk of last week’s bread, of the shape and
size of an old-time cheese, and carved some slabs from it which were as
good as Nicholson pavement, and tenderer.
He sliced off a piece of bacon for each man, but only the experienced
old hands made out to eat it, for it was condemned army bacon which the
United States would not feed to its soldiers in the forts, and the stage
company had bought it cheap for the sustenance of their passengers and
employees. We may have found this condemned army bacon further out on
the plains than the section I am locating it in, but we _found_ it—there
is no gainsaying that.
Then he poured for us a beverage which he called “Slumgullion,” and it
is hard to think he was not inspired when he named it. It really
pretended to be tea, but there was too much dish-rag, and sand, and old
bacon-rind in it to deceive the intelligent traveler.
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He had no sugar and no milk—not even a spoon to stir the ingredients
with.
We could not eat the bread or the meat, nor drink the “slumgullion.” And
when I looked at that melancholy vinegar-cruet, I thought of the
anecdote (a very, very old one, even at that day) of the traveler who
sat down to a table which had nothing on it but a mackerel and a pot of
mustard. He asked the landlord if this was all. The landlord said:
“_All_! Why, thunder and lightning, I should think there was mackerel
enough there for six.”
“But I don’t like mackerel.”
“Oh—then help yourself to the mustard.”
In other days I had considered it a good, a very good, anecdote, but
there was a dismal plausibility about it, here, that took all the humor
out of it.
Our breakfast was before us, but our teeth were idle.
I tasted and smelt, and said I would take coffee, I believed. The
station-boss stopped dead still, and glared at me speechless. At last,
when he came to, he turned away and said, as one who communes with
himself upon a matter too vast to grasp:
“_Coffee_! Well, if that don’t go clean ahead of me, I’m d——d!”
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We could not eat, and there was no conversation among the hostlers and
herdsmen—we all sat at the same board. At least there was no
conversation further than a single hurried request, now and then, from
one employee to another. It was always in the same form, and always
gruffly friendly. Its western freshness and novelty startled me, at
first, and interested me; but it presently grew monotonous, and lost its
charm. It was:
“Pass the bread, you son of a skunk!” No, I forget—skunk was not the
word; it seems to me it was still stronger than that; I know it was, in
fact, but it is gone from my memory, apparently. However, it is no
matter—probably it was too strong for print, anyway. It is the landmark
in my memory which tells me where I first encountered the vigorous new
vernacular of the occidental plains and mountains.
We gave up the breakfast, and paid our dollar apiece and went back to
our mail-bag bed in the coach, and found comfort in our pipes. Right
here we suffered the first diminution of our princely state. We left our
six fine horses and took six mules in their place. But they were wild
Mexican fellows, and a man had to stand at the head of each of them and
hold him fast while the driver gloved and got himself ready. And when at
last he grasped the reins and gave the word, the men sprung suddenly
away from the mules’ heads and the coach shot from the station as if it
had issued from a cannon. How the frantic animals did scamper! It was a
fierce and furious gallop—and the gait never altered for a moment till
we reeled off ten or twelve miles and swept up to the next collection of
little station-huts and stables.
So we flew along all day. At 2 P.M. the belt of timber that fringes the
North Platte and marks its windings through the vast level floor of the
Plains came in sight. At 4 P.M. we crossed a branch of the river, and at
5 P.M. we crossed the Platte itself, and landed at Fort Kearney, fifty-
six hours out from _St. Joe_—THREE HUNDRED MILES!
Now that was stage-coaching on the great overland, ten or twelve years
ago, when perhaps not more than ten men in America, all told, expected
to live to see a railroad follow that route to the Pacific. But the
railroad is there, now, and it pictures a thousand odd comparisons and
contrasts in my mind to read the following sketch, in the New York
Times, of a recent trip over almost the very ground I have been
describing. I can scarcely comprehend the new state of things:
“ACROSS THE CONTINENT.
“At 4.20 P.M., Sunday, we rolled out of the station at Omaha, and
started westward on our long jaunt. A couple of hours out, dinner was
announced—an “event” to those of us who had yet to experience what it is
to eat in one of Pullman’s hotels on wheels; so, stepping into the car
next forward of our sleeping palace, we found ourselves in the dining-
car. It was a revelation to us, that first dinner on Sunday. And though
we continued to dine for four days, and had as many breakfasts and
suppers, our whole party never ceased to admire the perfection of the
arrangements, and the marvelous results achieved. Upon tables covered
with snowy linen, and garnished with services of solid silver, Ethiop
waiters, flitting about in spotless white, placed as by magic a repast
at which Delmonico himself could have had no occasion to blush; and,
indeed, in some respects it would be hard for that distinguished chef to
match our menu; for, in addition to all that ordinarily makes up a
first-chop dinner, had we not our antelope steak (the gormand who has
not experienced this—bah! what does he know of the feast of fat things?)
our delicious mountain-brook trout, and choice fruits and berries, and
(sauce piquant and unpurchasable!) our sweet-scented, appetite-
compelling air of the prairies?
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“You may depend upon it, we all did justice to the good things, and as
we washed them down with bumpers of sparkling Krug, whilst we sped along
at the rate of thirty miles an hour, agreed it was the fastest living we
had ever experienced. (We beat that, however, two days afterward when we
made twenty-seven miles in twenty-seven minutes, while our Champagne
glasses filled to the brim spilled not a drop!) After dinner we repaired
to our drawing-room car, and, as it was Sabbath eve, intoned some of the
grand old hymns—“Praise God from whom,” etc.; “Shining Shore,”
“Coronation,” etc.—the voices of the men singers and of the women
singers blending sweetly in the evening air, while our train, with its
great, glaring Polyphemus eye, lighting up long vistas of prairie,
rushed into the night and the Wild. Then to bed in luxurious couches,
where we slept the sleep of the just and only awoke the next morning
(Monday) at eight o’clock, to find ourselves at the crossing of the
North Platte, three hundred miles from Omaha—fifteen hours and forty
minutes out.”
CHAPTER V.
Another night of alternate tranquillity and turmoil. But morning came,
by and by. It was another glad awakening to fresh breezes, vast expanses
of level greensward, bright sunlight, an impressive solitude utterly
without visible human beings or human habitations, and an atmosphere of
such amazing magnifying properties that trees that seemed close at hand
were more than three mile away. We resumed undress uniform, climbed a-
top of the flying coach, dangled our legs over the side, shouted
occasionally at our frantic mules, merely to see them lay their ears
back and scamper faster, tied our hats on to keep our hair from blowing
away, and leveled an outlook over the world-wide carpet about us for
things new and strange to gaze at. Even at this day it thrills me
through and through to think of the life, the gladness and the wild
sense of freedom that used to make the blood dance in my veins on those
fine overland mornings!
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Along about an hour after breakfast we saw the first prairie-dog
villages, the first antelope, and the first wolf. If I remember rightly,
this latter was the regular _cayote_ (pronounced ky-_o_-te) of the
farther deserts. And if it _was_, he was not a pretty creature or
respectable either, for I got well acquainted with his race afterward,
and can speak with confidence. The cayote is a long, slim, sick and
sorry-looking skeleton, with a gray wolf-skin stretched over it, a
tolerably bushy tail that forever sags down with a despairing expression
of forsakenness and misery, a furtive and evil eye, and a long, sharp
face, with slightly lifted lip and exposed teeth. He has a general
slinking expression all over. The cayote is a living, breathing allegory
of Want. He is _always_ hungry.
He is always poor, out of luck and friendless. The meanest creatures
despise him, and even the fleas would desert him for a velocipede. He is
so spiritless and cowardly that even while his exposed teeth are
pretending a threat, the rest of his face is apologizing for it. And he
is so _homely_!—so scrawny, and ribby, and coarse-haired, and pitiful.
When he sees you he lifts his lip and lets a flash of his teeth out, and
then turns a little out of the course he was pursuing, depresses his
head a bit, and strikes a long, soft-footed trot through the sage-brush,
glancing over his shoulder at you, from time to time, till he is about
out of easy pistol range, and then he stops and takes a deliberate
survey of you; he will trot fifty yards and stop again—another fifty and
stop again; and finally the gray of his gliding body blends with the
gray of the sage-brush, and he disappears. All this is when you make no
demonstration against him; but if you do, he develops a livelier
interest in his journey, and instantly electrifies his heels and puts
such a deal of real estate between himself and your weapon, that by the
time you have raised the hammer you see that you need a minie rifle, and
by the time you have got him in line you need a rifled cannon, and by
the time you have “drawn a bead” on him you see well enough that nothing
but an unusually long-winded streak of lightning could reach him where
he is now. But if you start a swift-footed dog after him, you will enjoy
it ever so much—especially if it is a dog that has a good opinion of
himself, and has been brought up to think he knows something about
speed.
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The cayote will go swinging gently off on that deceitful trot of his,
and every little while he will smile a fraudful smile over his shoulder
that will fill that dog entirely full of encouragement and worldly
ambition, and make him lay his head still lower to the ground, and
stretch his neck further to the front, and pant more fiercely, and stick
his tail out straighter behind, and move his furious legs with a yet
wilder frenzy, and leave a broader and broader, and higher and denser
cloud of desert sand smoking behind, and marking his long wake across
the level plain! And all this time the dog is only a short twenty feet
behind the cayote, and to save the soul of him he cannot understand why
it is that he cannot get perceptibly closer; and he begins to get
aggravated, and it makes him madder and madder to see how gently the
cayote glides along and never pants or sweats or ceases to smile; and he
grows still more and more incensed to see how shamefully he has been
taken in by an entire stranger, and what an ignoble swindle that long,
calm, soft-footed trot is; and next he notices that he is getting
fagged, and that the cayote actually has to slacken speed a little to
keep from running away from him—and _then_ that town-dog is mad in
earnest, and he begins to strain and weep and swear, and paw the sand
higher than ever, and reach for the cayote with concentrated and
desperate energy. This “spurt” finds him six feet behind the gliding
enemy, and two miles from his friends. And then, in the instant that a
wild new hope is lighting up his face, the cayote turns and smiles
blandly upon him once more, and with a something about it which seems to
say: “Well, I shall have to tear myself away from you, bub—business is
business, and it will not do for me to be fooling along this way all
day”—and forthwith there is a rushing sound, and the sudden splitting of
a long crack through the atmosphere, and behold that dog is solitary and
alone in the midst of a vast solitude!
It makes his head swim. He stops, and looks all around; climbs the
nearest sand-mound, and gazes into the distance; shakes his head
reflectively, and then, without a word, he turns and jogs along back to
his train, and takes up a humble position under the hindmost wagon, and
feels unspeakably mean, and looks ashamed, and hangs his tail at half-
mast for a week. And for as much as a year after that, whenever there is
a great hue and cry after a cayote, that dog will merely glance in that
direction without emotion, and apparently observe to himself, “I believe
I do not wish any of the pie.”
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The cayote lives chiefly in the most desolate and forbidding desert,
along with the lizard, the jackass-rabbit and the raven, and gets an
uncertain and precarious living, and earns it. He seems to subsist
almost wholly on the carcases of oxen, mules and horses that have
dropped out of emigrant trains and died, and upon windfalls of carrion,
and occasional legacies of offal bequeathed to him by white men who have
been opulent enough to have something better to butcher than condemned
army bacon.
He will eat anything in the world that his first cousins, the desert-
frequenting tribes of Indians will, and they will eat anything they can
bite. It is a curious fact that these latter are the only creatures
known to history who will eat nitro-glycerine and ask for more if they
survive.
The cayote of the deserts beyond the Rocky Mountains has a peculiarly
hard time of it, owing to the fact that his relations, the Indians, are
just as apt to be the first to detect a seductive scent on the desert
breeze, and follow the fragrance to the late ox it emanated from, as he
is himself; and when this occurs he has to content himself with sitting
off at a little distance watching those people strip off and dig out
everything edible, and walk off with it. Then he and the waiting ravens
explore the skeleton and polish the bones. It is considered that the
cayote, and the obscene bird, and the Indian of the desert, testify
their blood kinship with each other in that they live together in the
waste places of the earth on terms of perfect confidence and friendship,
while hating all other creature and yearning to assist at their
funerals. He does not mind going a hundred miles to breakfast, and a
hundred and fifty to dinner, because he is sure to have three or four
days between meals, and he can just as well be traveling and looking at
the scenery as lying around doing nothing and adding to the burdens of
his parents.
We soon learned to recognize the sharp, vicious bark of the cayote as it
came across the murky plain at night to disturb our dreams among the
mail-sacks; and remembering his forlorn aspect and his hard fortune,
made shift to wish him the blessed novelty of a long day’s good luck and
a limitless larder the morrow.
CHAPTER VI.
Our new conductor (just shipped) had been without sleep for twenty
hours. Such a thing was very frequent. From St. Joseph, Missouri, to
Sacramento, California, by stage-coach, was nearly nineteen hundred
miles, and the trip was often made in fifteen days (the cars do it in
four and a half, now), but the time specified in the mail contracts, and
required by the schedule, was eighteen or nineteen days, if I remember
rightly. This was to make fair allowance for winter storms and snows,
and other unavoidable causes of detention. The stage company had
everything under strict discipline and good system. Over each two
hundred and fifty miles of road they placed an agent or superintendent,
and invested him with great authority. His beat or jurisdiction of two
hundred and fifty miles was called a “division.” He purchased horses,
mules harness, and food for men and beasts, and distributed these things
among his stage stations, from time to time, according to his judgment
of what each station needed. He erected station buildings and dug wells.
He attended to the paying of the station-keepers, hostlers, drivers and
blacksmiths, and discharged them whenever he chose. He was a very, very
great man in his “division”—a kind of Grand Mogul, a Sultan of the
Indies, in whose presence common men were modest of speech and manner,
and in the glare of whose greatness even the dazzling stage-driver
dwindled to a penny dip. There were about eight of these kings, all
told, on the overland route.
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Next in rank and importance to the division-agent came the “conductor.”
His beat was the same length as the agent’s—two hundred and fifty miles.
He sat with the driver, and (when necessary) rode that fearful distance,
night and day, without other rest or sleep than what he could get
perched thus on top of the flying vehicle. Think of it! He had absolute
charge of the mails, express matter, passengers and stage-coach, until
he delivered them to the next conductor, and got his receipt for them.
Consequently he had to be a man of intelligence, decision and
considerable executive ability. He was usually a quiet, pleasant man,
who attended closely to his duties, and was a good deal of a gentleman.
It was not absolutely necessary that the division-agent should be a
gentleman, and occasionally he wasn’t. But he was always a general in
administrative ability, and a bull-dog in courage and
determination—otherwise the chieftainship over the lawless underlings of
the overland service would never in any instance have been to him
anything but an equivalent for a month of insolence and distress and a
bullet and a coffin at the end of it. There were about sixteen or
eighteen conductors on the overland, for there was a daily stage each
way, and a conductor on every stage.
Next in _real_ and official rank and importance, _after_ the conductor,
came my delight, the driver—next in real but not in _apparent_
importance—for we have seen that in the eyes of the common herd the
driver was to the conductor as an admiral is to the captain of the flag-
ship. The driver’s beat was pretty long, and his sleeping-time at the
stations pretty short, sometimes; and so, but for the grandeur of his
position his would have been a sorry life, as well as a hard and a
wearing one. We took a new driver every day or every night (for they
drove backward and forward over the same piece of road all the time),
and therefore we never got as well acquainted with them as we did with
the conductors; and besides, they would have been above being familiar
with such rubbish as passengers, anyhow, as a general thing. Still, we
were always eager to get a sight of each and every new driver as soon as
the watch changed, for each and every day we were either anxious to get
rid of an unpleasant one, or loath to part with a driver we had learned
to like and had come to be sociable and friendly with. And so the first
question we asked the conductor whenever we got to where we were to
exchange drivers, was always, “Which is him?” The grammar was faulty,
maybe, but we could not know, then, that it would go into a book some
day. As long as everything went smoothly, the overland driver was well
enough situated, but if a fellow driver got sick suddenly it made
trouble, for the coach _must_ go on, and so the potentate who was about
to climb down and take a luxurious rest after his long night’s siege in
the midst of wind and rain and darkness, had to stay where he was and do
the sick man’s work. Once, in the Rocky Mountains, when I found a driver
sound asleep on the box, and the mules going at the usual break-neck
pace, the conductor said never mind him, there was no danger, and he was
doing double duty—had driven seventy-five miles on one coach, and was
now going back over it on this without rest or sleep. A hundred and
fifty miles of holding back of six vindictive mules and keeping them
from climbing the trees! It sounds incredible, but I remember the
statement well enough.
The station-keepers, hostlers, etc., were low, rough characters, as
already described; and from western Nebraska to Nevada a considerable
sprinkling of them might be fairly set down as outlaws—fugitives from
justice, criminals whose best security was a section of country which
was without law and without even the pretence of it. When the “division-
agent” issued an order to one of these parties he did it with the full
understanding that he might have to enforce it with a navy six-shooter,
and so he always went “fixed” to make things go along smoothly.
Now and then a division-agent was really obliged to shoot a hostler
through the head to teach him some simple matter that he could have
taught him with a club if his circumstances and surroundings had been
different. But they were snappy, able men, those division-agents, and
when they tried to teach a subordinate anything, that subordinate
generally “got it through his head.”
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A great portion of this vast machinery—these hundreds of men and
coaches, and thousands of mules and horses—was in the hands of Mr. Ben
Holliday. All the western half of the business was in his hands. This
reminds me of an incident of Palestine travel which is pertinent here,
so I will transfer it just in the language in which I find it set down
in my Holy Land note-book:
No doubt everybody has heard of Ben Holliday—a man of prodigious energy,
who used to send mails and passengers flying across the continent in his
overland stage-coaches like a very whirlwind—two thousand long miles in
fifteen days and a half, by the watch! But this fragment of history is
not about Ben Holliday, but about a young New York boy by the name of
Jack, who traveled with our small party of pilgrims in the Holy Land
(and who had traveled to California in Mr. Holliday’s overland coaches
three years before, and had by no means forgotten it or lost his gushing
admiration of Mr. H.) Aged nineteen. Jack was a good boy—a good-hearted
and always well-meaning boy, who had been reared in the city of New
York, and although he was bright and knew a great many useful things,
his Scriptural education had been a good deal neglected—to such a
degree, indeed, that all Holy Land history was fresh and new to him, and
all Bible names mysteries that had never disturbed his virgin ear.
Also in our party was an elderly pilgrim who was the reverse of Jack, in
that he was learned in the Scriptures and an enthusiast concerning them.
He was our encyclopedia, and we were never tired of listening to his
speeches, nor he of making them. He never passed a celebrated locality,
from Bashan to Bethlehem, without illuminating it with an oration. One
day, when camped near the ruins of Jericho, he burst forth with
something like this:
“Jack, do you see that range of mountains over yonder that bounds the
Jordan valley? The mountains of Moab, Jack! Think of it, my boy—the
actual mountains of Moab—renowned in Scripture history! We are actually
standing face to face with those illustrious crags and peaks—and for all
we know” [dropping his voice impressively], “our eyes may be resting at
this very moment upon the spot WHERE LIES THE MYSTERIOUS GRAVE OF MOSES!
Think of it, Jack!”
“Moses who?” (falling inflection).
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“Moses who! Jack, you ought to be ashamed of yourself—you ought to be
ashamed of such criminal ignorance. Why, Moses, the great guide,
soldier, poet, lawgiver of ancient Israel! Jack, from this spot where we
stand, to Egypt, stretches a fearful desert three hundred miles in
extent—and across that desert that wonderful man brought the children of
Israel!—guiding them with unfailing sagacity for forty years over the
sandy desolation and among the obstructing rocks and hills, and landed
them at last, safe and sound, within sight of this very spot; and where
we now stand they entered the Promised Land with anthems of rejoicing!
It was a wonderful, wonderful thing to do, Jack! Think of it!”
“Forty years? Only three hundred miles? Humph! Ben Holliday would have
fetched them through in thirty-six hours!”
The boy meant no harm. He did not know that he had said anything that
was wrong or irreverent. And so no one scolded him or felt offended with
him—and nobody could but some ungenerous spirit incapable of excusing
the heedless blunders of a boy.
At noon on the fifth day out, we arrived at the “Crossing of the South
Platte,” _alias_ “Julesburg,” _alias_ “Overland City,” four hundred and
seventy miles from St. Joseph—the strangest, quaintest, funniest
frontier town that our untraveled eyes had ever stared at and been
astonished with.
CHAPTER VII.
It did seem strange enough to see a town again after what appeared to us
such a long acquaintance with deep, still, almost lifeless and houseless
solitude! We tumbled out into the busy street feeling like meteoric
people crumbled off the corner of some other world, and wakened up
suddenly in this. For an hour we took as much interest in Overland City
as if we had never seen a town before. The reason we had an hour to
spare was because we had to change our stage (for a less sumptuous
affair, called a “mud-wagon”) and transfer our freight of mails.
Presently we got under way again. We came to the shallow, yellow, muddy
South Platte, with its low banks and its scattering flat sand-bars and
pigmy islands—a melancholy stream straggling through the centre of the
enormous flat plain, and only saved from being impossible to find with
the naked eye by its sentinel rank of scattering trees standing on
either bank. The Platte was “up,” they said—which made me wish I could
see it when it was down, if it could look any sicker and sorrier. They
said it was a dangerous stream to cross, now, because its quicksands
were liable to swallow up horses, coach and passengers if an attempt was
made to ford it. But the mails had to go, and we made the attempt. Once
or twice in midstream the wheels sunk into the yielding sands so
threateningly that we half believed we had dreaded and avoided the sea
all our lives to be shipwrecked in a “mud-wagon” in the middle of a
desert at last. But we dragged through and sped away toward the setting
sun.
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Next morning, just before dawn, when about five hundred and fifty miles
from St. Joseph, our mud-wagon broke down. We were to be delayed five or
six hours, and therefore we took horses, by invitation, and joined a
party who were just starting on a buffalo hunt. It was noble sport
galloping over the plain in the dewy freshness of the morning, but our
part of the hunt ended in disaster and disgrace, for a wounded buffalo
bull chased the passenger Bemis nearly two miles, and then he forsook
his horse and took to a lone tree. He was very sullen about the matter
for some twenty-four hours, but at last he began to soften little by
little, and finally he said:
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“Well, it was not funny, and there was no sense in those gawks making
themselves so facetious over it. I tell you I was angry in earnest for
awhile. I should have shot that long gangly lubber they called Hank, if
I could have done it without crippling six or seven other people—but of
course I couldn’t, the old ‘Allen’s’ so confounded comprehensive. I wish
those loafers had been up in the tree; they wouldn’t have wanted to
laugh so. If I had had a horse worth a cent—but no, the minute he saw
that buffalo bull wheel on him and give a bellow, he raised straight up
in the air and stood on his heels. The saddle began to slip, and I took
him round the neck and laid close to him, and began to pray. Then he
came down and stood up on the other end awhile, and the bull actually
stopped pawing sand and bellowing to contemplate the inhuman spectacle.
“Then the bull made a pass at him and uttered a bellow that sounded
perfectly frightful, it was so close to me, and that seemed to literally
prostrate my horse’s reason, and make a raving distracted maniac of him,
and I wish I may die if he didn’t stand on his head for a quarter of a
minute and shed tears. He was absolutely out of his mind—he was, as sure
as truth itself, and he really didn’t know what he was doing. Then the
bull came charging at us, and my horse dropped down on all fours and
took a fresh start—and then for the next ten minutes he would actually
throw one hand-spring after another so fast that the bull began to get
unsettled, too, and didn’t know where to start in—and so he stood there
sneezing, and shovelling dust over his back, and bellowing every now and
then, and thinking he had got a fifteen-hundred dollar circus horse for
breakfast, certain. Well, I was first out on his neck—the horse’s, not
the bull’s—and then underneath, and next on his rump, and sometimes head
up, and sometimes heels—but I tell you it seemed solemn and awful to be
ripping and tearing and carrying on so in the presence of death, as you
might say. Pretty soon the bull made a snatch for us and brought away
some of my horse’s tail (I suppose, but do not know, being pretty busy
at the time), but _something_ made him hungry for solitude and suggested
to him to get up and hunt for it.
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“And then you ought to have seen that spider legged old skeleton go! and
you ought to have seen the bull cut out after him, too—head down, tongue
out, tail up, bellowing like everything, and actually mowing down the
weeds, and tearing up the earth, and boosting up the sand like a
whirlwind! By George, it was a hot race! I and the saddle were back on
the rump, and I had the bridle in my teeth and holding on to the pommel
with both hands. First we left the dogs behind; then we passed a jackass
rabbit; then we overtook a cayote, and were gaining on an antelope when
the rotten girth let go and threw me about thirty yards off to the left,
and as the saddle went down over the horse’s rump he gave it a lift with
his heels that sent it more than four hundred yards up in the air, I
wish I may die in a minute if he didn’t. I fell at the foot of the only
solitary tree there was in nine counties adjacent (as any creature could
see with the naked eye), and the next second I had hold of the bark with
four sets of nails and my teeth, and the next second after that I was
astraddle of the main limb and blaspheming my luck in a way that made my
breath smell of brimstone. I _had_ the bull, now, if he did not think of
one thing. But that one thing I dreaded. I dreaded it very seriously.
There was a possibility that the bull might not think of it, but there
were greater chances that he would. I made up my mind what I would do in
case he did. It was a little over forty feet to the ground from where I
sat. I cautiously unwound the lariat from the pommel of my saddle—”
“Your _saddle_? Did you take your saddle up in the tree with you?”
“Take it up in the tree with me? Why, how you talk. Of course I didn’t.
No man could do that. It _fell_ in the tree when it came down.”
“Oh—exactly.”
“Certainly. I unwound the lariat, and fastened one end of it to the
limb. It was the very best green raw-hide, and capable of sustaining
tons. I made a slip-noose in the other end, and then hung it down to see
the length. It reached down twenty-two feet—half way to the ground. I
then loaded every barrel of the Allen with a double charge. I felt
satisfied. I said to myself, if he never thinks of that _one_ thing that
I dread, all right—but if he does, all right anyhow—I am fixed for him.
But don’t you know that the very thing a man dreads is the thing that
always happens? Indeed it is so. I watched the bull, now, with
anxiety—anxiety which no one can conceive of who has not been in such a
situation and felt that at any moment death might come. Presently a
thought came into the bull’s eye. I knew it! said I—if my nerve fails
now, I am lost. Sure enough, it was just as I had dreaded, he started in
to climb the tree—”
“What, the bull?”
“Of course—who else?”
“But a bull can’t climb a tree.”
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“He can’t, can’t he? Since you know so much about it, did you ever see a
bull try?”
“No! I never dreamt of such a thing.”
“Well, then, what is the use of your talking that way, then? Because you
never saw a thing done, is that any reason why it can’t be done?”
“Well, all right—go on. What did you do?”
“The bull started up, and got along well for about ten feet, then
slipped and slid back. I breathed easier. He tried it again—got up a
little higher—slipped again. But he came at it once more, and this time
he was careful. He got gradually higher and higher, and my spirits went
down more and more. Up he came—an inch at a time—with his eyes hot, and
his tongue hanging out. Higher and higher—hitched his foot over the
stump of a limb, and looked up, as much as to say, ‘You are my meat,
friend.’ Up again—higher and higher, and getting more excited the closer
he got. He was within ten feet of me! I took a long breath,—and then
said I, ‘It is now or never.’ I had the coil of the lariat all ready; I
paid it out slowly, till it hung right over his head; all of a sudden I
let go of the slack, and the slipnoose fell fairly round his neck!
Quicker than lightning I out with the Allen and let him have it in the
face. It was an awful roar, and must have scared the bull out of his
senses. When the smoke cleared away, there he was, dangling in the air,
twenty foot from the ground, and going out of one convulsion into
another faster than you could count! I didn’t stop to count, anyhow—I
shinned down the tree and shot for home.”
“Bemis, is all that true, just as you have stated it?”
“I wish I may rot in my tracks and die the death of a dog if it isn’t.”
“Well, we can’t refuse to believe it, and we don’t. But if there were
some proofs—”
“Proofs! Did I bring back my lariat?”
“No.”
“Did I bring back my horse?”
“No.”
“Did you ever see the bull again?”
“No.”
“Well, then, what more do you want? I never saw anybody as particular as
you are about a little thing like that.”
I made up my mind that if this man was not a liar he only missed it by
the skin of his teeth. This episode reminds me of an incident of my
brief sojourn in Siam, years afterward. The European citizens of a town
in the neighborhood of Bangkok had a prodigy among them by the name of
Eckert, an Englishman—a person famous for the number, ingenuity and
imposing magnitude of his lies. They were always repeating his most
celebrated falsehoods, and always trying to “draw him out” before
strangers; but they seldom succeeded. Twice he was invited to the house
where I was visiting, but nothing could seduce him into a specimen lie.
One day a planter named Bascom, an influential man, and a proud and
sometimes irascible one, invited me to ride over with him and call on
Eckert. As we jogged along, said he:
“Now, do you know where the fault lies? It lies in putting Eckert on his
guard. The minute the boys go to pumping at Eckert he knows perfectly
well what they are after, and of course he shuts up his shell. Anybody
might know he would. But when we get there, we must play him finer than
that. Let him shape the conversation to suit himself—let him drop it or
change it whenever he wants to. Let him see that nobody is trying to
draw him out. Just let him have his own way. He will soon forget himself
and begin to grind out lies like a mill. Don’t get impatient—just keep
quiet, and let me play him. I will make him lie. It does seem to me that
the boys must be blind to overlook such an obvious and simple trick as
that.”
Eckert received us heartily—a pleasant-spoken, gentle-mannered creature.
We sat in the veranda an hour, sipping English ale, and talking about
the king, and the sacred white elephant, the Sleeping Idol, and all
manner of things; and I noticed that my comrade never led the
conversation himself or shaped it, but simply followed Eckert’s lead,
and betrayed no solicitude and no anxiety about anything. The effect was
shortly perceptible. Eckert began to grow communicative; he grew more
and more at his ease, and more and more talkative and sociable. Another
hour passed in the same way, and then all of a sudden Eckert said:
“Oh, by the way! I came near forgetting. I have got a thing here to
astonish you. Such a thing as neither you nor any other man ever heard
of—I’ve got a cat that will eat cocoanut! Common green cocoanut—and not
only eat the meat, but drink the milk. It is so—I’ll swear to it.”
A quick glance from Bascom—a glance that I understood—then:
“Why, bless my soul, I never heard of such a thing. Man, it is
impossible.”
“I knew you would say it. I’ll fetch the cat.”
He went in the house. Bascom said:
“There—what did I tell you? Now, that is the way to handle Eckert. You
see, I have petted him along patiently, and put his suspicions to sleep.
I am glad we came. You tell the boys about it when you go back. Cat eat
a cocoanut—oh, my! Now, that is just his way, exactly—he will tell the
absurdest lie, and trust to luck to get out of it again.
“Cat eat a cocoanut—the innocent fool!”
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Eckert approached with his cat, sure enough.
Bascom smiled. Said he:
“I’ll hold the cat—you bring a cocoanut.”
Eckert split one open, and chopped up some pieces. Bascom smuggled a
wink to me, and proffered a slice of the fruit to puss. She snatched it,
swallowed it ravenously, and asked for more!
We rode our two miles in silence, and wide apart. At least I was silent,
though Bascom cuffed his horse and cursed him a good deal,
notwithstanding the horse was behaving well enough. When I branched off
homeward, Bascom said:
“Keep the horse till morning. And—you need not speak of this—foolishness
to the boys.”
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CHAPTER VIII.
In a little while all interest was taken up in stretching our necks and
watching for the “pony-rider”—the fleet messenger who sped across the
continent from St. Joe to Sacramento, carrying letters nineteen hundred
miles in eight days! Think of that for perishable horse and human flesh
and blood to do! The pony-rider was usually a little bit of a man,
brimful of spirit and endurance. No matter what time of the day or night
his watch came on, and no matter whether it was winter or summer,
raining, snowing, hailing, or sleeting, or whether his “beat” was a
level straight road or a crazy trail over mountain crags and precipices,
or whether it led through peaceful regions or regions that swarmed with
hostile Indians, he must be always ready to leap into the saddle and be
off like the wind! There was no idling-time for a pony-rider on duty. He
rode fifty miles without stopping, by daylight, moonlight, starlight, or
through the blackness of darkness—just as it happened. He rode a
splendid horse that was born for a racer and fed and lodged like a
gentleman; kept him at his utmost speed for ten miles, and then, as he
came crashing up to the station where stood two men holding fast a
fresh, impatient steed, the transfer of rider and mail-bag was made in
the twinkling of an eye, and away flew the eager pair and were out of
sight before the spectator could get hardly the ghost of a look. Both
rider and horse went “flying light.” The rider’s dress was thin, and
fitted close; he wore a “round-about,” and a skull-cap, and tucked his
pantaloons into his boot-tops like a race-rider. He carried no arms—he
carried nothing that was not absolutely necessary, for even the postage
on his literary freight was worth _five dollars a letter_.
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He got but little frivolous correspondence to carry—his bag had business
letters in it, mostly. His horse was stripped of all unnecessary weight,
too. He wore a little wafer of a racing-saddle, and no visible blanket.
He wore light shoes, or none at all. The little flat mail-pockets
strapped under the rider’s thighs would each hold about the bulk of a
child’s primer. They held many and many an important business chapter
and newspaper letter, but these were written on paper as airy and thin
as gold-leaf, nearly, and thus bulk and weight were economized. The
stage-coach traveled about a hundred to a hundred and twenty-five miles
a day (twenty-four hours), the pony-rider about two hundred and fifty.
There were about eighty pony-riders in the saddle all the time, night
and day, stretching in a long, scattering procession from Missouri to
California, forty flying eastward, and forty toward the west, and among
them making four hundred gallant horses earn a stirring livelihood and
see a deal of scenery every single day in the year.
We had had a consuming desire, from the beginning, to see a pony-rider,
but somehow or other all that passed us and all that met us managed to
streak by in the night, and so we heard only a whiz and a hail, and the
swift phantom of the desert was gone before we could get our heads out
of the windows. But now we were expecting one along every moment, and
would see him in broad daylight. Presently the driver exclaims:
“HERE HE COMES!”
Every neck is stretched further, and every eye strained wider. Away
across the endless dead level of the prairie a black speck appears
against the sky, and it is plain that it moves. Well, I should think so!
In a second or two it becomes a horse and rider, rising and falling,
rising and falling—sweeping toward us nearer and nearer—growing more and
more distinct, more and more sharply defined—nearer and still nearer,
and the flutter of the hoofs comes faintly to the ear—another instant a
whoop and a hurrah from our upper deck, a wave of the rider’s hand, but
no reply, and man and horse burst past our excited faces, and go winging
away like a belated fragment of a storm!
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So sudden is it all, and so like a flash of unreal fancy, that but for
the flake of white foam left quivering and perishing on a mail-sack
after the vision had flashed by and disappeared, we might have doubted
whether we had seen any actual horse and man at all, maybe.
We rattled through Scott’s Bluffs Pass, by and by. It was along here
somewhere that we first came across genuine and unmistakable alkali
water in the road, and we cordially hailed it as a first-class
curiosity, and a thing to be mentioned with eclat in letters to the
ignorant at home. This water gave the road a soapy appearance, and in
many places the ground looked as if it had been whitewashed. I think the
strange alkali water excited us as much as any wonder we had come upon
yet, and I know we felt very complacent and conceited, and better
satisfied with life after we had added it to our list of things which
_we_ had seen and some other people had not. In a small way we were the
same sort of simpletons as those who climb unnecessarily the perilous
peaks of Mont Blanc and the Matterhorn, and derive no pleasure from it
except the reflection that it isn’t a common experience. But once in a
while one of those parties trips and comes darting down the long
mountain-crags in a sitting posture, making the crusted snow smoke
behind him, flitting from bench to bench, and from terrace to terrace,
jarring the earth where he strikes, and still glancing and flitting on
again, sticking an iceberg into himself every now and then, and tearing
his clothes, snatching at things to save himself, taking hold of trees
and fetching them along with him, roots and all, starting little rocks
now and then, then big boulders, then acres of ice and snow and patches
of forest, gathering and still gathering as he goes, adding and still
adding to his massed and sweeping grandeur as he nears a three thousand-
foot precipice, till at last he waves his hat magnificently and rides
into eternity on the back of a raging and tossing avalanche!
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This is all very fine, but let us not be carried away by excitement, but
ask calmly, how does this person feel about it in his cooler moments
next day, with six or seven thousand feet of snow and stuff on top of
him?
We crossed the sand hills near the scene of the Indian mail robbery and
massacre of 1856, wherein the driver and conductor perished, and also
all the passengers but one, it was supposed; but this must have been a
mistake, for at different times afterward on the Pacific coast I was
personally acquainted with a hundred and thirty-three or four people who
were wounded during that massacre, and barely escaped with their lives.
There was no doubt of the truth of it—I had it from their own lips. One
of these parties told me that he kept coming across arrow-heads in his
system for nearly seven years after the massacre; and another of them
told me that he was struck so literally full of arrows that after the
Indians were gone and he could raise up and examine himself, he could
not restrain his tears, for his clothes were completely ruined.
The most trustworthy tradition avers, however, that only one man, a
person named Babbitt, survived the massacre, and he was desperately
wounded. He dragged himself on his hands and knee (for one leg was
broken) to a station several miles away. He did it during portions of
two nights, lying concealed one day and part of another, and for more
than forty hours suffering unimaginable anguish from hunger, thirst and
bodily pain. The Indians robbed the coach of everything it contained,
including quite an amount of treasure.
CHAPTER IX.
We passed Fort Laramie in the night, and on the seventh morning out we
found ourselves in the Black Hills, with Laramie Peak at our elbow
(apparently) looming vast and solitary—a deep, dark, rich indigo blue in
hue, so portentously did the old colossus frown under his beetling brows
of storm-cloud. He was thirty or forty miles away, in reality, but he
only seemed removed a little beyond the low ridge at our right. We
breakfasted at Horse-Shoe Station, six hundred and seventy-six miles out
from St. Joseph. We had now reached a hostile Indian country, and during
the afternoon we passed Laparelle Station, and enjoyed great discomfort
all the time we were in the neighborhood, being aware that many of the
trees we dashed by at arm’s length concealed a lurking Indian or two.
During the preceding night an ambushed savage had sent a bullet through
the pony-rider’s jacket, but he had ridden on, just the same, because
pony-riders were not allowed to stop and inquire into such things except
when killed. As long as they had life enough left in them they had to
stick to the horse and ride, even if the Indians had been waiting for
them a week, and were entirely out of patience. About two hours and a
half before we arrived at Laparelle Station, the keeper in charge of it
had fired four times at an Indian, but he said with an injured air that
the Indian had “skipped around so’s to spile everything—and ammunition’s
blamed skurse, too.” The most natural inference conveyed by his manner
of speaking was, that in “skipping around,” the Indian had taken an
unfair advantage.