There were two men in the company who caused me particular discomfort.
One was a little Swede, about twenty-five years old, who knew only one
song, and he was forever singing it. By day we were all crowded into one
small, stifling bar-room, and so there was no escaping this person's
music. Through all the profanity, whisky-guzzling, "old sledge" and
quarreling, his monotonous song meandered with never a variation in its
tiresome sameness, and it seemed to me, at last, that I would be content
to die, in order to be rid of the torture. The other man was a stalwart
ruffian called "Arkansas," who carried two revolvers in his belt and a
bowie knife projecting from his boot, and who was always drunk and always
suffering for a fight. But he was so feared, that nobody would
accommodate him. He would try all manner of little wary ruses to entrap
somebody into an offensive remark, and his face would light up now and
then when he fancied he was fairly on the scent of a fight, but
invariably his victim would elude his toils and then he would show a
disappointment that was almost pathetic. The landlord, Johnson, was a
meek, well-meaning fellow, and Arkansas fastened on him early, as a
promising subject, and gave him no rest day or night, for awhile. On the
fourth morning, Arkansas got drunk and sat himself down to wait for an
opportunity. Presently Johnson came in, just comfortably sociable with
whisky, and said:
"I reckon the Pennsylvania 'lection--"
Arkansas raised his finger impressively and Johnson stopped. Arkansas
rose unsteadily and confronted him. Said he:
"Wha-what do you know a--about Pennsylvania? Answer me that. Wha--what
do you know 'bout Pennsylvania?"
"I was only goin' to say--"
"You was only goin' to say. You was! You was only goin' to say--what
was you goin' to say? That's it! That's what I want to know. I want to
know wha--what you ('ic) what you know about Pennsylvania, since you're
makin' yourself so d---d free. Answer me that!"
"Mr. Arkansas, if you'd only let me--"
"Who's a henderin' you? Don't you insinuate nothing agin me!--don't you
do it. Don't you come in here bullyin' around, and cussin' and goin' on
like a lunatic--don't you do it. 'Coz I won't stand it. If fight's what
you want, out with it! I'm your man! Out with it!"
Said Johnson, backing into a corner, Arkansas following, menacingly:
"Why, I never said nothing, Mr. Arkansas. You don't give a man no
chance. I was only goin' to say that Pennsylvania was goin' to have an
election next week--that was all--that was everything I was goin' to say
--I wish I may never stir if it wasn't."
"Well then why d'n't you say it? What did you come swellin' around that
way for, and tryin' to raise trouble?"
"Why I didn't come swellin' around, Mr. Arkansas--I just--"
"I'm a liar am I! Ger-reat Caesar's ghost--"
"Oh, please, Mr. Arkansas, I never meant such a thing as that, I wish I
may die if I did. All the boys will tell you that I've always spoke well
of you, and respected you more'n any man in the house. Ask Smith. Ain't
it so, Smith? Didn't I say, no longer ago than last night, that for a
man that was a gentleman all the time and every way you took him, give me
Arkansas? I'll leave it to any gentleman here if them warn't the very
words I used. Come, now, Mr. Arkansas, le's take a drink--le's shake
hands and take a drink. Come up--everybody! It's my treat. Come up,
Bill, Tom, Bob, Scotty--come up. I want you all to take a drink with me
and Arkansas--old Arkansas, I call him--bully old Arkansas. Gimme your
hand agin. Look at him, boys--just take a look at him. Thar stands the
whitest man in America!--and the man that denies it has got to fight me,
that's all. Gimme that old flipper agin!"
They embraced, with drunken affection on the landlord's part and
unresponsive toleration on the part of Arkansas, who, bribed by a drink,
was disappointed of his prey once more. But the foolish landlord was so
happy to have escaped butchery, that he went on talking when he ought to
have marched himself out of danger. The consequence was that Arkansas
shortly began to glower upon him dangerously, and presently said:
"Lan'lord, will you p-please make that remark over agin if you please?"
"I was a-sayin' to Scotty that my father was up'ards of eighty year old
when he died."
"Was that all that you said?"
"Yes, that was all."
"Didn't say nothing but that?"
"No--nothing."
Then an uncomfortable silence.
Arkansas played with his glass a moment, lolling on his elbows on the
counter. Then he meditatively scratched his left shin with his right
boot, while the awkward silence continued. But presently he loafed away
toward the stove, looking dissatisfied; roughly shouldered two or three
men out of a comfortable position; occupied it himself, gave a sleeping
dog a kick that sent him howling under a bench, then spread his long legs
and his blanket-coat tails apart and proceeded to warm his back. In a
little while he fell to grumbling to himself, and soon he slouched back
to the bar and said:
"Lan'lord, what's your idea for rakin' up old personalities and blowin'
about your father? Ain't this company agreeable to you? Ain't it? If
this company ain't agreeable to you, p'r'aps we'd better leave. Is that
your idea? Is that what you're coming at?"
"Why bless your soul, Arkansas, I warn't thinking of such a thing. My
father and my mother--"
"Lan'lord, don't crowd a man! Don't do it. If nothing'll do you but a
disturbance, out with it like a man ('ic)--but don't rake up old bygones
and fling'em in the teeth of a passel of people that wants to be
peaceable if they could git a chance. What's the matter with you this
mornin', anyway? I never see a man carry on so."
"Arkansas, I reely didn't mean no harm, and I won't go on with it if it's
onpleasant to you. I reckon my licker's got into my head, and what with
the flood, and havin' so many to feed and look out for--"
"So that's what's a-ranklin' in your heart, is it? You want us to leave
do you? There's too many on us. You want us to pack up and swim. Is
that it? Come!"
"Please be reasonable, Arkansas. Now you know that I ain't the man to--"
"Are you a threatenin' me? Are you? By George, the man don't live that
can skeer me! Don't you try to come that game, my chicken--'cuz I can
stand a good deal, but I won't stand that. Come out from behind that bar
till I clean you! You want to drive us out, do you, you sneakin'
underhanded hound! Come out from behind that bar! I'll learn you to
bully and badger and browbeat a gentleman that's forever trying to
befriend you and keep you out of trouble!"
"Please, Arkansas, please don't shoot! If there's got to be bloodshed--"
"Do you hear that, gentlemen? Do you hear him talk about bloodshed? So
it's blood you want, is it, you ravin' desperado! You'd made up your
mind to murder somebody this mornin'--I knowed it perfectly well. I'm
the man, am I? It's me you're goin' to murder, is it? But you can't do
it 'thout I get one chance first, you thievin' black-hearted,
white-livered son of a nigger! Draw your weepon!"
With that, Arkansas began to shoot, and the landlord to clamber over
benches, men and every sort of obstacle in a frantic desire to escape.
In the midst of the wild hubbub the landlord crashed through a glass
door, and as Arkansas charged after him the landlord's wife suddenly
appeared in the doorway and confronted the desperado with a pair of
scissors! Her fury was magnificent. With head erect and flashing eye
she stood a moment and then advanced, with her weapon raised. The
astonished ruffian hesitated, and then fell back a step. She followed.
She backed him step by step into the middle of the bar-room, and then,
while the wondering crowd closed up and gazed, she gave him such another
tongue-lashing as never a cowed and shamefaced braggart got before,
perhaps! As she finished and retired victorious, a roar of applause
shook the house, and every man ordered "drinks for the crowd" in one and
the same breath.
The lesson was entirely sufficient. The reign of terror was over, and
the Arkansas domination broken for good. During the rest of the season
of island captivity, there was one man who sat apart in a state of
permanent humiliation, never mixing in any quarrel or uttering a boast,
and never resenting the insults the once cringing crew now constantly
leveled at him, and that man was "Arkansas."
By the fifth or sixth morning the waters had subsided from the land, but
the stream in the old river bed was still high and swift and there was no
possibility of crossing it. On the eighth it was still too high for an
entirely safe passage, but life in the inn had become next to
insupportable by reason of the dirt, drunkenness, fighting, etc., and so
we made an effort to get away. In the midst of a heavy snow-storm we
embarked in a canoe, taking our saddles aboard and towing our horses
after us by their halters. The Prussian, Ollendorff, was in the bow,
with a paddle, Ballou paddled in the middle, and I sat in the stern
holding the halters. When the horses lost their footing and began to
swim, Ollendorff got frightened, for there was great danger that the
horses would make our aim uncertain, and it was plain that if we failed
to land at a certain spot the current would throw us off and almost
surely cast us into the main Carson, which was a boiling torrent, now.
Such a catastrophe would be death, in all probability, for we would be
swept to sea in the "Sink" or overturned and drowned. We warned
Ollendorff to keep his wits about him and handle himself carefully, but
it was useless; the moment the bow touched the bank, he made a spring and
the canoe whirled upside down in ten-foot water.
Ollendorff seized some brush and dragged himself ashore, but Ballou and I
had to swim for it, encumbered with our overcoats. But we held on to the
canoe, and although we were washed down nearly to the Carson, we managed
to push the boat ashore and make a safe landing. We were cold and
water-soaked, but safe. The horses made a landing, too, but our saddles
were gone, of course. We tied the animals in the sage-brush and there
they had to stay for twenty-four hours. We baled out the canoe and
ferried over some food and blankets for them, but we slept one more night
in the inn before making another venture on our journey.
The next morning it was still snowing furiously when we got away with our
new stock of saddles and accoutrements. We mounted and started. The
snow lay so deep on the ground that there was no sign of a road
perceptible, and the snow-fall was so thick that we could not see more
than a hundred yards ahead, else we could have guided our course by the
mountain ranges. The case looked dubious, but Ollendorff said his
instinct was as sensitive as any compass, and that he could "strike a
bee-line" for Carson city and never diverge from it. He said that if he
were to straggle a single point out of the true line his instinct would
assail him like an outraged conscience. Consequently we dropped into his
wake happy and content. For half an hour we poked along warily enough,
but at the end of that time we came upon a fresh trail, and Ollendorff
shouted proudly:
"I knew I was as dead certain as a compass, boys! Here we are, right in
somebody's tracks that will hunt the way for us without any trouble.
Let's hurry up and join company with the party."
So we put the horses into as much of a trot as the deep snow would allow,
and before long it was evident that we were gaining on our predecessors,
for the tracks grew more distinct. We hurried along, and at the end of
an hour the tracks looked still newer and fresher--but what surprised us
was, that the number of travelers in advance of us seemed to steadily
increase. We wondered how so large a party came to be traveling at such
a time and in such a solitude. Somebody suggested that it must be a
company of soldiers from the fort, and so we accepted that solution and
jogged along a little faster still, for they could not be far off now.
But the tracks still multiplied, and we began to think the platoon of
soldiers was miraculously expanding into a regiment--Ballou said they had
already increased to five hundred! Presently he stopped his horse and
said:
"Boys, these are our own tracks, and we've actually been circussing round
and round in a circle for more than two hours, out here in this blind
desert! By George this is perfectly hydraulic!"
Then the old man waxed wroth and abusive. He called Ollendorff all
manner of hard names--said he never saw such a lurid fool as he was, and
ended with the peculiarly venomous opinion that he "did not know as much
as a logarythm!"
We certainly had been following our own tracks. Ollendorff and his
"mental compass" were in disgrace from that moment.
After all our hard travel, here we were on the bank of the stream again,
with the inn beyond dimly outlined through the driving snow-fall. While
we were considering what to do, the young Swede landed from the canoe and
took his pedestrian way Carson-wards, singing his same tiresome song
about his "sister and his brother" and "the child in the grave with its
mother," and in a short minute faded and disappeared in the white
oblivion. He was never heard of again. He no doubt got bewildered and
lost, and Fatigue delivered him over to Sleep and Sleep betrayed him to
Death. Possibly he followed our treacherous tracks till he became
exhausted and dropped.
Presently the Overland stage forded the now fast receding stream and
started toward Carson on its first trip since the flood came. We
hesitated no longer, now, but took up our march in its wake, and trotted
merrily along, for we had good confidence in the driver's bump of
locality. But our horses were no match for the fresh stage team. We
were soon left out of sight; but it was no matter, for we had the deep
ruts the wheels made for a guide. By this time it was three in the
afternoon, and consequently it was not very long before night came--and
not with a lingering twilight, but with a sudden shutting down like a
cellar door, as is its habit in that country. The snowfall was still as
thick as ever, and of course we could not see fifteen steps before us;
but all about us the white glare of the snow-bed enabled us to discern
the smooth sugar-loaf mounds made by the covered sage-bushes, and just in
front of us the two faint grooves which we knew were the steadily filling
and slowly disappearing wheel-tracks.
Now those sage-bushes were all about the same height--three or four feet;
they stood just about seven feet apart, all over the vast desert; each of
them was a mere snow-mound, now; in any direction that you proceeded (the
same as in a well laid out orchard) you would find yourself moving down a
distinctly defined avenue, with a row of these snow-mounds an either side
of it--an avenue the customary width of a road, nice and level in its
breadth, and rising at the sides in the most natural way, by reason of
the mounds. But we had not thought of this. Then imagine the chilly
thrill that shot through us when it finally occurred to us, far in the
night, that since the last faint trace of the wheel-tracks had long ago
been buried from sight, we might now be wandering down a mere sage-brush
avenue, miles away from the road and diverging further and further away
from it all the time. Having a cake of ice slipped down one's back is
placid comfort compared to it. There was a sudden leap and stir of blood
that had been asleep for an hour, and as sudden a rousing of all the
drowsing activities in our minds and bodies. We were alive and awake at
once--and shaking and quaking with consternation, too. There was an
instant halting and dismounting, a bending low and an anxious scanning of
the road-bed. Useless, of course; for if a faint depression could not be
discerned from an altitude of four or five feet above it, it certainly
could not with one's nose nearly against it.