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 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 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 under-clothing, 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 mailbags 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.
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._