University of Virginia Library

26. CHAPTER XXVI.
HAM.

Two days Biddulph solaced himself on those
rare luxuries of Ruby's ménage; the third, we
started.

Ruby and the surgeon rode with us a score of
miles. It was hard to say good-bye. We were
grateful, and they were sorry.

“What can we do for you, Ruby?”

“Raze Laramie, abolish the plains, level the
Rockys, nullify the Sioux, and disband the
American army.”

“What can we do for you, Doctor?”

“Find me a wife, box her up so that no one
will stop her in transitu, mark Simeon Pathie,
M. D., U. S. A., and ship to Fort Vancouver,
Oregon, where I shall be stationed next summer.
Your English lady in half a day has spoiled my
philosophy of a life.”

“Good-bye and good luck!”

It was late travelling through that houseless
waste. Deep snow already blanched the Black
Hills, and Laramie Peak, their chief. Mr. Bierstadt,

in his fine picture in this year's Academy,
has shown them as they are in the mellow days
of summer. Now, cold and stern, they warned
us to hasten on.

We did hasten. We crowded through the buffalo;
we crossed and recrossed the Platte, already
curdling with winter; we dashed over the prairies
of Kansas, blackened by fire and whitened by
snow, but then unstained by any peaceful settler's
blood.

Jake Shamberlain, returning with his party,
met us on the way.

“I passed the train with the young woman
and her father,” said he. “We camped together
one night, and bein' as I was a friend of your 'n,
she give me a talk. Pooty tall talkin' 't wuz,
and I wuz teched in a new spot. I 've felt mean
as muck ever sence she opened to me on religion,
and when I git home I 'm goan to swing clear of
the Church, ef I ken cut clear, and emigrate to
Oregon. So, Barrownight, next time you come
out, you 'll find me on a claim there, out to the
Willamette or the Umpqua, just as much like
a gentleman's park in England as one grasshopper
is to another, only they hain't got no such
mountains to England as I 'll show you thar.”

“Well, Jake, we 'll try to pay you our respects.”

We hastened on. Why pause for our adventures?

They were but episodes along our new
gallop of three. This time it was not restless,
anxious gallop. We had no doubt but that in
good time we should overtake our friends, in
regions where men are not shot along the right
arm when they protect insulted dames.

Brent was himself again. We rode hard.
Biddulph was as fine a fellow as my grandmother
England has mothered. Find an Englishman
vital enough to be a Come-outer, and you have
found a man worthy to be the peer of an American
with Yankee education, Western scope, and
California irrepressibility.

Winter chased us close. Often we woke at
night, and found our bivouac sheeted with cold
snow, — a cool sheet, but luckily outside our
warm blankets. It was full December when the
plains left us, fell back, and beached us upon the
outer edge of civilization, at Independence, Missouri.

The muddy Missouri was running dregs.
Steamboats were tired of skipping from sand-bar
to sand-bar. Engineer had reported to Captain,
that “Kangaroo No. 5 would bust, if he did n't
stop trying to make her lift herself over the
damp country by her braces.” No more steam-boating
on the yellow ditch until there was a
rise; until the Platte sent down sand three and
water one, or the Yellowstone mud three and

water one, or the Missouri proper grit three and
water one. We must travel by land to St. Louis
and railroads.

We could go with our horses as fast as the
stage-coaches. So we sold our pack beasts, and
started to continue our gallop of three across
Missouri.

Half-way across, we stopped one evening at the
mean best tavern in a mean town, — a frowzy
county town, with a dusty public square, a boxy
church, and a spittley court-house.

Fit entertainment for beast the tavern offered.
We saw our horses stabled, and had our supper.

“Shall we go into the Spittoon?” said Biddulph.

“Certainly,” said Brent. “The bar-room — I
am sorry to hear you speak of it with foreign
prejudice — is an institution, and merits study.
Argee, upon the which the bar-room is based, is
also an institution.”

“Well, I came to study American institutions.
Let us go in and take a whiff of disgust.”

Fit entertainment for brute the bar-room offered.
In that club-room we found the brute
class drinking, swearing, spitting, squabbling
over the price of hemp and the price of “niggers,”
and talking what it called “politics.”

One tall, truculent Pike, the loudest of all that
blatant crew, seemed to Brent and myself an old

acquaintance. We had seen him or his double
somewhere. But neither of us could fit him with
a pedestal in our long gallery of memory. Saints
one takes pains to remember, and their scenes;
but satyrs one endeavors to lose.

“Have you had enough of the Spittoon?” I
asked Biddulph. “Shall we go up? They 've
put us all three in the same room; but bivouacs
in the same big room — Out-Doors — are what
we are best used to.”

Two and a half beds, one broken-backed chair,
a wash-stand decked with an ancient fringed
towel and an abandoned tooth-brush, one torn
slipper, and a stove-pipe hole, furnished our
bedchamber.

We were about to cast lots for the half-bed, when
we heard two men enter the next room. The
partition was only paper pasted over lath, and
cut up as if a Border Ruffian member of Congress
had practised at it with a bowie-knife before a
street-fight. Every word of our neighbors came
to us. They were talking of a slave bargain. I
eliminate their oaths, though such filtration does
them injustice.

“Eight hundred dollars,” said the first speaker,
and his voice startled us as if a dead man we
knew had spoken. “Eight hundred, — that 's
the top of my pile fur that boy. Ef he warn't so
old and had n't one eye poked out, I agree he 'd
be wuth a heap more.”

“Waal, a trade 's a trade. I 'll take yer
stump. Count out yer dimes, and I 'll fill out a
blank bill of sale. Murker, the boy 's yourn.”

“Murker!” — we both started at the name.
This was the satyr we had observed in the bar-room.
Had Fulano's victim crept from under
his cairn in Luggernel Alley, and chased us to
take flesh here and harm us again. Such a
superstitious thought crossed my mind.

The likeness — look, voice, and name — was
presently accounted for.

“You 're lookin' fur yer brother out from
Sacramenter, 'bout now, I reckon,” said the
trader.

“He wuz comin' cross lots with a man named
Larrap, a pardener of his'n. Like enough they 've
stayed over winter in Salt Lake. They oughter
rake down a most a mountainious pile thar.”

“Mormons is flush and sarcy with their dimes
sence the emigration. Now thar 's yer bill of
sale, all right.”

“And thar 's yer money, all right.”

“That are 's wut I call a screechin' good price
fur an old one-eyed nigger. Fourteen hundred
dollars, — an all-fired price.”

“Eight hundred, you mean.”

“No; fourteen. Yer see, you 're not up ter
taime on the nigger question. I know 'em like a
church-steeple. When I bought that are boy,

now comin' three year, I seed he wuz a sprightly
nigger, one er yer ambitious sort, what would be
mighty apt to git fractious, an' be makin' tracks,
onless I got a holt on him. So sez I to him,
`Ham, you 're a sprightly nigger, one of the raal
ambitious sort, now aincher?' He allowed he
warnt nothin' else. `Waal,' sez I, `Ham, how 'd
you like to buy yerself, an' be a free nigger, an'
hev a house of yer own, an' a woman of yer own,
all jess like white folks?' `Lor,' sez he, `Massa,
I 'd like it a heap.' `Waal,' sez I, `you jess
scrabble round an' raise me seven hundred dollars,
an' I 'll sell you to yerself, an' cheap at that.'
So yer see he began to pay up, an' I got a holt
on him. He 's a handy nigger, an' a likely
nigger, an' a pop'lar nigger. He ken play on
ther fiddle like taime, — pooty nigh a minstril is
that are nigger. He ken cut hair an' fry a beefsteak
with ayry man. He ken drive team, an'
do a little j'iner work, an' shoe a mule when thar
ain't no reg'lar blacksmith round. He made
these yer boots, an' reg'lar stompers they is.
He 's one er them chirrupy, smilin' niggers,
with white teeth an' genteel manners, what critturs
an' foaks nat'rally takes to. Waal, he picked
up the bits and quarters right smart. He 's ben
at it, lammin' ahead raal ambitious, for 'bout
three year. Last Sunday, after church, he pinted
up the last ten of the six hundred. So I allowed
't wuz come time to sell him. He wuz gettin'
his bead drawed, an' his idees sot on freedom
very onhealthy. I did n't like to disapp'int him
to ther last; so I allowed 't wuz jest as well to
let you hev him cheap to go down River. That 's
how to work them fractious runaway niggers.
That are 's my patent. You ken hev it for
nothin'. Haw! haw!”

“Haw, haw, haw! You are one er ther boys.
I 'm dum sorry that are trick can't be did twicet
on the same nigger. I reckon he knows too
much for that. Waal, s'pose we walk round to
the calaboose, 'fore we go to bed, an' see ef he 's
chained up all right.”

They went out.

Biddulph spoke first.

“Shame!”

“Yes,” said Brent; “do you wonder that we
have to run away to the Rockys and spend our
indignation on grizzlys?”

“What are we going to do now?”

“Try to abolish slavery in Ham's case. Come;
we 'll go buy him a file.”

“We seem to have business with the Murker
family,” said I.

“A hard lot they are. Representative brutes!”

“I am getting a knowledge of all classes on
your continent,” said Biddulph. “Some I like
better than others!”

“Don't be too harsh on us malecontents for the
sin of slavery. It is an ancestral taint. We
shall burn it out before many decades.”

“You had better, or it will set your own
house on fire.”

It was late as we walked along the streets,
channels of fever and ague now frozen up for the
winter. We saw a light through a shop door,
and hammered stoutly for admission.

A clerk, long-haired and frowzy, opened ungraciously.
In the back shop were three others,
also long-haired and frowzy, dealing cards and
drinking a dark compost from tumblers.

“Port wine,” whispered Brent. “Fine Old
London Dock Port is the favorite beverage, when
the editor, the lawyer, the apothecary, and the
merchant meet to play euchre in Missouri.”

We bought our files from the surly clerk, and
made for the calaboose. It was a stout log structure,
with grated windows. At one of these, by
the low moonlight, we saw a negro. It was cold
and late. Nobody was near. We hailed the man.

“Ham.”

“That 's me, Massa.”

“You 're sold to Murker, to go south to-morrow
morning. If you want to get free, catch!”

Brent tossed him up the files.

“Catch again!” said Biddulph, and up went
a rattling purse, England's subsidy.

Ham's white teeth and genteel manners appeared
at once. He grinned, and whispered
thanks.

“Is that all we can do?” asked the Baronet,
as we walked off.

“Yes,” said Brent, taking a nasal tone.
“Ham 's a pop'lar nigger, a handy nigger, one
er your raal ambitious sort. He ken cut hair,
fry a beefsteak, and play on the fiddle like a
minstril. He ken shoe a mule, drive a team, do
a little j'iner work, and make stompers. Yes,
Biddulph, trust him to gnaw himself free with
that Connecticut rat-tail.”

“Ham against Japhet; I hope he 'll win.”

“Now,” said Brent, “that we 've put in action
Christ's Golden Rule, Jefferson's Declaration of
Independence, and All-the-wisdom's Preamble to
the Constitution, we can sleep the sleep of well-doers,
if we have two man-stealers — and one
the brother of a murderer — only papered off
from us.”