2. 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.
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 homœopathic 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.
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.
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." 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.
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!"
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."