4. 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.
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 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.
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. 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 presented 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.
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
"Slum gullion," 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.
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!"
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 employe 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?
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."