As the sun went down and the evening chill came
on, we made preparation for bed. We stirred up the hard leather lettersacks,
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 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.
PAGE 13
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
fireplace 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 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 grass 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.
PAGE 14
It had come down from Esau and Samson, and had been accumula-ting 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 represented 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 misfor-tune. 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 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 then 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 enough 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 plausability 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 employee to another. It was always in
the same form, and always gruffy friendly. Its western freshness and
novelty startled me, at first, an interested me; but it presently grew
monotonus, and lost its charm. It was:
Page 15
"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 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 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 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, fitting 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."