Roughing It
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 he 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.
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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.
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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 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 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.
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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 “Slumgullion,” 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.
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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!”
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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
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?
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“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.”
CHAPTER V.
Another night of alternate tranquillity and turmoil. But morning came,
by and by. It was another glad awakening to fresh breezes, vast expanses
of level greensward, bright sunlight, an impressive solitude utterly
without visible human beings or human habitations, and an atmosphere of
such amazing magnifying properties that trees that seemed close at hand
were more than three mile away. We resumed undress uniform, climbed a-
top of the flying coach, dangled our legs over the side, shouted
occasionally at our frantic mules, merely to see them lay their ears
back and scamper faster, tied our hats on to keep our hair from blowing
away, and leveled an outlook over the world-wide carpet about us for
things new and strange to gaze at. Even at this day it thrills me
through and through to think of the life, the gladness and the wild
sense of freedom that used to make the blood dance in my veins on those
fine overland mornings!
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Along about an hour after breakfast we saw the first prairie-dog
villages, the first antelope, and the first wolf. If I remember rightly,
this latter was the regular _cayote_ (pronounced ky-_o_-te) of the