Roughing It
But don’t you know that the very thing a man dreads is the thing that
always happens? Indeed it is so. I watched the bull, now, with
anxiety—anxiety which no one can conceive of who has not been in such a
situation and felt that at any moment death might come. Presently a
thought came into the bull’s eye. I knew it! said I—if my nerve fails
now, I am lost. Sure enough, it was just as I had dreaded, he started in
to climb the tree—”
“What, the bull?”
“Of course—who else?”
“But a bull can’t climb a tree.”
065.jpg (75K)
“He can’t, can’t he? Since you know so much about it, did you ever see a
bull try?”
“No! I never dreamt of such a thing.”
“Well, then, what is the use of your talking that way, then? Because you
never saw a thing done, is that any reason why it can’t be done?”
“Well, all right—go on. What did you do?”
“The bull started up, and got along well for about ten feet, then
slipped and slid back. I breathed easier. He tried it again—got up a
little higher—slipped again. But he came at it once more, and this time
he was careful. He got gradually higher and higher, and my spirits went
down more and more. Up he came—an inch at a time—with his eyes hot, and
his tongue hanging out. Higher and higher—hitched his foot over the
stump of a limb, and looked up, as much as to say, ‘You are my meat,
friend.’ Up again—higher and higher, and getting more excited the closer
he got. He was within ten feet of me! I took a long breath,—and then
said I, ‘It is now or never.’ I had the coil of the lariat all ready; I
paid it out slowly, till it hung right over his head; all of a sudden I
let go of the slack, and the slipnoose fell fairly round his neck!
Quicker than lightning I out with the Allen and let him have it in the
face. It was an awful roar, and must have scared the bull out of his
senses. When the smoke cleared away, there he was, dangling in the air,
twenty foot from the ground, and going out of one convulsion into
another faster than you could count! I didn’t stop to count, anyhow—I
shinned down the tree and shot for home.”
“Bemis, is all that true, just as you have stated it?”
“I wish I may rot in my tracks and die the death of a dog if it isn’t.”
“Well, we can’t refuse to believe it, and we don’t. But if there were
some proofs—”
“Proofs! Did I bring back my lariat?”
“No.”
“Did I bring back my horse?”
“No.”
“Did you ever see the bull again?”
“No.”
“Well, then, what more do you want? I never saw anybody as particular as
you are about a little thing like that.”
I made up my mind that if this man was not a liar he only missed it by
the skin of his teeth. This episode reminds me of an incident of my
brief sojourn in Siam, years afterward. The European citizens of a town
in the neighborhood of Bangkok had a prodigy among them by the name of
Eckert, an Englishman—a person famous for the number, ingenuity and
imposing magnitude of his lies. They were always repeating his most
celebrated falsehoods, and always trying to “draw him out” before
strangers; but they seldom succeeded. Twice he was invited to the house
where I was visiting, but nothing could seduce him into a specimen lie.
One day a planter named Bascom, an influential man, and a proud and
sometimes irascible one, invited me to ride over with him and call on
Eckert. As we jogged along, said he:
“Now, do you know where the fault lies? It lies in putting Eckert on his
guard. The minute the boys go to pumping at Eckert he knows perfectly
well what they are after, and of course he shuts up his shell. Anybody
might know he would. But when we get there, we must play him finer than
that. Let him shape the conversation to suit himself—let him drop it or
change it whenever he wants to. Let him see that nobody is trying to
draw him out. Just let him have his own way. He will soon forget himself
and begin to grind out lies like a mill. Don’t get impatient—just keep
quiet, and let me play him. I will make him lie. It does seem to me that
the boys must be blind to overlook such an obvious and simple trick as
that.”
Eckert received us heartily—a pleasant-spoken, gentle-mannered creature.
We sat in the veranda an hour, sipping English ale, and talking about
the king, and the sacred white elephant, the Sleeping Idol, and all
manner of things; and I noticed that my comrade never led the
conversation himself or shaped it, but simply followed Eckert’s lead,
and betrayed no solicitude and no anxiety about anything. The effect was
shortly perceptible. Eckert began to grow communicative; he grew more
and more at his ease, and more and more talkative and sociable. Another
hour passed in the same way, and then all of a sudden Eckert said:
“Oh, by the way! I came near forgetting. I have got a thing here to
astonish you. Such a thing as neither you nor any other man ever heard
of—I’ve got a cat that will eat cocoanut! Common green cocoanut—and not
only eat the meat, but drink the milk. It is so—I’ll swear to it.”
A quick glance from Bascom—a glance that I understood—then:
“Why, bless my soul, I never heard of such a thing. Man, it is
impossible.”
“I knew you would say it. I’ll fetch the cat.”
He went in the house. Bascom said:
“There—what did I tell you? Now, that is the way to handle Eckert. You
see, I have petted him along patiently, and put his suspicions to sleep.
I am glad we came. You tell the boys about it when you go back. Cat eat
a cocoanut—oh, my! Now, that is just his way, exactly—he will tell the
absurdest lie, and trust to luck to get out of it again.
“Cat eat a cocoanut—the innocent fool!”
068.jpg (84K)
Eckert approached with his cat, sure enough.
Bascom smiled. Said he:
“I’ll hold the cat—you bring a cocoanut.”
Eckert split one open, and chopped up some pieces. Bascom smuggled a
wink to me, and proffered a slice of the fruit to puss. She snatched it,
swallowed it ravenously, and asked for more!
We rode our two miles in silence, and wide apart. At least I was silent,
though Bascom cuffed his horse and cursed him a good deal,
notwithstanding the horse was behaving well enough. When I branched off
homeward, Bascom said:
“Keep the horse till morning. And—you need not speak of this—foolishness
to the boys.”
069.jpg (50K)
CHAPTER VIII.
In a little while all interest was taken up in stretching our necks and
watching for the “pony-rider”—the fleet messenger who sped across the
continent from St. Joe to Sacramento, carrying letters nineteen hundred
miles in eight days! Think of that for perishable horse and human flesh
and blood to do! The pony-rider was usually a little bit of a man,
brimful of spirit and endurance. No matter what time of the day or night
his watch came on, and no matter whether it was winter or summer,
raining, snowing, hailing, or sleeting, or whether his “beat” was a
level straight road or a crazy trail over mountain crags and precipices,
or whether it led through peaceful regions or regions that swarmed with
hostile Indians, he must be always ready to leap into the saddle and be
off like the wind! There was no idling-time for a pony-rider on duty. He
rode fifty miles without stopping, by daylight, moonlight, starlight, or
through the blackness of darkness—just as it happened. He rode a
splendid horse that was born for a racer and fed and lodged like a
gentleman; kept him at his utmost speed for ten miles, and then, as he
came crashing up to the station where stood two men holding fast a
fresh, impatient steed, the transfer of rider and mail-bag was made in
the twinkling of an eye, and away flew the eager pair and were out of
sight before the spectator could get hardly the ghost of a look. Both
rider and horse went “flying light.” The rider’s dress was thin, and
fitted close; he wore a “round-about,” and a skull-cap, and tucked his
pantaloons into his boot-tops like a race-rider. He carried no arms—he
carried nothing that was not absolutely necessary, for even the postage
on his literary freight was worth _five dollars a letter_.
071.jpg (120K)
He got but little frivolous correspondence to carry—his bag had business
letters in it, mostly. His horse was stripped of all unnecessary weight,
too. He wore a little wafer of a racing-saddle, and no visible blanket.
He wore light shoes, or none at all. The little flat mail-pockets
strapped under the rider’s thighs would each hold about the bulk of a
child’s primer. They held many and many an important business chapter
and newspaper letter, but these were written on paper as airy and thin
as gold-leaf, nearly, and thus bulk and weight were economized. The
stage-coach traveled about a hundred to a hundred and twenty-five miles
a day (twenty-four hours), the pony-rider about two hundred and fifty.
There were about eighty pony-riders in the saddle all the time, night
and day, stretching in a long, scattering procession from Missouri to
California, forty flying eastward, and forty toward the west, and among
them making four hundred gallant horses earn a stirring livelihood and
see a deal of scenery every single day in the year.
We had had a consuming desire, from the beginning, to see a pony-rider,
but somehow or other all that passed us and all that met us managed to
streak by in the night, and so we heard only a whiz and a hail, and the
swift phantom of the desert was gone before we could get our heads out
of the windows. But now we were expecting one along every moment, and
would see him in broad daylight. Presently the driver exclaims:
“HERE HE COMES!”
Every neck is stretched further, and every eye strained wider. Away
across the endless dead level of the prairie a black speck appears
against the sky, and it is plain that it moves. Well, I should think so!
In a second or two it becomes a horse and rider, rising and falling,
rising and falling—sweeping toward us nearer and nearer—growing more and
more distinct, more and more sharply defined—nearer and still nearer,
and the flutter of the hoofs comes faintly to the ear—another instant a
whoop and a hurrah from our upper deck, a wave of the rider’s hand, but
no reply, and man and horse burst past our excited faces, and go winging
away like a belated fragment of a storm!
072.jpg (33K)
So sudden is it all, and so like a flash of unreal fancy, that but for
the flake of white foam left quivering and perishing on a mail-sack
after the vision had flashed by and disappeared, we might have doubted
whether we had seen any actual horse and man at all, maybe.
We rattled through Scott’s Bluffs Pass, by and by. It was along here
somewhere that we first came across genuine and unmistakable alkali
water in the road, and we cordially hailed it as a first-class
curiosity, and a thing to be mentioned with eclat in letters to the
ignorant at home. This water gave the road a soapy appearance, and in
many places the ground looked as if it had been whitewashed. I think the
strange alkali water excited us as much as any wonder we had come upon
yet, and I know we felt very complacent and conceited, and better
satisfied with life after we had added it to our list of things which
_we_ had seen and some other people had not. In a small way we were the
same sort of simpletons as those who climb unnecessarily the perilous
peaks of Mont Blanc and the Matterhorn, and derive no pleasure from it
except the reflection that it isn’t a common experience. But once in a
while one of those parties trips and comes darting down the long
mountain-crags in a sitting posture, making the crusted snow smoke
behind him, flitting from bench to bench, and from terrace to terrace,
jarring the earth where he strikes, and still glancing and flitting on
again, sticking an iceberg into himself every now and then, and tearing