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<h2>ROUGHING IT, By Mark Twain, Part 1 </h2>
<pre>
Project Gutenberg's Roughing It, Part 1., by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
Title: Roughing It, Part 1.
Author: Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
Release Date: July 2, 2004 [EBook #8582]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ROUGHING IT, PART 1. ***
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</pre>
<br>
<hr>
<br><br><br><br><br><br>
<center><img alt="cover.jpg (90K)" src="images/cover.jpg" height="1071" width="733"></center>
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<center><img alt="spine.jpg (54K)" src="images/spine.jpg" height="1071" width="307"></center>
<br><br><br><br>
<center>
<h1>ROUGHING IT, Part. 1</h1>
<br><br>
<h2>By Mark Twain</h2>
</center>
<br><br><br><br>
<center><img alt="frontispiece1.jpg (168K)" src="images/frontispiece1.jpg" height="643" width="903"></center>
<br><br><br><br>
<a name="frontispiece2"></a>
<center><img alt="frontispiece2.jpg (184K)" src="images/frontispiece2.jpg" height="1020" width="600"></center>
<br><br><br><br>
<center><img alt="titlepage.jpg (95K)" src="images/titlepage.jpg" height="1064" width="705"></center>
<br><br><br><br>
<center><img alt="dedication.jpg (18K)" src="images/dedication.jpg" height="273" width="425"></center>
<br><br><br><br>
<center><h2>PREFATORY.</h2> </center>
<br>
<p>This book is merely a personal narrative, and not a
pretentious history or a philosophical dissertation. It is a
record of several years of variegated vagabondizing, and its
object is rather to help the resting reader while away an idle
hour than afflict him with metaphysics, or goad him with science.
Still, there is information in the volume; information concerning
an interesting episode in the history of the Far West, about
which no books have been written by persons who were on the
ground in person, and saw the happenings of the time with their
own eyes. I allude to the rise, growth and culmination of the
silver-mining fever in Nevada—a curious episode, in some
respects; the only one, of its peculiar kind, that has occurred
in the land; and the only one, indeed, that is likely to occur in
it.</p>
<p>Yes, take it all around, there is quite a good deal of
information in the book. I regret this very much; but really it
could not be helped: information appears to stew out of me
naturally, like the precious ottar of roses out of the otter.
Sometimes it has seemed to me that I would give worlds if I could
retain my facts; but it cannot be. The more I calk up the
sources, and the tighter I get, the more I leak wisdom.
Therefore, I can only claim indulgence at the hands of the
reader, not justification.</p>
<p>THE AUTHOR.</p>
<br><br><br><br>
<center><h2>CONTENTS.</h2></center>
<br>
<blockquote><blockquote>
<p><a href="#ch01">CHAPTER I.</a> My Brother appointed Secretary of Nevada—I Envy
His Prospective Adventures—Am Appointed Private Secretary Under
Him—My Contentment Complete—Packed in One Hour—Dreams and
Visions—On the Missouri River—A Bully Boat</p>
<p><a href="#ch02">CHAPTER II.</a> Arrive at St. Joseph—Only Twenty-five Pounds
Baggage Allowed—Farewell to Kid Gloves and Dress Coats—Armed to
the Teeth—The "Allen"—A Cheerful Weapon—Persuaded to Buy a
Mule—Schedule of Luxuries—We Leave the "States"—"Our
Coach"—Mails for the Indians—Between a Wink and an
Earthquake—A Modern Sphynx and How She Entertained Us—A
Sociable Heifer</p>
<p><a href="#ch03">CHAPTER III.</a> "The Thoroughbrace is Broke"—Mails Delivered
Properly—Sleeping Under Difficulties—A Jackass Rabbit
Meditating, and on Business—A Modern
Gulliver—Sage-brush—Overcoats as an Article of Diet—Sad Fate
of a Camel—Warning to Experimenters</p>
<p><a href="#ch04">CHAPTER IV.</a> Making Our Bed—Assaults by the Unabridged—At a
Station—Our Driver a Great and Shining Dignitary—Strange Place
for a Frontyard—Accommodations—Double Portraits—An
Heirloom—Our Worthy Landlord—"Fixings and Things"—An
Exile—Slumgullion—A Well Furnished Table—The Landlord
Astonished—Table Etiquette—Wild Mexican Mules—Stage-coaching
and Railroading</p>
<p><a href="#ch05">CHAPTER V.</a> New Acquaintances—The Cayote—A Dog's
Experiences—A Disgusted Dog—The Relatives of the Cayote—Meals
Taken Away from Home</p>
<p><a href="#ch06">CHAPTER VI.</a> The Division Superintendent—The Conductor—The
Driver—One Hundred and Fifty Miles' Drive Without
Sleep—Teaching a Subordinate—Our Old Friend Jack and a
Pilgrim—Ben Holliday Compared to Moses</p>
<p><a href="#ch07">CHAPTER VII.</a> Overland City—Crossing the Platte—Bemis's
Buffalo Hunt—Assault by a Buffalo—Bemis's Horse Goes Crazy—An
Impromptu Circus—A New Departure—Bemis Finds Refuge in a
Tree—Escapes Finally by a Wonderful Method</p>
<p><a href="#ch08">CHAPTER VIII.</a> The Pony Express—Fifty Miles Without
Stopping—"Here he Comes"—Alkali Water—Riding an
Avalanche—Indian Massacre</p>
<p><a href="#ch09">CHAPTER IX.</a> Among the Indians—An Unfair Advantage—Laying on
our Arms—A Midnight Murder—Wrath of Outlaws—A Dangerous, yet
Valuable Citizen</p>
<p><a href="#ch10">CHAPTER X.</a> History of Slade—A Proposed Fist-fight—Encounter
with Jules—Paradise of Outlaws—Slade as Superintendent—As
Executioner—A Doomed Whisky Seller—A Prisoner—A Wife's
Bravery—An Ancient Enemy Captured—Enjoying a
Luxury—Hob-nobbing with Slade—Too Polite—A Happy Escape</p>
</blockquote></blockquote>
<br><br><br><br>
<center><h2>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS</h2></center>
<br>
<center>
<table summary="">
<tr><td>
1. <a href="#frontispiece2">THE MINERS' DREAM</a><br>
2. <a href="#020">ENVIOUS CONTEMPLATIONS</a><br>
3. <a href="#021">INNOCENT DREAMS</a><br>
4. <a href="#023a">LIGHT TRAVELING ORDER</a><br>
5. <a href="#023b">THE "ALLEN"</a><br>
6. <a href="#024">INDUCEMENTS TO PURCHASE</a><br>
7. <a href="#025">THE FACETIOUS DRIVER</a><br>
8. <a href="#026">PLEASING NEWS</a><br>
9. <a href="#027">THE SPHYNX</a><br>
10. <a href="#032">MEDITATION</a><br>
11. <a href="#033a">ON BUSINESS</a><br>
12. <a href="#033b">AUTHOR AS GULLIVER</a><br>
13. <a href="#035">A TOUCH STATEMENT</a><br>
14. <a href="#038">THIRD TRIP OF THE UNABRIDGED</a><br>
15. <a href="#041">A POWERFUL GLASS</a><br>
16. <a href="#042a">AN HEIRLOOM</a><br>
17. <a href="#042b">OUR LANDLORD</a><br>
18. <a href="#043">DIGNIFIED EXILE</a><br>
19. <a href="#044">DRINKING SLUMGULLION</a><br>
20. <a href="#045">A JOKE WITHOUT CREAM</a><br>
21. <a href="#047">PULLMAN CAR DINING-SALOON</a><br>
22. <a href="#049">OUR MORNING RIDE</a><br>
23. <a href="#050">PRAIRIE DOGS</a><br>
24. <a href="#051">A CAYOTE</a><br>
25. <a href="#052">SHOWING RESPECT TO RELATIVES</a><br>
26. <a href="#055">THE CONDUCTOR</a><br>
27. <a href="#057">TEACHING A SUBORDINATE</a><br>
28. <a href="#058">JACK AND THE ELDERLY PILGRIM</a><br>
29. <a href="#061">CROSSING THE PLATTE</a><br>
30. <a href="#062">I BEGAN TO PRAY</a><br>
31. <a href="#063">A NEW DEPARTURE</a><br>
32. <a href="#065">SUSPENDED OPERATIONS</a><br>
33. <a href="#068">A WONDERFUL LIE</a><br>
34. <a href="#069">TALL PIECE</a><br>
35. <a href="#071">HERE HE COMES</a><br>
36. <a href="#072">CHANGING HORSES</a><br>
37. <a href="#073">RIDING THE AVALANCHE</a><br>
38. <a href="#076">INDIAN COUNTRY</a><br>
39. <a href="#081">A PROPOSED FIST FIGHT</a><br>
40. <a href="#082">FROM BEHIND THE DOOR</a><br>
41. <a href="#084">SLADE AS AN EXECUTIONER</a><br>
42. <a href="#085">AN UNPLEASANT VIEW</a><br>
43. <a href="#088">UNAPPRECIATED POLITENESS</a><br>
</td></tr>
</table>
</center>
<br><br><br><br>
<br><br>
<br><br>
<a name="ch01"></a>
<br><br>
<center>
<h2>CHAPTER I.</h2>
</center>
<br>
<p>My brother had just been appointed Secretary of Nevada
Territory—an office of such majesty that it concentrated in
itself the duties and dignities of Treasurer, Comptroller,
Secretary of State, and Acting Governor in the Governor's
absence. A salary of eighteen hundred dollars a year and the
title of "Mr. Secretary," gave to the great position an air of
wild and imposing grandeur. I was young and ignorant, and I
envied my brother. I coveted his distinction and his financial
splendor, but particularly and especially the long, strange
journey he was going to make, and the curious new world he was
going to explore. He was going to travel! I never had been away
from home, and that word "travel" had a seductive charm for me.
Pretty soon he would be hundreds and hundreds of miles away on
the great plains and deserts, and among the mountains of the Far
West, and would see buffaloes and Indians, and prairie dogs, and
antelopes, and have all kinds of adventures, and may be get
hanged or scalped, and have ever such a fine time, and write home
and tell us all about it, and be a hero. And he would see the
gold mines and the silver mines, and maybe go about of an
afternoon when his work was done, and pick up two or three
pailfuls of shining slugs, and nuggets of gold and silver on the
hillside. And by and by he would become very rich, and return
home by sea, and be able to talk as calmly about San Francisco
and the ocean, and "the isthmus" as if it was nothing of any
consequence to have seen those marvels face to face.
</p>
<a name="020"></a>
<br><br>
<center><img alt="020.jpg (69K)" src="images/020.jpg" height="500" width="481"></center>
<br><br>
<p>
What I suffered in contemplating his happiness, pen cannot describe. And
so, when he offered me, in cold blood, the sublime position of
private secretary under him, it appeared to me that the heavens
and the earth passed away, and the firmament was rolled together
as a scroll! I had nothing more to desire. My contentment was
complete.</p>
<p>At the end of an hour or two I was ready for the journey. Not
much packing up was necessary, because we were going in the
overland stage from the Missouri frontier to Nevada, and
passengers were only allowed a small quantity of baggage apiece.
There was no Pacific railroad in those fine times of ten or
twelve years ago—not a single rail of it. I only proposed to
stay in Nevada three months—I had no thought of staying longer
than that. I meant to see all I could that was new and strange,
and then hurry home to business. I little thought that I would
not see the end of that three-month pleasure excursion for six or
seven uncommonly long years!</p>
<p>I dreamed all night about Indians, deserts, and silver bars,
and in due time, next day, we took shipping at the St. Louis
wharf on board a steamboat bound up the Missouri River.</p>
<a name="021"></a>
<br><br>
<center>
<img alt="021.jpg (82K)" src="images/021.jpg" height="525" width="585">
</center>
<br><br>
<p>We were six days going from St. Louis to "St. Jo."—a trip
that was so dull, and sleepy, and eventless that it has left no
more impression on my memory than if its duration had been six
minutes instead of that many days. No record is left in my mind,
now, concerning it, but a confused jumble of savage-looking
snags, which we deliberately walked over with one wheel or the
other; and of reefs which we butted and butted, and then retired
from and climbed over in some softer place; and of sand-bars
which we roosted on occasionally, and rested, and then got out
our crutches and sparred over.</p>
<p>In fact, the boat might almost as well have gone to St. Jo. by
land, for she was walking most of the time, anyhow—climbing over
reefs and clambering over snags patiently and laboriously all day
long. The captain said she was a "bully" boat, and all she wanted
was more "shear" and a bigger wheel. I thought she wanted a pair
of stilts, but I had the deep sagacity not to say so.</p>
<br><br>
<a name="ch02"></a>
<br><br>
<center>
<h2>CHAPTER II.</h2>
</center>
<br>
<p>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.</p>
<a name="023a"></a>
<br><br>
<center>
<img alt="023a.jpg (31K)" src="images/023a.jpg" height="412" width="256">
</center>
<br><br>
<p>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 homoeopathic 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.</p>
<a name="023b"></a>
<br><br>
<center>
<img alt="023b.jpg (11K)" src="images/023b.jpg" height="199" width="263">
</center>
<br><br>
<p>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.</p>
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<p>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.</p>
<p>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!</p>
<p>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." </p>
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<p>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.</p>
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<p>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.</p>
<p>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:</p>
<p>"The mosquitoes are pretty bad, about here, madam."</p>
<p>"You bet!"</p>
<p>"What did I understand you to say, madam?"</p>
<p>"You BET!"</p>
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<p>Then she cheered up, and faced around and said:</p>
<p>"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?"</p>
<p>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!</p>
<p>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:</p>
<p>"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."</p>
<p>We resolved not to "lay by at Cottonwood."</p>
<br><br>
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<p>About an hour and a half before daylight we were bowling along
smoothly over the road—so smoothly that our cradle only rocked
in a gentle, lulling way, that was gradually soothing us to
sleep, and dulling our consciousness—when something gave away
under us! We were dimly aware of it, but indifferent to it. The
coach stopped. We heard the driver and conductor talking together
outside, and rummaging for a lantern, and swearing because they
could not find it—but we had no interest in whatever had
happened, and it only added to our comfort to think of those
people out there at work in the murky night, and we snug in our
nest with the curtains drawn. But presently, by the sounds, there
seemed to be an examination going on, and then the driver's voice
said:</p>
<p>"By George, the thoroughbrace is broke!"</p>
<p>This startled me broad awake—as an undefined sense of
calamity is always apt to do. I said to myself: "Now, a
thoroughbrace is probably part of a horse; and doubtless a vital
part, too, from the dismay in the driver's voice. Leg, maybe—and
yet how could he break his leg waltzing along such a road as
this? No, it can't be his leg. That is impossible, unless he was
reaching for the driver. Now, what can be the thoroughbrace of a
horse, I wonder? Well, whatever comes, I shall not air my
ignorance in this crowd, anyway."</p>
<p>Just then the conductor's face appeared at a lifted curtain,
and his lantern glared in on us and our wall of mail matter. He
said: "Gents, you'll have to turn out a spell. Thoroughbrace is
broke."</p>
<p>We climbed out into a chill drizzle, and felt ever so homeless
and dreary. When I found that the thing they called a
"thoroughbrace" was the massive combination of belts and springs
which the coach rocks itself in, I said to the driver:</p>
<p>"I never saw a thoroughbrace used up like that, before, that I
can remember. How did it happen?"</p>
<p>"Why, it happened by trying to make one coach carry three
days' mail—that's how it happened," said he. "And right here is
the very direction which is wrote on all the newspaper-bags which
was to be put out for the Injuns for to keep 'em quiet. It's most
uncommon lucky, becuz it's so nation dark I should 'a' gone by
unbeknowns if that air thoroughbrace hadn't broke."</p>
<p>I knew that he was in labor with another of those winks of
his, though I could not see his face, because he was bent down at
work; and wishing him a safe delivery, I turned to and helped the
rest get out the mail-sacks. It made a great pyramid by the
roadside when it was all out. When they had mended the
thoroughbrace we filled the two boots again, but put no mail on
top, and only half as much inside as there was before. The
conductor bent all the seat-backs down, and then filled the coach
just half full of mail-bags from end to end. We objected loudly
to this, for it left us no seats. But the conductor was wiser
than we, and said a bed was better than seats, and moreover, this
plan would protect his thoroughbraces. We never wanted any seats
after that. The lazy bed was infinitely preferable. I had many an
exciting day, subsequently, lying on it reading the statutes and
the dictionary, and wondering how the characters would turn
out.</p>
<p>The conductor said he would send back a guard from the next
station to take charge of the abandoned mail-bags, and we drove
on.</p>
<p>It was now just dawn; and as we stretched our cramped legs
full length on the mail sacks, and gazed out through the windows
across the wide wastes of greensward clad in cool, powdery mist,
to where there was an expectant look in the eastern horizon, our
perfect enjoyment took the form of a tranquil and contented
ecstasy. The stage whirled along at a spanking gait, the breeze
flapping curtains and suspended coats in a most exhilarating way;
the cradle swayed and swung luxuriously, the pattering of the
horses' hoofs, the cracking of the driver's whip, and his "Hi-yi!
g'lang!" were music; the spinning ground and the waltzing trees
appeared to give us a mute hurrah as we went by, and then slack
up and look after us with interest, or envy, or something; and as
we lay and smoked the pipe of peace and compared all this luxury
with the years of tiresome city life that had gone before it, we
felt that there was only one complete and satisfying happiness in
the world, and we had found it.</p>
<p>After breakfast, at some station whose name I have forgotten,
we three climbed up on the seat behind the driver, and let the
conductor have our bed for a nap. And by and by, when the sun
made me drowsy, I lay down on my face on top of the coach,
grasping the slender iron railing, and slept for an hour or more.
That will give one an appreciable idea of those matchless roads.
Instinct will make a sleeping man grip a fast hold of the railing
when the stage jolts, but when it only swings and sways, no grip
is necessary. Overland drivers and conductors used to sit in
their places and sleep thirty or forty minutes at a time, on good
roads, while spinning along at the rate of eight or ten miles an
hour. I saw them do it, often. There was no danger about it; a
sleeping man will seize the irons in time when the coach jolts.
These men were hard worked, and it was not possible for them to
stay awake all the time.</p>
<p>By and by we passed through Marysville, and over the Big Blue
and Little Sandy; thence about a mile, and entered Nebraska.
About a mile further on, we came to the Big Sandy—one hundred
and eighty miles from St. Joseph.</p>
<p>As the sun was going down, we saw the first specimen of an
animal known familiarly over two thousand miles of mountain and
desert—from Kansas clear to the Pacific Ocean—as the "jackass
rabbit." He is well named. He is just like any other rabbit,
except that he is from one third to twice as large, has longer
legs in proportion to his size, and has the most preposterous
ears that ever were mounted on any creature but a jackass.</p>
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<p>When he is sitting quiet, thinking about his sins, or is
absent-minded or unapprehensive of danger, his majestic ears
project above him conspicuously; but the breaking of a twig will
scare him nearly to death, and then he tilts his ears back gently
and starts for home. All you can see, then, for the next minute,
is his long gray form stretched out straight and "streaking it"
through the low sage-brush, head erect, eyes right, and ears just
canted a little to the rear, but showing you where the animal is,
all the time, the same as if he carried a jib. Now and then he
makes a marvelous spring with his long legs, high over the
stunted sage-brush, and scores a leap that would make a horse
envious. Presently he comes down to a long, graceful "lope," and
shortly he mysteriously disappears. He has crouched behind a
sage-bush, and will sit there and listen and tremble until you
get within six feet of him, when he will get under way again. But
one must shoot at this creature once, if he wishes to see him
throw his heart into his heels, and do the best he knows how. He
is frightened clear through, now, and he lays his long ears down
on his back, straightens himself out like a yard-stick every
spring he makes, and scatters miles behind him with an easy
indifference that is enchanting.</p>
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<p>Our party made this specimen "hump himself," as the conductor
said. The secretary started him with a shot from the Colt; I
commenced spitting at him with my weapon; and all in the same
instant the old "Allen's" whole broadside let go with a rattling
crash, and it is not putting it too strong to say that the rabbit
was frantic! He dropped his ears, set up his tail, and left for
San Francisco at a speed which can only be described as a flash
and a vanish! Long after he was out of sight we could hear him
whiz.</p>
<p>I do not remember where we first came across "sage-brush," but
as I have been speaking of it I may as well describe it.</p>
<p>This is easily done, for if the reader can imagine a gnarled
and venerable live oak-tree reduced to a little shrub two
feet-high, with its rough bark, its foliage, its twisted boughs,
all complete, he can picture the "sage-brush" exactly. Often, on
lazy afternoons in the mountains, I have lain on the ground with
my face under a sage-bush, and entertained myself with fancying
that the gnats among its foliage were liliputian birds, and that
the ants marching and countermarching about its base were
liliputian flocks and herds, and myself some vast loafer from
Brobdignag waiting to catch a little citizen and eat him.</p>
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<p>It is an imposing monarch of the forest in exquisite
miniature, is the "sage-brush." Its foliage is a grayish green,
and gives that tint to desert and mountain. It smells like our
domestic sage, and "sage-tea" made from it taste like the
sage-tea which all boys are so well acquainted with. The
sage-brush is a singularly hardy plant, and grows right in the
midst of deep sand, and among barren rocks, where nothing else
in the vegetable world would try to grow, except
"bunch-grass."—["Bunch-grass" grows on the bleak mountain-sides of Nevada and
neighboring territories, and offers excellent feed for stock,
even in the dead of winter, wherever the snow is blown aside and
exposes it; notwithstanding its unpromising home, bunch-grass is
a better and more nutritious diet for cattle and horses than
almost any other hay or grass that is known—so stock-men
say.]—The sage-bushes grow from three to six or seven feet
apart, all over the mountains and deserts of the Far West, clear
to the borders of California. There is not a tree of any kind in
the deserts, for hundreds of miles—there is no vegetation at all
in a regular desert, except the sage-brush and its cousin the
"greasewood," which is so much like the sage-brush that the
difference amounts to little. Camp-fires and hot suppers in the
deserts would be impossible but for the friendly sage-brush. Its
trunk is as large as a boy's wrist (and from that up to a man's
arm), and its crooked branches are half as large as its
trunk—all good, sound, hard wood, very like oak.</p>
<p>When a party camps, the first thing to be done is to cut
sage-brush; and in a few minutes there is an opulent pile of it
ready for use. A hole a foot wide, two feet deep, and two feet
long, is dug, and sage-brush chopped up and burned in it till it
is full to the brim with glowing coals. Then the cooking begins,
and there is no smoke, and consequently no swearing. Such a fire
will keep all night, with very little replenishing; and it makes
a very sociable camp-fire, and one around which the most
impossible reminiscences sound plausible, instructive, and
profoundly entertaining.</p>
<p>Sage-brush is very fair fuel, but as a vegetable it is a
distinguished failure. Nothing can abide the taste of it but the
jackass and his illegitimate child the mule. But their testimony
to its nutritiousness is worth nothing, for they will eat pine
knots, or anthracite coal, or brass filings, or lead pipe, or old
bottles, or anything that comes handy, and then go off looking as
grateful as if they had had oysters for dinner. Mules and donkeys
and camels have appetites that anything will relieve temporarily,
but nothing satisfy.</p>
<p>In Syria, once, at the head-waters of the Jordan, a camel took
charge of my overcoat while the tents were being pitched, and
examined it with a critical eye, all over, with as much interest
as if he had an idea of getting one made like it; and then, after
he was done figuring on it as an article of apparel, he began to
contemplate it as an article of diet. He put his foot on it, and
lifted one of the sleeves out with his teeth, and chewed and
chewed at it, gradually taking it in, and all the while opening
and closing his eyes in a kind of religious ecstasy, as if he had
never tasted anything as good as an overcoat before, in his life.
Then he smacked his lips once or twice, and reached after the
other sleeve. Next he tried the velvet collar, and smiled a smile
of such contentment that it was plain to see that he regarded
that as the daintiest thing about an overcoat. The tails went
next, along with some percussion caps and cough candy, and some
fig-paste from Constantinople.
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And then my newspaper
correspondence dropped out, and he took a chance in
that—manuscript letters written for the home papers. But he was
treading on dangerous ground, now. He began to come across solid
wisdom in those documents that was rather weighty on his stomach;
and occasionally he would take a joke that would shake him up
till it loosened his teeth; it was getting to be perilous times
with him, but he held his grip with good courage and hopefully,
till at last he began to stumble on statements that not even a
camel could swallow with impunity. He began to gag and gasp, and
his eyes to stand out, and his forelegs to spread, and in about a
quarter of a minute he fell over as stiff as a carpenter's
work-bench, and died a death of indescribable agony. I went and
pulled the manuscript out of his mouth, and found that the
sensitive creature had choked to death on one of the mildest and
gentlest statements of fact that I ever laid before a trusting
public.</p>
<p>I was about to say, when diverted from my subject, that
occasionally one finds sage-bushes five or six feet high, and
with a spread of branch and foliage in proportion, but two or two
and a half feet is the usual height.</p>
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<h2>CHAPTER IV.</h2>
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<p>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.</p>
<p>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?"</p>
<p>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.</p>
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<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
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<p>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.
</p>
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<p>
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
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<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
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<p>He had no sugar and no milk—not even a spoon to stir the
ingredients with.</p>
<p>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:</p>
<p>"All! Why, thunder and lightning, I should think there was
mackerel enough there for six."</p>
<p>"But I don't like mackerel."</p>
<p>"Oh—then help yourself to the mustard."</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Our breakfast was before us, but our teeth were idle.</p>
<p>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:</p>
<p>"Coffee! Well, if that don't go clean ahead of me, I'm
d—-d!"</p>
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<p>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:</p>
<p>"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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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!</p>
<p>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:</p>
<blockquote><blockquote>
<p>"ACROSS THE CONTINENT.</p>
<p>"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?</p>
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<p>"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."</p>
</blockquote></blockquote>
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<h2>CHAPTER V.</h2>
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<p>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!</p>
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<p>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 farther deserts. And if it was, he
was not a pretty creature or respectable either, for I got well
acquainted with his race afterward, and can speak with
confidence. The cayote is a long, slim, sick and sorry-looking
skeleton, with a gray wolf-skin stretched over it, a tolerably
bushy tail that forever sags down with a despairing expression of
forsakenness and misery, a furtive and evil eye, and a long,
sharp face, with slightly lifted lip and exposed teeth. He has a
general slinking expression all over. The cayote is a living,
breathing allegory of Want. He is always hungry.</p>
<p>He is always poor, out of luck and friendless. The meanest
creatures despise him, and even the fleas would desert him for a
velocipede. He is so spiritless and cowardly that even while his
exposed teeth are pretending a threat, the rest of his face is
apologizing for it. And he is so homely!—so scrawny, and ribby,
and coarse-haired, and pitiful. When he sees you he lifts his lip
and lets a flash of his teeth out, and then turns a little out of
the course he was pursuing, depresses his head a bit, and strikes
a long, soft-footed trot through the sage-brush, glancing over
his shoulder at you, from time to time, till he is about out of
easy pistol range, and then he stops and takes a deliberate
survey of you; he will trot fifty yards and stop again—another
fifty and stop again; and finally the gray of his gliding body
blends with the gray of the sage-brush, and he disappears. All
this is when you make no demonstration against him; but if you
do, he develops a livelier interest in his journey, and instantly
electrifies his heels and puts such a deal of real estate between
himself and your weapon, that by the time you have raised the
hammer you see that you need a minie rifle, and by the time you
have got him in line you need a rifled cannon, and by the time
you have "drawn a bead" on him you see well enough that nothing
but an unusually long-winded streak of lightning could reach him
where he is now. But if you start a swift-footed dog after him,
you will enjoy it ever so much—especially if it is a dog that
has a good opinion of himself, and has been brought up to think
he knows something about speed.</p>
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<p>The cayote will go swinging gently off on that deceitful trot
of his, and every little while he will smile a fraudful smile
over his shoulder that will fill that dog entirely full of
encouragement and worldly ambition, and make him lay his head
still lower to the ground, and stretch his neck further to the
front, and pant more fiercely, and stick his tail out straighter
behind, and move his furious legs with a yet wilder frenzy, and
leave a broader and broader, and higher and denser cloud of
desert sand smoking behind, and marking his long wake across the
level plain! And all this time the dog is only a short twenty
feet behind the cayote, and to save the soul of him he cannot
understand why it is that he cannot get perceptibly closer; and
he begins to get aggravated, and it makes him madder and madder
to see how gently the cayote glides along and never pants or
sweats or ceases to smile; and he grows still more and more
incensed to see how shamefully he has been taken in by an entire
stranger, and what an ignoble swindle that long, calm,
soft-footed trot is; and next he notices that he is getting
fagged, and that the cayote actually has to slacken speed a
little to keep from running away from him—and then that town-dog
is mad in earnest, and he begins to strain and weep and swear,
and paw the sand higher than ever, and reach for the cayote with
concentrated and desperate energy. This "spurt" finds him six
feet behind the gliding enemy, and two miles from his friends.
And then, in the instant that a wild new hope is lighting up his
face, the cayote turns and smiles blandly upon him once more, and
with a something about it which seems to say: "Well, I shall have
to tear myself away from you, bub—business is business, and it
will not do for me to be fooling along this way all day"—and
forthwith there is a rushing sound, and the sudden splitting of a
long crack through the atmosphere, and behold that dog is
solitary and alone in the midst of a vast solitude!</p>
<p>It makes his head swim. He stops, and looks all around; climbs
the nearest sand-mound, and gazes into the distance; shakes his
head reflectively, and then, without a word, he turns and jogs
along back to his train, and takes up a humble position under the
hindmost wagon, and feels unspeakably mean, and looks ashamed,
and hangs his tail at half- mast for a week. And for as much as a
year after that, whenever there is a great hue and cry after a
cayote, that dog will merely glance in that direction without
emotion, and apparently observe to himself, "I believe I do not
wish any of the pie."</p>
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<p>The cayote lives chiefly in the most desolate and forbidding
desert, along with the lizard, the jackass-rabbit and the raven,
and gets an uncertain and precarious living, and earns it. He
seems to subsist almost wholly on the carcases of oxen, mules and
horses that have dropped out of emigrant trains and died, and
upon windfalls of carrion, and occasional legacies of offal
bequeathed to him by white men who have been opulent enough to
have something better to butcher than condemned army bacon.</p>
<p>He will eat anything in the world that his first cousins, the
desert- frequenting tribes of Indians will, and they will eat
anything they can bite. It is a curious fact that these latter
are the only creatures known to history who will eat
nitro-glycerine and ask for more if they survive.</p>
<p>The cayote of the deserts beyond the Rocky Mountains has a
peculiarly hard time of it, owing to the fact that his relations,
the Indians, are just as apt to be the first to detect a
seductive scent on the desert breeze, and follow the fragrance to
the late ox it emanated from, as he is himself; and when this
occurs he has to content himself with sitting off at a little
distance watching those people strip off and dig out everything
edible, and walk off with it. Then he and the waiting ravens
explore the skeleton and polish the bones. It is considered that
the cayote, and the obscene bird, and the Indian of the desert,
testify their blood kinship with each other in that they live
together in the waste places of the earth on terms of perfect
confidence and friendship, while hating all other creature and
yearning to assist at their funerals. He does not mind going a
hundred miles to breakfast, and a hundred and fifty to dinner,
because he is sure to have three or four days between meals, and
he can just as well be traveling and looking at the scenery as
lying around doing nothing and adding to the burdens of his
parents.</p>
<p>We soon learned to recognize the sharp, vicious bark of the
cayote as it came across the murky plain at night to disturb our
dreams among the mail-sacks; and remembering his forlorn aspect
and his hard fortune, made shift to wish him the blessed novelty
of a long day's good luck and a limitless larder the morrow.</p>
<br><br>
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<h2>CHAPTER VI.</h2>
</center>
<br>
<p>Our new conductor (just shipped) had been without sleep for
twenty hours. Such a thing was very frequent. From St. Joseph,
Missouri, to Sacramento, California, by stage-coach, was nearly
nineteen hundred miles, and the trip was often made in fifteen
days (the cars do it in four and a half, now), but the time
specified in the mail contracts, and required by the schedule,
was eighteen or nineteen days, if I remember rightly. This was to
make fair allowance for winter storms and snows, and other
unavoidable causes of detention. The stage company had everything
under strict discipline and good system. Over each two hundred
and fifty miles of road they placed an agent or superintendent,
and invested him with great authority. His beat or jurisdiction
of two hundred and fifty miles was called a "division." He
purchased horses, mules harness, and food for men and beasts, and
distributed these things among his stage stations, from time to
time, according to his judgment of what each station needed. He
erected station buildings and dug wells. He attended to the
paying of the station-keepers, hostlers, drivers and blacksmiths,
and discharged them whenever he chose. He was a very, very great
man in his "division"—a kind of Grand Mogul, a Sultan of the
Indies, in whose presence common men were modest of speech and
manner, and in the glare of whose greatness even the dazzling
stage-driver dwindled to a penny dip. There were about eight of
these kings, all told, on the overland route.</p>
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<p>Next in rank and importance to the division-agent came the
"conductor." His beat was the same length as the agent's—two
hundred and fifty miles. He sat with the driver, and (when
necessary) rode that fearful distance, night and day, without
other rest or sleep than what he could get perched thus on top of
the flying vehicle. Think of it! He had absolute charge of the
mails, express matter, passengers and stage, coach, until he
delivered them to the next conductor, and got his receipt for
them.</p>
<p>Consequently he had to be a man of intelligence, decision and
considerable executive ability. He was usually a quiet, pleasant
man, who attended closely to his duties, and was a good deal of a
gentleman. It was not absolutely necessary that the
division-agent should be a gentleman, and occasionally he wasn't.
But he was always a general in administrative ability, and a
bull-dog in courage and determination—otherwise the
chieftainship over the lawless underlings of the overland service
would never in any instance have been to him anything but an
equivalent for a month of insolence and distress and a bullet and
a coffin at the end of it. There were about sixteen or eighteen
conductors on the overland, for there was a daily stage each way,
and a conductor on every stage.</p>
<p>Next in real and official rank and importance, after the
conductor, came my delight, the driver—next in real but not in
apparent importance—for we have seen that in the eyes of the
common herd the driver was to the conductor as an admiral is to
the captain of the flag-ship. The driver's beat was pretty long,
and his sleeping-time at the stations pretty short, sometimes;
and so, but for the grandeur of his position his would have been
a sorry life, as well as a hard and a wearing one. We took a new
driver every day or every night (for they drove backward and
forward over the same piece of road all the time), and therefore
we never got as well acquainted with them as we did with the
conductors; and besides, they would have been above being
familiar with such rubbish as passengers, anyhow, as a general
thing. Still, we were always eager to get a sight of each and
every new driver as soon as the watch changed, for each and every
day we were either anxious to get rid of an unpleasant one, or
loath to part with a driver we had learned to like and had come
to be sociable and friendly with. And so the first question we
asked the conductor whenever we got to where we were to exchange
drivers, was always, "Which is him?" The grammar was faulty,
maybe, but we could not know, then, that it would go into a book
some day. As long as everything went smoothly, the overland
driver was well enough situated, but if a fellow driver got sick
suddenly it made trouble, for the coach must go on, and so the
potentate who was about to climb down and take a luxurious rest
after his long night's siege in the midst of wind and rain and
darkness, had to stay where he was and do the sick man's work.
Once, in the Rocky Mountains, when I found a driver sound asleep
on the box, and the mules going at the usual break-neck pace, the
conductor said never mind him, there was no danger, and he was
doing double duty—had driven seventy-five miles on one coach,
and was now going back over it on this without rest or sleep. A
hundred and fifty miles of holding back of six vindictive mules
and keeping them from climbing the trees! It sounds incredible,
but I remember the statement well enough.</p>
<p>The station-keepers, hostlers, etc., were low, rough
characters, as already described; and from western Nebraska to
Nevada a considerable sprinkling of them might be fairly set down
as outlaws—fugitives from justice, criminals whose best security
was a section of country which was without law and without even
the pretence of it. When the "division- agent" issued an order to
one of these parties he did it with the full understanding that
he might have to enforce it with a navy six-shooter, and so he
always went "fixed" to make things go along smoothly.</p>
<p>Now and then a division-agent was really obliged to shoot a
hostler through the head to teach him some simple matter that he
could have taught him with a club if his circumstances and
surroundings had been different. But they were snappy, able men,
those division-agents, and when they tried to teach a subordinate
anything, that subordinate generally "got it through his
head."</p>
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<p>A great portion of this vast machinery—these hundreds of men
and coaches, and thousands of mules and horses—was in the hands
of Mr. Ben Holliday. All the western half of the business was in
his hands. This reminds me of an incident of Palestine travel
which is pertinent here, so I will transfer it just in the
language in which I find it set down in my Holy Land
note-book:</p>
<blockquote><blockquote>
<p>No doubt everybody has heard of Ben Holliday—a man of
prodigious energy, who used to send mails and passengers flying
across the continent in his overland stage-coaches like a very
whirlwind—two thousand long miles in fifteen days and a half, by
the watch! But this fragment of history is not about Ben
Holliday, but about a young New York boy by the name of Jack, who
traveled with our small party of pilgrims in the Holy Land (and
who had traveled to California in Mr. Holliday's overland coaches
three years before, and had by no means forgotten it or lost his
gushing admiration of Mr. H.) Aged nineteen. Jack was a good
boy—a good-hearted and always well-meaning boy, who had been
reared in the city of New York, and although he was bright and
knew a great many useful things, his Scriptural education had
been a good deal neglected—to such a degree, indeed, that all
Holy Land history was fresh and new to him, and all Bible names
mysteries that had never disturbed his virgin ear.</p>
<p>Also in our party was an elderly pilgrim who was the reverse
of Jack, in that he was learned in the Scriptures and an
enthusiast concerning them. He was our encyclopedia, and we were
never tired of listening to his speeches, nor he of making them.
He never passed a celebrated locality, from Bashan to Bethlehem,
without illuminating it with an oration. One day, when camped
near the ruins of Jericho, he burst forth with something like
this:</p>
<p>"Jack, do you see that range of mountains over yonder that
bounds the Jordan valley? The mountains of Moab, Jack! Think of
it, my boy—the actual mountains of Moab—renowned in Scripture
history! We are actually standing face to face with those
illustrious crags and peaks—and for all we know" [dropping his
voice impressively], "our eyes may be resting at this very moment
upon the spot WHERE LIES THE MYSTERIOUS GRAVE OF MOSES! Think of
it, Jack!"</p>
<p>"Moses who?" (falling inflection).</p>
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<p>"Moses who! Jack, you ought to be ashamed of yourself—you
ought to be ashamed of such criminal ignorance. Why, Moses, the
great guide, soldier, poet, lawgiver of ancient Israel! Jack,
from this spot where we stand, to Egypt, stretches a fearful
desert three hundred miles in extent—and across that desert that
wonderful man brought the children of Israel!—guiding them with
unfailing sagacity for forty years over the sandy desolation and
among the obstructing rocks and hills, and landed them at last,
safe and sound, within sight of this very spot; and where we now
stand they entered the Promised Land with anthems of rejoicing!
It was a wonderful, wonderful thing to do, Jack! Think of
it!"</p>
<p>"Forty years? Only three hundred miles? Humph! Ben Holliday
would have fetched them through in thirty-six hours!"</p>
<p>The boy meant no harm. He did not know that he had said
anything that was wrong or irreverent. And so no one scolded him
or felt offended with him—and nobody could but some ungenerous
spirit incapable of excusing the heedless blunders of a boy.</p>
</blockquote></blockquote>
<p>At noon on the fifth day out, we arrived at the "Crossing of
the South Platte," alias "Julesburg," alias "Overland City," four
hundred and seventy miles from St. Joseph—the strangest,
quaintest, funniest frontier town that our untraveled eyes had
ever stared at and been astonished with.</p>
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<h2>CHAPTER VII.</h2>
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<p>It did seem strange enough to see a town again after what
appeared to us such a long acquaintance with deep, still, almost
lifeless and houseless solitude! We tumbled out into the busy
street feeling like meteoric people crumbled off the corner of
some other world, and wakened up suddenly in this. For an hour we
took as much interest in Overland City as if we had never seen a
town before. The reason we had an hour to spare was because we
had to change our stage (for a less sumptuous affair, called a
"mud-wagon") and transfer our freight of mails.</p>
<p>Presently we got under way again. We came to the shallow,
yellow, muddy South Platte, with its low banks and its scattering
flat sand-bars and pigmy islands—a melancholy stream straggling
through the centre of the enormous flat plain, and only saved
from being impossible to find with the naked eye by its sentinel
rank of scattering trees standing on either bank. The Platte was
"up," they said—which made me wish I could see it when it was
down, if it could look any sicker and sorrier. They said it was a
dangerous stream to cross, now, because its quicksands were
liable to swallow up horses, coach and passengers if an attempt
was made to ford it. But the mails had to go, and we made the
attempt. Once or twice in midstream the wheels sunk into the
yielding sands so threateningly that we half believed we had
dreaded and avoided the sea all our lives to be shipwrecked in a
"mud-wagon" in the middle of a desert at last. But we dragged
through and sped away toward the setting sun.</p>
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<p>Next morning, just before dawn, when about five hundred and
fifty miles from St. Joseph, our mud-wagon broke down. We were to
be delayed five or six hours, and therefore we took horses, by
invitation, and joined a party who were just starting on a
buffalo hunt. It was noble sport galloping over the plain in the
dewy freshness of the morning, but our part of the hunt ended in
disaster and disgrace, for a wounded buffalo bull chased the
passenger Bemis nearly two miles, and then he forsook his horse
and took to a lone tree. He was very sullen about the matter for
some twenty-four hours, but at last he began to soften little by
little, and finally he said:</p>
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<p>"Well, it was not funny, and there was no sense in those gawks
making themselves so facetious over it. I tell you I was angry in
earnest for awhile. I should have shot that long gangly lubber
they called Hank, if I could have done it without crippling six
or seven other people—but of course I couldn't, the old
'Allen's' so confounded comprehensive. I wish those loafers had
been up in the tree; they wouldn't have wanted to laugh so. If I
had had a horse worth a cent—but no, the minute he saw that
buffalo bull wheel on him and give a bellow, he raised straight
up in the air and stood on his heels. The saddle began to slip,
and I took him round the neck and laid close to him, and began to
pray. Then he came down and stood up on the other end awhile, and
the bull actually stopped pawing sand and bellowing to
contemplate the inhuman spectacle.</p>
<p>"Then the bull made a pass at him and uttered a bellow that
sounded perfectly frightful, it was so close to me, and that
seemed to literally prostrate my horse's reason, and make a
raving distracted maniac of him, and I wish I may die if he
didn't stand on his head for a quarter of a minute and shed
tears. He was absolutely out of his mind—he was, as sure as
truth itself, and he really didn't know what he was doing. Then
the bull came charging at us, and my horse dropped down on all
fours and took a fresh start—and then for the next ten minutes
he would actually throw one hand-spring after another so fast
that the bull began to get unsettled, too, and didn't know where
to start in—and so he stood there sneezing, and shovelling dust
over his back, and bellowing every now and then, and thinking he
had got a fifteen-hundred dollar circus horse for breakfast,
certain. Well, I was first out on his neck—the horse's, not the
bull's—and then underneath, and next on his rump, and sometimes
head up, and sometimes heels—but I tell you it seemed solemn and
awful to be ripping and tearing and carrying on so in the
presence of death, as you might say. Pretty soon the bull made a
snatch for us and brought away some of my horse's tail (I
suppose, but do not know, being pretty busy at the time), but
something made him hungry for solitude and suggested to him to
get up and hunt for it.</p>
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<p>"And then you ought to have seen that spider legged old
skeleton go! and you ought to have seen the bull cut out after
him, too—head down, tongue out, tail up, bellowing like
everything, and actually mowing down the weeds, and tearing up
the earth, and boosting up the sand like a whirlwind! By George,
it was a hot race! I and the saddle were back on the rump, and I
had the bridle in my teeth and holding on to the pommel with both
hands. First we left the dogs behind; then we passed a jackass
rabbit; then we overtook a cayote, and were gaining on an
antelope when the rotten girth let go and threw me about thirty
yards off to the left, and as the saddle went down over the
horse's rump he gave it a lift with his heels that sent it more
than four hundred yards up in the air, I wish I may die in a
minute if he didn't. I fell at the foot of the only solitary tree
there was in nine counties adjacent (as any creature could see
with the naked eye), and the next second I had hold of the bark
with four sets of nails and my teeth, and the next second after
that I was astraddle of the main limb and blaspheming my luck in
a way that made my breath smell of brimstone. I had the bull,
now, if he did not think of one thing. But that one thing I
dreaded. I dreaded it very seriously. There was a possibility
that the bull might not think of it, but there were greater
chances that he would. I made up my mind what I would do in case
he did. It was a little over forty feet to the ground from where
I sat. I cautiously unwound the lariat from the pommel of my
saddle——"</p>
<p>"Your saddle? Did you take your saddle up in the tree with
you?"</p>
<p>"Take it up in the tree with me? Why, how you talk. Of course
I didn't. No man could do that. It fell in the tree when it came
down."</p>
<p>"Oh—exactly."</p>
<p>"Certainly. I unwound the lariat, and fastened one end of it
to the limb. It was the very best green raw-hide, and capable of
sustaining tons. I made a slip-noose in the other end, and then
hung it down to see the length. It reached down twenty-two
feet—half way to the ground. I then loaded every barrel of the
Allen with a double charge. I felt satisfied. I said to myself,
if he never thinks of that one thing that I dread, all right—but
if he does, all right anyhow—I am fixed for him. 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——"</p>
<p>"What, the bull?"</p>
<p>"Of course—who else?"</p>
<p>"But a bull can't climb a tree."</p>
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<p>"He can't, can't he? Since you know so much about it, did you
ever see a bull try?"</p>
<p>"No! I never dreamt of such a thing."</p>
<p>"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?"</p>
<p>"Well, all right—go on. What did you do?"</p>
<p>"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."</p>
<p>"Bemis, is all that true, just as you have stated it?"</p>
<p>"I wish I may rot in my tracks and die the death of a dog if
it isn't."</p>
<p>"Well, we can't refuse to believe it, and we don't. But if
there were some proofs——"</p>
<p>"Proofs! Did I bring back my lariat?"</p>
<p>"No."</p>
<p>"Did I bring back my horse?"</p>
<p>"No."</p>
<p>"Did you ever see the bull again?"</p>
<p>"No."</p>
<p>"Well, then, what more do you want? I never saw anybody as
particular as you are about a little thing like that."</p>
<p>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:</p>
<p>"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."</p>
<p>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:</p>
<p>"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."</p>
<p>A quick glance from Bascom—a glance that I
understood—then:</p>
<p>"Why, bless my soul, I never heard of such a thing. Man, it is
impossible."</p>
<p>"I knew you would say it. I'll fetch the cat."</p>
<p>He went in the house. Bascom said:</p>
<p>"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.</p>
<p>"Cat eat a cocoanut—the innocent fool!"</p>
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<p>Eckert approached with his cat, sure enough.</p>
<p>Bascom smiled. Said he:</p>
<p>"I'll hold the cat—you bring a cocoanut."</p>
<p>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!</p>
<p>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:</p>
<p>"Keep the horse till morning. And—you need not speak of
this—foolishness to the boys."</p>
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<h2>CHAPTER VIII.</h2>
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<p>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.</p>
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<p>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.</p>
<p>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:</p>
<p>"HERE HE COMES!"</p>
<p>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!</p>
<p>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!</p>
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<p>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.</p>
<p>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 his clothes,
snatching at things to save himself, taking hold of trees and
fetching them along with him, roots and all, starting little
rocks now and then, then big boulders, then acres of ice and snow
and patches of forest, gathering and still gathering as he goes,
adding and still adding to his massed and sweeping grandeur as he
nears a three thousand-foot precipice, till at last he waves his
hat magnificently and rides into eternity on the back of a raging
and tossing avalanche!</p>
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<p>This is all very fine, but let us not be carried away by
excitement, but ask calmly, how does this person feel about it in
his cooler moments next day, with six or seven thousand feet of
snow and stuff on top of him?</p>
<p>We crossed the sand hills near the scene of the Indian mail
robbery and massacre of 1856, wherein the driver and conductor
perished, and also all the passengers but one, it was supposed;
but this must have been a mistake, for at different times
afterward on the Pacific coast I was personally acquainted with a
hundred and thirty-three or four people who were wounded during
that massacre, and barely escaped with their lives. There was no
doubt of the truth of it—I had it from their own lips. One of
these parties told me that he kept coming across arrow-heads in
his system for nearly seven years after the massacre; and another
of them told me that he was struck so literally full of arrows
that after the Indians were gone and he could raise up and
examine himself, he could not restrain his tears, for his clothes
were completely ruined.</p>
<p>The most trustworthy tradition avers, however, that only one
man, a person named Babbitt, survived the massacre, and he was
desperately wounded. He dragged himself on his hands and knee
(for one leg was broken) to a station several miles away. He did
it during portions of two nights, lying concealed one day and
part of another, and for more than forty hours suffering
unimaginable anguish from hunger, thirst and bodily pain. The
Indians robbed the coach of everything it contained, including
quite an amount of treasure.</p>
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<h2>CHAPTER IX.</h2>
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<p>We passed Fort Laramie in the night, and on the seventh
morning out we found ourselves in the Black Hills, with Laramie
Peak at our elbow (apparently) looming vast and solitary—a deep,
dark, rich indigo blue in hue, so portentously did the old
colossus frown under his beetling brows of storm-cloud. He was
thirty or forty miles away, in reality, but he only seemed
removed a little beyond the low ridge at our right. We
breakfasted at Horse-Shoe Station, six hundred and seventy-six
miles out from St. Joseph. We had now reached a hostile Indian
country, and during the afternoon we passed Laparelle Station,
and enjoyed great discomfort all the time we were in the
neighborhood, being aware that many of the trees we dashed by at
arm's length concealed a lurking Indian or two. During the
preceding night an ambushed savage had sent a bullet through the
pony-rider's jacket, but he had ridden on, just the same, because
pony-riders were not allowed to stop and inquire into such things
except when killed. As long as they had life enough left in them
they had to stick to the horse and ride, even if the Indians had
been waiting for them a week, and were entirely out of patience.
About two hours and a half before we arrived at Laparelle
Station, the keeper in charge of it had fired four times at an
Indian, but he said with an injured air that the Indian had
"skipped around so's to spile everything—and ammunition's blamed
skurse, too." The most natural inference conveyed by his manner
of speaking was, that in "skipping around," the Indian had taken
an unfair advantage.</p>
<p>The coach we were in had a neat hole through its front—a
reminiscence of its last trip through this region. The bullet
that made it wounded the driver slightly, but he did not mind it
much. He said the place to keep a man "huffy" was down on the
Southern Overland, among the Apaches, before the company moved
the stage line up on the northern route. He said the Apaches used
to annoy him all the time down there, and that he came as near as
anything to starving to death in the midst of abundance, because
they kept him so leaky with bullet holes that he "couldn't hold
his vittles." This person's statement were not generally believed.</p>
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<p>We shut the blinds down very tightly that first night in the
hostile Indian country, and lay on our arms. We slept on them
some, but most of the time we only lay on them. We did not talk
much, but kept quiet and listened. It was an inky-black night,
and occasionally rainy. We were among woods and rocks, hills and
gorges—so shut in, in fact, that when we peeped through a chink
in a curtain, we could discern nothing. The driver and conductor
on top were still, too, or only spoke at long intervals, in low
tones, as is the way of men in the midst of invisible dangers. We
listened to rain-drops pattering on the roof; and the grinding of
the wheels through the muddy gravel; and the low wailing of the
wind; and all the time we had that absurd sense upon us,
inseparable from travel at night in a close-curtained vehicle,
the sense of remaining perfectly still in one place,
notwithstanding the jolting and swaying of the vehicle, the
trampling of the horses, and the grinding of the wheels. We
listened a long time, with intent faculties and bated breath;
every time one of us would relax, and draw a long sigh of relief
and start to say something, a comrade would be sure to utter a
sudden "Hark!" and instantly the experimenter was rigid and
listening again. So the tiresome minutes and decades of minutes
dragged away, until at last our tense forms filmed over with a
dulled consciousness, and we slept, if one might call such a
condition by so strong a name—for it was a sleep set with a
hair-trigger. It was a sleep seething and teeming with a weird
and distressful confusion of shreds and fag-ends of dreams—a
sleep that was a chaos. Presently, dreams and sleep and the
sullen hush of the night were startled by a ringing report, and
cloven by such a long, wild, agonizing shriek! Then we heard—ten
steps from the stage—</p>
<p>"Help! help! help!" [It was our driver's voice.]</p>
<p>"Kill him! Kill him like a dog!"</p>
<p>"I'm being murdered! Will no man lend me a pistol?"</p>
<p>"Look out! head him off! head him off!"</p>
<p>[Two pistol shots; a confusion of voices and the trampling of
many feet, as if a crowd were closing and surging together around
some object; several heavy, dull blows, as with a club; a voice
that said appealingly, "Don't, gentlemen, please don't—I'm a
dead man!" Then a fainter groan, and another blow, and away sped
the stage into the darkness, and left the grisly mystery behind
us.]</p>
<p>What a startle it was! Eight seconds would amply cover the
time it occupied—maybe even five would do it. We only had time
to plunge at a curtain and unbuckle and unbutton part of it in an
awkward and hindering flurry, when our whip cracked sharply
overhead, and we went rumbling and thundering away, down a
mountain "grade."</p>
<p>We fed on that mystery the rest of the night—what was left of
it, for it was waning fast. It had to remain a present mystery,
for all we could get from the conductor in answer to our hails
was something that sounded, through the clatter of the wheels,
like "Tell you in the morning!"</p>
<p>So we lit our pipes and opened the corner of a curtain for a
chimney, and lay there in the dark, listening to each other's
story of how he first felt and how many thousand Indians he first
thought had hurled themselves upon us, and what his remembrance
of the subsequent sounds was, and the order of their occurrence.
And we theorized, too, but there was never a theory that would
account for our driver's voice being out there, nor yet account
for his Indian murderers talking such good English, if they were
Indians.</p>
<p>So we chatted and smoked the rest of the night comfortably
away, our boding anxiety being somehow marvelously dissipated by
the real presence of something to be anxious about.</p>
<p>We never did get much satisfaction about that dark occurrence.
All that we could make out of the odds and ends of the
information we gathered in the morning, was that the disturbance
occurred at a station; that we changed drivers there, and that
the driver that got off there had been talking roughly about some
of the outlaws that infested the region ("for there wasn't a man
around there but had a price on his head and didn't dare show
himself in the settlements," the conductor said); he had talked
roughly about these characters, and ought to have "drove up there
with his pistol cocked and ready on the seat alongside of him,
and begun business himself, because any softy would know they
would be laying for him."</p>
<p>That was all we could gather, and we could see that neither
the conductor nor the new driver were much concerned about the
matter. They plainly had little respect for a man who would
deliver offensive opinions of people and then be so simple as to
come into their presence unprepared to "back his judgment," as
they pleasantly phrased the killing of any fellow-being who did
not like said opinions. And likewise they plainly had a contempt
for the man's poor discretion in venturing to rouse the wrath of
such utterly reckless wild beasts as those outlaws—and the
conductor added:</p>
<p>"I tell you it's as much as Slade himself want to do!"</p>
<p>This remark created an entire revolution in my curiosity. I
cared nothing now about the Indians, and even lost interest in
the murdered driver. There was such magic in that name, SLADE!
Day or night, now, I stood always ready to drop any subject in
hand, to listen to something new about Slade and his ghastly
exploits. Even before we got to Overland City, we had begun to
hear about Slade and his "division" (for he was a
"division-agent") on the Overland; and from the hour we had left
Overland City we had heard drivers and conductors talk about only
three things—"Californy," the Nevada silver mines, and this
desperado Slade. And a deal the most of the talk was about Slade.
We had gradually come to have a realizing sense of the fact that
Slade was a man whose heart and hands and soul were steeped in
the blood of offenders against his dignity; a man who awfully
avenged all injuries, affront, insults or slights, of whatever
kind—on the spot if he could, years afterward if lack of earlier
opportunity compelled it; a man whose hate tortured him day and
night till vengeance appeased it—and not an ordinary vengeance
either, but his enemy's absolute death—nothing less; a man whose
face would light up with a terrible joy when he surprised a foe
and had him at a disadvantage. A high and efficient servant of
the Overland, an outlaw among outlaws and yet their relentless
scourge, Slade was at once the most bloody, the most dangerous
and the most valuable citizen that inhabited the savage
fastnesses of the mountains.</p>
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<h2>CHAPTER X.</h2>
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<p>Really and truly, two thirds of the talk of drivers and
conductors had been about this man Slade, ever since the day
before we reached Julesburg. In order that the eastern reader may
have a clear conception of what a Rocky Mountain desperado is, in
his highest state of development, I will reduce all this mass of
overland gossip to one straightforward narrative, and present it
in the following shape:</p>
<p>Slade was born in Illinois, of good parentage. At about
twenty-six years of age he killed a man in a quarrel and fled the
country. At St. Joseph, Missouri, he joined one of the early
California-bound emigrant trains, and was given the post of
train-master. One day on the plains he had an angry dispute with
one of his wagon-drivers, and both drew their revolvers. But the
driver was the quicker artist, and had his weapon cocked first.
So Slade said it was a pity to waste life on so small a matter,
and proposed that the pistols be thrown on the ground and the
quarrel settled by a fist-fight. The unsuspecting driver agreed,
and threw down his pistol—whereupon Slade laughed at his
simplicity, and shot him dead!</p>
<p>He made his escape, and lived a wild life for awhile, dividing
his time between fighting Indians and avoiding an Illinois
sheriff, who had been sent to arrest him for his first murder. It
is said that in one Indian battle he killed three savages with
his own hand, and afterward cut their ears off and sent them,
with his compliments, to the chief of the tribe.</p>
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<p>Slade soon gained a name for fearless resolution, and this was
sufficient merit to procure for him the important post of
overland division-agent at Julesburg, in place of Mr. Jules,
removed. For some time previously, the company's horses had been
frequently stolen, and the coaches delayed, by gangs of outlaws,
who were wont to laugh at the idea of any man's having the
temerity to resent such outrages. Slade resented them
promptly.</p>
<p>The outlaws soon found that the new agent was a man who did
not fear anything that breathed the breath of life. He made short
work of all offenders. The result was that delays ceased, the
company's property was let alone, and no matter what happened or
who suffered, Slade's coaches went through, every time! True, in
order to bring about this wholesome change, Slade had to kill
several men—some say three, others say four, and others six—but
the world was the richer for their loss. The first prominent
difficulty he had was with the ex-agent Jules, who bore the
reputation of being a reckless and desperate man himself. Jules
hated Slade for supplanting him, and a good fair occasion for a
fight was all he was waiting for. By and by Slade dared to employ
a man whom Jules had once discharged. Next, Slade seized a team
of stage-horses which he accused Jules of having driven off and
hidden somewhere for his own use. War was declared, and for a day
or two the two men walked warily about the streets, seeking each
other, Jules armed with a double-barreled shot gun, and Slade
with his history-creating revolver. Finally, as Slade stepped
into a store Jules poured the contents of his gun into him from
behind the door. Slade was plucky, and Jules got several bad
pistol wounds in return.</p>
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<p>Then both men fell, and were carried to their respective
lodgings, both swearing that better aim should do deadlier work
next time. Both were bedridden a long time, but Jules got to his
feet first, and gathering his possessions together, packed them
on a couple of mules, and fled to the Rocky Mountains to gather
strength in safety against the day of reckoning. For many months
he was not seen or heard of, and was gradually dropped out of the
remembrance of all save Slade himself. But Slade was not the man
to forget him. On the contrary, common report said that Slade
kept a reward standing for his capture, dead or alive!</p>
<p>After awhile, seeing that Slade's energetic administration had
restored peace and order to one of the worst divisions of the
road, the overland stage company transferred him to the Rocky
Ridge division in the Rocky Mountains, to see if he could perform
a like miracle there. It was the very paradise of outlaws and
desperadoes. There was absolutely no semblance of law there.
Violence was the rule. Force was the only recognized authority.
The commonest misunderstandings were settled on the spot with the
revolver or the knife. Murders were done in open day, and with
sparkling frequency, and nobody thought of inquiring into them.
It was considered that the parties who did the killing had their
private reasons for it; for other people to meddle would have
been looked upon as indelicate. After a murder, all that Rocky
Mountain etiquette required of a spectator was, that he should
help the gentleman bury his game—otherwise his churlishness
would surely be remembered against him the first time he killed a
man himself and needed a neighborly turn in interring him.</p>
<p>Slade took up his residence sweetly and peacefully in the
midst of this hive of horse-thieves and assassins, and the very
first time one of them aired his insolent swaggerings in his
presence he shot him dead! He began a raid on the outlaws, and in
a singularly short space of time he had completely stopped their
depredations on the stage stock, recovered a large number of
stolen horses, killed several of the worst desperadoes of the
district, and gained such a dread ascendancy over the rest that
they respected him, admired him, feared him, obeyed him! He
wrought the same marvelous change in the ways of the community
that had marked his administration at Overland City. He captured
two men who had stolen overland stock, and with his own hands he
hanged them. He was supreme judge in his district, and he was
jury and executioner likewise—and not only in the case of
offences against his employers, but against passing emigrants as
well. On one occasion some emigrants had their stock lost or
stolen, and told Slade, who chanced to visit their camp. With a
single companion he rode to a ranch, the owners of which he
suspected, and opening the door, commenced firing, killing three,
and wounding the fourth.</p>
<p>From a bloodthirstily interesting little Montana book.—["The
Vigilantes of Montana," by Prof. Thos. J. Dimsdale.]—I take this
paragraph:</p>
<blockquote><blockquote>
<p>"While on the road, Slade held absolute sway. He would ride
down to a station, get into a quarrel, turn the house out of
windows, and maltreat the occupants most cruelly. The
unfortunates had no means of redress, and were compelled to
recuperate as best they could."</p>
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<p>On one of these occasions, it is said he killed the father of
the fine little half-breed boy Jemmy, whom he adopted, and who
lived with his widow after his execution. Stories of Slade's
hanging men, and of innumerable assaults, shootings, stabbings
and beatings, in which he was a principal actor, form part of the
legends of the stage line. As for minor quarrels and shootings,
it is absolutely certain that a minute history of Slade's life
would be one long record of such practices.</p>
<p>"The Vigilantes of Montana" by Prof. Thomas J. Dimsdale</p>
</blockquote></blockquote>
<p>Slade was a matchless marksman with a navy revolver. The
legends say that one morning at Rocky Ridge, when he was feeling
comfortable, he saw a man approaching who had offended him some
days before—observe the fine memory he had for matters like
that—and, "Gentlemen," said Slade, drawing, "it is a good
twenty-yard shot—I'll clip the third button on his coat!" Which
he did. The bystanders all admired it. And they all attended the
funeral, too.</p>
<p>On one occasion a man who kept a little whisky-shelf at the
station did something which angered Slade—and went and made his
will. A day or two afterward Slade came in and called for some
brandy. The man reached under the counter (ostensibly to get a
bottle—possibly to get something else), but Slade smiled upon
him that peculiarly bland and satisfied smile of his which the
neighbors had long ago learned to recognize as a death-warrant in
disguise, and told him to "none of that!—pass out the
high-priced article." So the poor bar-keeper had to turn his back
and get the high-priced brandy from the shelf; and when he faced
around again he was looking into the muzzle of Slade's pistol.
"And the next instant," added my informant, impressively, "he was
one of the deadest men that ever lived."</p>
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<p>The stage-drivers and conductors told us that sometimes Slade
would leave a hated enemy wholly unmolested, unnoticed and
unmentioned, for weeks together—had done it once or twice at any
rate. And some said they believed he did it in order to lull the
victims into unwatchfulness, so that he could get the advantage
of them, and others said they believed he saved up an enemy that
way, just as a schoolboy saves up a cake, and made the pleasure
go as far as it would by gloating over the anticipation. One of
these cases was that of a Frenchman who had offended Slade. To
the surprise of everybody Slade did not kill him on the spot, but
let him alone for a considerable time. Finally, however, he went
to the Frenchman's house very late one night, knocked, and when
his enemy opened the door, shot him dead—pushed the corpse
inside the door with his foot, set the house on fire and burned
up the dead man, his widow and three children! I heard this story
from several different people, and they evidently believed what
they were saying. It may be true, and it may not. "Give a dog a
bad name," etc.</p>
<p>Slade was captured, once, by a party of men who intended to
lynch him. They disarmed him, and shut him up in a strong
log-house, and placed a guard over him. He prevailed on his
captors to send for his wife, so that he might have a last
interview with her. She was a brave, loving, spirited woman. She
jumped on a horse and rode for life and death. When she arrived
they let her in without searching her, and before the door could
be closed she whipped out a couple of revolvers, and she and her
lord marched forth defying the party. And then, under a brisk
fire, they mounted double and galloped away unharmed!</p>
<p>In the fulness of time Slade's myrmidons captured his ancient
enemy Jules, whom they found in a well-chosen hiding-place in the
remote fastnesses of the mountains, gaining a precarious
livelihood with his rifle. They brought him to Rocky Ridge, bound
hand and foot, and deposited him in the middle of the cattle-yard
with his back against a post. It is said that the pleasure that
lit Slade's face when he heard of it was something fearful to
contemplate. He examined his enemy to see that he was securely
tied, and then went to bed, content to wait till morning before
enjoying the luxury of killing him. Jules spent the night in the
cattle-yard, and it is a region where warm nights are never
known. In the morning Slade practised on him with his revolver,
nipping the flesh here and there, and occasionally clipping off a
finger, while Jules begged him to kill him outright and put him
out of his misery. Finally Slade reloaded, and walking up close
to his victim, made some characteristic remarks and then
dispatched him. The body lay there half a day, nobody venturing
to touch it without orders, and then Slade detailed a party and
assisted at the burial himself. But he first cut off the dead
man's ears and put them in his vest pocket, where he carried them
for some time with great satisfaction. That is the story as I
have frequently heard it told and seen it in print in California
newspapers. It is doubtless correct in all essential
particulars.</p>
<p>In due time we rattled up to a stage-station, and sat down to
breakfast with a half-savage, half-civilized company of armed and
bearded mountaineers, ranchmen and station employees. The most
gentlemanly- appearing, quiet and affable officer we had yet
found along the road in the Overland Company's service was the
person who sat at the head of the table, at my elbow. Never youth
stared and shivered as I did when I heard them call him
SLADE!</p>
<p>Here was romance, and I sitting face to face with it!—looking
upon it—touching it—hobnobbing with it, as it were! Here,
right by my side, was the actual ogre who, in fights and brawls
and various ways, had taken the lives of twenty-six human beings,
or all men lied about him! I suppose I was the proudest stripling
that ever traveled to see strange lands and wonderful people.</p>
<p>He was so friendly and so gentle-spoken that I warmed to him
in spite of his awful history. It was hardly possible to realize
that this pleasant person was the pitiless scourge of the
outlaws, the raw-head-and-bloody- bones the nursing mothers of
the mountains terrified their children with. And to this day I
can remember nothing remarkable about Slade except that his face
was rather broad across the cheek bones, and that the cheek bones
were low and the lips peculiarly thin and straight. But that was
enough to leave something of an effect upon me, for since then I
seldom see a face possessing those characteristics without
fancying that the owner of it is a dangerous man.</p>
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<p>The coffee ran out. At least it was reduced to one tin-cupful,
and Slade was about to take it when he saw that my cup was
empty.</p>
<p>He politely offered to fill it, but although I wanted it, I
politely declined. I was afraid he had not killed anybody that
morning, and might be needing diversion. But still with firm
politeness he insisted on filling my cup, and said I had traveled
all night and better deserved it than he—and while he talked he
placidly poured the fluid, to the last drop. I thanked him and
drank it, but it gave me no comfort, for I could not feel sure
that he would not be sorry, presently, that he had given it away,
and proceed to kill me to distract his thoughts from the loss.
But nothing of the kind occurred. We left him with only
twenty-six dead people to account for, and I felt a tranquil
satisfaction in the thought that in so judiciously taking care of
No. 1 at that breakfast-table I had pleasantly escaped being No.
27. Slade came out to the coach and saw us off, first ordering
certain rearrangements of the mail-bags for our comfort, and then
we took leave of him, satisfied that we should hear of him again,
some day, and wondering in what connection.</p>
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by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
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