THE FINEST HOTEL.
A SKETCH OF LIFE IN THE MOUNTAINS OF KENTUCKY.
By A. Lytle Peterman.
“Boys, is there a hotel in this place?” the traveler asked of two youngsters lounging near, as he stood, suit-case in hand, on the cinder path by the track, looking inquiringly about him, while the train pulled off down the road.
“What place?” putting answer and inquiry into one. It aroused their interest and surprise to hear Montvale called a “place.”
“This village, or hamlet, or station, or whatever you call it—is there a hotel hereabout?” he replied, a little impatient and determined to make himself understood.
“A hotel? Yes, sir,” answered the larger of the boys.
“Then I’ll thank you and pay you to show me to it,” the stranger said, as he brightened up, throwing off the lost look that had struck his face at the same moment his foot had struck the cinders, when he stepped from the train.
“All right; up this a-way,” the larger boy answered, as he turned into the path, and the smaller fell in behind him. The traveler and his suit-case, side by side, brought up the rear. The boys were agreeable, but not over-polite, neither thinking to say, “I’ll take the baggage.”
When they had gone perhaps a hundred yards, the traveler’s eyes all the while seeking sight of a hotel and finding none, the leader stopped suddenly, raised his arm, pointed his finger back down the railway, and remarked, “The finest hotel is ’way down hyander.”
“Very well,” said the stranger, an experienced traveler, therefore past the “kicking” stage; “take me to the finest.”
The procession faced about, headed down the track, retraced its steps, passed the depot, and continued on its way.
But we are not yet to “the finest hotel.” In fact, there is time to “view the landscape o’er” before we arrive, especially as the boys are quiet, remarkably quiet for Kentucky boys—“mighty say-nothin’ shavers,” as the landlady afterwards described them to her guest.
It was dusk, on a Sunday evening in September. The rain had just begun falling gently—the prelude to the first cool snap of the autumn. The stranger had left the train to spend the night, preparatory to his cross-country trip on the following day.
Montvale is a station on the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway, in the mountains of Kentucky, seventy-five or a hundred miles east of Lexington. It is of consequence chiefly because it is on the road to somewhere else—the point of departure from the railway to the country lying beyond. Contrary to the rule, its inhabitants seemed to realize its urban limitations, especially the meagerness of its population. The two boys, unprepared for such compliment, were surprised to hear it called a “place.”
At that time, less than a decade ago—and doubtless ever since,—Montvale straggled around over a wide expanse of flat woods and weedy fields, between ranges. Space to spare was the most striking thing about it. The land, too swampy for tillage, except after elaborate artificial drainage, was “good to fill a hole in the ground and hold the world together.”
The houses, after the “boxed” style of carpentry, seemed not to have been built, but to have grown up, like the weeds. They had never peeped into a paint-bucket; their complexion was that of the crawfish land on which they stood. Most of the doors, off the hinges, whether they ever had any or not, stood leaning against the inside wall, ready in case a storm or other emergency arose.
There was little direct communication between the homes, partly because the weeds overhung the pig-trails of travel; partly because it was about a Sabbath-day’s journey from each house to its nearest neighbor; partly because all paths led to or through the depot yard, as the literal and figurative center of the hamlet. The railway station was at once the market, the park, the amusement hall, the shipping center, the business section, the social resort, the lounging place, the nursery and playground of all Montvale. The railway track, with the path beside it, was the main and only street of the “place.”
Just as the traveler was wondering if they were going to tramp down to the next station, the leader said, “Out this hyer way,” turning off to the right, through a sea of white-topped weeds. The rain was still falling, and night had come on. A few pale rays of the moon, struggling through the clouds, showed the boys’ heads now and then bobbing above the watery weeds, like porpoises at play on the surface of the ocean.
At last, the little procession reached a plank fence with a gap in it. The boys stopped, confronted the traveler, and the leader said, “This is the finest hotel anywhar about hyer.”
“Where?” the stranger asked.
“Right yander—go through this gate,” tapping with his hand a piece of frame-work standing across the path.
The boys took the proffered pay, dropped it into their pockets, thrust their hands down to keep it from getting out, and plunged again into the depths of the weedy sea.
The traveler peered through the rain and fog into the yard, where the weeds had lost so much of their stature that he thought he must be nearing the shore. He picked up the gate leaning across the path, from panel to panel of the fence, and set it out of the way, remarking, “Everything about here is off its hinges—I’m nearly off myself.”
He approached the “hotel,” consisting mostly of “boxed” lean-to, and rested one foot upon the sill of the shed—by courtesy known as the “porch.” He paused; in the language of eastern railway danger signs, he thought he would “Stop, Look and Listen.” Silence and the clouds reigned. No sound but the patter of the drops on the roof. No light gleamed from the skimpy window, nor crept through the generous cracks in the wall.
He rapped at the door; no answer. He rapped again—louder; still no answer. There must be nobody at home in “the finest hotel.” So he hammered the rickety, raky, crazy shutter just because there wasn’t, till it shook, rattled and shivered, and the boards on the rear wall creaked and groaned in sympathy.
A cracked, rasping, whining voice from the inner depths called out, “Well!”
“Madam”—for that voice could belong to none but a crone—“I want to get to stay over night.”
“This is a purty time o’ night to be a-prowlin’ ’round, a-draggin’ uv honest, hard-workin’ folks out’n the bed ter wait on ye,” the landlady replied. The reprimand came mixed with the rattle of straw-ticks and the rustle of bedclothing.
“I am sorry,” the traveler answered, “but I came as early as I could. Really, I am neither the conductor, engineer, nor superintendent of that train. Don’t you keep hotel?”
“Yes, sorter, a leetle, sometimes, when I feel like it. But can’t ye wait tell a body gits on her cloze; ur will ye jist come in anyhow, whether ur no?”
“Oh, certainly, I’ll gladly wait,” the traveler said; “take your own time—mine, too.”
“Whar air you frum?” asked the voice from within, somewhat muffled as it poked its head up through a calico dress.
“I don’t see what that has to do with it, but I came directly from Lexington.”
“Yes, I ’lowed so;” she answered. “I jist thought it ’uz some o’ them Bluegrass fellers what sets up all night and sleeps all day—what hain’t nothin’ to do but keep awake them that has to work.”
After taking time enough to have arrayed herself for presentation to the queen, Madame Calico now approached the door, holding a little sputtering brass lamp—apparently the model of the first invention—in one hand, while she vainly tried to tie her apron strings with the other. She knocked up the wooden latch with her elbow and a clatter, and the door swung open. Holding high her lamp—a rustic model for “Liberty Enlightening the World”—she waited for the stranger to speak.
“Madame, I’m very sorry—,” he began.
“Yes, I know it,” she snapped, cutting him off from the remainder of his sentence. “’Bout ever’ thing ’at comes frum Lex’n’ton’s sorry, mighty sorry. Guess they’s some good people down thar, but I hain’t never seed ’em. They don’t never come up hyer. I reckin you kin stay, but I can’t give ye no bed all to yerself; an’ I tell ye now, ye needn’t to ax it.”
Meanwhile, Madame Calico had admitted him and led the way through a side door into an adjoining room which served as a lounging hall for guests, whether “by the day” or “by the week.” Having learned how to make allowances for the moods of hotels, landlords and landladies, he had followed meekly, without invitation.
By “the dim and flaring lamp,” he now caught the outlines of a half-finished stairway winding up to the garret. There was no railing to this gangway; safety consisted in keeping away from the brink. Madame Calico stood on the third step, her countenance and kerosene jet beaming contemptuously down upon the upturned face of the hesitating guest at the bottom.
“Madam,” he asked, hearing, as he thought, a chorus of snores winding down the gangway, “does anybody else sleep up there?”
“No, they hain’t nobody hardly now, sence the mill ’uz shot down.” Rather an evasive answer.
“How many?” he inquired.
“The mill is shot down, an’ most uv the hands has quit work, an’ they hain’t many stays hyer now.”
The guest, growing insistent, asked the third time, as he took a single, hesitating step upward, “Well, who are they—can’t you say just how many?”
Madame Calico, now on the defensive, grew more amiable—rather, less hostile—, but again took refuge in “the mill” and its shutting down: “Sence the mill wuz shot down, the’ve mos’ly all went away; they’s hardly any ub ’em left now.”
The guest was growing impatient, as she could readily see. Not liking the outlook, he stopped, turned as if to descend, and once more demanded, “Well, Madam, will you tell me just how many or not?”
She was loath to lose her guest and his pay, “after a-bein’ drug out’n” her bed. So she at last came to the point, but in her own roundabout way: “Sence the mill ’uz shot down they hain’t nobody sca’cely sleeps up hyer—nobody but Sam Thompson, an’ Tim Turney, an’ Joe Alley, an’ Bob Redford, an’ Jack Johnson, an’ Bill Ed Jeckley—I b’lieve them’s all—oh, yes, an’ Less Wilson. You kin sleep with Bill Ed, but he won’t sleep nowhar exceptin’ the fore side uv the bed.”
“Well,” the traveler muttered to himself, “in an adventure, even a formidable certainty is better than a gloomy doubt.”
They had now reached the landing at the angle in the wall. Madame Calico handed the little lamp to the guest, and turned to go, saying, “You kin bunk up with Bill Ed.”
“But how shall I know Bill Ed from the others?” he asked.
“W’y, he’s in the empty bed by hisself; t’others is a-sleepin’ three an’ four tergether. Bill Ed won’t sleep ’ith none uv ’em, ’caze, he says, he ruther sleep ’ith a meal-sack uv augers an’ hammers then ’ith a man. Sometimes I jist have to slip a stranger like you in terhin’ him, an’ Bill Ed don’t know nothin’ about it tell mornin’.”
As she clambered down the gangway, hugging the wall, and the new guest crept up into the garret, he called out, “What time do we rise in the morning?”
“Oh, most any time,” she answered. “Sence the mill ’uz shot down, ever’ feller jist suits hisself about crawlin’ out.”
“About what hour?” he asked.
“Well, when the mill ’uz a-runnin’ we used to git up purty soon, but sence hit ’uz shot down we’re all sorter lazy-like, so we purty giner’ly al’ays have late eatin’.”
“But, Madam, please name the hour for breakfast,” he insisted.
“Well, you kin do purty much to suit yerself sence the mill ’uz shot down. Jest sleep ez late as yer please. We al’ays eat late when comp’ny’s hyer, sence the mill ’uz shot down. So you git yer hands an’ face washed an’ ready by four o’clock’ll do.”
No wonder the mill hands went to bed before nightfall! They had to, in order to get in in time to get out.
Till now, the sounds coming down from the garret had blended into something like harmony. When the new guest neared the top of the gangway, it seemed to him like poking his head into a den of infuriated wild beasts. The roaring, growling and groaning made “confusion dire and dreadful din.”
A glance around caused him to wonder how many slept in that one room before “the mill ’uz shot down.”
The bedsteads were made from pieces of undressed scantling, nailed together; not one of them had ever felt a plane or seen a chisel. The little forest of posts and frames looked like a railway trestle; and the groans and sighs issuing from it sounded as if an express train had just plunged over, mangling passengers and crew. The mill “hands” lay uncovered in that stifling atmosphere, tumbled and tangled into all shapes and attitudes, looking like a band of contortionists struck dead, each in the midst of his favorite trick. There lay Bill Ed—two hundred fifty pounds of mountaineer—spread along the front railing, his arm thrown out and hanging over, to keep him from rolling back and wedging himself under the rafters of the roof. His was the “empty bed”—fairly on the way to occupancy!
The new guest, lifting his lamp and peering over huge Bill Ed to the sleeping place beyond, observed to himself, “In the language of the sweet girl graduate, ‘Beyond the Alps lies Italy.’ The ‘valley’ is all right, if I can ever scale the mountain.”
But he found an easier way. He undressed, sneaked into the “valley” from the foot of the bed, and taking care not to thrust his nose against the roof, he stretched himself out, but not to sleep—to listen! His entrance had not disturbed the snorers. In fact, it had seemed to give them a new inspiration, for the expiration grew louder. They might have supplied steam enough to keep the mill from shutting down. They made up a whole band of wind instruments, each blowing a different horn. The listener now had time to analyze and classify them.
One sounded like a March gust whistling through the splinters on the end of a hickory rail. Another had the hiss of the air-brake under a passenger coach, when the train is about to start. There was one gasp like the continued tearing of brown domestic, and another that made you look around for a stream of broken stones pouring into a tin bucket. One long-winded horn, out of tune with all others, hissed like a jet of steam escaping from the steam-chest when a heavy freight engine is beginning to move. Bill Ed, evidently the sawyer of the mill, had a long-drawn snort like the sound of a circular saw ripping through a seasoned oak, closing with the confused ring of the steel as it clears the end of the log, combined with the clatter of the “carriage” rushing back for a fresh start.
To sleep amid such a din was a problem. By and by the traveler dozed off, but not out of reach of that roar—it lingered in the distance. At last it ceased—the snorers had risen and gone!
Just when well asleep—so it seemed to him—, a bell—it must have been first cousin to the little lamp—tinkled on the gangway. The traveler withdrew from the crevice between rafter and railing—where he had literally lodged,—and turned over.
By and by a cow-bell bellowed, not rang, in the lounging hall below. The traveler turned over once more, yawned, slumbered again.
After a time—the clock knew how long—, a conch-shell thrust up the gangway roared; and the sleeper, thinking it a through freight, pushed on, making for the next station.
Another silence. At last, behold, Madame Calico stood at the foot of the gangway, and shouted: “Air you a-gona git up to-day? Ur do ye want me to git yer breakfas’ and then drag ye out’n the bed, an’ put yer cloze on ye, an’ wash ye, an’ chaw yer victuals fur ye?”
“I’ll be down in a moment, Madam,” the traveler answered.
“Ever’body but you has eat an’ gone, an’ done furgot hit, by this time,” she replied. “You’ll fin’ the wash-pan a-settin’ on the porch.”
He arose, dressed hurriedly, made his way down, and by raking around on the “porch,” finally stumbled against the wash-pan. The morning was still dark, but a gray spot was in the eastern sky—daylight was on its way to “the finest hotel.”
Toilet finished, with the aid of his handkerchief in place of a towel, he began wondering where the dining-room could be. He heard no footsteps about the “hotel,” and search revealed neither kitchen nor fire. Peering around, he at last caught sight of smoke curling up from a stick-and-clay chimney some hundred yards away, beyond a bay of the weedy sea he had crossed the evening before. Parting the weeds overhanging the path was much like swimming across.
Breakfast—varied, wholesome, well-cooked—was on the table—had been for an hour or more. Madame Calico, first seeing him seated and busy, then remarked, “You’ll jist have to wait on yerself, but I reckin ye ain’t noways bashful. I’ll have to go back to the hotel to clean up atter ye. It’s a blessed thing the mill’s shot down, fur we couldn’t a-had no sich layin’ up in the bed a-soakin’ an’ a-sobbin’ this time o’ day, ’way hyer might’ nigh dinner.” He was not sorry to make his meal in silence, peace and the landlady’s absence.
Breakfast finished, the guest made his way back toward his lodging place. Turning the corner and confronting the entrance, he read, on a board over the shed, the name of “the finest hotel,” “Traveler’s Rest;” and immediately, by the law of contrast, his memory reverted to the garret, the snoring, Bill Ed and the “empty bed,”—to the hand-bell, the cow-bell and the conch-shell.
Just before he paid his bill and left, in quest of a turnout for the day’s drive, Madame Calico, still in the act of cleaning up, favored him with her views on affairs in and about Montvale, and divers and sundry bits of information—some of a startling kind. “No,” she said, “the hotel business don’t amount to nothin’ much sence the mill ’uz shot down. Wunst in a while some feller comes stragglin’ along way hyander in the night, when all honest white folks is asleep, but the trouble o’ waitin’ on ’im an’ cleanin’ up atter ’im’s more’n the pay.
“Them revenue men an’ marshals an’ sich rakin’s an’ scrapin’s uv the yearth has might nigh ruint Montvale. A passel uv ’em comes here t’other day—jist week afore last—an’ axes me ’bout Sam Ben Jeckley’s ’stillery, whar it wuz. Sam Ben is Bill Ed’s brother. An’ I up an’ tells ’em I don’t know nothin’ about it—hain’t never seed it, nur smelt it, nur tasted it, nur been about it, nur had nothin’ to do with it, in no shape, size, form, nur fashion.
“They said they knowed it ’uz around hyer somewhar. An’ sir, they rummaged over this lan’ an’ country a-s’archin’ fur that ’stillery—hit uz the mill the hands worked at. Atter cavortin’ aroun’ two ur three days, like a lot o’ male-cows a-tarrin’ up a paster, they afinally finds the mill—’stillery, as they called it—about two miles frum hyer.
“An’ they taken axes an’ smashed the whole thing tell they wuz nuther ha’r nur hide uv it left. An’ they spilt out three tanks o’ sour-mash byer, an’ we hain’t had none fur the table sence. It beats all uv yer sasafac tea, yer spicewood tea, an’ yer Californy byer.
“They poured out five barl’s uv the best whisky—’cordin’ to what’s said uv it—that ever went to town on ’lection day. They say jist one drink ’ould run a man wil’ enough fur the ’sylum, an’ one drap ’ould make a rabbit pick a qua’rl with a bull-dog, ef he had to spit in his face to do it.
“It’s all sech ez that has ruint the country—stark-nater’ly wiped business out’n Montvale. The dirty, low-flunged, lazy good-fur-nothin’ imps uv the devil, prowlin’ aroun’, ’stroyin’ what other people’s sweat has earnt!
“But still they wuzn’t satisfied! Then they went up above the mill—’stillery, as they called it—, an’ drawed the’r Winchesters an’ Smith & Westerns, an’ farred bullets all through the ruff, an’ poked the door ez full o’ holes ez a sifter. They jest blowed the whole thing bodyaciously all to flugens an’ flinderations, with the’r guns an’ pistols.
“An’ that’s how the mill come to be shot down,” she added, as her parting guest once more lifted the gate aside.
“Good day, Madam,” he said, as he lifted it back.
“Wush ye well,” she answered. “Ef ye’re ever hyer agin, come to see us—I reckin we kin stand ye, an’ Bill Ed won’t know nothin’ about it tell he’s up an’ out. He may be gone by that time any way, fur he’s speenied to Feder’l Court up at Louisville purty soon, fur a witness ’gin the government, to swar Sam Ben an’ tother ’shiners out’n trouble.”
“Yes,” said the traveler to himself, “when I put up again at ‘the finest hotel,’ Bill Ed will be gone—to Federal Court, or some lower or higher tribunal.”
