ROUTE I.
It was in the by-gone days of the Misty Mountain Stage and Express Company—only a few years ago by actual chronological computation, it is true; but at least a half a century by the change effected in the less than demi-decade which has passed.
Do you know that at times, when I contemplate this change, I can scarcely realize that I have lived long enough to have lived through it? I often feel as if the memory of the things that were is the reflection of experiences in a former state of existence, so different is the what is from the what was. I feel burdened by great personal antiquity, and cannot help considering myself a sort of Methusalem le Petit. I have seen the great plains spanned by the rail and the wire. The smoking, shrieking steed of steam drinks the waters of the fork of the Misty Mountain, sacred but a year or two ago to the pony of the red man. The journey which occupied weeks to accomplish ten years past is now made in a few hours, and lightning whispers are interchanged between the Atlantic and the Pacific.
My good old Uncle Joe, an old-time leather-dealer in the “Swamp” in New York City—who, a bachelor, had adopted me, an orphan, and, having educated me, had assigned me a desk in the dingy old office with the leathery smell—told me one day, without any previous warning, that he wished me to start without delay for the Stony Sierra to look after some of his business interests in that region. That was my Uncle Joe’s way of doing things. His engagements did not permit his leaving New York at the time. Besides, he had crossed the great plains more than twice or thrice, and had had enough of them. But as I had not had any of them, a little, he thought, would do me good, and he proposed to give it me.
My journey to the (then) end of railroad communication was remarkable only for the general railway decadence which, commencing at Chicago, increased “in inverse ratio to the square of the distance from our objective point,” as the elegant English of the telegraph would phrase it. The conductor grew familiar with the passengers, who grew fewer. The various characters of the “newspaper boy,” the vegetable-ivory notion vender, the “ice-cold lemonade” boy, the candy-seller, the cigar boy, the bookseller, the apple and orange boy, were all performed by one and the same protean youngster. The passengers had dwindled so that it would not pay to invest two boys in that dramatic business. At length, the Thespian youth, tired of playing a dozen different characters to empty cars, threw off all his disguises at once, and subsided into a mere passenger like the rest of us.
A sudden shock brought a slight nap in which I was indulging to a timely end. The train had stopped. The pitiful account of passengers were on their feet, some leaving the car, others looking about them with an expression of interrogative imbecility, when the brakeman shouted out:
“Devil’s Landing—end o’ track!”
No danger of taking a wrong train now. So we passengers, four in number, left the car. We concluded a hasty agreement to stick to each other as fellow-men and fellow-passengers, we four waifs washed on the shore of barbarism by the advancing tide of civilization. A fellow-feeling of lost-sheepiness made us wondrous kind to each other.
I accosted a small, dried-up, hard-featured old fellow of eighteen or nineteen:
“Any hotels here?”
Answer (in an intensely contemptuous manner): “No!”
“Any restaurants—eating-houses?”
“Yes, four on ’em: the ’Merik’n House, the Mansh’n House, the Pacific S’loon, and Jack Langford’s dug-out.”
Finding the old juvenile so communicative, and having more questions to propound, we propitiate him by offering a cigar in recognition of his social and chronological equality, and in proof that we are not “stuck-up snobs from the East.” He takes the cigar brusquely without oral signification of acceptance or expression of thanks. He bites the end off wolfishly, and places the cigar as near his ear as possible. We offer him a match. He takes it, puts it into his vest-pocket, saying:
“Guess I’ll take a dry smoke.”
“Which is the best of the hotels or eating-houses?”
“All doggoned bad.”
“Which is the cleanest?”
“All doggoned dirty.”
“Which is the cheapest?”
“All doggoned dear.”
“Which is the quietest?”
“Doggoned row goin’ on in all of ’em most o’ the time. Man killed at some one on ’em ’most every night, and a brace or more on dance-nights.”
We requested him to direct us to the “American” or the “Mansion House.”
“Don’t need to go far. That,” said he, indicating by a movement of his cigar and his lower jaw a partially finished “balloon-frame” house about thirty yards to the right, “is the ’Merik’n; and that,” indicating in like manner a canvas shed to the left, “is the Mansh’n House.”
Devil’s Landing consisted of about a dozen mushroom edifices and about as many “dug-outs.” On reflection, we concluded to try the “American House.”
A small space cut off by an unpainted counter served for an office, but no “register” was displayed. The establishment had only very recently been moved up, the official behind the counter informed us, from the last resting-place by the way of runners with the rails.
A look at the “sleeping apartments” was sufficient for me. I determined not to sleep in any of them if I could possibly help it.
I went back to the functionary at the counter, and asked the time of departure of the Misty Mountain coach, and learned that a coach left the same afternoon, and that there was one place vacant. I engaged the seat at once, glad to escape the horrors of a night in the American House and Devil’s Landing. My fellow-passengers wished me to wait for the next day’s coach, but I declined. When we agreed to stick together, I knew nothing of the American House.
We had dinner. It consisted of very fat and very rusty bacon, putty biscuits, and mud coffee without milk.
“The cows have not come in,” said one of the greasy waiters, when I asked for milk.
“The cows never do come home here,” whispered a neighbor, evidently an habitué.
It was toward the close of August, and the heat was excessive. The sun shone mercilessly on us through the partially glazed and wholly uncurtained windows. Yet we ate and perspired, and perspired and drank mud coffee, with a persistency which astonished me when after thinking on these matters.
The flies were terrible. They swept around the room in buzzing clouds. Some of them were nearly large enough to offer a fair mark for a shot-gun; the smaller ones insinuated themselves everywhere—into your nose, ears, eyes—aye, even into your mouth. They immolated themselves in the frowzy, oily butter; and their remains studded the reeking mass like currants in a pudding.
Such a wonderful effect has the pure prairie air—it doth so whet the edge of appetite—that, though our eyes were shocked, we ate and ate, and our sense of taste was not offended. The meal only cost us two dollars apiece.
After dinner, I lit a fifty-cent Devil’s Landing cigar, and walked (literally) around town—a perambulation which did not quite occupy five minutes. As I finished my walk, a shot was fired at the other end of town—that is, within fifteen or twenty rods. Other shots followed. A long-haired, slouched-hatted, and red-legginged individual dashed past on a pretty good horse. Evidently he was the mark at which the firing was directed. As he passed, an armed man or two rushed out of every house and shot at him. The proprietor of the Oriental Saloon came forth, armed with a Henry rifle, and deliberately blazed away at the long-haired fugitive. The latter, finding bullets in front of him, bullets to left of him, bullets behind him, after several miraculous escapes from close shots, had no course open but to turn to right of him, around the corner of the American House, which would afford him some cover. But just as he turned, his horse was hit in the off fore-leg and brought to in a moment. Immediately he was hemmed in by the muzzles of twenty repeating-rifles. He had emptied his six-shooter. Flight was impossible. There was no course but surrender—not even suicide—left. He jumped from his horse, and sat down cross-legged on the ground. He was quickly seized and pinioned. His horse was taken in charge by a citizen. No words were wasted on either side. His lariat of horse-hair furnished a deadly loop, which was placed around his neck. He was marched about a mile to the only tree in sight—an old cottonwood.
While the crowd was going to the tree, the clerk of the American House told me in a few words the history of the long-haired victim. He was a half-breed Choctaw, frequently employed as a scout by the government. There were several of these scouts in the region. They called themselves “wolves,” and prided themselves on their destruction of human life. When any of them came into town citizens were sure to be shot at. Their favorite way of leaving town was, having first filled themselves with “fighting whiskey,” to dash through at full speed, discharging their revolvers at anything human that chanced to appear in their path. The citizens had determined not to stand this sort of thing any longer. “Johnny Henshaw”—so our “wolf” was called—had been drinking rather freely of late. He had declared his intention of shooting three prominent men of the town, mentioning them by name. Hence the measures about to be taken.
Johnny Henshaw seemed to be about twenty years old—indeed rather under than over that age. There was nothing in his features to show a trace of Indian blood. His hair was light brown, his eyes a soft, light blue, his skin fair, and his cheeks rosy. The expression of his face was gentle and pleasing. It made me heart-sick to look at the young fellow, even though he was a wolf and deserved a wolf’s fate, and to think that in the midst of health and strength and youth he was marching to a speedy death. As we came near the fatal tree, I tried to imagine what thoughts were passing in the outlaw’s mind by mentally putting myself in his place. The effort made me dizzy and sick. I felt as if I were about to fall senseless.
When we had reached the cottonwood tree, the cortége halted. A wagon was hauled up to the tree, and Johnny caused to mount it. One end of his lariat was made fast to a branch of the tree. Three or four men jumped on the wagon. Some confusion occurred in properly adjusting the noose about the victim’s neck. Johnny pushed the men from him, saying:
“Get out o’ here! I’ll show ye how a man can die!” And, fixing with his own hands the noose about his neck, he jumped into eternity!