With a peculiar air of deliberation and of childlike simplicity, he said in every-day tones, “Come up there, mules!”
One quick strain, a slight rumble, and the wagon rolled on to Copples’s.
Smith and I followed, and as we neared the house he punched me familiarly and said, as a brown petticoat disappeared in the station door, “There’s Sarah Jane! When I see that girl I feel like I’d reach out and gather her in;” then clasping her imaginary form as if she was about to dance with him, he executed a couple of waltz turns, softly intimating, “That’s what’s the matter with H. G.”
Kaweah being stabled, we betook ourselves to the office, which was of course bar-room as well. As I entered, the unfortunate teamster was about paying his liquid compliment to the florid Pike. Their glasses were filled. “My respects,” said the little driver. The whiskey became lost to view, and went eroding its way through the dust these poor fellows had swallowed. He added, “Well, Billy, you can swear.”
“Swear?” repeated the Pike in a tone of incredulous questioning. “Me swear?” as if the compliment were greater than his modest desert. “No, I can’t blaspheme worth a cuss. You’d jest orter hear Pete Green. He can exhort the impenitent mule. I’ve known a ten-mule-team to renounce the flesh and haul thirty-one thousand through a foot of clay mud under one of his outpourings.”
As a hotel, Copples’s is on the Mongolian plan, which means that dining-room and kitchen are given over to the mercies—never very tender—of Chinamen; not such Chinamen as learned the art of pig-roasting that they might be served up by Elia, but the average John, and a sadly low average that John is. I grant him a certain general air of thrift, admitting, too, that his lack of sobriety never makes itself apparent in loud Celtic brawl. But he is, when all is said, and in spite of timid and fawning obedience, a very poor servant.
Now and then at one friend’s house it has happened to me that I dined upon artistic Chinese cookery, and all they who come home from living in China smack their lips over the relishing cuisine. I wish they had sat down that day at Copples’s. No; on second thought I would spare them.
John may go peacefully to North Adams and make shoes for us, but I shall not solve the awful domestic problem by bringing him into my kitchen; certainly so long as Howells’s “Mrs. Johnson” lives, nor even while I can get an Irish lady to torment me, and offer the hospitality of my home to her cousins.
After the warning bell, fifty or sixty teamsters inserted their dusty heads in buckets of water, turned their once white neck-handkerchiefs inside out, producing a sudden effect of clean linen, and made use of the two mournful wrecks of combs which hung on strings at either side the Copples’s mirror. Many went to the bar and partook of a “dust-cutter.” There was then such clearing of throats, and such loud and prolonged blowing of noses as may not often be heard upon this globe.
In the calm which ensued, conversation sprang up on “lead harness,” the “Stockton wagon that had went off the grade,” with here and there a sentiment called out by two framed lithographic belles, who in great richness of color and scantiness of raiment flanked the bar-mirror;—a dazzling reflector, chiefly destined to portray the bar-keeper’s back hair, which work of art involved much affectionate labor.