The station buildings were long, low huts, made of sun-dried,
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 10
speaking of, were thatched and then sodded, or covered
with a thick layer of earth, and from this sprang 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
buildings consisted of barns, stable room for twelve or 15
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 20
for a man to crawl through, but this had no glass in it.
There was no flooring, but the ground was packed hard.
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 coffeepots,25
a tin teapot, a little bag of salt, and a side of bacon.
By the door of the station keeper's den, outside, was a
tin washbasin, 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 30
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 he 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. 5
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 10
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 a comb by a string—but if I had to describe that
patriarch or die, I believe I would order some sample 15
coffins. 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. 20
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 25
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 30
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. 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 bench5
four feet long, and two empty candle boxes. The table
was a greasy board on stilts, and the tablecloth 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 queen's-ware 10
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, 15
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. There was only one cruet left,
and that was a stopperless, fly-specked, broken-necked 20
thing, with two inches of vinegar in it and a dozen preserved
flies with their heels up and looking sorry they
had invested there.
The station keeper upended a disk of last week's bread,
of the shape and size of an old-time cheese, and carved some 25
slabs from it which were as good as Nicholson pavement,
and tenderer.
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 30
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.
Then he poured for us a beverage which he called slumgullion
and it is hard to think he was not inspired when 5
he named it. It really pretended to be tea, but there was
too much dishrag, and sand, and old bacon rind in it to
deceive the intelligent traveler. He had no sugar and no
milk—not even a spoon to stir the ingredients with.
We could not eat the bread or the meat, or drink the 10
"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 at a
table which had nothing on it but a mackerel and a pot
of mustard. He asked the landlord if this was all. The 15
landlord said:
"All! Why, thunder and lightning, I should think
there was mackerel enough there for six."