Just before I left England, and knowing that I contemplated a visit to the Rockies, Mr. Black was good enough to request me to look into his book and to see, from the circumstances, as quoted above, whether I was not fairly entitled to have that bottle of champagne produced: he also desired me to present his compliments to a "very pretty Scotch lassie" at the hotel.
Of course I pursued the inquiry; I had by chance stayed at this very hotel, but I ascertained, alas! that poor old Jones, the good-natured landlord, had long since made his pile in the good old times when he could charge crowds of passengers a dollar and a half for their meals instead of (as now) seventy-five cents only: had retired to a farm somewhere in Idaho; had died, and left an enormous fortune to his widow. I may also inform Mr. Black that "the pretty Scotch lassie" is now the mother of a large family somewhere up in the mountains.
The inn has become the property of the Union Pacific, and is, in fact, one of the dining stations of that enterprising company. I regret to say that the intelligent and civil manager, though perfectly acquainted with the circumstances (through having read "Green Pastures" in a ten cent edition), did not feel it to be a part of his duty to his employers to hand over to me the bottle of champagne, notwithstanding the credentials I presented. He did not, however, raise the slightest objection when I invited him to join me and my friend M. in drinking to the health of the writer of "Green Pastures," to the wealthy widow of the departed Jones, and to "the pretty Scotch lassie," wherever she may be.
A local newspaper thus, somewhat erroneously, recorded our visit to this city:—
"A. B. and C. D., two Englishmen who have been travelling around the world, stopped off yesterday morning, and are guests at The Pacific. They had letters of introduction to Jones(!), the former landlord of the hotel, and had been told that Cheyenne was 'Hell on Wheels.' They are disappointed."
In these western parts it is a dangerous thing sometimes to refuse a "drink," and to offer to pay for it is a mortal offence. I was told that in Cheyenne even the cowboys, with their big whips, broad-brimmed felt hats, and hip-joint boots, were a superior, well-educated class, who had a large reading-room, crowded of an evening with men who could hold their own on any subject, political, social, or literary; and that there were among them good mathematicians, and even classical scholars.
The following cutting from "The Cheyenne Democrat" exhibits the cowboy in another light:—
"He Drank.
"MILORD HAS AN ADVENTURE WITH A BIG HORN COWBOY AND A BIG HORN.
"Editor Becker, of the Big Horn 'Sentinel,' tells a good story of a nobby and snobby milord, of British extraction, who travelled from Big Horn with him and Abe Idelman on the stage-coach early this week. Milord was excessively exclusive. He wouldn't be social, and spoke to no one except the two 'John Henry' servants he had with him, and was altogether as unpleasant as his snobbishness could make him. At a dinner station there were a lot of jolly cowboys on a lark, and one of them 'treating' everybody asked the Englishman to drink. Of course, milord haughtily refused. The cowboy displayed a dangerous-looking six-shooter, and very impressively insisted on his drinking.