That "well" drawled out and sustained, with the look that accompanied it, told me quite as much about the Club as I desired to know. Paul and I christened our acquaintance with cocktails.
Conversation at any time, on any topic, or with any person in Tucson (as elsewhere on the frontier), invariably led to this ceremony. Cocktail drinking has a charm of its own, which lifts it above drinking as otherwise practised. Your confirmed cock-tail drinker is not to be confounded with the common sot. He is an artist. With what exquisite feeling will he graduate his cup, from the gentle "smile" of early morning, to the potent "smash" of night! The analytical skill of a chemist marks his unerring detection of the very faintest dissonance in the harmony of the ingredients that compose his beverage. He has an antidote to correct, a tonic to induce every mood and humour that man knows. Endless variety rewards a single-hearted devotion to cocktails, whilst the refinement and ingenuity that may be exercised in the display of such an attachment, redeem it from intemperance. It becomes an art; I am not sure that it ought not to be termed a science. It is drinking etherealised, rescued from vulgar appetite and brutality, purified of its low origin and ennobled. A cocktail hath the soul of wit, it is brief—it is a jest, a bon-mot, happy thought, a gibe, a word of sympathy, a tear, an inspiration, a short prayer. A list of your experienced cocktail drinker's potations for the day constitutes a complete picture of life, and the secret joys and sorrows that he hides from all the world may almost be said therein to stand betrayed to the eye of a brother scientist.
The four days' waiting passed at length, and seated in the corpulent old coach, with its team of four wheelers and four leaders, we rumbled slowly out of Tucson.
The passengers were a Mexican dame with a baby, a Mexican, an American miner, and myself. A sort of second whip sat beside the driver, armed with a short but heavy weapon, with which he made excursions from the box-seat to the ground, and whilst the coach was still in motion fought it out with any refractory member of the team, as he ran beside him. Collecting a pocketful of the wickedest stones that he could find, he would then return, and pelt the bronchos from his former elevation. Another of his duties was to disentangle the team, when, as not unfrequently occurred, so many of the leaders faced the wheelers that further progress was impossible. It also fell to his lot to tie the coach together with thongs and string when its dissolution appeared imminent. In the performance of his various duties this individual displayed considerable agility, ability, and resource.
The Mexican woman was frightful, the infant very like her, only by no means so quiet. Mother and child left us at the end of the first stage. The Mexican slept all day; towards evening he awoke and reduced himself to a state of complete intoxication with mascal. The miner never opened his lips until the following morning just before entering Magdalena, when we happened to see a jackass rabbit.
"Next jackass rabbit we see, I'll be durned if I don't shoot him," he said.
He forthwith produced and cocked a long Colt's revolver. But, as we saw no more rabbits, I missed this exhibition of his skill.
From the pace at which we proceeded during the night, I presumed that the Mexican's bottle of mascal was not the only one we had on board. The jolting was terrific. Besides encountering the ordinary ruts and irregularities in the ground, we struck every now and then, when going at full gallop, against a loose boulder, or the projecting corner of a rock, the shock of which brought our heads in stunning contact with the brass-capped nails that studded the roof of the coach. I was sometimes in doubt a moment whether my neck were broken or not. When Magdalena was reached my scalp was raw, and every angle of my body bruised.
Stage travelling in Mexico, if this were a fair sample of it, is neither luxurious nor speedy. Owing to the irregularity with which the service is conducted, it is impossible for relays to be in attendance. Not until the coach arrives is a peon sent out to drive in fresh horses from the country. As they roam free over the broad vegas, they may be miles from home; consequently it is no unusual thing for the best part of a day to be wasted before they are found. Outward bound, we were singularly fortunate in this respect. On the return journey, our delays were all prolonged, in some cases exceeding even five or six hours. The wattled sheds and huts at which these intervals were passed were of the filthiest description.