CHAPTER XVIII.
Civilized Life in a Large and Young City—What a Redskin would think of it—A Chandelier and a Bonfire—The Old Friend—The Well-known Pipe—Too Old to Kill—Spitted—The White Mahala—Again in Co-operation with the Government—Three more Indian Murders—Our Indian Recruit—"Shoot Heap, but no Gun"—"A Convarted Red Devil."
The following winter was passed by me in San Francisco. It was for the first time since I had joined Captain Crim in crossing the Plains, that I had trodden the streets of a large city. All seemed to me so new, so busy, so thickly populated, that, for a few days, it appeared to me like the real Wilderness, while I looked back on the mountains, the forests, the cañons, and the desert I had left, as my actual world.
My feelings partially realized those of the savage, when for the first time he treads in the active marts of trade, and their equally laborious wealth or poverty.
Mingling with his wonder at the thronged and toiling stores, the superficial wealth everywhere apparent, the spars and masts of the huge shipping, the numerous spires, the sloping-eyed and high cheek-boned Chinese, the buzz of countless life surging around him, the clanging bells from the churches, haply the decorated volunteers stepping out to the voice of drum and trumpet, with the elegantly dressed women, the inanely simpering dandies, and blear-eyed spectacled old men, who have been working on and on without pause or cessation for scores of years—there cannot but rise in him a feeling of contempt for all he sees before him.
He may not but contrast his own chainless and unfettered existence with that walled-in life whose passions are merely, so it would appear to him, things of routine; whose enjoyments seem to him meaningless shadows; whose loves and hates would count in his eye as nothing; and whose range, from the cradle to the grave, is to him narrower than the glad gallop of a single day on which he sights his game, or spots his enemy.
But what have I to do with such thoughts as these? My white friend cannot realize them—nor can my red enemy even read them. The first will consequently laugh at me for indulging in, while the last will never hear of my having entertained, any such reflections.
Moreover, after the first week of my sojourn in San Francisco, they gradually wore away. In my early life, which had been for so many years almost forgotten, I had been upon the stage, had dealt in pop-corn, and had proven my skill as a detective. If I could now find no occasion to employ one of the last-named class, I could in any case purchase and eat the second when it came in my way, and gaze upon that which was enacted on the first, either laughingly or applausively. So, by degrees, the old-time fancies came back, and I began to believe there might be some delight in civilization after all. I saw a few friends, and, as I was not without money, made many new. Some of these have been really friends, and some of them—well! it would be useless to sum up their characters, as they were not the red devils I had latterly been brought in contact with. Possibly, none of them would have felt any pleasure in making my body serve as a living chandelier, by way of a prelude to lighting a bonfire with my person as the central faggot. Yet, very certainly, they would have cleaned me out of all I had about me, without the slightest compunction, not even allowing me to retain the price of one meal.