Frontier Humor in Verse, Prose and Picture

by Palmer Cox

A stout German woman who sat near by also seemed to be looking upon the chicken as though she would like to help me make away with it. With that magnanimity which was ever my peculiar characteristic, I severed the pope’s nose from the trunk and proffered her the delicious morsel, when, to my utter astonishment and confusion, she whipped out of her pocket a big bologna sausage the size of a stuffed club, and shook it triumphantly in my face, so close that it might have greased the end of my nose. She actually scouted the idea. Independent, proud and self-sustaining, these Germans, and no mistake. She evidently felt insulted, and delivered herself of a long essay in the German tongue. She was undoubtedly giving me to understand that she was able to furnish grists for her own mill. Of course that is what she meant. I could tell that by the way she flourished the bologna, and pointed to her mouth and stomach. I expected she was about to whack me over the jaw with the singular looking weapon, and prepared to dodge on the shortest possible notice. But she didn’t. As if to madden me, she commenced eating the sausage in a hasty, excited manner, taking about two inches at a bite. What could I do? What did I do? Why, let her eat it, of course; it was none of my business. I had no objection, so long as she didn’t choke, and render it necessary for me to pat her upon the back, which I certainly thought I would have to do before she finished her meal.

You may be sure I offered no more chicken to any person after that, but picked the bones as bare as pen-holders. If she liked bologna better than a choice piece of fowl, it was her fault, not mine. I washed my hands of the whole affair.

I stopped a few hours at a mill in the mountains, and while there witnessed an amusing incident. There was a small pipe leading from the engine, and projecting through the side of the building close to the ground. Through this pipe the waste water was conveyed from the engine, and at the end of it quite a puddle or drain had been formed, about a foot in width and eight or ten feet in length. The constant dripping from the pipe kept the water warm, and from it a steam was continually rising. There were several Indian camps in the vicinity of the mill, and as wood was rather scarce, the squaws belonging to the camps were in the habit of congregating around this warm drain when the cold weather numbed their poorly protected limbs. It was not an unusual thing to see half a dozen coming down the hill to squat beside the drain, and there sit for hours discussing the current topics of the day, enjoying at the same time the luxury of a cheap steam bath.

There were a couple sitting at the drain in this innocent manner while I was at the mill. I called the engineer’s attention to the capital opportunity that lay before him to give them a surprise that would be fun to behold. This he could do by simply turning a gauge cock and allowing the steam to go out with a rush upon the squatting pair. The engineer was a sober sort of man, not at all given to humor, and not inclined to take advantage of the opportunity. But when I informed him that I represented an illustrated paper and wanted to make a stirring sketch of the scene, he consented for my benefit. As he went to comply with my suggestion, I moved to the window to see how the squaws would enjoy it. I had hardly reached my position when the steam shot along the surface of the water like smoke from the muzzle of a rifle. At the same instant the gentle savages shot at least four feet into the air, in the most extravagant positions imaginable. Until that moment I would not have believed the human form could assume such strange attitudes on such short notice. If I had not been intently gazing upon the pair as they sat chatting sociably over the drain, and had my eyes riveted upon them as they shot aloft, I could hardly have thought the two dark figures performing such grotesque evolutions in mid air were indeed human beings.

STEAM LET ON.

The steam was harmless, as it had to go quite a distance before escaping, but the squaws didn’t understand anything about that, you know. No person had enlightened their untutored minds upon that point, and they didn’t sit there very long in order to ascertain; for the sake of the squaws, however, let us hope that it was. One thing they evidently did feel certain about, and that was that something had broken loose, and that, too, at a very inopportune moment. The thought that followed close upon the heels of the other was to change their position in the shortest possible time. If they both had been shot into the air out of one mortar they could hardly have shown greater concert of action. If there was any difference in their sensitiveness or agility, the one farthest from the pipe seemed to claim the superiority, for, as near as I could judge, she was first to spring aloft. The back of one was towards me, and the face of the other. Though quite a distance from them, I could distinguish the white eyes of the latter standing out as prominently as a pair of silver-headed nails in the end of a mahogany coffin.

It may be argued that this was a mean trick. It may even be said that it was a sinful act. I admit all this; nay, more, it may be that I will have to answer for it hereafter, when you, and they, and all of us, have ceased to be interested in things pertaining to the flesh; but in the face of this supposition, I must still adhere to the original assertion that it was indeed an amusing incident, and will go further and say that as yet I have not been brought down to that perfect state of repentance where I could sincerely say that I regretted having been the instigator of the deed.

I never learned whether the squaws returned to the drain again, but, judging from the way they hustled over the hill in the direction of their camp, I am inclined to think not.

While coming down the river there was quite an excitement on board, on account of the steamer grounding suddenly upon the “Hog’s Back.” She was running pretty fast at the time, and the sudden stop threw several passengers off their feet, and for a few moments all was confusion. I was partly disrobed at the time, and the first thought that entered my mind was that we had collided with some schooner on its way up the river. Before leaving, a gentleman placed a lady and two small children in my charge, and my first act was to run to the state-room in which they were. I found the lady preparing for rest, but the children were already in bed. Without much ceremony, I seized a child in each hand, and bidding the lady to follow, started to deposit them near the davits, that they might be handy to throw into the boats in case we were compelled to take to them.