But by this time we have got far past Elko, and the train is carrying us through an undulating desert of rabbit-bush and greasewood, with dull, barren hills on either hand, and then we reach Carlin, another dreadful-looking hamlet of the Corinne type, and, alas! Gentile also, without a tree or a road, and nearly every shanty in it a saloon.
More Indians are on the platform. They are allowed, it appears, under the Company's contract with the government, to ride free of charge upon the trains, and so the poor creatures spend their summer days, when they are not away hunting or stealing, in travelling backwards and forwards from one station to the next, and home again. This does not strike the civilized imagination as a very exhilarating pastime, nor one to be contemplated with much enthusiasm of enjoyment. Yet the Indians, in their own grave way, enjoy it prodigiously.
Curiously enough, they cannot be persuaded to ride anywhere, except on the platforms between the baggage-cars. But here they cluster as thick as swarming bees, the in all the fantastic combination of vermilion, "bucks" tag-rag and nudity, the squaws dragging about ponderous bison robes and sheep-skins, and laden with papooses, the children, grotesque little imitations of their parents, with their playthings in their hands.
For the "papoose" is a human child after all, and the little Shoshonee girls nurse their dolls just as little girls in New York do, only, of course, the Red Indian's child carries on her back an imitation papoose in an imitation pannier, instead of wheeling an imitation American baby in an imitation American "baby-carriage." I watched one of these brown fragments of the great sex that gives the world its wives and its mothers, its sweethearts and its sisters, and it was quite a revelation to me to hear the wee thing crooning to her wooden baby, and hushing it to sleep, and making believe to be anxious as to its health and comforts. Yes, and my mind went back on a sudden to the nursery, on the other side of the Atlantic, thousands of miles away, where another little girl sits crooning over her doll of rags and wax, and on her face I saw just the same expression of troubled concern as clouded the little Shoshonee's brow, and the same affectation of motherly care.
So it takes something more than mere geographical distance to alter human nature.
CHAPTER XXII.
FROM NEVADA INTO CALIFORNIA.
Of Bugbears—Suggestions as to sleeping-cars—A Bannack chief, his hat and his retinue—The oasis of Humboldt—Past Carson Sink—A reminiscence of wolves—"Hard places"—First glimpses of California—A corn miracle—Bunch-grass and Bison—From Sacramento to Benicia.
IS a bugbear most bug or bear? I never met one yet fairly face to face, for the bugbear is an evasive insect. Nor, if I did meet one, can I say whether I should prefer to find it mainly bug or mainly bear. The latter is of various sorts. Thus, one, the little black bear of the Indian hills, is about as formidable as a portmanteau of the same size. Another, the grizzly of the Rockies, is a very unamiable person. His temper is as short as his tail; and he has very little more sense of right and wrong than a Land-leaguer. But he is not so mean as the bug. You never hear of grizzly bears getting into the woodwork of bedsteads and creeping out in the middle of the night to sneak up the inside of your night-shirt. He does not go and cuddle himself up flat in a crease of the pillow-case, and then slip out edgeways as soon as it is dark, and bite you in the nape of the neck. It is not on record that a bear ever got inside a nightcap and waited till the gas was turned out, to come forth and feed like grief on the damask cheek of beauty. No, these are not the habits of bears, they are more manly than bugs. If you want to catch a bear between your finger and thumb, and hold it over a lighted match on the point of a pin, it will stand still to let you try. Or if you want to have a good fair slap at a bear with a slipper, it won't go flattening itself out in the crevices of furniture, in order to dodge the blow, but will stand up square in the road, in broad daylight, and let you do it. So, on the whole, I cannot quite make up my mind whether bugs or bears are the worst things to have about a house. You see you could shoot at the bear out of the window; but it would be absurd to fire off rifles at bugs between the blankets. Besides, bears don't keep you awake all night by leaving you in doubt as to whether they are creeping about the bed or not, or spoil your night's rest by making you sit up and grope about under the bed-clothes and try to see things in the dark. Altogether, then, there is a good deal to be said on the side of the bear.
I am led to these remarks by remembering that at Carlin, in Nevada, I found two bugs in my "berth" in the sleeping-car. The porter thought I must have "brought them with me." Perhaps I did, but, as I told him, I didn't remember doing so, and with his permission would not take them any further. Or perhaps the Shoshonees brought them. All Indians, whether red or brown, are indifferent to these insects, and carry them about with them in familiar abundance.