“The day cleared, and as we could not start till the evening, the Major proposed to get up a race. He knew of a horse (his own) that could beat any in our ‘crowd.’ He had seen him run a good many times, and ‘just knowed how he could shine.’ Fifty dollars was the stake, and ‘let him what won take the money.’ ”
Fred volunteered to ride a fast little gray of Mr. Coke’s. Three-quarters of a mile were measured on the prairie. The Major brought out his animal, greased its hoofs, washed its face, brushed its hair, mounted the half-breed upon it barebacked, and took his station at the winning-post. At first the half-breed made the running. Major and friends were cock-a-hoop; but the Englishman was a bit of a jockey.
“They were now about three hundred yards from the post. Fred had never used the spur; he needed but to slack the reins—away dashed the little gray, gaining at every stride upon the old horse. It is our turn to cheer! The Major begins to think seriously of his fifty dollars, when, in an instant, the fate of the game is changed. The little gray stumbles; he has put his foot in a hole—he staggers, and with difficulty recovers himself. The big horse must win. Now for whip and spur! Neck and neck, in they come—and which has won the race? ‘Well, sir!’ said the Major, ‘slick work, wasn’t it? what is your opinion?’ I might have known by this deferential question what his opinion was; but, to tell the truth, I could not decide which horse was the winner, and so I said. He jumped at this favorable decision on my part, and ‘calculated’ forthwith that it was a dead heat. I learned afterward that he had confessed we had won, and thought little of our ‘smartness’ for not finding it out. My little gray was thenceforth an object of general admiration; and the utilitarian minds of the Yankees could not understand why I was not traveling through the States with such a pony, and making my fortune by backing him against every thing of its size.”
Mr. Coke is a good appreciator of the Yankees, and so lively and successful in his sketches of their national traits and peculiarities, that it is to be regretted he does not talk rather more about them. His stay at New York he passes over in a couple of pages.
“I am not ambitious,” he says, “of circulating more American notes, nor do I care to follow in the footsteps of Mrs. Trollope. Enough has been written to illustrate the singularities of second-rate American society. Good society is the same all the world over. General remarks I hold to be fair play. But to indulge in personalities is a poor return for hospitality; and those Americans who are most willing to be civil to foreigners, receive little enough encouragement to extend that civility, when, as is too often the case, those very foreigners afterward attempt to amuse their friends on one side of the Atlantic, at the expense of a breach of good faith to their friends on the other. . . . . I have a great respect for almost every thing American. I do not mean to say that I have any affection for a thorough-bred Yankee, in our acceptation of the term; far from it. I think him the most offensive of all bipeds in the known world.”
The English are perhaps too apt to judge a whole nation upon a few unfavorable specimens; also to attach exaggerated importance to trifling peculiarities. This latter tendency is fostered, in the case of America, by those relentless book-makers, who, to point a chapter and raise a laugh, are ready, as Mr. Coke justly remarks, to sacrifice a friend and caricature facts. In our opinion, Englishmen and Americans will like each other better when they see each other more. “All Americans I have met,” says Mr. Coke, “were agreeable enough if humored a little, and perfectly civil if civilly treated.” Brutes and ruffians (like good society) are the same in all countries. At Sacramento, Mr. Coke one day took up a newspaper to read an account of a Lynch execution which had taken place at four that morning.
“I was perusing the trial, when a ruffianly-looking individual interrupted me with, ‘Say, stranger, let’s have a look at that paper, will you?’ ‘When I have done with it,’ said I, and continued reading. This answer would have satisfied most Christians endowed with any moderate degree of patience; but not so the ruffian. He bent himself over the back of my chair, put one hand on my shoulder, and with the other held the paper, so that he could read as well as I. ‘Well, I guess you’re reading about Jim, aint you?’ ‘Who’s Jim?’ said I. ‘Him as they hung this morning,’ he answered, at the same time resuming his seat. ‘Jim was a particular friend of mine, and I helped to hang him.’ ”
The narrative that follows, and which is rather too lengthy to extract entire, is very graphic and striking—an excellent specimen of life in California. Jim, it appeared, was a “Britisher,” an ex-convict from the penal settlements, a terrible scamp and desperado. His offenses were many, but murder was the crime he suffered for. Here is the horribly thrilling account of his execution, as given to Mr. Coke by the “friend” who helped to Lynch him.
“It was just about daylight. They carried him to the horse-market, set him on a table, and tied the rope round one of the lower branches of a big elm-tree. All the time I kept by his side, and when he was getting on the table he asked me to lend him my revolver to shoot one of the jurymen, who had spoken violently against him. When I refused, he asked me to tie the knot so as it wouldn’t slip. ‘It aint no account,’ said I, ‘to talk in that way, Jim; old fellow, you’re bound to die; and if they didn’t hang you I’d shoot you myself.’ ‘Well, then,’ said he, ‘give me hold of the rope, and I’ll show you how little I care for death.’ He seized the cord, pulled himself in an instant out of the reach of the crowd, and sat cross-legged on the bough. Half-a-dozen rifles were raised to bring him down, but reflecting that he could not escape, they forebore to fire. He tied a noose in the rope, put it round his neck, slipped it up till it was pretty tight, and then stood up and addressed the mob. He didn’t say much, except that he hated them all. He cursed the man he shot; he then cursed the world; and last of all he cursed himself; and with a terrible oath he jumped into the air, and with a jerk that shook the tree swung backward and forward over the heads of the crowd.”
We are cantering rather ahead of Mr. Coke and his friends, whom we left at Trader’s Point, with a long trail before them. Their councils were already divided. The members of the triumvirate could not agree as to how many of their attendants should be retained. Finally, most of them were paid off and sent back. This was a very painful and arduous part of the journey. On the second day after leaving Major Barrow’s station, they reached Elk Horn ferry. It had been broken up by the Indians, and a raft had to be made, and the baggage taken across piecemeal. “The animals were not so easy to get across. Some of us were obliged to swim the river (which was sixty or seventy yards wide) eight or nine times, taking one horse at a time, or driving two or three by flogging and shouting behind them.” The musquetoes were in the ascendant; the rains heavy and frequent; the Sioux Indians, it was reported, had received from the Pawnees intimation of the movements of the Pale-face band.