The meal was excellent. Its chief dish was corned beef and cabbage, and there were boiled potatoes and boiled beans besides, with abundance of home-made white bread, and strong hot tea.
My seat was last in the row on one side of the table. The end seat was unoccupied, and my nearest neighbor ignored me; I was free to satisfy a well-developed appetite, and grow more familiar with my surroundings.
First of all I ate a very hearty supper. The food was admirably cooked, and was served with a high degree of cleanness. The oil-cloth, of marble design, which covered the table was spotless, and the rude, coarse service, befitting a camp, had all been thoroughly washed. It is true that the men were without their coats, most of them with their waistcoats off, but these are men whose work is of the cleanest, and there was nothing in all the setting of the supper to mar a healthy appetite; there was much, I thought, that really heightened the pleasure of eating.
The conversation ran on as it had begun in the lobby. There was much talk about the progress of the work, and gossip about neighboring camps, and proposals for the disposing of Sunday; and it struck me with swift terror that the presence of the three young women, who waited on the table, was no least check to profanity. The talk never rose to the pitch of excitement, it was the mere give and take of ordinary conversation, and yet there mingled in it the blackest oaths. With a curse of eternal perdition upon his lips, a man would speak to his neighbor of some casual incident of the day, and would end his sentence with a volley of nameless insults and hideous blasphemies. This was their common language. With no realization of what they did, they flung eternal curses and foul insults at one another in lightest banter.
Half an hour later we had all returned to the lobby. The teamsters lit their lanterns, and went to care for the horses. Some of the men went up into the loft. Four had soon started a game of cards at the table, while most of the others filled the bench near the stove, or drew empty beer-kegs and old soap-boxes from their hiding, and completed the circle around the fire. Everyone was smoking, and all seemed highly content.
I was crowded in between a lank young fellow with dark hair and eyes, and a long, lean nose, who was swearing comfortably at a gawky youth across the stove, and an older man, of heavier build, who had fine black eyes and a black mustache, a very pale complexion, and long black hair that lay in pasty ringlets about his face and on his neck.
Soon I came to know these two as "Long-nosed Harry" and "Fred the Barber." I should explain at once that the camps have a curious nomenclature of their own. As among other workingmen whom I have known, so here, only a man's Christian name is used, but it is nearly always accompanied with an explanatory phrase. A new-comer in the camp is called "Buddy" until his name is learned, and some appropriate epithet is found, or until a nickname springs complete from the mysterious source of those appellatives.
I knew that Fred the Barber was making ready to speak to me, and I was on my guard, when, while the talk was running high, I heard a voice close to my ear:
"Say, Buddy, you ain't a pedler, are you?"
"No."