In a few hours the mercury had fallen
from 103 degrees to 29 degrees, and we had ascended 6,987 feet in
105 miles!
After passing through the sheds, we had several grand
views of a pine forest on fire before reaching Truckee at 11 P.M.
having traveled 258 miles. Truckee, the center of the "lumbering
region" of the Sierras, is usually spoken of as "a rough mountain
town," and Mr. W. had told me that all the roughs of the district
congregated there, that there were nightly pistol affrays in
bar-rooms, etc., but as he admitted that a lady was sure of
respect, and Mr. G. strongly advised me to stay and see the
lakes, I got out, much dazed, and very stupid with sleep, envying
the people in the sleeping car, who were already unconscious on
their luxurious couches. The cars drew up in a street - if street
that could be called which was only a wide, cleared space,
intersected by rails, with here and there a stump, and great
piles of sawn logs bulking big in the moonlight, and a number of
irregular clap-board, steep-roofed houses, many of them with
open fronts, glaring with light and crowded with men. We had
pulled up at the door of a rough Western hotel, with a partially
open front, being a bar-room crowded with men drinking and
smoking, and the space between it and the cars was a moving mass
of loafers and passengers. On the tracks, engines, tolling heavy
bells, were mightily moving, the glare from their cyclopean eyes
dulling the light of a forest which was burning fitfully on a
mountain side; and on open spaces great fires of pine logs were
burning cheerily, with groups of men round them. A band was
playing noisily, and the unholy sound of tom-toms was not far
off. Mountains - the Sierras of many a fireside dream - seemed to
wall in the town, and great pines stood out, sharp and clear cut,
against a sky in which a moon and stars were shining frostily.
It was a sharp frost at that great height, and when an
"irrepressible rigger," who seemed to represent the hotel
establishment, deposited me and my carpetbag in a room which
answered for "the parlor," I was glad to find some remains of
pine knots still alight in the stove. A man came in and said
that when the cars were gone he would try to get me a room, but
they were so full that it would be a very poor one. The crowd
was solely masculine. It was then 11:30 P.M., and I had not had
a meal since 6 A.M.; but when I asked hopefully for a hot supper,
with tea, I was told that no supper could be got at that hour;
but in half an hour the same man returned with a small cup of
cold, weak tea, and a small slice of bread, which looked as if it
had been much handled.
I asked the Negro factotum about the hire of horses, and
presently a man came in from the bar who, he said, could supply
my needs. This man, the very type of a Western pioneer, bowed,
threw himself into a rocking-chair, drew a spittoon beside him,
cut a fresh quid of tobacco, began to chew energetically, and put
his feet, cased in miry high boots, into which his trousers were
tucked, on the top of the stove. He said he had horses which
would both "lope" and trot, that some ladies preferred the
Mexican saddle, that I could ride alone in perfect safety; and
after a route had been devised, I hired a horse for two days.
This man wore a pioneer's badge as one of the earliest settlers
of California, but he had moved on as one place after another
had become too civilized for him, "but nothing," he added, "was
likely to change much in Truckee." I was afterwards told that
the usual regular hours of sleep are not observed there. The
accommodation is too limited for the population of 2,000,[2]
which is masculine mainly, and is liable to frequent temporary
additions, and beds are occupied continuously, though by
different occupants, throughout the greater part of the
twenty-four hours. Consequently I found the bed and room
allotted to me quite tumbled looking. Men's coats and sticks
were hanging up, miry boots were littered about, and a rifle was
in one corner. There was no window to the outer air, but I slept
soundly, being only once awoke by an increase of the same din in
which I had fallen asleep, varied by three pistol shots fired in
rapid succession.
[2] Nelson's Guide to the Central Pacific Railroad.
This morning Truckee wore a totally different aspect. The crowds
of the night before had disappeared. There were heaps of ashes
where the fires had been. A sleepy German waiter seemed the only
person about the premises, the open drinking saloons were nearly
empty, and only a few sleepy-looking loafers hung about in what
is called the street. It might have been Sunday; but they say
that it brings a great accession of throng and jollity. Public
worship has died out at present; work is discontinued on Sunday,
but the day is given up to pleasure. Putting a minimum of
indispensables into a bag, and slipping on my Hawaiian riding
dress[3] over a silk skirt, and a dust cloak over all, I
stealthily crossed the plaza to the livery stable, the largest
building in Truckee, where twelve fine horses were stabled in
stalls on each side of a broad drive. My friend of the evening
before showed me his "rig," three velvet-covered side-saddles
almost without horns. Some ladies, he said, used the horn of the
Mexican saddle, but none "in the part" rode cavalier fashion. I
felt abashed.
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