A batch of United States troopers came down the road and flung
themselves across the country into their rough lines. The
Melican cavalryman can ride, though he keeps his accoutrements
pig-fashion and his horse cow-fashion.
I was free of that camp in five minutes - free to play with the
heavy, lumpy carbines, have the saddles stripped, and punch the
horses knowingly in the ribs. One of the men had been in the
fight with "Wrap-up-his-Tail," and he told me how that great
chief, his horse's tail tied up in red calico, swaggered in front
of the United States cavalry, challenging all to single combat.
But he was slain, and a few of his tribe with him.
"There's no use in an Indian, anyway," concluded my friend.
A couple of cow-boys - real cow-boys - jingled through the camp
amid a shower of mild chaff. They were on their way to Cook
City, I fancy, and I know that they never washed. But they were
picturesque ruffians exceedingly, with long spurs, hooded
stirrups, slouch hats, fur weather-cloth over their knees, and
pistol-butts just easy to hand.
"The cow-boy's goin' under before long," said my friend. "Soon
as the country's settled up he'll have to go. But he's mighty
useful now. What would we do without the cow-boy?"
"As how?" said I, and the camp laughed.
"He has the money. We have the skill. He comes in winter to
play poker at the military posts. We play poker - a few. When
he's lost his money we make him drunk and let him go. Sometimes
we get the wrong man."
And he told me a tale of an innocent cow-boy who turned up,
cleaned out, at an army post, and played poker for thirty-six
hours. But it was the post that was cleaned out when that
long-haired Caucasian removed himself, heavy with everybody's pay
and declining the proffered liquor.
"Noaw," said the historian, "I don't play with no cow-boy unless
he's a little bit drunk first."
Ere I departed I gathered from more than one man the significant
fact that up to one hundred yards he felt absolutely secure
behind his revolver.
"In England, I understand," quoth the limber youth from the
South, - "in England a man isn't allowed to play with no
fire-arms. He's got to be taught all that when he enlists. I
didn't want much teaching how to shoot straight 'fore I served
Uncle Sam. And that's just where it is. But you was talking
about your Horse Guards now?"
I explained briefly some peculiarities of equipment connected
with our crackest crack cavalry. I grieve to say the camp roared.
"Take 'em over swampy ground. Let 'em run around a bit an' work
the starch out of 'em, an' then, Almighty, if we wouldn't plug
'em at ease I'd eat their horses."
There was a maiden - a very little maiden - who had just stepped
out of one of James's novels. She owned a delightful mother and
an equally delightful father - a heavy-eyed, slow-voiced man of
finance. The parents thought that their daughter wanted change.
She lived in New Hampshire. Accordingly, she had dragged them up
to Alaska and to the Yosemite Valley, and was now returning
leisurely, via the Yellowstone, just in time for the tail-end of
the summer season at Saratoga.
We had met once or twice before in the park, and I had been
amazed and amused at her critical commendation of the wonders
that she saw. From that very resolute little mouth I received a
lecture on American literature, the nature and inwardness of
Washington society, the precise value of Cable's works as
compared with Uncle Remus Harris, and a few other things that had
nothing whatever to do with geysers, but were altogether
pleasant.
Now, an English maiden who had stumbled on a dust-grimed,
lime-washed, sun-peeled, collarless wanderer come from and going
to goodness knows where, would, her mother inciting her and her
father brandishing an umbrella, have regarded him as a dissolute
adventurer - a person to be disregarded.
Not so those delightful people from New Hampshire. They were
good enough to treat him - it sounds almost incredible - as a human
being, possibly respectable, probably not in immediate need of
financial assistance.
Papa talked pleasantly and to the point.
The little maiden strove valiantly with the accent of her birth
and that of her rearing, and mamma smiled benignly in the
background.
Balance this with a story of a young English idiot I met mooning
about inside his high collar, attended by a valet. He
condescended to tell me that "you can't be too careful who you
talk to in these parts." And stalked on, fearing, I suppose,
every minute for his social chastity.
That man was a barbarian (I took occasion to tell him so), for he
comported himself after the manner of the head-hunters and hunted
of Assam who are at perpetual feud one with another.
You will understand that these foolish stories are introduced in
order to cover the fact that this pen cannot describe the glories
of the Upper Geyser Basin. The evening I spent under the lee of
the Castle Geyser, sitting on a log with some troopers and
watching a baronial keep forty feet high spouting hot water. If
the Castle went off first, they said the Giantess would be quiet,
and vice versa, and then they told tales till the moon got up and
a party of campers in the woods gave us all something to eat.
