For a long time I had
not seen a woman in a hat; the Mexicans all wore a linen towel
over their heads.
But her beauty was startling, and, after all, I thought, a woman
so handsome must try to live up to her reputation. Now for some
weeks Jack had been investigating the sulphur well, which was
beneath the old pump in our corral. He had had a long wooden
bath-tub built, and I watched it with a lazy interest, and
observed his glee as he found a longshoreman or roustabout who
could caulk it. The shape was exactly like a coffin (but men have
no imaginations), and when I told him how it made me feel to look
at it, he said: "Oh! you are always thinking of gloomy things.
It's a fine tub, and we are mighty lucky to find that man to
caulk it. I'm going to set it up in the little square room, and
lead the sulphur water into it, and it will be splendid, and just
think," he added, "what it will do for rheumatism!"
Now Jack had served in the Twentieth Massachusetts Volunteers
during the Civil War, and the swamps of the Chickahominy had
brought him into close acquaintance with that dread disease.
As for myself, rheumatism was about the only ailment I did not
have at that time, and I suppose I did not really sympathize with
him. But this energetic and indomitable man mended the pump, with
Fisher's help, and led the water into the house, laid a floor,
set up the tub in the little square room, and behold, our sulphur
bath!
After much persuasion, I tried the bath. The water flowed thick
and inky black into the tub; of course the odor was beyond
description, and the effect upon me was not such that I was ever
willing to try it again. Jack beamed. "How do you like it,
Martha?" said he. "Isn't it fine? Why people travel hundreds of
miles to get a bath like that!"
I had my own opinion, but I did not wish to dampen his
enthusiasm. Still, in order to protect myself in the future, I
had to tell him I thought I should ordinarily prefer the river.
"Well," he said, "there are those who will be thankful to have a
bath in that water; I am going to use it every day."
I remonstrated: "How do you know what is in that inky water - and
how do you dare to use it ?"
"Oh, Fisher says it's all right; people here used to drink it
years ago, but they have not done so lately, because the pump was
broken down."
The Washington people seemed glad to pay us the visit. Jack's
eyes danced with true generosity and glee. He marked his victim;
and, selecting the Staff beauty and the Paymaster's wife, he
expatiated on the wonderful properties of his sulphur bath.
"Why, yes, the sooner the better," said Mrs. Martin. "I'd give
everything I have in this world, and all my chances for the next,
to get a tub bath!"
"It will be so refreshing just before supper," said Mrs.
Maynadier, who was more conservative.
So the Indian, who had put on his dark blue waist-band (or sash),
made from flannel, revelled out and twisted into strands of yarn,
and which showed the supple muscles of his clean-cut thighs, and
who had done up an extra high pompadour in white clay, and
burnished his knife, which gleamed at his waist, ushered these
Washington women into a small apartment adjoining the bath-room,
and turned on the inky stream into the sarcophagus.
The Staff beauty looked at the black pool, and shuddered. "Do you
use it?" said she.
"Occasionally," I equivocated.
"Does it hurt the complexion?" she ventured.
"Jack thinks it excellent for that," I replied.
And then I left them, directing Charley to wait, and prepare the
bath for the second victim.
By and by the beauty came out. "Where is your mirror ?" cried she
(for our appointments were primitive, and mirrors did not grow on
bushes at Ehrenberg); "I fancy I look queer," she added, and, in
truth, she did; for our water of the Styx did not seem to
affiliate with the chemical properties of the numerous cosmetics
used by her, more or less, all her life, but especially on the
voyage, and her face had taken on a queer color, with peculiar
spots here and there.
Fortunately my mirrors were neither large nor true, and she never
really saw how she looked, but when she came back into the
living-room, she laughed and said to Jack: "What kind of water
did you say that was? I never saw any just like it."
"Oh! you have probably never been much to the sulphur springs,"
said he, with his most superior and crushing manner.
"Perhaps not," she replied, "but I thought I knew something about
it; why, my entire body turned such a queer color."
"Oh! it always does that," said this optimistic soldier man, "and
that shows it is doing good."
The Paymaster's wife joined us later. I think she had profited by
the beauty's experience, for she said but little.
The Quartermaster was happy; and what if his wife did not believe
in that uncanny stream which flowed somewhere from out the
infernal regions, underlying that wretched hamlet, he had
succeeded in being a benefactor to two travellers at least!
We had a merry supper: cold ham, chicken, and fresh biscuit, a
plenty of good Cocomonga wine, sweet milk, which to be sure
turned to curds as it stood on the table, some sort of preserves
from a tin, and good coffee.
