LITMIR.BIZ

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foliage of one stunted mesquite-bush, which sheltered from the vertical rays of the sun the crouching form of old Juanita, who was energetically pounding between smooth stones the week’s washing of the household, and supplying in the gaudy stripes of her bright “serape” the amount of color which old-school critics used to maintain was indispensable to every landscape.

      Juanita was old and discreet, but her thoughts were not altogether on the world to come. Her face was ordinarily plastered with flour-paste, the cosmetic of the Southwest. Why this attention to her toilet, the wisest failed to tell. Often did I assure her that nothing could improve her complexion—a statement not to be controverted—and never did she fail to rebuke me with her most bewitching smile, and the words, “Ah! Don Juan, you’re such a flatterer.”

      The gentlemen whose names I have just given are nearly all dead or so well advanced in years and dignity that what I have to say now will not sound like flattery. They had each and all travelled over a great deal of the earth’s surface, and several of them were scholars of ripe learning. I was much younger then than I am now, and of course the attainments of men so much older than myself made a deep impression upon me, but even to this day I would place the names of Titus and Bashford in the list of scholars of erudition whom I have known, and very high up in the list, too.

      The remainder of the patrons seemed to be about evenly divided between the cynical grumblers who, having paid their score with regularity, arrogated to themselves the right to asperse the viands; and the eulogists who, owing to temporary financial embarrassments, were unable to produce receipts, and sought to appease their not by any means too hard-hearted landlady by the most fulsome adulation of the table and its belongings.

      Like the brokers of Wall Street who are bulls to-day and bears to-morrow, it not infrequently happened among the “Shoo Fly’s” patrons that the most obdurate growler of last week changed front and assumed position as the Advocatus Diaboli of this.

      But, take them for all in all, they were a good-hearted, whole-souled lot of men, who had roughed it and smoothed it in all parts of the world, who had basked in the smiles of Fortune and had not winced at her frown; a trifle too quick on the trigger, perhaps, some of them, to be perfectly well qualified to act as Sunday-school superintendents, yet generous to the comrade in distress and polite to all who came near them. The Western man—the Pacific Sloper especially—is much more urbane and courteous under such circumstances than his neighbor who has grown up on the banks of the Delaware or Hudson. There was bitter rivalry between Mrs. Wallen and Mr. Neugass, the proprietor of the “Palace”—a rivalry which diffused itself among their respective adherents.

      I make the statement simply to preserve the record of the times, that the patrons of the “Shoo Fly” never let go an opportunity to insinuate that the people to be met at the “Palace” were, to a large extent, composed of the “nouveaux riches.” There was not the slightest foundation for this, as I can testify, because I afterward sat at Neugass’s tables, when Mrs. Wallen had retired from business and gone into California, and can recall no difference at all in the character of the guests.

      Tucson enjoyed the singular felicity of not possessing anything in the shape of a hotel. Travellers coming to town, and not provided with letters which would secure them the hospitality of private houses, craved the privilege of “making down” their blankets in the most convenient corral, and slept till early morn, undisturbed save by the barking of dogs, which never ceased all through the night, or the crowing of loud-voiced chanticleers, which began ere yet the dawn had signalled with its first rosy flush from the peak of the Santa Rita. It was the customary thing for wagon trains to halt and go into camp in the middle of the plaza in front of the cathedral church of San Antonio, and after the oxen or mules had been tied to the wheels, the drivers would calmly proceed to stretch out tired limbs in the beautiful moonlight.

      I never could see the advantage of such a state of affairs, and felt that it belittled the importance of the town, which really did a very large business with the surrounding country for hundreds of miles. There are always two and even three different ways of looking at the same proposition, and to Bob Crandall and Vet Mowry this manner of camping “à la belle étoile” was the one thing “to which they pointed with pride.” It was proof of the glorious climate enjoyed by Tucson. Where else in the whole world, sir, could a man camp out night after night all the year round? Was it in Senegambia? No, sir. In Nova Zembla? No, sir. In Hong Kong? No, sir. In Ireland?—but by this time one could cut off the button, if necessary, and break away.

      So there were only three places in which people could get acquainted with one another—in the “Shoo Fly” or “Palace” restaurants; in the gambling resorts, which never closed, night or day, Sunday or Monday; and at the post-office, in the long line of Mexicans and Americans slowly approaching the little square window to ask for letters.

      For the convenience of my readers and myself, I will take the liberty of presenting some of my dead and gone friends in the “Shoo Fly,” where we can have seats upon which to rest, and tables upon which to place our elbows, if we so desire.

      But first a word or two more about Tucson itself.

      It was in those days the capital of the Territory of Arizona, and the place of residence of most of the Federal officials. Its geographical situation was on the right bank of the pretty little stream called the Santa Cruz, a mile or more above where it ran into the sands. In round figures, it was on the 32d degree of north latitude, and not far from the 112th degree west from Greenwich. The valley of the Santa Cruz, although not much over a mile and a half wide, is wonderfully fertile, and will yield bountifully of all cereals, as well as of the fruits of the south temperate or north tropical climes, and could easily have supported a much larger population, but on account of the bitter and unrelenting hostilities waged by the Apaches, not more than 3,200 souls could be claimed, although enthusiasts often deluded themselves into a belief in much higher figures, owing to the almost constant presence of trains of wagons hauled by patient oxen or quick-moving mules, or “carretas” drawn by the philosophical donkey or “burro” from Sonora. The great prairie-schooners all the way from the Missouri River made a very imposing appearance, as, linked two, and even three, together, they rolled along with their heavy burdens, to unload at the warehouses of the great merchants, Lord & Williams, Tully, Ochoa & De Long, the Zeckendorfs, Fish & Collingwood, Leopoldo Carrillo, or other of the men of those days whose transactions ran each year into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

      Streets and pavements there were none; lamps were unheard of; drainage was not deemed necessary, and water, when not bought from the old Mexican who hauled it in barrels in a dilapidated cart from the cool spring on the bishop’s farm, was obtained from wells, which were good and sweet in the first months of their career, but generally became so impregnated with “alkali” that they had to be abandoned; and as lumber was worth twenty-five cents a foot, and therefore too costly to be used in covering them, they were left to dry up of their own accord, and remain a menace to the lives and limbs of belated pedestrians. There was no hint in history or tradition of a sweeping of the streets, which were every bit as filthy as those of New York.

      The age of the garbage piles was distinctly defined by geological strata. In the lowest portion of all one could often find arrowheads and stone axes, indicative of a pre-Columbian origin; superimposed conformably over these, as the geologists used to say, were skins of chile colorado, great pieces of rusty spurs, and other reliquiae of the “Conquistadores,” while high above all, stray cards, tomato cans, beer bottles, and similar evidences of a higher and nobler civilization told just how long the Anglo-Saxon had called the territory his own.

      This filthy condition of the streets gave rise to a weird system of topographical designation. “You want to find the Governor’s? Wa’al, podner, jest keep right down this yere street past the Palace s’loon, till yer gets ter the second manure-pile on yer right; then keep to yer left past the post-office, ’n’ yer’ll see a dead burro in th’ middle of th’ road, ’n’ a mesquite tree ’n yer lef’, near a Mexican ‘tendajon’ (small store), ’n’ jes’ beyond that ’s the Gov.’s outfit. Can’t miss it. Look out fur th’ dawg down ter Muñoz’s corral; he ’s a salviated son ov a gun.”

      It took some time for the ears

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