One would as soon expect the rabbits to fight as the Goshoots, and yet
they used to live off the offal and refuse of the stations a few months
and then come some dark night when no mischief was expected, and burn
down the buildings and kill the men from ambush as they rushed out.
And once, in the night, they attacked the stage-coach when a District
Judge, of Nevada Territory, was the only passenger, and with their first
volley of arrows (and a bullet or two) they riddled the stage curtains,
wounded a horse or two and mortally wounded the driver. The latter was
full of pluck, and so was his passenger. At the driver’s call Judge Mott
swung himself out, clambered to the box and seized the reins of the team,
and away they plunged, through the racing mob of skeletons and under a
hurtling storm of missiles. The stricken driver had sunk down on the
boot as soon as he was wounded, but had held on to the reins and said he
would manage to keep hold of them until relieved.
And after they were taken from his relaxing grasp, he lay with his head
between Judge Mott’s feet, and tranquilly gave directions about the road;
he said he believed he could live till the miscreants were outrun and
left behind, and that if he managed that, the main difficulty would be at
an end, and then if the Judge drove so and so (giving directions about
bad places in the road, and general course) he would reach the next
station without trouble. The Judge distanced the enemy and at last
rattled up to the station and knew that the night’s perils were done; but
there was no comrade-in-arms for him to rejoice with, for the soldierly
driver was dead.
Let us forget that we have been saying harsh things about the Overland
drivers, now. The disgust which the Goshoots gave me, a disciple of
Cooper and a worshipper of the Red Man–even of the scholarly savages in
the “Last of the Mohicans” who are fittingly associated with backwoodsmen
who divide each sentence into two equal parts: one part critically
grammatical, refined and choice of language, and the other part just such
an attempt to talk like a hunter or a mountaineer, as a Broadway clerk
might make after eating an edition of Emerson Bennett’s works and
studying frontier life at the Bowery Theatre a couple of weeks–I say
that the nausea which the Goshoots gave me, an Indian worshipper, set me
to examining authorities, to see if perchance I had been over-estimating
the Red Man while viewing him through the mellow moonshine of romance.
The revelations that came were disenchanting. It was curious to see how
quickly the paint and tinsel fell away from him and left him treacherous,
filthy and repulsive–and how quickly the evidences accumulated that
wherever one finds an Indian tribe he has only found Goshoots more or
less modified by circumstances and surroundings–but Goshoots, after all.
They deserve pity, poor creatures; and they can have mine–at this
distance. Nearer by, they never get anybody’s.
There is an impression abroad that the Baltimore and Washington Railroad
Company and many of its employees are Goshoots; but it is an error.
There is only a plausible resemblance, which, while it is apt enough to
mislead the ignorant, cannot deceive parties who have contemplated both
tribes. But seriously, it was not only poor wit, but very wrong to start
the report referred to above; for however innocent the motive may have
been, the necessary effect was to injure the reputation of a class who
have a hard enough time of it in the pitiless deserts of the Rocky
Mountains, Heaven knows! If we cannot find it in our hearts to give
those poor naked creatures our Christian sympathy and compassion, in
God’s name let us at least not throw mud at them.
CHAPTER XX.
On the seventeenth day we passed the highest mountain peaks we had yet
seen, and although the day was very warm the night that followed upon its
heels was wintry cold and blankets were next to useless.
On the eighteenth day we encountered the eastward-bound telegraph-