The station-keeper upended a disk of last week's bread, of the shape and
size of an old-time cheese, and carved some slabs from it which were as
good as Nicholson pavement, and tenderer.
He sliced off a piece of bacon for each man, but only the experienced old
hands made out to eat it, for it was condemned army bacon which the
United States would not feed to its soldiers in the forts, and the stage
company had bought it cheap for the sustenance of their passengers and
employees. We may have found this condemned army bacon further out on
the plains than the section I am locating it in, but we found it--there
is no gainsaying that.
Then he poured for us a beverage which he called "Slum gullion," and it
is hard to think he was not inspired when he named it. It really
pretended to be tea, but there was too much dish-rag, and sand, and old
bacon-rind in it to deceive the intelligent traveler.
He had no sugar and no milk--not even a spoon to stir the ingredients
with.
We could not eat the bread or the meat, nor drink the "slumgullion." And
when I looked at that melancholy vinegar-cruet, I thought of the anecdote
(a very, very old one, even at that day) of the traveler who sat down to
a table which had nothing on it but a mackerel and a pot of mustard. He
asked the landlord if this was all.
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