On rising in the morning you look for a place to perform your ablutions, and find that the lavatory is nothing more than a deal plank in rear of the dining-room, in the open air. It is furnished with a tin basin, securely fastened by a chain to a staple in the side of the building, a very dirty looking towel on a roller, and a small piece of yellow soap, which seems likely to do duty during the rise and fall of many a future mushroom city, for by no amount of ingenuity can any suds be possibly coaxed out of it. There is also a looking-glass, or rather a piece of one, which it makes you nervous to look in; and a veteran comb minus several teeth, which nevertheless is considered one of the most valuable articles in the place, and to avoid appropriation, is also fastened to the side of the house by a chain. Having availed yourself of these luxurious surroundings, you go to breakfast, and find the ubiquitous hot biscuits, tough thin beef-steaks, and poor coffee awaiting you. Several outsiders, besides those who are staying at the house, drop in for this meal, each one putting his pistol on the table at the side of his plate; and breakfast is rapidly despatched under a sort of armed neutrality, which makes a timid man, new to the thing, fearful of breaking it by even asking his next-door neighbour to pass the salt.
Outside, on chairs tilted back against the side of the house, are two or three frontier doctors, their ears on the alert to catch the sounds of strife, which may possibly betoken the need of their healing art. One or two lawyers and real-estate men are also there, with plans of the city already mapped out, eager to buy or sell, though at very different prices. Besides these, there are numerous individuals of the nondescript class known as ‘bummers,’ whose business at this or any other place is a mystery, but who seem to rub along somehow or other, and at this minute are retailing the latest bar-room ‘shooting scrape,’ and discussing the city’s chances as if they had great interests at stake.
All this time the hubbub and excitement in the main street are ever increasing. If you walk down it, you will find one or two drug stores, an ironmongery establishment, a store where anything can be obtained from a sombrero to a set of harness, and a butcher’s shop. With these exceptions, every building is a bar-room or gambling-house. In these, the games of faro, keno, roulette, and poker are in full swing day and night, the dealers at the first-named game being relieved when tired, or when the cards seem to be persistently running against them. The professional gamblers who frequent these scenes can be easily recognised. They are generally the best-dressed men in the place, by which I mean that they wear black cloth clothes and a diamond solitaire in their shirt front, which places them in bold relief against the surrounding roughly clad assemblage. These professional gamblers are usually styled ‘sporting men’ or ‘sports.’ They have an expression in their faces peculiar to the fraternity—a watchful, calculating, cruel look, and an impassive countenance carefully trained not to betray any signs of their feelings. When off duty, if we may so express it, some of them are gentlemanly, pleasant enough companions, who might really be trusted; but on duty they become again the unscrupulous gambler, ready to fleece his friend, by fair play or foul, without a particle of compunction. They are ever on the _qui vive_ with their weapons, although not quarrelsome; nor do they drink much, are coolly brave and determined as well as excellent shots, and have not much belief in anything here or, we fear, hereafter.