Still, all things considered, it was a very comfortable night.  It wore gradually away, and when at last a cold gray light was visible through the puckers and chinks in the curtains, we yawned and stretched with satisfaction, shed our cocoons, and felt that we had slept as much as was necessary.  By and by, as the sun rose up and warmed the world, we pulled off our clothes and got ready for breakfast.  We were just pleasantly in time, for five minutes afterward the driver sent the weird music of his bugle winding over the grassy solitudes, and presently we detected a low hut or two in the distance.  Then the rattling of the coach, the clatter of our six horses’ hoofs, and the driver’s crisp commands, awoke to a louder and stronger emphasis, and we went sweeping down on the station at our smartest speed.  It was fascinating—­that old overland stagecoaching.

We jumped out in undress uniform.  The driver tossed his gathered reins out on the ground, gaped and stretched complacently, drew off his heavy buckskin gloves with great deliberation and insufferable dignity—­taking not the slightest notice of a dozen solicitous inquires after his health, and humbly facetious and flattering accostings, and obsequious tenders of service, from five or six hairy and half-civilized station-keepers and hostlers who were nimbly unhitching our steeds and bringing the fresh team out of the stables—­for in the eyes of the stage-driver of that day, station-keepers and hostlers were a sort of good enough low creatures, useful in their place, and helping to make up a world, but not the kind of beings which a person of distinction could afford to concern himself with; while, on the contrary, in the eyes of the station-keeper and the hostler, the stage-driver was a hero—­a great and shining dignitary, the world’s favorite son, the envy of the people, the observed of the nations.  When they spoke to him they received his insolent silence meekly, and as being the natural and proper conduct of so great a man; when he opened his lips they all hung on his words with admiration (he never honored a particular individual with a remark, but addressed it with a broad generality to the horses, the stables, the surrounding country and the human underlings); when he discharged a facetious insulting personality at a hostler, that hostler was happy for the day; when he uttered his one jest—­old as the hills, coarse, profane, witless, and inflicted on the same audience, in the same language, every time his coach drove up there—­the varlets roared, and slapped their thighs, and swore it was the best thing they’d ever heard in all their lives.  And how they would fly around when he wanted a basin of water, a gourd of the same, or a light for his pipe!—­but they would instantly insult a passenger if he so far forgot himself as to crave a favor at their hands.  They could do that sort of insolence as well as the driver they copied it from—­for, let it be borne in mind, the overland driver had but little less contempt for his passengers than he had for his hostlers.