It had come down from Esau and Samson, and had been accumulating hair ever since—­along with certain impurities.  In one corner of the room stood three or four rifles and muskets, together with horns and pouches of ammunition.  The station-men wore pantaloons of coarse, country-woven stuff, and into the seat and the inside of the legs were sewed ample additions of buckskin, to do duty in place of leggings, when the man rode horseback—­so the pants were half dull blue and half yellow, and unspeakably picturesque.  The pants were stuffed into the tops of high boots, the heels whereof were armed with great Spanish spurs, whose little iron clogs and chains jingled with every step.  The man wore a huge beard and mustachios, an old slouch hat, a blue woolen shirt, no suspenders, no vest, no coat—­in a leathern sheath in his belt, a great long “navy” revolver (slung on right side, hammer to the front), and projecting from his boot a horn-handled bowie-knife.  The furniture of the hut was neither gorgeous nor much in the way.  The rocking-chairs and sofas were not present, and never had been, but they were represented by two three-legged stools, a pine-board bench four feet long, and two empty candle-boxes.  The table was a greasy board on stilts, and the table-cloth and napkins had not come—­and they were not looking for them, either.  A battered tin platter, a knife and fork, and a tin pint cup, were at each man’s place, and the driver had a queens-ware saucer that had seen better days.  Of course this duke sat at the head of the table.  There was one isolated piece of table furniture that bore about it a touching air of grandeur in misfortune.  This was the caster.  It was German silver, and crippled and rusty, but it was so preposterously out of place there that it was suggestive of a tattered exiled king among barbarians, and the majesty of its native position compelled respect even in its degradation.

There was only one cruet left, and that was a stopperless, fly-specked, broken-necked thing, with two inches of vinegar in it, and a dozen preserved flies with their heels up and looking sorry they had invested there.

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.