The Silverado Squatters | Page 3

there lounging
townsfolk. Other streets are marked out, and most likely named; for
these towns in the New World begin with a firm resolve to grow larger,
Washington and Broadway, and then First and Second, and so forth,
being boldly plotted out as soon as the community indulges in a plan.
But, in the meanwhile, all the life and most of the houses of Calistoga
are concentrated upon that street between the railway station and the
road. I never heard it called by any name, but I will hazard a guess that
it is either Washington or Broadway. Here are the blacksmith's, the
chemist's, the general merchant's, and Kong Sam Kee, the Chinese
laundryman's; here, probably, is the office of the local paper (for the
place has a paper--they all have papers); and here certainly is one of the
hotels, Cheeseborough's, whence the daring Foss, a man dear to legend,
starts his horses for the Geysers.
It must be remembered that we are here in a land of stage-drivers and
highwaymen: a land, in that sense, like England a hundred years ago.
The highway robber--road-agent, he is quaintly called-- is still busy in

these parts. The fame of Vasquez is still young. Only a few years go,
the Lakeport stage was robbed a mile or two from Calistoga. In 1879,
the dentist of Mendocino City, fifty miles away upon the coast,
suddenly threw off the garments of his trade, like Grindoff, in The
Miller and his Men, and flamed forth in his second dress as a captain of
banditti. A great robbery was followed by a long chase, a chase of days
if not of weeks, among the intricate hill-country; and the chase was
followed by much desultory fighting, in which several--and the dentist,
I believe, amongst the number--bit the dust. The grass was springing
for the first time, nourished upon their blood, when I arrived in
Calistoga. I am reminded of another highwayman of that same year.
"He had been unwell," so ran his humorous defence, "and the doctor
told him to take something, so he took the express-box."
The cultus of the stage-coachman always flourishes highest where there
are thieves on the road, and where the guard travels armed, and the
stage is not only a link between country and city, and the vehicle of
news, but has a faint warfaring aroma, like a man who should be
brother to a soldier. California boasts her famous stage-drivers, and
among the famous Foss is not forgotten. Along the unfenced,
abominable mountain roads, he launches his team with small regard to
human life or the doctrine of probabilities. Flinching travellers, who
behold themselves coasting eternity at every corner, look with natural
admiration at their driver's huge, impassive, fleshy countenance. He has
the very face for the driver in Sam Weller's anecdote, who upset the
election party at the required point. Wonderful tales are current of his
readiness and skill. One in particular, of how one of his horses fell at a
ticklish passage of the road, and how Foss let slip the reins, and,
driving over the fallen animal, arrived at the next stage with only three.
This I relate as I heard it, without guarantee.
I only saw Foss once, though, strange as it may sound, I have twice
talked with him. He lives out of Calistoga, at a ranche called Fossville.
One evening, after he was long gone home, I dropped into
Cheeseborough's, and was asked if I should like to speak with Mr. Foss.
Supposing that the interview was impossible, and that I was merely
called upon to subscribe the general sentiment, I boldly answered
"Yes." Next moment, I had one instrument at my ear, another at my
mouth and found myself, with nothing in the world to say, conversing

with a man several miles off among desolate hills. Foss rapidly and
somewhat plaintively brought the conversation to an end; and he
returned to his night's grog at Fossville, while I strolled forth again on
Calistoga high street. But it was an odd thing that here, on what we are
accustomed to consider the very skirts of civilization, I should have
used the telephone for the first time in my civilized career. So it goes in
these young countries; telephones, and telegraphs, and newspapers, and
advertisements running far ahead among the Indians and the grizzly
bears.
Alone, on the other side of the railway, stands the Springs Hotel, with
its attendant cottages. The floor of the valley is extremely level to the
very roots of the hills; only here and there a hillock, crowned with
pines, rises like the barrow of some chieftain famed in war; and right
against one of these hillocks is the Springs Hotel--is or was; for since I
was there the place has been destroyed