‘Waal, Cap’en, I guess we’ve made the ranch anyhow,’ said the Major, as we drew up at the door of this most uninviting-looking establishment. ‘A mighty tall smell of brimstone,’ he further added, ‘seems coming up from “Old Hoof’s” stove-pipe. Calkilate he’s doing a tallish kind of dinner below.’
I had no time to reply, ere the host, owner, and general manager of the Tuscan Springs made his appearance. ‘How’s your health, Doctor?’ inquired the Major. ‘I’ve brought up Cap’en —— to have a peep at your location; he’s mighty curious about these kind of diggins.’
‘Waal, Cap’en,’ said the Doctor, in a long drawling voice, ‘I am glad to see you. I raither guess you don’t see such nat’ral ready-made places, for curin’ jist every sickness, in the old country as we have in California.—Here, boy, put up the mustangs: and now step in, and I’ll tell old aunty to scramble up some eggs and bacon, and then we can take a look round the springs.’
Aunty was a quaint specimen of the feminine gender, not at all suggestive of the gentler sex. Her features were small, but sharply cut. She was bent naturally, but not from age, and reminded me of a witch. One would not have felt at all astonished at seeing her mount a broomstick, and start on an aërial trip over the burnt-up rocks. But all honour to her skill as a cook,—she did her fixings admirably!
During dinner I had ample time to take stock of Doctor Ephraim Meadows. His face would have been a fortune as a study to a painter; his forehead high but narrow, his eyebrows thick, bushy, and overhanging; his hair would have joined his eyebrows, had not a narrow line of yellow skin formed a kind of boundary between them. Peering out from beneath his shaggy hair were two little twinkling, restless grey eyes, more roguish than good-natured. His nose, crooked and sharp, was like the beak of a buzzard; with thin dry lips that shut in a straight line, which told in pretty plain language he could be resolute and rusty if need be. The tip of his chin, bent up in an easy curve, was covered with a yellowish beard, that had been guiltless of comb or shears for many a day. His nether limbs were clad in leather never-mention-ums, kept up by a wide belt, from which dangled a six-shooter. A red shirt, with an immense collar that reached the point of the shoulders, and a dirty jean jacket completed his costume.