Page:On the border with Crook - Bourke - 1892.djvu/108



THE DIVERSIONS OF TUCSON—THE GAMBLING SALOONS—BOB CRANDALL AND HIS DIAMOND—"SLAP-JACK BILLY"—TIGHT-ROPE WALKERS—THE THEATRE—THE DUEÑAS—BAILES—THE NEWSPAPERS—STAGE-DRIVERS.

It has been shown that Tucson had no hotels. She did not need any at the time of which I am writing, as her floating population found all the ease and comfort it desired in the flare and glare of the gambling hells, which were bright with the lustre of smoking oil lamps and gay with the varicolored raiment of moving crowds, and the music of harp and Pan's pipes. In them could be found nearly every man in the town at some hour of the day or night, and many used them as the Romans did their "Thermæ"—as a place of residence.

All nationalities, all races were represented, and nearly all conditions of life. There were cadaverous-faced Americans, and Americans whose faces were plump; men in shirt sleeves, and men who wore their coats as they would have done in other places; there were Mexicans wrapped in the red, yellow, and black striped cheap "serapes," smoking the inevitable cigarrito, made on the spot by rolling a pinch of tobacco in a piece of corn shuck; and there were other Mexicans more thoroughly Americanized, who were clad in the garb of the people of the North. Of Chinese and negroes there were only a few—they had not yet made acquaintance to any extent with that section of our country; but their place was occupied by civilized Indians, Opatas, Yaquis, and others, who had come up with "bull" teams and pack trains from Sonora. The best of order prevailed, there being no noise save the hum of conversation or the click of the chips on the different tables. Tobacco smoke ascended from cigarritos, pipes, and the vilest of cigars, filling all the rooms with the foulest of odors. The bright light from the lamps did not equal the steely glint in the eyes of the "bankers," who ceaselessly and imper