The hotel had been closed while its owner was away on business. Now he opened the door with some caution; the upper hinge was loose and dangling, and in spite of his care it fell on his boot as he stepped across the threshold; he kicked it aside.
They walked through a narrow hall, dark as a cellar. The hall ended in a few stone steps which led up to a bare room. This was the Grand Hotel’s best guest room, and here the Swedish guest could stay. Inside was a real bed, nailed together of heavy boards, with a mattress and fairly clean sheet, pillow, and blanket. The only other furniture was a table and a chair at the window. The walls were decorated with buffalo horns; even this room indicated they were in buffalo country.
A room for a gentleman, said the host, a room for a man of means in America. Now Robert must rest while he went down and cooked dinner for them. They would have their dinner in the main dining room. Unfortunately, the Grand Hotel was without personnel at the moment. Before he left on his business journey he had been forced to let his chef go, his last employee. This man had been ordered never to get drunk until after dinner, but he had never obeyed. The host himself had always had to save the steaks from burning. And one day the cook had taken the wrong bottle and poured castor oil in the bean soup. The guests had all spent the night in the privy. In the morning they had all moved out, accusing him, the owner, of trying to poison them, and refusing to pay their bills. That was why he had kicked out his chef; that bean soup had cost him two hundred dollars.
About an hour later Robert came down to enjoy Fred’s promised dinner. The “main” dining room was a widening in the hall with an iron stove in a corner. It had a long table at which twenty guests could sit down to a meal. Fred was frying buffalo steaks on the stove and served them with a red, peppery sauce; he called it chili Colorado. The meat was good but the sharp sauce burned Robert’s tongue. The host had put both knife and fork at his plate; almost every day, said Fred, some guest arrived who asked for both these tools. After the buffalo steak he served pancakes which he called tortillas. He had learned to cook these in the California goldfields.
Fredrik Mattsson from Asarum poured whiskey from a fat bottle and handed his guest a large tumbler of the dark-brown fluid.
“Let’s drink a Swedish Skol! Good luck, boy!”
Robert was not accustomed to the strong liquor, which scratched like a scrubbing brush in his throat and burned in his stomach afterward. The hotel dining room had a closed-in and dank smell. Robert couldn’t help saying that he felt as if he were sitting in a cellar.
“Yes, Grand Hotel was built for a potato cellar!” said Fred proudly.
And the host told him the story of his hotel, an amazing and proud story. The house itself was a historical building; it was the oldest house in town, four years old. He intended to put a sign on the front of his house indicating its venerable age.
When Grand City had been founded, four years ago, the first inhabitants had needed a place to store their potatoes. This house had been built for potato storage. But as the town grew and attracted cattle thieves, ruffians, and murderers, it had become more important to have a safe place to put them rather than the potatoes. It was worse to have thieves on the loose than to eat spoiled potatoes. By and by they were hanged, of course, depending on time and opportunity, but it usually took a day or two before official execution could be performed, and in the meantime the criminals were kept in this jail. In this very spot where they now were sitting, many men had spent the last hours of their life.
Then had come a time in Grand City’s history when law and order had been set aside. There had not been enough men to attend to that business; no one could expect men to jail themselves and stay in prison. For a year or so the jail had been abandoned for lack of officials. The last prisoner had been strung up, or perhaps he had escaped, and no new criminals could be supplied.
Then came the church period of Grand City’s history. After the Mormons, a group of Seventh-Day Adventists had arrived. They needed a church and rented the empty jail. The potato cellar was turned into the lord’s temple. The pulpit stood here in the dining room; when Fred tore it down he had used the planks for a counter in his bar. Here in this old potato cellar the Seventh-Day Adventists had once made themselves ready to ascend into heaven — the Last Day, they had decided, would occur on New Year’s Eve 1850, and all members of the congregation had gathered in here. They had sold all their possessions, everyone was dressed in white muslin robes; they had done their earthly chores and were ready for the ascension. But the Last Day had been postponed indefinitely, and since the Seventh-Day Adventists already had given away everything they owned on earth without gaining admittance to heaven, some problems about money had arisen. The confusion increased when the pastor ran away with the wife of the church warden.
And the crafty Mormons, who preached their doctrine forcefully, took advantage of the other sect’s predicament: they drove them out of the church and used the building themselves.
After a time of great strife in Grand City’s church life a period of peace and order reigned. Even though the town at that time was without jail or potato cellar it had five church buildings, all Mormon.
The host inhaled deeply, spat to the left and then to the right, and poured more whiskey for his guest and for himself before he continued.
This peaceful period was nearing its end when he came to this town. He had arrived in time to attend a Mormon wedding here in the church. A rich and highly trusted member was marrying eight women at one time. It was an average Mormon wedding and he had participated in the festivities.
The eight brides had been lined up in a row outside on the street, decked in white clothing, their hair curled, all ready. In front of the brides sat the bridegroom, like a company commander on a fine horse, in tails and stovepipe hat. The congregation had raised a triumphal arch across the street, and back and forth under this arch men rode among the guests and fired salutes with rifles and revolvers until the whole town was enveloped in a cloud of powder smoke. When the ceremony was about to commence the brides walked under the arch to meet the groom. Each bride in turn walked up, the groom pulled her up beside him in the saddle and rode off to the house where the bridal chamber had been prepared. After a time the groom came riding back alone; now his first wife was no longer a maid but a Mormon wife. The marriage had been consummated. Then the groom picked up his next bride, rode away, and turned this maid into wife.
In four hours the groom had finished his ride — eight times back and forth. In four hours he had consummated his marriage with eight wives. And that Mormon was a small, weak-looking man, but he had been gifted with heavenly strength to perform his manly duty. He could almost be compared to Brigham Young himself.
But this wedding turned out to be the undoing of the Mormons. It caused bad blood among other men in town, who had long envied the Mormons their women. There was already a great lack of women in the West before this sect had come with their polygamy. One man could take ten wives while a hundred men couldn’t get a single woman. A small war broke out in Grand City. The Mormons used Colt revolvers and could fire five shots without reloading, but some of the other men had Sam Colts newest invention, which fired six shots. And with Colt’s six-shooters they drove the whole Mormon group out of town.
Now the churches stood empty and Fred had used the opportunity to take over the biggest building in town. He had opened a hotel and bar in the old Mormon temple, and the onetime potato cellar was now really in its glory.