At last the day came for me to go home, for I had passed my fourteenth
birthday and was too old to stay at the Sisters’ School.
I wanted to kiss my favorite teacher good-by, but didn’t quite dare do
it. So I rode down to the station with Tommy, who bought me a fifty-cent
knife, out of his salary, only twelve dollars a month, and went away to
join my father.
Father took me back to the same hotel, to the same room. He had occupied
it during the three years I had been away, and the only change was that
he put a small bed in it for me. Everything was new and strange to me.
Men coming and going all day, eating and drinking. Everything was noise
and bustle, and it took me a few days to get used to this new life.
I found lots of papers lying around—some cheap novels, Police Gazettes,
etc.—and I read them all, everything I could get hold of. I saw my
father only at night, and occasionally we would take a walk then for an
hour.
One evening as we were returning from our walk, we came upon a man whose
team of horses was stalled in a mud hole. He was beating the horses, and
cursing them with the most fearful oaths. I stopped still in my tracks
and began praying for him. Father looked back, saw me standing still,
and said: “What are you doing, John, listening to that mule skinner
swear?”
I finished my prayer and caught up with him.
“You will learn to swear soon enough, John, without stopping to listen
to these teamsters,” he said a little severely.
In self-defense I told him I was not listening to the man, but praying
for him. “The Sisters taught us to do that,” I said. “They taught us to
pray for all sinners.”
Father wore a long beard, the custom of his day. When he was very
thoughtful or vexed with some problem, he had a habit of twisting up the
end of his beard into a pigtail. He would then put the pigtail between
his teeth and chew on it.
After I explained what I had been doing, he looked at me strangely,
twisted up his beard, put the end in his mouth, and began chewing. He
took my hand, something he never did before, and we walked home in
silence. He went straight upstairs, and I found some fresh papers, which
I read downstairs. When I went up to go to bed he was sitting in his
chair, staring at the wall and still chewing his beard. My coming
aroused him. He said, “Good night, John,” and we went to bed.
The next evening he came in as usual. He read his paper and I read
whatever came to my hand. When we went upstairs, he said: “John, the
Sisters taught you many prayers, did they?” “Yes, sir, all the prayers.
I know them all,” I said proudly.
“How about reading?” he asked. I read him a piece from a newspaper
fairly well.
“And writing, John? Yes, I know you learned to write and spell. Your
letters to me were very good. How’s your arithmetic, John? How many are
eight times nine, John?”
I was stuck. I hesitated and blushed. He saw my confusion and gave me an
easier one. “Seven times six, John?”
I was stuck again and got more confused. “Start at the beginning, John,
maybe you can get it that way.”
I started at seven times one, got as far as seven times four, and fell
down. This was torture. I think he saw it, too, for he said, “Oh, well,
John, that will come to you later. Don’t worry about it; just keep on
trying.”
He was a sharp at mathematics, and I think my failure to learn
multiplication hurt him more than if he had caught me spelling bird with
a “u,” or sugar with two “gs.” After a month of idleness it was decided
that I should go to the district school, which had been built in our
town while I was at the Sisters’. I got a new set of books and started
bravely off.
We had a woman teacher, very strict, but fair to us all. I learned
rapidly everything but arithmetic, which did not seem to agree with me,
nor does it yet, for that matter. I also learned to play ball, football,
marbles, and, I must admit, hooky, the most fascinating of all small-boy
games. These new games, and so many other interesting new things, soon
crowded the prayers into the background of my mind, but not entirely out
of it. I said them no more at night and morning, nor any other time. But
I still remember them, and I believe now, after forty prayerless years,
I could muster a passable prayer if the occasion required it and there
were not so many people about who could do it so much better.
After school, having no chores to do, I loitered around the hotel
office. One day I found a dime novel entitled, “The James Boys.” I
seized upon it and devoured it. After that I was always on the lookout
for dime novels. I found a place where they were sold. I would buy one
and trade with some other boy when it was read. If I could not trade
it, I took it back to the store and the woman gave me a five-cent one
for it. The nickel one was just as thrilling, but shorter. I read them
all. “Old Sleuth,” “Cap Collier,” “Frank Reade,” “Kit Carson.”
Father saw me with them, but never bothered me. One day he brought
me one of Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking tales. I read it and
was cured of the five- and ten-cent novels.
Between going to school and to the depot in the evening to see the train
come in, and hanging around the hotel bar watching the town’s celebrated
ones, especially the “bad men” who had killed or shot somebody somewhere
some time, I put in fairly busy days. The time flew.
I got to be quite looked up to by the other boys of my age. I “lived at
the hotel,” had “nobody to boss me around,” didn’t have to “run errands
and chop kindling and go after the groceries and carry milk.” When a new
boy showed up, I was the one to show him around. I remember distinctly,
now, that in less than a year after I left the Sisters, I was going down
the street with a new boy when we came upon one of the town drunkards
and bad men. I pointed him out with pride. “See that old fellow? That’s
old Beverly Shannon. He’s been out to Leadville. He killed a man out
there and nearly got hung. You ought to hear him swear when he gets
drunk and falls down and nobody will help him up.”
There was admiration in my voice. Our town was full of bad men. All had
been in the war on one side or the other. Everybody had a pistol or two,
and a shotgun or a rifle. Everybody knew how to use them. No small
boy’s outfit was complete without a pistol. Usually it was a rusty old
“horse pistol,” a cap-and-ball affair, some old relic of the Civil War.
By a great stroke of fortune I got two of them. I was helping an old
lady to move some things out of her cellar when we ran across them in a
trunk.
“Lord, Lord,” she said, “are those awful things here yet? I thought they
had been thrown away years ago. Johnnie, take them out and bury them
somewhere. Throw them away so I will never see them again.”
These two old pistols made me feel important, established. I began to
look about me. It was time I began to be somebody. My latest hero was
the man that kept the bar in the hotel. He owned the building, leased
the hotel, and ran the bar himself. He was a fat man, and he wore a
fancy striped vest with a heavy gold watch chain across it and a
twenty-dollar gold piece dangled from the chain for a charm. He had
been out to California. It was the only twenty-dollar piece in the town.
He was a small politician, the town fixer. When anybody got into any
trouble and had to go before the justice of the peace, he went down to
the hotel and saw “Cy” Near. Cy would say, “Leave it to me, that’s all,
leave it to me.” When it was all over the fellow would come down to
“Cy’s” and order drinks for everybody in sight, several times. Then he
would say, “What do I owe you, Cy?”
“Owe me? Owe me for what?”
“Why, you know, Cy, for fixing up that little trouble.”
“Oh, that’s what you mean. Say, you don’t owe me a thin dime, not a
greasy nickel.” Cy would wave a fat arm in the air. “I don’t take money
for helping my friends. I sell licker, good licker; that’s my business.”
The chap would buy a few more rounds of drinks, thank Cy again, and
start for the door. Cy would shout, “Hey, George, I forgot to tell you.
I’m rafflin’ off a hoss an’ buggy and you’d better take a half dozen
tickets. You stand to win a good rig.”
Around election time Cy would round up all the fellows he could, remind
them that he had befriended them, and say, “What do we care who’s
President of the United States? What we want is a decent justice of the
peace and town marshal.”
I decided to pattern my life after Cy’s. He was a popular, successful
man. I began swinging my arms about, talking in a loud, hoarse voice,
wearing my hat on the back of my head. Cy smoked big cigars. I tried
one, and gave up the notion of smoking, at least for a while.
It was not long till my fancy for the saloon keeper changed. One evening
when the train came in a single traveler got off. He was a tall, lean
man, who walked like a soldier, erect and with a confident step. He had
a short, stubby, gray mustache. He wore a gray suit, a gray hat, and
held a pair of gloves in his hand. He walked quickly toward the front of
the train and waited by the baggage car till a trunk was tossed out. An
express man near by was told to take the trunk over to the hotel.
I followed the gray man to the hotel. Presently the trunk was left in
front and I went to inspect it. It was a leather trunk, with brass
fittings, plastered over with stickers from many hotels and steamship
lines. It was scratched and battered and travel-stained. The thing
fascinated me. I stood around and felt it, read the stickers, some of
them from foreign parts of the world, and wondered what kind of man he
could be that possessed such a wonderful trunk.
I was restless and disturbed when the porter took it upstairs out of my
sight. It had roused strange thoughts and longings in my mind that I did
not understand then. I know now that it suggested travel, adventure by
land and sea—the world.
I now pulled my hat down from the back of my head and wore it properly.
I straightened up, kept my hands out of my pockets, walked with a quick
step, and assumed a confident, positive manner. I even began to think
about a mustache, bristly, cut down like the gray man’s. I must have a
gray suit, gray hat, gloves, and a leather trunk. A big problem for a
boy with no income.
I determined to earn some money and looked about for after-school work.
After my father, I thought the saloon man, Cy, was the wisest man in our
town. For some reason which I never could figure out, I did not submit
the matter to my father, but went to the saloon man. Maybe it was
because he was easier to talk to. We went over the situation carefully.
There was no job in sight that either of us could think of. At last Cy
said, “Well, if you’re so crazy about a job, I’ll make one for you.”
Cy was a bachelor, and lived in a single room in the hotel. He opened
and closed his bar, did all the work, was always drinking, but no one
ever saw him drunk.
“You can come in here in the morning before school and clean the place
up. Sweeping out ain’t no man’s job, anyway, and I’m tired of it. You
can wash up the glasses and dust up around the bar. In the afternoon
when you come home from school, you can be around in case there’s any
errands. At night you can look after the pool table, collect for the
games, and see that they don’t steal the balls. You can serve the drinks
when there’s a card game, and bring a new deck when some sore loser
tears the old one up.”
I was so grateful to Cy that I gave him my very best “thank you.” Here
was a chance to get on in life, to have my own money, and be independent
and mix around with men—to learn something of the world. I was so taken
with this notion that I hunted up the broom, which was worn down to the
strings, and began sweeping out the barroom. There were no customers in
the place. Cy stood by, his hat on one side of his head, a big cigar in
the opposite side of his mouth, hands in pockets, and eyed me
thoughtfully. When I had the place about half swept out, Cy came over
and took the broom out of my hands. He turned it about, examined it
carefully. “Johnnie, I think you’re on the square with me, and I’m going
to be on the up and up with you. You go to the store and get yourself a
new broom.”
I did that, and swept the place all over again. Having started to work
without my father’s permission I decided to say nothing till I got well
settled in my job. I had a feeling that he might veto the whole thing
if I told him at the start, but if I waited a while and had a few
dollars saved up he might let me continue.
Father knew Cy very well. On rare occasions he went into the bar and had
a drink and a talk with him.
I worked faithfully, early and late. At the end of the week, in the
afternoon when there was no customer about, Cy mysteriously beckoned me
into his “office,” a small closet of a room at one end of the bar. It
was simply furnished—a table, a chair, a large spittoon, one picture on
the wall opposite the desk. A picture of the mighty John L. Sullivan in
fighting pose. Cy seated himself at the table, put on a pair of glasses,
and drew out a small notebook. He looked carefully about the room.
Seeing the door of his office open, he told me to close it.
To me Cy had always been much of a mystery. He had been “out West”—to
Leadville, Deadwood, and San Francisco. He owned the latest pattern of
repeating rifle and a couple of “forty-fives.” He played poker. I
thought I was now to be initiated into some of the secret activities of
his life. Maybe he would ask me to do something dangerous. Well,
whatever it was, I would do it. He wrote something in the notebook, then
took three silver dollars out of his pocket and put them in my hand,
carefully, without clinking them.
“Johnnie, this is pay day.”
I went back to work happy. Pay day, three dollars of my own money. I
would have a gray suit, gray hat, gloves, and a leather trunk in no
time. I would soon be a tall, handsome, distinguished-looking gentleman,
on Cy’s money. I jingled my three dollars loudly and could hardly wait
for my father to come home so I could tell him about my working and ask
him to mind my money for me.
The possession of three dollars changed me at once. I became
independent, confident, secure. When father came in I went to him
without a single misgiving, feeling sure he would approve. I had my
money in my hand and my spirit was high. I told him I had been working
for Mr. Near all week; that I had three dollars in wages and wanted him
to take care of them for me. He took the money and put it in his
pocket, saying: “All right. Let me know when you want it.”
“And you don’t mind my working for Cy?”
“No. I don’t mind. Cy told me all about it. You will have to learn to
work some time. And you will have to learn lots of other things. So you
may as well start at Cy’s.”
He turned to his paper, and I thought the thing was settled, but as I
went out of the room I saw him twisting up the end of his long beard.
The school work was no trouble to me. I put in a year, and vacation time
came along almost before I knew it. I was saving all the money I earned
as assistant to Cy, and was looking forward to earning more during
vacation. I brought home to my father a report from the school which
seemed to show that I had made good progress. He glanced at the card and
threw it to one side.
“I suppose you have the multiplication table this time, John?”
“Oh, yes, I learned it at last.”
“How many are eight times nine, John?”
“Seventy-two, sir.”
“Good. Seven times six?”
“Forty-two, sir.”
“Correct, John.”
He did not seem to be much interested in my correct and prompt answers;
kept on looking at his paper. Finally he looked at me and said: “And
eight times thirteen, John?”
I was stuck again. This one froze me stiff. I got mad, red in the face.
I took pencil and paper out of my pockets, figured it out, and give him
the result. It seemed that he was taking advantage of me. Nobody at
school had ever asked me that question. I felt wronged. I thought of my
money and my two big horse pistols. If I was to be treated in this way I
would take my money and pistols and go away where I could get a square
deal. And if I did not get a square deal, I’d take it.
Father looked at the paper I gave him. “Why, you have it right, John.
That’s good, very good.” He was stroking his beard thoughtfully, and I
could not tell whether he was smiling or making a face.
Vacation was almost over. I needed new books for the coming season and
spoke to father about them one night.
“Never mind them now. We will see about them later. We are going away,
going to Kansas City. I have been promoted after all these years.”
“But I will lose my job,” I demurred.
“I’ll get you another job. Don’t worry. Do you want a regular job,
working all day, or would you like to go to school some more?”
I decided to have an all-day job, and let the school go.
“All right,” he said, “we’ll see about it.”
My father made no fuss about leaving the small town where he had spent
ten years of his life. He had no close friends or cronies. After my
mother died, he seldom spoke to any one but me, and I think he was glad
to go away. He was a cold, hard, silent Scotch-Irishman. He took no part
in social doings, never went to church, belonged to no clubs; nor was he
enough interested in politics to become a citizen and exercise the high
privilege of voting on election day.
My good-bys did not take much time. Cy was sorry to have me go. He
laboriously wrote me a fine letter of recommendation which he gave me
along with a large, worn silver watch, that wound with a key. It weighed
almost a pound, and I was proportionately proud of it. My boy friends
envied me in going away to a big city and impressed upon me the
necessity for taking my pistols with me. Unnecessary advice; I had no
intention of leaving them behind.
And last of all I hunted up old Beverly Shannon, the bad man. He was a
hooknosed old man with hard eyes and a long chin whisker dripping
tobacco juice. He had worn the Northern blue, and drew a small pension
for a “bad leg.” Times when he was half drunk, limping around town in
search of more drinks, some one would say: “Look out, ‘Bev.’ You’re
limpin’ on the wrong leg.” This always brought a string of eloquent
curses from him, and a warning that they had “better be keerful. I
hain’t stopped killin’ jest ’cause Abe Lincoln says the war’s over.”
In those days all roads led to the harness shop, and there “old Bev” was
always to be found when sober, outside the shop on a bench under a tree.
There he met all the droughty farmers and entertained them with war
stories and tales of his wanderings “out West.” He was always invited to
drink with them. His pension kept him in food. His life held no serious
problem.
I found him on his bench, sober and sorry for it. He passed the time of
day with me, and I told him I was going away and had come to say
good-by.
“Goin’ to the city, huh? Well, don’t let ’em rub it into you. You ain’t
a very strong boy.” He was a foxy old man. He leered at me out of his
cunning eyes. “Have you got any shootin’ irons?” Long John Silver, the
pirate, could not have done any better in the way of complimenting a
boy. I was fairly hooked. I assured him that I was well heeled, having
two pistols.
“That’s good. You’ll git along all right. Now you run along. I’ve got to
git me a farmer. I ain’t had my whisky yet.”
I hastily dug up enough silver out of my small pocket money for a couple
of drinks, and gave it to him. As I went away I thought he looked like
an old spider watching his web for a fly.