WE swapped not a word on the way to the railroad.
The judge seemed to be settled down into a sort of numb condition, and I
was glad of it, for I did not feel like talking. He stood indifferently
at one side when I bought tickets, and I was glad of that also. If I was
to be purser and general manager of that expedition I did not want to
have a joint debate every time I made a move.
My first tickets took us to a junction point. Then I bought to Chicago.
The judge went along silently, showing about as much interest as a mummy
in me, or in the scenery or people. I suppose the old fellow was having
a terrible struggle with his fears, his thoughts, and his recollection
of the manner in which he had parted from his family. I sympathized with
him and left him alone. Once in a while I got a side-glance from him
which suggested that he had not abandoned his distrust of me. Perhaps
he pondered that he was simply submitting to another form of
self-destruction and was willing to let it go at that!
I’ll confess this: I was taking so much interest in the world about me
that I was finding it hard to concentrate my thoughts on the business
we had in hand. I had done no railroad-riding to speak of till then. It
seemed as unreal as if I were headed for the moon instead of into the
far vastness of my native land. When we went rolling through the
smoky fringes of Chicago and I saw that there really was a Chicago, my
emotion, as I remember it, was astonishment. But I had already found out
that a greenhorn could get along pretty well by watching other folks
and by asking questions.
So we crowded into the transfer-wagon on Polk Street and were quickly
across the city to another railroad station, where I bought tickets
for St. Paul. Before the train pulled out I raided a folder-stand and
grabbed a sample of everything in the rack.
I went into those folders like a girl diving into the love scenes in a
mush novel; I studied as diligently as if I were a prize pupil getting
ready for a contest. I had my nose in those papers for hours, till I
could close my eyes and see maps and repeat time-tables and names of
cities backward.
So I wasn’t at a loss when we reached St. Paul. I trotted the judge
right along to a window and bought tickets for Spokane. He was mumbling
a monotone of growls in my ear while I counted out the money.
“Look here, young man,” he said, when we had left the window, “I am not
going to be teamed any farther until you tell me exactly where you are
going and what you are intending to do.”
It rather surprised me to hear him speak; I had sort of forgotten that
he could talk.
“Do you pretend that you expect to get money, racing around like this?”
“I’m on the trail of it, Judge Kingsley--your money, you remember. I’m
not doing this for my own amusement.”
“You seem to be; I’ve been watching you, sir. You are plainly relishing
this junketing about. I go no farther.”
“How much money have you in your pocket?” I asked, mildly.
He looked alarmed. “I did not bring money! You took the money for
expenses, you said. I depended on that. I have only a few dollars.”
“That’s good,” I told him. “So there’s no chance for argument here on
this platform.” I waved the tickets under his nose. “I reckon you’ll
have to stick right along with me, sir, wherever I go.”
That settled that rebellion!
When I started toward the train he followed. His face was white, his
jaws were ridged, and he was furious--but his anger locked his lips. He
did not bother me with questions. That night I hid my money inside my
berth-pillow; by the way the judge looked at me I knew he would pick my
pocket if he got a chance.
On we went across the prairies of the Dakotas--and the journey was not
interesting. It was all dun and dull and brown and monotonous in
that late March. When the sun shone it only showed up more of the raw
country. Every little while we went plunging through a snow-squall which
plastered the car windows and speckled the brown of the prairie.
Then the doldrums got me! All at once I found myself bluer than the old
judge had been, even in his deepest despondency. This was a reckless
escapade, not a sensible man’s project! I had bragged and blustered
and made promises there in that little tin dipper of a Levant where the
horizon was pinched in by Mitchell’s Mountain and Tumbledick Hill. I had
got by with my bluff in the wood-lot game and had felt as if I were a
big man!
But out there!
No longer was it a string of mere names and a smudge of color on paper
to make a map! I was looking out, hour by hour, on the reality of the
vastness of the great West. As to the men I was hunting for in that wide
expanse--those fly-by-nighters, those human skip-bugs--would they not be
dodging where impulse took them? Jeff Dawlin was a mere gambler--willing
to take a chance on anything. Had he not taken a mere gambler’s chance
on my finding those men? If I succeeded he would get his pay. If I did
not succeed it was only _my_ failure--he had invested nothing--he had no
interest in my affairs, except a gambler’s.
And what could I do to those men if I did find them? They were at home
out there--as much at home as they were in the East. The farther out on
those prairies I rolled, the farther away from all confidence in myself
I seemed to be. Old Ariock Blake used to say that sometimes he felt as
if he were “forty miles from water and a hundred miles from land.” I
felt just as helplessly up in the air as that! I fairly wallowed in
sloppy gloom.
To sit there in front of Zebulon Kingsley in my state of mind and
courage and look on his gad-awful sourness of visage was too much for my
nerves.
I went to get a drink of water and heard men laughing in the
smoking-room. If there were men in the world who could laugh I wanted
to be with them. So I went in. They were playing poker, and after a time
one man had to leave the train and they asked me into the game.
I was desperate enough to grab at anything that would take my mind off
my troubles, so I began to play poker. And when a man sits in to play
poker with strangers it’s a mighty small slice of mind he has left to
blotter worry with.
I was away from the judge a long time, and he came hunting me up and
caught me at the pastime. Perhaps he feared that his two-legged bank had
fallen off the train and he had been worrying; but when he saw me with
cards in my hand and money spread out he had a lot more to worry about
and his face showed it. He let out of him a sort of moan and went away.
“Your father?” asked one of the men, casually. “Sick?”
“Yes,” I said. “I mean he’s sick, but he’s not my father. He is a big
Eastern capitalist I’m escorting West on business.”
“Put me next--I can offer him some great chances,” said another man.
“I’m afraid he is feeling too bad to talk business--and he is very
notional in the matter of strangers. Don’t say anything to him; leave it
to me.” I was obliged to say something about the judge and to block them
from bothering him, if I could, for I knew he would not be contented
with one inspection of me at my devilish and dangerous occupation.
“Don’t pay any attention to his actions,” I advised. “He’s feeling
mighty sick--a long ride makes him sort of seasick.”
I was glad I had planted something with the men, for the judge kept
coming and sticking his head between the curtains and making strange
noises. He went at me in good earnest when he had me at table in the
dining-car.
“How dare you throw away my money on gamblers?”
“I haven’t done so, Judge Kingsley.”
“I saw you doing it in that dirty den of smoke and vice.”
“You saw me playing cards, I’ll admit. I had to do something to keep
from going crazy.”
“Tossing away my money! Gambling my dollars--”
“Just a moment, sir! That money is a part of my profits and I consider
it a common pot for both of us. I know how to play poker. I have added
forty-five dollars to it.”
“Do you boast that you have been cheating at cards to help _me?_”
Confound him! he could sting a man with that tongue of his!
“A man can play poker without cheating. Just as a man can do business
without cheating!”
I looked him in the eye and he shut up. I had found out that I could get
along with him better when he didn’t talk. After the meal I went back to
the game. I felt that every little helped, provided I could hold my own.
I couldn’t resist a quiet chuckle inside when I reflected that I was
industriously playing cards for the benefit of Judge Zebulon Kingsley,
Sunday-school superintendent of Levant.
I had learned long before how to watch out in a card game, and when I
felt little scratches on the backs of the cards and observed that one
of the players was doing the gouge act with a specially manicured
finger-nail, I turned a few tricks of my own. I felt the full humor of
the thing when I calmed my conscience with the thought that it was all
for the sake of the judge. When he came to the curtains and glared at me
I grinned at him.
I cleaned up one hundred and fifteen dollars, at any rate, before we
rolled into Spokane--and I had at least five hundred dollars’ worth of
respite from my bitter misgivings. When I showed that tainted money
to the judge with some little pride and impelled by a spirit of
devilishness I couldn’t control, I thought for a moment that he would
bite me.
“I’m not going to associate any longer with a scalawag. I’m not going to
be bullyragged by a scoundrel!”
“However, when we’re roaming we’ve got to do as the roamers do,” I told
him. Deep in me I was ashamed of the disrespect I was showing him
by plaguing him in that fashion, but I felt an almost irresistible
hankering to do it; he had so long lorded it in Levant. Furthermore, he
did not seem to recognize in any manner my spirit of self-sacrifice; he
had not shown to me one flash of wholehearted gratitude. I may have
had a cloudy notion that he needed to have his spirit of Kingsley pride
humbled before he would ever consider me as a likely son-in-law. My
ideas then and the memories of my ideas now are not very clear, for I
was not in any very calm and philosophic mood those days.
After a carriage had snatched us across Spokane and we were landed
on the platform of a station from which trains for the Idaho country
departed, he did buck in good earnest.
He was a man of plan and method; he had passed his life in routine. That
rattle-brained gallop must have offended every instinct in him.
“I’ll not get on that train. I’ll go no farther. I’ll appeal to the
police,” he raved. “Give me my share of that money and I’ll go home.”
“I have mixed it all together--gambling money and all! I would not have
you traveling on gambling money, Judge.” My pertness added to his anger.
“I’ll have you arrested, so help me--”
“Hold on before you put the binding word to that oath, Judge Kingsley.
If you dare to put me in the jug away out here away from home, I’ll yank
you in as an embezzler of town money--and I’ve got an uncle who is first
selectman of the town! A little telegraphing will do the trick. Now
let’s both of us throw away our bombs. The fuses are sizzling! Climb
aboard.”
He ground his teeth and climbed!
A fine sort of a brindled, cross-eyed hen was I setting to hatch my
son-in-law hopes! But a mood of recklessness was sweeping me then.
I did not buy tickets; I paid cash fares to the conductor, naming a
station I culled from the folder. I was not sure what the limits of the
Potlatch country were; I proposed to drop in with somebody on the train,
if I could manage it discreetly, and post myself by asking questions.
I saw no likely subjects in the car where we were riding--the passengers
were mostly women--so I slicked up my silk hat, fixed it at a confident
and compelling angle, and went out into the smoking-car.
As I have just said, the spirit of recklessness was flaming in me. I did
not dare to let it die down. I lashed my courage and my craziness both
together. I was bitterly afraid I might drop back into that paralyzing
despondency I had felt back there on the Dakota prairies. That meant
that I would become a useless quitter. Only by dint of holding myself in
that desperate mood where I proposed to let chance have its way with me,
and to grab in on anything that offered, would I have gone through so
brazenly with the affair on which I soon found myself entering. It was
merely another gamble, it seemed to me after I was in it. It was
taking my mind off my more private affairs, even as the poker game had
distracted my attention.
I marched through to the front of the smoking-car where the train-boy
was arranging his little stock, bought a paper, and walked slowly back
up the aisle with a glance to right and left at the faces of the men,
hoping to get a rise from that “likely subject” I was hunting for.
One man returned my glance with interest.
After I sat down, well up in the car, I looked over the top of the
newspaper and saw that the stranger’s interest in me continued. The chap
had a broad face, liquor-mottled. After a while he unscrewed the top of
a flask and sucked in a long drink. Then he worked his shoulders, jerked
at the bottom of his waistcoat, wriggled his arms, and displayed
other symptoms of a man who is trying to brace up and to pull himself
together. At last he derricked himself out of his seat and swayed up the
car aisle. He divided glances between my plug-hat and the frock-coat.
“Excuse me, but it’s the clothes,” said the stranger.