LADRONE TRAVELS IN STATE
With a little leisure to walk about and talk with the citizens of
Seattle, I became aware of a great change since the year before. The
boom of the goldseeker was over. The talk was more upon the Spanish
war; the business of outfitting was no longer paramount; the reckless
hurrah, the splendid exultation, were gone. Men were sailing to the
north, but they embarked, methodically, in business fashion.
It is safe to say that the north will never again witness such a
furious rush of men as that which took place between August, '97, and
June, '98. Gold is still there, and it will continue to be sought,
but the attention of the people is directed elsewhere. In Seattle, as
all along the line, the talk a year ago had been almost entirely on
gold hunting. Every storekeeper advertised Klondike goods, but these
signs were now rusty and faded. The fever was over, the reign of the
humdrum was restored.
Taking the train next day, I passed Ladrone in the night somewhere,
and as I looked from my window at the great fires blazing in the
forest, my fear of his burning came upon me again. At Spokane I
waited with great anxiety for him to arrive. At last the train drew
in and I hurried to his car. The door was closed, and as I nervously
forced it open he whinnied with that glad chuckling a gentle horse
uses toward his master. He had plenty of hay, but was hot and
thirsty, and I hurried at risk of life and limb to bring him cool
water. His eyes seemed to shine with delight as he saw me coming with
the big bucket of cool drink. Leaving him a tub of water, I bade him
good-by once more and started him for Helena, five hundred miles
away.
At Missoula, the following evening, I rushed into the ticket office
and shouted, "Where is '54'?"
The clerk knew me and smilingly extended his hand.
"How de do? She has just pulled out. The horse is all OK. We gave him
fresh water and feed."
I thanked him and returned to my train.
Reaching Livingston in the early morning I was forced to wait nearly
all day for the train. This was no hardship, however, for it enabled
me to return once more to the plain. All the old familiar presences
were there. The splendid sweep of brown, smooth hills, the glory of
clear sky, the crisp exhilarating air, appealed to me with great
power after my long stay in the cold, green mountains of the north.
I walked out a few miles from the town over the grass brittle and
hot, from which the clapping grasshoppers rose in swarms, and
dropping down on the point of a mesa I relived again in drowse the
joys of other days. It was plain to me that goldseeking in the Rocky
Mountains was marvellously simple and easy compared to even the best
sections of the Northwest, and the long journey of the Forty-niners
was not only incredibly more splendid and dramatic, but had the
allurement of a land of eternal summer beyond the final great range.
The long trail I had just passed was not only grim and monotonous,
but led toward an ever increasing ferocity of cold and darkness to
the arctic circle and the silence of death.
When the train came crawling down the pink and purple slopes of the
hills at sunset that night, I was ready for my horse. Bridle in hand
I raced after the big car while it was being drawn up into the
freight yards. As I galloped I held excited controversy with the head
brakeman. I asked that the car be sent to the platform. He objected.
I insisted and the car was thrown in. I entered, and while Ladrone
whinnied glad welcome I knocked out some bars, bridled him, and said,
"Come, boy, now for a gambol." He followed me without the slightest
hesitation out on the platform and down the steep slope to the
ground. There I mounted him without waiting for saddle and away we
flew.
He was gay as a bird. His neck arched and his eyes and ears were
quick as squirrels. We galloped down to the Yellowstone River and
once more he thrust his dusty nozzle deep into the clear mountain
water. Then away he raced until our fifteen minutes were up. I was
glad to quit. He was too active for me to enjoy riding without a
saddle. Right up to the door of the car he trotted, seeming to
understand that his journey was not yet finished. He entered
unhesitatingly and took his place. I battened down the bars, nailed
the doors into place, filled his tub with cold water, mixed him a
bran mash, and once more he rolled away. I sent him on this time,
however, with perfect confidence. He was actually getting fat on his
prison fare, and was too wise to allow himself to be bruised by the
jolting of the cars.
The bystanders seeing a horse travelling in such splendid loneliness
asked, "Runnin' horse?" and I (to cover my folly) replied evasively,
"He can run a little for good money." This satisfied every one that
he was a sprinter and quite explained his private car.
At Bismarck I found myself once more ahead of "54" and waited all day
for the horse to appear. As the time of the train drew near I
borrowed a huge water pail and tugged a supply of water out beside
the track and there sat for three hours, expecting the train each
moment. At last it came, but Ladrone was not there. His car was
missing. I rushed into the office of the operator: "Where's the horse
in '13,238'?" I asked.
"I don't know," answered the agent, in the tone of one who didn't
care.
Visions of Ladrone side-tracked somewhere and perishing for want of
air and water filled my mind. I waxed warm.
"That horse must be found at once," I said. The clerks and operators
wearily looked out of the window. The idea of any one being so
concerned about a horse was to them insanity or worse. I insisted. I
banged my fist on the table. At last one of the young men yawned
languidly, looked at me with dim eyes, and as one brain-cell
coalesced with another seemed to mature an idea. He said:--
"Rheinhart had a horse this morning on his extra."
"Did he--maybe that's the one." They discussed this probability with
lazy indifference. At last they condescended to include me in their
conversation.
I insisted on their telegraphing till they found that horse, and with
an air of distress and saint-like patience the agent wrote out a
telegram and sent it. Thereafter he could not see me; nevertheless I
persisted. I returned to the office each quarter of an hour to ask if
an answer had come to the telegram. At last it came. Ladrone was
ahead and would arrive in St. Paul nearly twelve hours before me. I
then telegraphed the officers of the road to see that he did not
suffer and composed myself as well as I could for the long wait.
At St. Paul I hurried to the freight office and found the horse had
been put in a stable. I sought the stable, and there, among the big
dray horses, looking small and trim as a racer, was the lost horse,
eating merrily on some good Minnesota timothy. He was just as much at
ease there as in the car or the boat or on the marshes of the Skeena
valley, but he was still a half-day's ride from his final home.
I bustled about filling up another car. Again for the last time I
sweated and tugged getting feed, water, and bedding. Again the
railway hands marvelled and looked askance. Again some one said,
"Does it pay to bring a horse like that so far?"
"Pay!" I shouted, thoroughly disgusted, "does it pay to feed a dog
for ten years? Does it pay to ride a bicycle? Does it pay to bring up
a child? Pay--no; it does not pay. I'm amusing myself. You drink beer
because you like to, you use tobacco--I squander my money on a
horse." I said a good deal more than the case demanded, being hot and
dusty and tired and--I had broken loose. The clerk escaped through a
side door.
Once more I closed the bars on the gray and saw him wheeled out into
the grinding, jolting tangle of cars where the engines cried out like
some untamable flesh-eating monsters. The light was falling, the
smoke thickening, and it was easy to imagine a tragic fate for the
patient and lonely horse.
Delay in getting the car made me lose my train and I was obliged to
take a late train which did not stop at my home. I was still paying
for my horse out of my own bone and sinew. At last the luscious green
hills, the thick grasses, the tall corn-shocks and the portly
hay-stacks of my native valley came in view and they never looked so
abundant, so generous, so entirely sufficing to man and beast as now
in returning from a land of cold green forests, sparse grass, and icy
streams.
At ten o'clock another huge freight train rolled in, Ladrone's car
was side-tracked and sent to the chute. For the last time he felt the
jolt of the car. In a few minutes I had his car opened and a plank
laid.
"Come, boy!" I called. "This is home."
He followed me as before, so readily, so trustingly, my heart
responded to his affection. I swung to the saddle. With neck arched
high and with a proud and lofty stride he left the door of his prison
behind him. His fame had spread through the village. On every corner
stood the citizens to see him pass.
As I opened the door to the barn I said to him:--
"Enter! Your days of thirst, of hunger, of cruel exposure to rain and
snow are over. Here is food that shall not fail," and he seemed to
understand.
It might seem absurd if I were to give expression to the relief and
deep pleasure it gave me to put that horse into that familiar stall.
He had been with me more than four thousand miles. He had carried me
through hundreds of icy streams and over snow fields. He had
responded to every word and obeyed every command. He had suffered
from cold and hunger and poison. He had walked logs and wallowed
through quicksands. He had helped me up enormous mountains and I had
guided him down dangerous declivities. His faithful heart had never
failed even in days of direst need, and now he shall live amid plenty
and have no care so long as he lives. It does not pay,--that is
sure,--but after all what does pay?
THE LURE OF THE DESERT
I lie in my blanket, alone, alone!
Hearing the voice of the roaring rain,
And my heart is moved by the wind's low moan
To wander the wastes of the wind-worn plain,
Searching for something--I cannot tell--
The face of a woman, the love of a child--
Or only the rain-wet prairie swell
Or the savage woodland wide and wild.
I must go away--I know not where!
Lured by voices that cry and cry,
Drawn by fingers that clutch my hair,
Called to the mountains bleak and high,
Led to the mesas hot and bare.
O God! How my heart's blood wakes and thrills
To the cry of the wind, the lure of the hills.
I'll follow you, follow you far;
Ye voices of winds, and rain and sky,
To the peaks that shatter the evening star.
Wealth, honor, wife, child--all
I have in the city's keep,
I loose and forget when ye call and call
And the desert winds around me sweep.