THERE'S A REASON: THIS IS IT!--CONCLUSION.
And now let me answer questions that have no doubt arisen in the minds
of the readers who have waded through these chapters. "Why isn't this
record presented in the regulation way--as a novel with a love story
running through it;" or, "What is the moral?"
Let me ask such readers to follow me a little farther.
On March 22d, 1873, a description of a certain boy who left his
Wisconsin home to buffet with the world on his own responsibility would
have read as follows:
Age, 16 years, 6 mos. and 7 days. Weight 109 pounds; black hair,
black eyes, smooth, pale face; well dressed; had, after paying for
one handbag, a Derringer revolver (pop-gun) and a few knick-knacks,
$85.00 in cash (a large sum for a youth of his age in those days).
Carried trip pass from Milwaukee to Council Bluffs, Iowa, via the
Chicago & Northwestern Railway, personally given to him by Marvin
Hughitt, then superintendent; also letter of introduction from E.
J. Cuyler, to S. H. H. Clark, general manager of the Union Pacific
Railroad at Omaha, recommending him as a worthy boy looking for a
railroad office job, also requesting transportation favors.
This description takes no account of a deep-seated cough, occasional
flashes of red in the pale face, and a fear expressed by friends that
he was taking a desperate means of escaping the fate that had overtaken
his dear mother but four months previously. It takes no account of his
life up to the time of his departure on the long journey, not yet ended;
though in the natural order of worldly things, the day is near at hand.
I might add that he had been a "call boy" at a big railroad terminal,
had advanced to a desk as a way-bill clerk, and when advised to seek a
dry climate and there live out-of-doors, was earning a man's wage.
We will pass over briefly an encounter with one of the best men that
ever lived--S. H. H. Clark--in his office at Omaha. When asked for a
pass to Sherman, Wyoming, he said gruffly:
"Haven't you got any money?"
This was the reply:
"Yes, sir, and I'll pay my fare, too, if you don't want to give me a
pass."
"Well," he said, turning to look out of a window, "maybe I'll give you
an order for a half-fare ticket," which brought forth this:
"I don't want to be impolite, Mr. Clark, because you are a friend of
good friends of mine--Mr. Hughitt and Mr. Cuyler--but I must say you
don't know me as well as you might--I'm no half-fare fellow. Good-bye."
And then Mr. Clark laughed, and said he was not in earnest and gave the
pass freely and willingly.
There was a nice chat after that between the pale-faced youth and the
big railroader, during which The Boy discovered that Mr. Clark liked his
nerve but questioned his physical ability to stand the rough knocks that
were coming.
Later, after a season in a division railroad office The Boy, carried
away with the spirit of adventure that was everywhere about him, and
carrying out a plan he had made to live in the open, went to Cheyenne,
signed up with a bull-train, and began the life of out-of-doors. The
"train" was loaded and ready to leave Camp Carlin, at Fort Russell, for
Fort Laramie on the North Platte, but it was for a while impossible to
employ men enough to drive the teams. There had been an outbreak among
the Sioux, and things looked dark when The Boy asked for a job driving
bulls; and when he was hired by Nate Williams, the Missourian wagon
boss, it was almost a joke to Nate, who said afterward that he took one
chance in a million when he employed The Boy and took him to camp. Both
The Boy and Nate won on the long shot.
A year later The Boy was driving a lead team, looked after the
manifests, kept the accounts, and shirked no duty, fair weather or foul.
All this time the pale and flushed cheeks were giving place to bronze,
the thin arms and skinny legs were toughening and filling out, and the
cough had disappeared--weight after first year, 155.
Before leaving Camp Carlin on this first trip The Boy had time to write
home and receive a reply. He told a relative what he had done, and the
reply was a stinging rebuke and almost a final farewell, for the
relative said nothing good could possibly result from quitting a job
with a railroad paying $100 a month and taking one as a teamster at the
same figure--"and you nothing but a sickly boy." But the relative was
wrong, although excusable.
And now, after all the evidence is in, we find that the "sickly"
youngster is still in the land of the living, past three score years,
and with some prospects of another score!
The letter left a sore spot, and The Boy foolishly decided that he was
cut off. So he did not write again for nearly two years.
The middle of the second winter found him at Fort Fetterman, living in a
dug-out in the embankment of a creek bottom, waiting for the springtime
when he could again use his stout lungs in shouting at his bulls, but
his strong arms were not idle the while, for he chopped cottonwood, box
elder and pine logs for the Fetterman commissary.
In those days there was naught but military law, and the civilians were
under more or less surveillance, and it was customary for them to report
at given periods to the sergeant who sat in the adjutant's adobe office
in the fort.
On one of those occasions The Boy's attention was directed to a
bulletin board upon which was tacked a card carrying the caption in big
black types:
"INFORMATION WANTED"
Under this was The Boy's name, a detailed description of him when he
left Cheyenne, and the statement that "anyone knowing his whereabouts
will confer a favor upon his anxious father and sister and receive a
reward if word is sent to Thomas Jefferson, a friend of the family at
Sherman, Wyoming Territory," to whom an appeal had been made. It was
stated in the notice that he "weighs about 100 pounds, has black hair,
black eyes, and is pale and sickly."
At this time The Boy weighed nearly 170, was brown as a berry, had
muscles of an athlete, and in no wise resembled the description. He had
no difficulty in convincing the sergeant that while the name was similar
to his own it evidently was the description of a tenderfoot, and he was
no tenderfoot--not then.
* * * * *
If I could pay any greater tribute than this to life in the open I would
do it; and if there were a possible love story in this record I would
ignore it because, while it might entertain and please some tastes, it
would not answer the main purpose of these tales, namely:
To demonstrate that as long as there is life there is hope, especially
if the spark of life is properly fanned in a salubrious, glorious and
vigorous climate.
"As long as there is life there is hope!" But after all is it not truer
to say "As long as there is hope there is life?"
Hope is the centerpiece of the familiar trio--Faith, Hope and
Charity--and not the least one of these virtues. It is practical to be
hopeful and to order our lives in the spirit of hopefulness; the world
will be better for our hopefulness, especially in these depressing
times. Moreover, it is a Christian duty to be hopeful.
"Hope," says the Rev. Julian K. Smyth, head of the Swedenborgian church
in the United States, "is an affection of the will, and the will is ever
in the desire to act; thus hope is not only a lively virtue, but a
heroic and even a practical one."
It is a good rule of life never to be discouraged no matter what the
misfortune, disappointment or mistake. Life will have been a success to
one who lives in hopefulness, for life will have been lived happily
through many human failures and errors. Life in the world of the flesh
is a battle which, if well fought--if we have faith in the Divine
Providence--means a victory over what we call Death, for Death is in
truth not the End, but the--
BEGINNING.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Prairie Schooner, by William Francis Hooker