A Young Man Goes West
From the upper four hundreds on Riverside Drive to Broadway where the
lower thirties slash through is a long walk. Danny Lenox walked it this
June day. As he left the house his stride was long and nervously eager,
but before he covered many blocks his gait moderated and the going took
hours.
Physical fatigue did not slow down his progress. The demands upon his
mental machinery retarded his going. He needed time to think, to plan,
to bring order out of the chaos into which he had been plunged. Danny
had suddenly found that many things in life are to be considered
seriously. An hour ago they could have been numbered on his fingers;
now they were legion. It was a newly recognized fact, but one so
suddenly obvious that the tardiness of his realization became of
portentous significance.
Through all the hurt and shame and rage the great truth that his father
had hammered home became crystal clear. He had been merely a waster,
and a sharp bitterness was in him as he strode along, hands deep in
pockets.
The first flash of his resentment had given birth to the childish
desire to "show 'em," and as he crowded his brain against the host of
strange facts he found this impulse becoming stronger, growing into a
healthy determination to adjust his standard of values so that he
could, even with this beginning, justify his existence.
Oh, the will to do was strong in his heart, but about it was a clammy,
oppressive something. He wondered at it--then traced it back directly
to the place in his throat that cried out for quenching. As he
approached a familiar haunt that urge became more insistent and the
palms of his hands commenced to sweat. He crossed the street and made
on down the other side. He had wasted his ability to do, had let this
desire sap his will. He needed every jot of strength now. He would
begin at the bottom and call back that frittered vitality. He shut his
teeth together and doggedly stuck his head forward just a trifle.
The boy had no plan; there had not been time to become so specific. His
whole philosophy had been stood on its head with bewildering
suddenness. He knew, though, that the first thing to do was to cut his
environment, to get away, off anywhere, to a place where he could build
anew. The idea of getting away associated itself with one thing in his
mind: means of transportation. So, when his eyes without conscious
motive stared at the poster advertising a railroad system that crosses
the continent, Danny Lenox stopped and let the crowd surge past him.
A man behind the counter approached the tall, broad-shouldered chap who
fumbled in his pockets and dumped out their contents. He looked with a
whimsical smile at the stuff produced: handkerchiefs, pocket-knife,
gold pencil, tobacco pouch, watch, cigarette case, a couple of hat
checks, opened letters, and all through it money--money in bills and in
coins.
The operation completed, Danny commenced picking out the money. He
tossed the crumpled bills together in a pile and stacked the coins.
That done, he swept up the rest of his property, crammed it into his
coat pockets, and commenced smoothing the bills.
The other man, meanwhile, stood and smiled.
"Cleaning up a bit?" he asked.
Danny raised his eyes.
"That's the idea," he said soberly. "To clean up--a bit."
The seriousness of his own voice actually startled him.
"How far will that take me over your line?" he asked, indicating the
money.
The man stared hard; then smiled.
"You mean you want that much worth of ticket?"
"Yes, ticket and berth--upper berth. Less this." He took out a
ten-dollar bill. "I'll eat on the way," he explained gravely.
The other counted the bills, turning them over with the eraser end of
his pencil, then counted the silver and made a note of the total.
"Which way--by St. Louis or Chicago?" he asked. "We can send you
through either place."
Danny lifted a dollar from the stack on the counter and flipped it in
the air. Catching it, he looked at the side which came up and said:
"St. Louis."
Again the clerk calculated, referring to time-tables and a map.
"Denver," he muttered, as though to himself. Then to Danny: "Out of
Denver I can give you the Union Pacific, Denver and Rio Grande, or
Santa Fe."
"The middle course."
"All right--D. and R.G."
Then more referring to maps and time-tables, more figuring, more
glances at the pile of money.
"Let's see--that will land you at--at--" as he ran his finger down the
tabulation--"at Colt, Colorado."
Danny moved along the counter to the glass-covered map, a new interest
in his face.
"Where's that--Colt, Colorado?" he asked, leaning his elbows on the
counter.
"See?" The other indicated with his pencil.
"You go south from Denver to Colorado Springs; then on through Pueblo,
through the Royal Gorge here, and right in here--" he put the lead
point down on the red line of the railroad and Danny's head came close
to his--"is where you get off."
The boy gazed lingeringly at the white dot in the red line and then
looked up to meet the other's smile.
"Mountains and more mountains," he said with no hint of lightness.
"That's a long way from this place."
He gazed out on to flowing Broadway with a look somewhat akin to
pleading, and heard the man mutter: "Yes, beyond easy walking from
downtown, at least."
Danny straightened and sighed. That much was settled. He was going to
Colt, Colorado. He looked back at the map again, possessed with an
uneasy foreboding.
Colt, Colorado!
"Well, when can I leave?" he asked, as he commenced putting his
property back into the proper pockets.
"You can scarcely catch the next train," said the clerk, glancing at
the clock, "because it leaves the Grand Central in nineteen min--"
"Yes, I can!" broke in Danny. "Get me a ticket and I'll get there!"
Then, as though to himself, but still in the normal speaking tone: "I'm
through putting things off."
Eighteen and three-quarters minutes later a tall, young man trotted
through the Grand Central train shed to where his Pullman waited. The
porter looked at the length of the ticket Danny handed the conductor.
"Ain't y'll carryin' nothin', boss?" he asked.
"Yes, George," Danny muttered as he passed into the vestibule, "but
nothing you can help me with."
With the grinding of the car wheels under him Danny's mind commenced
going round and round his knotty problem. His plan had called for
nothing more than a start. And now--Colt, Colorado!
Behind him he was leaving everything of which he was certain, sordid
though it might be. He was going into the unknown, ignorant of his own
capabilities, realizing only that he was weak. He thought of those
burned bridges, of the uncertainty that lay ahead, of the tumbling of
the old temple about his ears--
And doubt came up from the ache in his throat, from the call of his
nerves. He had not had a drink since early last evening. He needed--No!
That was the last thing he needed.
He sat erect in his seat with the determination and strove to fight
down the demands which his wasting had made so steely strong. He felt
for his cigarette case. It was empty, but the tobacco pouch held a
supply, and as he walked toward the smoking compartment he dusted some
of the weed into a rice paper.
Danny pushed aside the curtain to enter, and a fat man bumped him with
a violent jolt.
"Oh, excuse me!" he begged, backing off. "Sorry. I'll be back in a
jiffy with more substantial apologies."
Three others in the compartment made room for Danny, who lighted his
cigarette and drew a great gasp of smoke into his lungs.
In a moment the fat man was back, his eyes dancing. In his hand was a
silver whisky flask.
"Now if you don't say this is the finest booze ever turned out of a gin
mill, I'll go plumb!" he declared. "Drink, friend, drink!"
He handed the flask to one of the others.
"Here's to you!" the man saluted, raising the flask high and then
putting its neck to his mouth.
Danny's tongue went again to his lips; his breath quickened and the
light in his eyes became a greedy glitter. He could hear the gurgle of
the liquid; his own throat responded in movement as he watched the
swallowing. He squeezed his cigarette until the thin paper burst and
the tobacco sifted out.
"Great!" declared the man with a sigh as he lowered the flask. "Great!"
He smacked his lips and winked. "Ah! No whisky's bad, but this's
better'n most of it!"
Then, extending the flask toward Danny, he said: "Try it, brother; it's
good for a soul."
But Danny, rising to his feet with a suddenness that was almost a
spring, strode past him to the door. His face suddenly had become tight
and white and harried. He paused at the entry, holding the curtain
aside, and turned to see the other, flask still extended, staring at
him in bewilderment.
"I'm not drinking, you know," said Danny weakly, "not drinking."
Then he went out, and the fat man who had produced the liquor said
soberly:
"Not drinking, and havin' a time staying off it. But say--ain't that
some booze?"
Long disuse of the power to plan concretely, to think seriously of
serious facts, had left it weak. Danny strove to route himself through
to that new life he knew was so necessary, but he could not call back
the ability of tense thinking with a word or a wish. And while he tried
for that end the boy commenced to realize that perhaps he had not so
far to seek for his fresh start. Perhaps it was not waiting for him in
Colt, Colorado. Perhaps it was right here in his throat, in his nerves.
Perhaps the creature in him was not a thing to be cleared away before
he could begin to fight--perhaps it was the proper object at which to
direct his whole attack.
Enforced idleness was an added handicap. Physical activity would have
made the beginning much easier, for before he realized it Danny was in
the thick of battle. A system that had been stimulated by poison in
increasing proportion to its years almost from boyhood began to make
unequivocal demands for the stuff that had held it to high pitch.
Tantalizingly at first, with the thirsting throat and jumping muscles;
then with thundering assertions that warped the vision and numbed the
intellect and toyed with the will. He gave up trying to think ahead.
His entire mental force went into the grapple with that desire. Where
he had thought to find possible distress in the land out yonder, it had
come to meet him--and of a sort more fearful, more tremendous, than any
which he had been able to conceive.
Through the rise of that fevered fighting the words of his father rang
constantly in Danny's mind.
"He was right--right, right!" the boy declared over and over. "It was
brutal; but he was right! I've wasted, I've gone the limit. And he
doesn't think I can come back!"
While faith would have been as a helping hand stretched down to pull
him upward, the denial of it served as a stinging goad, driving him on.
A chord deep within him had been touched by the raining blows from his
father, and the vibrations of that chord became quicker and sharper as
the battle crescendoed. The unbelief had stirred a retaliating
determination.
It was this that sent a growl of defiance into Danny's throat at sight
of a whisky sign; it was the cause of his cursing when, walking up and
down a station platform at a stop, he saw men in the buffet car lift
glasses to their lips and smile at one other. It was this that drew him
away from an unfinished meal in the diner when a man across the table
ordered liquor and Danny's eyes ached for the sight of it, his nostrils
begged for the smell.
So on every hand came the suggestions that made demands upon his
resistance, that made the weakness gnaw the harder at his will. But he
fought against it, on and on across a country, out into the mountains,
toward the end of his ride.
The unfolding of the marvels of a continent's vitals had a peculiar
effect on Danny.
Before that trip he had held the vaguest notions of the West, but with
the realization of the grandeur of it all he was torn between a
glorified inspiration and a suffocating sense of his own smallness.
He had known only cities, and cities are, by comparison, such puny
things. They froth and ferment and clatter and clang and boast, and yet
they are merely flecks, despoiled spots, on an expanse so vast that it
seems utterly unconscious of their presence. The boy realized this as
the big cities were left behind, as the stretches between stations
became longer, the towns more flimsy, newer. A species of terror filled
him as he gazed moodily from his Pullman window out across that
panorama to the north. Why, he could see as far as to the Canadian
boundary, it seemed! On and on, rising gently, ever flowing, never
ending, went the prairie. Here and there a fence; now a string of
telephone poles marching out sturdily, bravely, to reduce distance by
countless hours. There a house, alone, unshaded, with a woman standing
in the door watching his speeding train. Yonder a man shacking along on
a rough little horse, head down, listless--a crawling jot under that
endless sky.
Even his train, thing of steel and steam, was such a paltry particle,
screaming to a heaven that heard not, driving at a distance that cared
not.
Then the mountains!
Danny awoke in Denver, to step from his car and look at noble Evans
raising its craggy, hoary head into the salmon pink of morning,
defiant, ignoring men who fussed and puttered down there in its eternal
shadow; at Long's Peak, piercing the sky as though striving to be away
from humans; at Pike, shimmering proudly through its sixty miles of
crystal distance, taking a heavy, giant delight in watching beings
worry their way through its hundred-mile dooryard.
Then along the foothills the train tore with the might of which men are
so proud; yet it only crawled past those mountains.
Stock country now, more and more cattle in sight. Blase, white-faced
Herefords lifted their heads momentarily toward the cars. They heeded
little more than did the mountains.
Then, to the right and into the ranges, twisting, turning, climbing,
sliding through the narrow defiles at the grace of the towering heights
which--so alive did they seem--could have whiffed out that thing, those
lives, by a mere stirring on their complacent bases.
And Danny commenced to draw parallels. Just as his life had been
artificial, so had his environment. Manhattan--and this! Its
complaining cars, its popping pavements, its echoing buildings--it had
all seemed so big, so great, so mighty! And yet it was merely a little
mud village, the work of a prattling child, as compared with this
country. The subway, backed by its millions in bonds, planned by
constructive genius, executed by master minds, a thing to write into
the history of all time, was a mole-passage compared to this gorge! The
Woolworth, labor of years, girders mined on Superior, stones quarried
elsewhere, concrete, tiling, cables, woods, all manner of fixtures
contributed by continents; donkey engines puffing, petulant whistles
screaming, men of a dozen tongues crawling and worming and dying for
it; a nation standing agape at its ivory and gold attainments! And what
was it? Put it down here and it would be lost in the rolling of the
prairie as it swelled upward to meet honest heights!
No wonder Danny Lenox felt inconsequential. And yet he sensed a
friendly something in that grandeur, an element which reached down for
him like a helping hand and offered to draw him out of his cramped,
mean little life and put him up with stalwart men.
"If this rotten carcass of mine, with its dry throat and fluttering
hands, will only stick by me I'll show 'em yet!" he declared, and held
up one of those hands to watch its uncertainty.
And in the midst of one of those bitter, griping struggles to keep his
vagrant mind from running into vinous paths, the brakes clamped down
and the porter, superlatively polite, announced:
"This is Colt, sah."
A quick interest fired Danny. He hurried to the platform, stood on the
lowest step, and watched the little clump of buildings swell to natural
size. He reached into his pocket, grasped the few coins remaining
there, and gave them to the colored boy.
The train stopped with a jolt, and Danny stepped off. The conductor,
who had dropped off from the first coach as it passed the station, ran
out of the depot, waved his hand, and the grind of wheels commenced
again.
As the last car passed, Danny Lenox stared at it, and for many minutes
his gaze followed its departure. After it had disappeared around the
distant curve he retained a picture of the white-clad servant, leaning
forward and pouring some liquid from a bottle.
The roar of the cars died to a murmur, a muttering, and was swallowed
in the canyon. The sun beat down on the squat, green depot and cinder
platform, sending the quivering heat rays back to distort the outlines
of objects. Everywhere was a white, blinding light.
From behind came a sound of waters, and Danny turned about to gaze far
down into a ragged gorge where a river tumbled and protested through
the rocky way.
Beyond the stream was stretching mesa, quiet and flat and smooth
looking in the crystal distance, dotted with pine, shimmering under the
heat.
For five minutes he stared almost stupidly at that grand sweep of still
country, failing to comprehend the fact of arrival. Then he walked to
the end of the little station and gazed up at the town.
A dozen buildings with false fronts, some painted, some without
pretense of such nicety, faced one another across a thoroughfare four
times as wide as Broadway. Sleeping saddle ponies stood, each with a
hip slumped and nose low to the yellow ground. A scattering of houses
with their clumps of outbuildings and fenced areas straggled off behind
the stores.
Scraggly, struggling pine stood here and there among the rocks, but
shade was scant.
Behind the station were acres of stock pens, with high and unpainted
fences. Desolation! Desolation supreme!
Danny felt a sickening, a revulsion. But lo! his eyes, lifting blindly
for hope, for comfort, found the thing which raised him above the
depression of the rude little town.
A string of cliffs, ranging in color from the bright pink of the
nearest to the soft violet of those which might be ten or a hundred
miles away, stretched in mighty columns, their varied pigments telling
of the magnificent distances to which they reached. All were plastered
up against a sky so blue that it seemed thick, and as though the color
must soon begin to drip. Glory! The majesty of the earth's ragged
crust, the exquisite harmony of that glorified gaudiness! Danny pulled
a great chestful of the rare air into his lungs. He threw up his arms
in a little gesture that indicated an acceptance of things as they
were, and in his mind flickered the question:
"The beginning--or the end?"