"The Call of the City."
It was the "Call of the City", the true brother of that other curse of
humanity, the "Call of the Road", that had been heard by Joe and Jim.
For years previous to their unannounced departure they had felt its
subtle influence when they read about the grand city in the newspapers
which were occasionally found upon the right-of-way, having been thrown
there from the passing trains by passengers who had read them. The
"call" had also come to them while listening to the stories of adventure
among the wonderful palaces and the sodden slums which comprise every
city, which were told them by passing tramps as they stopped to rest,
to ask for employment, or more often to beg food at the section house.
But the strongest incentive of all was the hoboes, who as they passed by
aboard of freight trains, with their feet dangling out of open box car
doors or hanging to the mail and express cars of passenger trains, waved
friendly greetings to the lads, which they interpreted as a beckoning to
the city.
Except for the rare instances, when the railroad company transferred
their father to take charge of some other section, or the few times when
they had made trips to the nearest villages, which were small and had
but few inhabitants, the McDonald boys had never seen another world
except the one whose boundaries melted into the endless, undulating
prairie around their home.
Their parents, who were ever worrying about how to properly provide for
their family, had--as nowadays so many other parents do--entirely
overlooked the fact that growing boys should be permitted to travel,
even if only upon an excursion, to curb within them the inborn and
almost irresistible desire to roam, which all have inherited from
ancestors, who attired in wooden shoes and coarse apparel, and carrying
gunny sacks, had landed not so many years ago at Castle Garden, after
having crossed the stormy Atlantic in the steerage of a sailing vessel,
and who instead of bringing along a fancy "family tree", had brought
with them a pair of calloused, but willing hands, intending to win with
them a way to wealth and fame, in the New World, for their own humble
selves and their "proud" descendants.
The "Call of the City" found in the twins willing listeners as the
cessation of their school duties, the enforced idleness at the
reservation, and the monotony of their existence became a bane to them.
They hearkened to the call that had already conquered a vast army of
other boys, sons of those who till the soil and labor out-of-doors
earning a fair competence, which although it demands hard toil, gives in
exchange pure air, healthy food and every comfort and luxury that
willing hands backed by intelligence can produce.
For months prior to their departure on their trip, whenever they could
gallop beyond ear shot of their elder brother, while riding to and from
school, and at night when alone in their bedroom, Joe and Jim pictured
to each other the grand future which they thought every city offered to
them, comparing it favorably with the drudge of the life of monotonous
toil that would be theirs at the section reservation. They repeated the
stories of success they had read in the newspapers, the magazines and
even in their school books, which told in glowing words of poor lads who
had forsaken the country to become rich and famous in the cities, but
they never repeated, for they had never read the stories of those
unaccountable numbers who had "moved to town" and who had been swallowed
up by the city's whirlpool, to become slaves of the mills and the
factories, serfs of the bars and the counters, and who had been forced
to toil from dawn to dusk to barely eke out an existence that meant
residing high up in the simmering, sweltering tenements, or in damp,
pest-ridden basements, deep down in the bowels of the earth, which
coupled with improper food, quickly reduced their vitality, so that
although they were young in years, the merciless lash of the city's
fight for a living had bent their backs and prematurely aged them.
Joe and Jim realized that it would have been an impossibility for them
to wring from their mother her consent to let them try their luck in the
city, for since their father's death, they had become her moral support.
They felt ashamed to be loafing idly about the reservation until school
opened again and have their widowed mother support them, as they were
now sixteen years of age, and more than able to support not only
themselves, but could and would gladly have supported her had an
opportunity been offered them. The more they argued the matter between
themselves, the more they became resolved to journey to some city, and
at least until the time came for them to be on hand at school opening,
make their own way and perhaps their fortune, which seemed to them
within easy reach. They had saved almost fifty dollars, which had been
earned running errands and working as water-boys whenever an "extra"
gang had been sent from the division point to assist their father's crew
in putting in a new culvert, building a new switch or doing other heavy
work requiring more man-power then the reservation crew could supply.
This money was kept in a small savings bank, to which they had easy
access.
Their scheming and plotting had finally reached the point where it
needed only the least provocation to cause them to skip, and this chance
came to them one evening while the section crew was in their bunk house,
and their mother and Donald, whom they had not taken into their
confidence, were busy in the kitchen, when a long, eastbound freight
train pulled in upon the siding to let the westbound passenger train
pass it. The boys were lounging in the front yard and as the freight
train slowly drew past them they espied some open, empty box cars, and
as if driven by some strange impulse, they pressed each other's hands
and whispered that now "the time had come," and then dashed up to their
room, emptied the savings bank, packed their few necessities into small
bundles and, carefully avoiding the rear of the section house where the
kitchen was located, and keeping on the alert to prevent meeting or
being seen by any of the section men or train crew, they ran down the
side of the train, which was just pulling out of the siding, climbed--as
they had so often seen hoboes do--into an empty box car, and slinking
back into the darkness of its farthest corner, they were soon traveling
beyond familiar landscape. Gradually they became accustomed to the
jolting and rattling of their side-door Pullman and stretched themselves
upon its hard floor and fell asleep.
It must have been almost morning when, as they stopped at the last water
tank west of Grand Forks, they were aroused from their slumbers by the
bright rays shed by a lighted lantern held in the hands of a brakeman
who roughly shouted: "Which way, kids?" "To Saint Paul," answered Joe.
"Got some money, lads, with which you can square your ride?" inquired
the railroad man, as he raised his lantern higher so he could the better
estimate the fare he could charge his hobo-passengers, who had now risen
and were rubbing their sleep-laden eyes, and then he recognized the
twins, whom he had so often greeted from his passing train, and added:
"Well, I will be danged if you hoboes aren't Widow McDonald's twins,"
and then, after he had questioned them as to their destination, and
while he withdrew his lantern from the door, he finished the
conversation by excusing himself: "It's all right, my lads," he
cheerfully said, "all charges have been settled as we brakemen do not
collect toll from friends. It's the hoboes we are after to make them
'hit the grit'." and with that he was gone.
[Illustration: They were aroused from their slumbers by the bright rays
shed by a lantern held by a brakeman who discovered them in the box
car.]
A few hours later they landed at Grand Forks, N.D., and by keeping close
to their side-door Pullman they had the luck to reach, unmolested, the
outskirts of Minneapolis on the evening of the third day after leaving
their home.
When the freight train slowed up to pull into the railroad yards,
imitating the other hoboes whom they saw diving out of all sorts of
hiding places, they jumped to the ground, scaled the right-of-way fence
and made a bee line for the wonder of all wonders, that they had read,
heard and dreamed so much about--"The City."
[Illustration: The train enters the city]