ARRIVAL AT THE TRANSFER TRACK OF SOUTH OMAHA.
One dark, dismal, rainy morning, a little before daylight, I arrived
with the remnant of our stock train on the stockyards transfer at South
Omaha. The conductor and brakeman ordered me out of the way-car. So
picking up my belongings I got out in the mud and rain and looked around
for some shelter. There was a lot of railroad tracks and switches, but
no houses or hotels, or anyone to inquire from, as I had learnt by
experience that conductors, brakemen and switchmen never give any
information to stockmen in a dark, rainy night.
So after wandering up and down the tracks for a ways, and not being able
to find out which way the town lay I got on top of the stock cars, and
huddling down in my rain-soaked rags I prepared to wait till daylight.
The rain was very cold, and after a bit turned to snow and chilled me to
the bone. But I was afraid to leave the stock cars, as I had never been
there before and was sure to get lost if I left the stock, as the town
is quite a ways from the transfer. I thought of Dillbery Ike, Packsaddle
Jack and old Chuckwagon in the other world, and wondered why I should be
left shivering in this awful storm, suffering the pangs of hunger and
cold, while doubtless they had more fire than they really needed. No
matter what their condition was in the other world, it was bound to be
better than mine. Even the sheepmen's condition in the other world
couldn't be much worse, though some claim there is a hell set apart
a-purpose for sheepmen on the other side.
[Illustration: _The Arrival of the Survivor at the Transfer._]
My clothes were all worn out long ago; my beard had grown down to my
knees and the hair on my head having never been cut since we started,
now reached to my waist, and, of course, it and my beard was some
protection from the storm. But I realized that if I stayed where I was
it would only be a short time till I should meet my comrades who had
gone before, and I thought it would be proper to make some preparations
for the other world. I never had prayed or went to church much, 'cause a
cowman don't have any chance to attend to these, as there is always
either some calves to brand Sundays, or else some of the neighbors
coming visiting. But I remembered a passage of scripture I had heard
when a boy, and it came back to me now and kept ringing in my ears:
"Forgive thine enemy." I never had an enemy in my whole life that I knew
of, without it was this blamed railroad, and while I wasn't sure they
was enemies, yet they had dealt me more misery than anyone, except it
might be this stockyards company that was keeping me and my stock out on
this transfer, starving and freezing in the storm after me and my steers
had all got to be Rip Van Winkles getting that far on the road. I
studied over the matter and could see it would be too great a job to
forgive them both at the same time, and, of course, couldn't tell how
much forgiveness the stockyards company would have to have, as I hadn't
got through with them yet. There might be so much against them before
they got my cattle unloaded that it would be impossible to forgive it.
It was very lucky, as it turned out afterwards, that I had this
forethought, because, as I take it, forgiveness only comes from the
heart no matter what your lips say, and your heart is the blamedest
thing to control in forgiveness, as well as love, and when that
stockyards company finally got around to bring my cattle in and unload
them, I reckon it would have been impossible for any mortal man with the
least spark of vitality left in his veins to have forgiven them. They
have tried over and over to explain it to me by saying that when they
built the transfer tracks and unloading chutes, their receipts only run
about 1,500 to 2,000 cattle a day, with about the same number of hogs
and about 200 sheep. And, now in the fall of the year, their receipts of
cattle run up to 7,000 to 12,000 a day, with the same number of hogs and
20,000 to 25,000 of sheep, and they are trying to handle them with the
same facilities they had to start with. So they are pretty near always
so far behind in unloading stock in the busy season that it takes all
the slack business season to finish unloading the stock that
accumulated during the rush.
Having made up my mind to put off forgiving the stockyards company till
some future date, I turned all my attention to forgiving the railroad
company. I had noticed a good many religious people when some one had
done them an injury and they couldn't get at them any other way they
would pray for them. And while they generally asked the Lord to forgive
them, yet they always told their side of the story in such a way that if
the Lord was anyways easily prejudiced, he would be pretty tolerable
slow about handing out any unsought-for clemency to their enemies, as
they always started in by telling of all the mean things their enemies
had ever done in order to remind the Lord what a big contract it was.
After studying the matter over I thought this would be the proper way to
pray for the railroad company. But after I got started telling the Lord
what mean things they had done, I see 'twas no use to try to finish
unless I'd hand the matter down to future generations, as one life
wouldn't be long enough to get fairly started in.
THE INFERNO OF THE TRANSFER.
All night long I had heard voices on all sides of me and apparently the
owners of them were in the direst distress. Some were praying
undoubtedly, but the most were cursing. A few were crying and moaning
with the cold and I thought for a long time I must have got into an
inferno of lost souls, and added to my sufferings in the storm in which
I had come close to death was the terror of listening to these
distressing cries, and I longed for daylight to appear so these horrors
would be explained.
Daylight began to appear while I was thinking about these things, and I
could see other stock trains near me, and on every train I could see one
or more miserable wretches like myself huddled down on top of a car in
the snow and cold rain, and the only sign of life you could detect was
when they took spells of shivering. One of them was pretty close, and I
hailed him once or twice, and finally he roused up enough to answer me;
but the poor, shivering wretch was so numb with the cold he didn't sense
much of anything, and when I asked him why all the shippers stayed out
all night with their cattle, place of going into town, he said lots of
times cattle were so tired when they got to Omaha and they were so long
about getting them to the chutes, that there was more danger of their
getting down after they got to the transfer and getting tramped to death
than before. Then he said lots of stockmen who tried to get to town from
the transfer in the night and had got killed, and some got their legs
cut off by trains that were all the time switching on the transfer
tracks. He said if the Humane Society took half the pains to protect the
shippers that they did the stock being shipped he thought it would be
better. He said a shipper was a human being even if he did look like a
orangoutang just dragged out of a Chicago sewer when he got through to
Omaha with a shipment of livestock. I thought maybe he was getting
personal, so told him he didn't look so fine himself; that I thought
anyone who resembled a jackass in a Wyoming blizzard hadn't any call to
make reflections on other people's looks. Just then the switch engine
coupled onto his train and hauled him and his stock off to the unloading
chutes, and I was kinda glad he was gone, as I had conceived a dislike
to him anyway. I can't bear anyone who makes disagreeable reflections
and comparisons on one's personal appearance when one isn't looking
their best, especially a person who ain't got anything to brag of
themselves.
THE FARMER'S PRAYER.
I looked on the other side of me and saw another stock train with a
group of four or five stockmen on top the cars. They were huddled down
together in the snow and wet, and I thought at first one of them was
making a speech, but soon discovered he was praying. It turned out one
of their number was dying from ill health and the exposure of the night
before, they having been there all night waiting for the switch engine
to haul them to the chutes. They were a bunch of Nebraska farmers who
had bought some feeders in Omaha sometime previous, shipped them out to
their farms a couple hundred miles west, fed up their corn crop and was
bringing the cattle back. The man that was praying seemed to be a son
and partner of the dying man, and was telling the Lord the whole
transaction from a to izard. Whether he was doing this to relieve his
own feelings, or whether he thought the Lord would size his father up as
an honest man in place of a sucker, it's hard to tell. Anyway, you could
tell by his prayer that him and his dying father had got the worst of
the deal all the way through. What I heard of his prayer run something
like this:
"O Lord, Thou knowest how Thy humble servants have been the victims of
designing and unscrupulous men. Thou knowest, Lord, how a hooked-nosed
Sheeny first induced Thy poor servants to buy of him a lot of
crooked-backed, narrow-hipped, long-tailed, high-on-the-rump,
ewe-necked, dehorned, Southern steers, and how they had kept them off of
water for seven days, waiting for a sale, and then let them drink till
their stomachs was like unto bass drums, when they weighed them up to
Thy deceived servants, and then, O Lord, Thy wretched servants, not
having any money to pay for them, we had to go to a grasping commission
man and, O Lord, Thou knowest how he did charge us usury cent for cent
and all kinds of percent, how he figured up interest on the cost of the
steers, then figured interest on that interest, then figured interest on
the interest that he had figured on the interest, then figured a
commission for buying them, then another commission for selling them,
then figured the interest on the commission, then figured the interest
on the interest that he had figured on the commission; and, how when we
had got these steers home, two of them were dead, three were cripples,
five were lump jaws, and how their feet were so large, and they had such
wise, old-fashioned countenances, we were behooved to look into their
mouths to determine by their teeth how old they were, and Thy astonished
servants discovered that in place of two year-olds, as was represented,
they were a great many times two years old; and how many times when we
had a little fat on their ribs, they saw someone afoot, and becoming
frightened, ran round and round the feed lots till they were poorer than
ever, and some there was that escaping over the fence were never seen by
Thy servants any more, they having disappeared over the hills and in
adjacent corn fields; and Thou knowest how we were always sober,
law-abiding citizens till we were inveigled into buying these imitation
steers, and since that time have lived in a constant round of
excitement, terror and riot."
The switch engine now coupled on to the dying man's stock train and
pulled it away to the chutes, so I didn't hear the last of the prayer.
Probably his commission man heard it after he got through explaining why
the steers didn't bring any more money.