THE GREAT HARVEST RANGE.
Turn we now to record more grateful scenes. Let us leave the black
cross on the breast of the dead man. The dead man swinging in the
morning breeze. Our backs are turned upon an unknown, moundless grave,
down in a sandy, barren jack-oak field. A shallow grave over which no
head stone tells the passer by that all flesh is grass. A grave on
which the startled rabbit pauses, with ears erect, to heed the breaking
of a twig. A grave on which the quail pipes forth his cheering notes
in the glimmer of the dawn, and the prairie grouse crows good-night to
the setting sun. A grave in which lies mouldering a monument to the
reign of the lawless judge. A grave in which is secreted the prey of
the human tiger. The occupant of the grave has found rest at last. His
tramp is o'er. He sleeps the sleep that knows no waking, he dreams the
dream that knows no breaking.
That there is only one occupant of the shallow grave down in the
black-jack barren is due to the exertions of the man with whom Ben ate
supper the previous evening. He it was who extended aid to our hero
in his dire distress and saved his life. Through his intercessions
Cleveland was lowered from the limb and spared. Like one walking in
his sleep, his mind and energies paralyzed by the dreadful scene
through which he had passed, Ben made a futile attempt to justify
his dead friend's memory. He only met with repulses--nay, threats.
No one would believe him, none give credence to his tale. He found
none who had witnessed the hanging, none who would talk about it,
but plenty who with frowning eyes and threatening looks turned their
backs upon him when he attempted to speak of it. Had Ben appeared
before that bulwark of the law--that greatest of all great American
impositions--the Grand Jury, and told his tale of the _crime_, the
Grand Jury could not have laid its indicting hand on a single man who
had had any thing to do with the hanging. He did not know this, nor did
he appreciate the people he was among. He called for justice, and came
near getting a flogging. One not unfavorable result was accomplished
by his pertinacious search after justification, however. Though he did
not find the blind goddess, he found a railway ticket that conveyed him
out of the State, and two hundred miles westward. His presence became
disagreeable to the citizens of Lickskillet. The tiger had glutted
himself and was drowsy. He did not like to be disturbed.
A delegation of two benevolent citizens waited upon him and informed
him that from the plentitude of their hearts, and the charitable nature
of their dispositions they were not only willing to condone his recent
acts and view his crimes with a lenient eye, but they would aid him
on his journey, and provide him with a railroad ticket to a distant
point, with the stipulation that his foot should never press their sod
again, and a gentle intimation that his own particular rope would be
carefully preserved for his own particular use. The offer came in the
shape of a command. With a stubbornness, peculiarly his own, Ben would
have rejected it. He would have staid and fought to the death there
and then for his dead friend's memory. But the poor, thin, lank parson
came to him. The good man trembled lest the tiger should be roused from
his slumber. He knew the beast for had he not dwelt beneath the velvet
of its paw for many a day? He demonstrated to our hero the futility
of one man, and he a penniless stranger, attempting the indictment of
an entire community bound together by ties of blood, relationship,
interest and--_crime_. A community that was a law unto itself. Ben
gathered a clearer view of the case from the good man's explanations.
So Ben was placed on board of a train, and whirled away into Egypt.
Or, to speak more lucidly, into the very centre of Southern Illinois.
And despite the sad incidents that had thronged the past forty-eight
hours of his existence, as he stood on the platform of the station
where the ticket expired and the train deposited him, he made the
reflection:
"Nine days and nine hundred miles from New York! One hundred miles
from St. Louis!" and the nine days seemed nine ages, and the nine
hundred miles seemed so many worlds, separating him from the Benjamin
Cleveland he had parted from and the life he had left, in the far east.
And for the first time since the commencement of his tramp, he felt
alone and lonely.
Tramps! Ben thought he had met many of the brotherhood before, but he
now found himself on their great summer range. The solitary free-rider
or small detachments of two and three, now swelled to squads numbering
so high as a dozen.
In fact he had been dropped by the train on the Great Harvest Route,
extending from the wheat fields of Minnesota, diagonally across the
State of Iowa, crossing the Mississippi at Davenport, and thence
extending clear down into the southern half of Illinois. A strip of
country five hundred miles long, that may appropriately be termed the
Harvest Range. The herd commences to move northward early in July.
Starting in the neighborhood of Du Quoin or Bellville, it follows up
the harvest, heading north-west, and ending the summer's incursion
during the months of September and October in Minnesota. An eastern
person has no conception of the vast army of impecuniosities forming
this great herd of harvest tramps. Forth they come from the purlieus of
cities, from hospitals, work-houses, poor-houses, soup-houses, and the
various charitable asylums that have harbored them during the winter
and spring. Up from the orange-scented south; from the pampas of Texas;
the stave-timber of Arkansas, the cotton-fields of Mississippi; and
from those bon-resorts of the fraternity in the river towns on the
Father of Waters--"Pinch" in Memphis, "Under the Hill" in Natchez,
"Elephant Johnnie's" and "Smoke Town" in New Orleans, and other
celebrated haunts, where an existence (such as it is) has been dragged
through for five months of the year. They crowd the river boats; they
haunt the wood-pile landings, they line the tracks and capture the
trains on their way to the joys and fattenings of the Harvest Range.
Once on the Range and life smiles upon them. Back doors know them so
well that during the favored period, the good housewife responds to
each knock with a chunk of bread in one hand and a hunk of meat in the
other, awaiting no solicitations. And how does the herd graze? They
graze off of the charity of a community mellow with the ripeness of
harvest-time. There help is needed--they are the monarchs of the hour.
They become despotic. They will not solicit work. Work must solicit
them. Their labor is an article in demand, and the price goes up, up,
up. There are special rates paid during harvest--paid at no other
season. In the years immediately succeeding the war harvest hands
received as high as five dollars per day--and were not content. They
never are. If wages are two dollars and fifty cents, they demand three
dollars. If three they ask for four. It is _their_ harvest-time; and
without a cent in their pockets and existing on the bread of charity,
they will hold out for days together, in idleness, rather than work for
less than they demand.
Then a few days work; a glorious spree in which their earnings
disappear; and they move off along the Range. As the harvest retreats
north they follow it. Neither benefitted in purse or person by the
labor they irregularly perform.
The dram shops do a thriving business. Scenes of lawlessness are
numerous, and battles with towns that have tired of their arrogant
idleness and mendicancy frequently occur. Railroads are blockaded
with them. Road employees lead a life of trouble, terror and turmoil.
Incidents have been where they have seized trains. They hesitate at
nothing. Every year the herd becomes larger,--every year its chance
for honest labor smaller and smaller. There is a great enemy eating
up their range; destroying their stamping-grounds. It is _invention_.
Where seven men held stations and bound in a field, three men on a
_harvester_ now do the same amount of work. What will you do with the
idle four? Where three men labored on a _harvester_, one now drives and
the _automatic binder_ makes the sheaves. What will you do with the
idle two?
"Make producers of them."
Good. Who will make the consumers, were each to produce for himself?
On to the north--to the great grain fields of Minnesota--go the herd.
And then they come back again; but no longer the solid army that
marched north. Fleeing from the cold they come down in fragments. By
boat, raft, and skiff down the great river. By tramping, and jumping
the trains. By every conceivable method of travelling they make their
way south. Where was this herd twenty-five years ago? We do not know.
Like the Texas cattle trade, it is a growth of the present decade.
It was this Harvest Range that Ben now found himself crossing. The
herd had left. It was far to the north. Remnants of it were numerous,
however. Tramps who had tired of following the trail. Sharp tramps who
cutely remained to fatten on the deserted pastures. Sharper tramps who
sought the lower rendezvous before the herd returned. Crippled members
of the fraternity, left behind. Parties that the law had detained. The
stragglers formed quite a respectable army still.
At least our hero thought so, shortly after ensconcing himself in an
empty box car on a western bound freight, late that night. It was the
only empty and open car in the train, and he was congratulating himself
upon holding exclusive possession of it when a gang of four invaded
his privacy, and in passing the next three stations the excursionists
had augmented to fifteen souls. Of course the train employees became
aware of their presence, and ordered them off twice. The first time
they all got out and going around to the other side all got in again.
On a repetition of the order to dismount they merely laughed and
chaffed the conductor. The conductor telegraphed the state of affairs
to Maidensville and called for help to eject them. The operator made
the dispatch public, and the citizens of Maidensville were apprised
of their approaching visitors. The tramps were not blind to these
matters. Expecting a forcible ejectment and arrest when they arrived
at Maidensville, they guarded against it by refusing to allow the
train men to close the doors and lock them in, intending to jump from
the train before it drew up at the station. But the engineer threw
his valves wide open and ran his train into the depot at a rate that
prevented the squad from leaving until it finally stopped. When it
did so a surprise awaited all parties. A delegation of citizens was
on hand with bread and cheese. It begged the tramps to remain in the
car and partake of the food, intimating an immediate arrest for any
who dismounted. They were also informed that their ride to St. Louis
was paid for, and the conductor discovered to his chagrin, that, by
telegraph, the citizens of Maidensville had chartered empty box car
No. 1073 to convey a load of live stock from Maidensville to St.
Louis--that day and date. The conductor opened his eyes. The citizens
smiled broadly. And the fair city of Maidensville was relieved from her
unwelcome guests.
With much hilarity the excursionists completed their ride into East St.
Louis, where they arrived at noon. But what was Ben's dismay to find a
small squad of police ready to receive them as they dismounted! Alas,
here he was again, for the second time during his journey, under arrest!
The crowd was taken before the mayor, arranged in a platoon, charged
with vagrancy, asked no questions, permitted no defence, found
guilty,--and sentenced to sixty days in the work house, and a fine of
fifty dollars, each! Good-bye to New Orleans. Good-bye to the twenty
thousand dollars. Good-bye to the great, glorious, grey eyes. Our
hero was fairly floored. Indignation at this summary treatment was
swallowed up in amazement. Struck dumb with the overwhelming nature
of his disaster, with drooping head and downcast eyes he followed his
companions in misery out of the court room. They traversed several
streets, closely attended by policemen, and at last neared the river.
The tall chimneys and acres of roofs of smoke-curtained St. Louis
arose on the opposite bank. Our friend's heart gave a great leap.
There was the city that had filled his mind these many days. There was
where he was to have again seen _her_. There was the half-way house of
his tramp. Once in it and his journey would have seemed more like an
accomplished fact, having attained the first objective point in the
stipulations of his wager. And there it was, just across the river--so
near and yet so far! A mile of water, sixty days imprisonment, and
fifty dollars fine, separating them. Wild thoughts entered his head.
He would break from his captors and rushing to the stream plunge in
and swim for the opposite shore. Which, had he done, he might quite
possibly have reached New Orleans, but it would have been in a very
unenviable state. This desperate notion was forming itself into a
determination when his attention was arrested by the voice of the
officer in charge of the squad.
"Men," said that official, "yonder's St. Louis, where you all want to
go. Remember, if you are caught on this side again, up you go for sixty
days. Here are your ferry tickets. Now git!"
It was tit for tat. "Illinois Town" was paying St. Louis in her own
currency. That morning the "Future Great" had shipped, by rail, half
a dozen of her paupers to Chicago. That afternoon the "Future Great"
received a consignment of sixteen tramps from "Illinois Town."