OUR HERO REACHES ST. LOUIS.
As Ben placed his foot on the Missouri shore, he cried aloud with an
exultant thrill vibrating every fibre of his body: "St. Louis! Ten days
and ten hundred miles from New York! Hurrah for New Orleans!" and his
emotions were such that he could fairly have turned a double somersault
and cracked his heels for joy. Then as his feelings quieted down, "Now
for New Orleans," he said. But how? That was the rub.
The levee was lined with steamboats. Boats with wheels behind them
like aquatic wheel-barrows, and boats with wheels at their sides like
folded wings. River crafts piled deck upon deck until the pilot-house,
perched on top of the "Texas" looked like a bird cage. A forest of
black smoke stacks interspersed with golden balls and gilded figures
of eagles, horses, cotton-bales, barrels, and various devices. Some of
the stacks belching forth smoke like the nostrils of a live monster;
others silent and grim. Light draught stern-wheelers in the Big Muddy
trade, that ran way up into the mystic region of the Yellow Stone in
the spring and came down in the fall, taking up with them Indian
annuities and government supplies, and bringing down bullet-holes
in their pilot-houses from the rifles of ungrateful savages who
cannot understand why white men should take their land from them
and pay them in phantom beeves and unkept treaties. Ohio river tow
boats--stern-wheelers also--but aquatic giants. Boats that think
nothing of butting their square heads against four solid acres of coal
flats, twelve feet deep, and shoving the whole field to the lower river
coaling grounds--their very machinery a load sinking them deep in the
water, and well worthy of their names, "Ajax," "Hercules," "Colossal,"
and so on. Raft boats from the St. Croix, Black River and Chippewa,
with their holds stowed full of great coils of rope. Trading boats
from the Illinois, Tennessee, Arkansas, White and Red Rivers--boats
that somehow bore about them a romantic aroma of travel and adventure.
Wrecking boats and stump-pullers--that dredge the bottom of the river
from St. Louis to the Gulf. Vast floating palaces in the Memphis,
Vicksburg, and New Orleans trade--their long, fairy-like and gorgeous
cabins elevated on stilts, way high up above the hulls. Boats that
could laugh at sixteen hundred tons of freight, and stow five thousand
bales of cotton! A solid two miles of these crafts, thick as they could
lie, all with their great round blunt noses hanging on the levees.
And then the humanity gathered about them--Diego and African, native
and foreigner--people from all over the world. Acres of cotton-bales,
regiments of hides in bundles, barricades of salt, ramparts of sugar
hogsheads; all being constantly added to by a supply from the bowels of
the monsters on the levee, while down their capacious maws was poured
a stream of flour in barrels, grain in sacks and other productions of
the stomach-supplying north. It was a scene of life and activity, such
as Ben had never before witnessed. A wonderful picture of commerce
proving in stronger tongue than any wordy argument the necessity of an
undivided North and South--a UNION!
Ben gazed and wondered, and wondered and gazed, and the more his eyes
discovered, the more they sought for; while up against the sky loomed
that _chef-d'œuvre_ of modern engineering, the famous bridge. He leaned
against a cotton-bale and gave his eyes a holiday. And well he might,
for the picture has not its equal in all the world.
A light touch on his arm aroused him. He turned and saw--_Tommy_!
Little Tommy whom he felt he had known for years, instead of days.
"Ha, ha! I thought I'd find you on the levee sometime," he exclaimed.
"All the 'bums' sun themselves here!"
Save that he was a trifle thinner and his round cheek had lost some of
its bloom, the boy looked much as he did when Ben parted with him in
Harrisburg. The sparkling brown eyes were the same and the ring of his
voice had lost none of its silver as he danced around Ben crying:
"Bennie, old boy, I'm awful glad to see you! I am indeed. But how thin
you are! Poor Bennie. He'll never make a first-class cadjer, so he
won't. And, my eyes! How ragged and dirty! Why don't you rent yourself
out for a museum of hard times? I hunted, and hunted, and hunted, for
you all along the road, but I must have been ahead of you. I came
through on express trains, I did. Sometimes on the roof, sometimes on
the pilot, sometimes on the platform, and sometimes inside--until I'd
get bounced. I made myself bomb-proof with an old shirt and sixteen
newspapers, and I'm thinking they hurt their boots more than they hurt
me. Laugh again, Bennie. I like to see you laugh--you've got such
pretty teeth. And now you're blushing! Oh, Ben, aint you ashamed!
There's no use, I may as well give you up for a bad job; you will never
be an ornament to the profession; never make a first-class war-horse.
Now tell me all about where you have been, and how you have been,
and--and everything!" and Tommy quite out of words and wind, stopped
exhausted.
Ben was glad to meet a friendly face in the great strange city, and boy
though Tommy was, he felt grateful for his friendship.
"But, Tommy, I have not told you all," said our hero after briefly
relating his experience on the tramp. "Do you know that I have seen you
since you saw me?"
Tommy looked his surprise and answered:
"No! Where?"
"In Pittsburg," and Ben told him how he had stood and listened to the
conversation between Blackoat and Nipper, and how Tommy had appeared
and disappeared.
Had Ben been more attentive or observant of his little friend he would
have noticed that the hand on his arm trembled, and the boy's cheek
paled as he mentioned Blackoat's name. But he did not, and when he
looked up, Tommy's face was a burning red, filled with confusion.
"What a gilly you are, Ben!" he said. "You made a mistake in the dark.
It was some one else you saw and could not have been me, for I didn't
stop in Pittsburg."
Cleveland looked at him in astonishment.
"Tommy, are you telling me the truth?"
"Truth positive, Benjamin!" With an endorsing nod of the head. "Don't
you believe me?"
Ben reflected a moment before he answered, and when he did the words
came slow, as though he was trying to persuade himself that he meant
what he said.
"Yes, Tommy--I believe you. But I was never before so mistaken in my
life. Never in my life."
"It _was_ a queer delusion," returned Tom; and there the matter dropped.
"And which way now, friend Ben? You have reached your destination, your
pilgrimage is over, there's to be a fatted calf, a purple robe and a
gold ring! Is that the programme?"
"No, not quite," answered Ben, smiling. "The fact is my pilgrimage is
only half over, Tommy. I am going to New Orleans."
"To New Orleans! Why you told me St. Louis!" cried the boy in surprise.
"Very well, and am I not come to St. Louis?"
"Yes, true enough; but you do not remain here?"
"No, my boy. New Orleans is my destination. I have some moneyed
interests there--if I get there in time. If I don't,--well--the
interests are quite as heavy but not of a financial nature."
"All this is a mystery to me, Ben, and I don't ask for your
confidence," said Tommy, shrugging his shoulders; "but when is it
necessary for you to be in New Orleans?"
"At ten o'clock on the morning of the second of next month; just eleven
days from to-day," replied Ben.
"Why you have lots of time! I could go to Mexico by that time," said
Tom encouragingly. "I don't care if I take a trip down the river with
you, Ben. Which way are you going?"
Ben expressed himself pleased at the prospect of his little friend's
company, and thought the river would be their best route.
"So it is, undoubtedly," said Tommy. "You can go from St. Louis to New
Orleans for four dollars on deck. Have you four dollars?"
Ben confessed that he had not. That all his cash assets consisted of
ten cents, the remnant of the twenty-five he had received from the
dray-man in New Jersey City.
"What, you have the dime yet? How saving you are!" cried the other.
"But a dime won't take you to New Orleans. Not by river. Say, you
fellow, how'll a fellow get to New Orleans?"
This last query was propounded to a picturesque representative of the
fraternity who was sunning himself on a neighboring cotton-bale.
"New Orleans? Why buy a railroad and ride down," replied the party
addressed, leisurely turning over on his side, with his face toward our
friend's.
"Oh, come, partner, give us a square answer," expostulated Tommy. "We
want to get down there."
At this the man sat up on the cotton-bale and requested a chew of
tobacco, having obtained which he leisurely continued:
"You can go to New Orleans lots of ways. You can walk down 'long the
levees. Lot's of 'em does that. You can beat your way by boat. Lots
of 'em does _that_. You can go from here to Cairo by boat or rail and
then beat your way from Cairo over the Jackson and Great Northern.
Lot's of 'em do _that_. That's the way most of the lake men go down
in the fall, and the cotton pickers come up in the spring. The other
big north and south road for the bums is the Texas route. And a very
good road it is. After you get to Poplar Bluffs--that's the end of the
first division--it's clear sailing down to Texarkanna. That's a boss
town too. Stands half in Texas and half in Arkansas. That's where it
got that name. You can shoot a man in Texas and go across the track
and be in Arkansas, or wicey wersey, which makes it very convenient
for the inhabitants. That road runs catacornered across Arkansas, and
its got to be a great cotton route from Texas, which has made it very
convenient for tramps."
"Yes, that's all right; but how about the New Orleans route?"
interrupted Tommy, afraid lest the new brother if he continued would
get over into Asia and commence barge-lining the Ganges.
"Well, as I was a saying, you can go from here to Texas, easy as you
please, on the Iron Mountain road. I 'spose four thousand tramps go
down along it every winter and come up every spring. They're the Texas
Rangers of '76--1876!" and he grinned.
"But is it a good route to New Orleans?" asked Ben, who was afraid the
professional was again about to desert his subject.
"No; it's a better route to Texas," replied he.
"But we want to go to New Orleans," protested Cleveland.
"Don't you be a fool and go to New Orleans when you can get to Texas,"
advised their irrelevant informant.
"New Orleans is crowded with tramps every winter. So is all the South,
though they don't howl about the matter the way they do up North. You
let New Orleans alone. You go to Texas and be a Ranger!"
"A Ranger? What sort?" asked Tommy.
"Range all over the country after hand-outs," replied the professional
with another grin.
"You keep telling us about Texas and we are not going to Texas," said
Ben.
"More fool you," placidly commented the Ranger. "Texas is a good state."
Ben was in despair of ever getting information from this source, but
made one last effort to obtain it by asking the garrulous professional
if they could get to New Orleans by the Iron Mountain road.
"Well, you can and you can't," was the highly unsatisfactory answer.
"You can go from here to Little Rock, and can there get off on the
Memphis and Little Rock Road. That road would take you to the river
right opposite Memphis."
"Then it won't take us to New Orleans?"
"Oh, no. You'd have to jump a boat from Memphis. But I say! Why in
thunder don't you jump a boat here? That's your best plan. Jump any of
the New Orleans steamers an' keep your eye peeled for the clerk when
he comes around. I see my buddy up the levee. Good-bye. Take the boat.
Better go to Texas though. Might strike a Mexican revolution. Have one
every new moon. Go to Texas. That's my notion," and shouting back these
fragments of advice, the professional withdrew up the levee and was
soon lost in the crowd.
"There Tom," said Ben, "we'll have to go by boat."
"I was aware of that long ago," coolly replied Tommy. "Do you see
that big boat down there with the horns on her jack-staff? That is
the Argenta. She leaves for New Orleans to-morrow afternoon at four
o'clock, and you and I will go on her."
This matter definitely arranged the two friends walked up the levee.