A little after daybreak they went on with the cows. For half a
mile or more until the little house had sunk below the hill crest
Trove was looking backward. Now and ever after he was to think and
tarry also in the road of life and look behind him for the golden
towers of memory. The drovers saw a change in Trove and flung at
him with their stock of rusty, ancestral witticisms. But Thurst
Tilly had a way of saying and doing quite his own,
"Never see any one knocked so flat as you was," said he. "Ye
didn't know enough t' keep ahead o' the cattle. I declare I
thought they'd trample ye 'fore ye could git yer eye unsot."
Trove made no answer.
"That air gal had a mighty power in her eye," Thurst went on.
"When I see her totin' you off las' night I says t' the boys, says
I, 'Sid is goin' t' git stepped on. He ain't never goin' t' be the
same boy ag'in.'"
The boy held his peace, and for days neither ridicule nor
excitement--save only for the time they lasted--were able to bring
him out of his dream.
That night they came to wild country, where men and cattle lay down
to rest by the roadway--a thing Trove enjoyed. In the wagon were
bread and butter and boiled eggs and tea and doughnuts and cake and
dried herring. The men built fires and made tea and ate their
suppers, and sang, as the night fell, those olden ballads of the
frontier--"Barbara Allen," "Bonaparte's Dream," or the "Drover's
Daughter."
For days they were driving in the wild country. At bedtime each
wound himself in a blanket and lay down to rest, beneath a rude
lean-to if it were raining, but mostly under the stars. On this
journey Trove got his habit of sleeping, out-of-doors in fair
weather. After it, save in midwinter, walls seemed to weary and
roofs to smother him. The drove began to low at daybreak, and soon
they were all cropping the grass or browsing in the briers. Then
the milking, and breakfast over a camp fire, and soon after sunrise
they were all tramping in the road again.
It was a pleasant journey--the waysides glowing with the blue of
violets, the green of tender grass, the thick-sown, starry gold of
dandelions. Wild fowl crossed the sky in wedge and battalion,
their videttes out, their lines now firm, now wheeling in a long
curve to take the path of the wind. Every thicket was a fount of
song that fell to silence when darkness came and the low chant of
the marshes.
When they came into settled country below the big woods they began
selling. At length the drove was reduced to one section; Trove
following with the helper named Thurston Tilly, familiarly known as
"Thurst."
He was a tall, heavy, good-natured man, distinguished for fat,
happiness, and singular aptitudes. He had lifted a barrel of salt
by the chimes and put it on a wagon; once he had eaten two mince
pies at a meal; again he had put his heel six inches above his head
on a barn door, and, any time, he could wiggle one ear or both or
whistle on his thumb. At every lodging place he had left a feeling
of dread and relief as well as a perennial topic of conversation.
At every inn he added something to his stock of fat and happiness.
Then, often, he seemed to be overloaded with the latter and would
sit and shake his head and roar with laughter, now and then giving
out a wild yell. He had a story of which no one had ever heard the
finish. He began it often, but, somehow, never got to the end. He
always clung to the lapel of his hearer's coat as if in fear of
losing him, and never tried his tale but once on the same pair of
ears. Having got his inspiration he went in quest of his hearer,
and having hitched him, as it were, by laying hold of his elbow or
coat collar, began the tale. It was like pouring molasses on a
level place--it moved slowly and spread and got nowhere in
particular. At first his manner was slow, dignified, and
confidential, changing to fit his emotion. He whispered, he
shouted, he laughed, he looked sorrowful, he nudged the stranger in
his abdomen, he glared upon him, eye close to eye, he shook him by
the shoulder, and slowly wore him out. Some endured long and were
patient, but soon or late all began to back and dodge, and finally
broke away, and seeing the hand of the narrator reach for them,
dodged quickly and, being pursued, ran. Often this odd chase took
them around trees and stumps and buildings, the stranger escaping,
frequently, through some friendly door which he could lock or hold
fast. Then Thurst, knocking loudly, gave out a wild yell or two,
peered in at the nearest window, and came at last to his chair,
sorrowful and much out of breath, his tale unfinished. There was
in the man a saving element of good nature, and no one ever got
angry with him. At each new attempt be showed a grimmer
determination to finish, but even there, in a land of strong and
patient men, not one, they used to say, had ever the endurance to
hear the end of that unfinished tale.
It was not easy to dispose of cattle in the southern counties that
year, but they found a better market as they bore west, and were
across the border of Ohio when the last of the drove were sold.
That done, Trove and Thurst Tilly took the main road to Cleveland,
whence they were to return home by steamboat.
It led them into woods and by stumpy fields and pine-odoured
hamlets. The first day of their walk was rainy, and they went up a
toteway into thick timber and built a fire and kept dry and warm
until the rain ceased. That evening they fell in with emigrants on
their way to the far west.
The latter were camped on the edge of a wood, near the roadway, and
cooking supper as the two came along. Being far from a town, Trove
and Tilly were glad to accept the hospitality of the travellers.
They had come to the great highway of travel from east to west.
Every day it was cut by wagons of the mover overloaded with Lares
and Penates, with old and young, enduring hardships and the loss of
home and old acquaintance for hope of better fortune.
A man and wife and three boys were the party, travelling with two
wagons. They were bound for Iowa and, being heavy loaded, were
having a hard time. All sat on a heap of boughs in the firelight
after supper.
"It's a long, long road to Iowa, father," said the woman.
"It'll soon be over," said he, with a tone of encouragement.
"I've been thinking all day of the lilacs and the old house," said
she.
They looked in silence at the fire a moment.
"We're a bit homesick," said the man, turning to Trove, "an' no
wonder. It's been hard travelling, an' we've broke down every few
miles. But we'll have better luck the rest o' the journey."
Evidently his cheerful courage had been all that kept them going.
"Lost all we had in the great fire of '35," said he, thoughtfully.
"I went to bed a rich man, but when I rose in the morning I had not
enough to pay a week's board. Everything had been swept away."
"A merchant?" Trove inquired.
"A partner in the great Star Mill on East River," said the man. "I
could have got a fortune for my share--at least a hundred thousand
dollars--and I had worked hard for it."
"And were you not able to succeed again?"
"No," said the traveller, sadly, shaking his head. "If some time
you have to lose all you possess. God grant you still have youth
and a strong arm. I tried--that is all--I tried."
The boy looked up at him, his heart touched. The man was near
sixty years of age; his face had deep lines in it; his voice the
dull ring of loss, and failure, and small hope. The woman covered
her face and began to sob.
"There, mother," said the man, touching her head; "we'd better
forget. I'll never speak of that again--never. We're going to
seek our fortune. Away in the great west we'll seek our fortune."
His effort to be cheerful was perhaps the richest colour of that
odd scene there in the still woods and the firelight.
"We're going to take a farm in the most beautiful country in the
world. It's easy to make money there."
"If you've no objection I'd like to go with you," said Thurst
Tilly. "I'm a good farmer."
"Can you drive a team?" said the man.
"Drove horses all my life," said Thurst; whereupon they made a
bargain.
Trove and Tilly went away to the brook for water while the
travellers went to bed in their big, covered wagon. Trove lay down
with his blanket on the boughs, reading over the indelible record
of that day. And he said, often, as he thought of it, years after,
that the saddest thing in all the world is a man of broken courage.
X