CHAPTER I.

STARTING ON A CATTLE-TRAIN.

I cannot tell when the idea of going abroad first came into my mind, but, in a little journal kept in my thirteenth year while travelling with the minstrels, I find the fact that I was going to Europe alluded to as a matter of which there was not the shadow of a doubt.

There is a jolly sort of beggar in San Francisco who says hope is worth twenty-five dollars a month. It must be that I shared with him his principal income during the four years of college life which almost immediately succeeded my wanderings as a minstrel, and which launched me again on the world at twenty. What else besides the hope of Continental travel sustained me during those four years I cannot now say. My pecuniary resources for that whole period were so small that they have tapered entirely out of my remembrance.

Leaving college, I had served, I recollect, but a few months in the post-office of Toledo, Ohio, when I took a deliberate account of my savings one morning, and was gratified. I found in my possession too large a sum to permit of deferring the realization of my long-cherished dream another day.

Counting my money over and over, I could make no less of it than one hundred and eighty-one dollars, in new United States treasury-notes; and I resigned “mine office,” not with the heartbroken feeling of Richelieu, in the play, but still, like him, with the lingering cares of Europe on my mind.

* * * * *

Not the smallest fraction of this vast sum, I had resolved, should be squandered on the ephemeral railroads of our younger civilization. My treasury-notes were to be dedicated, green, votive offerings, on the older shrines of our race. But the city of Toledo is situated about seven hundred miles from the sea, and it now became an interesting question how this distance was to be compassed for--nothing.

To a good-natured friend of mine in one of the railroad offices I explained, at considerable length, and with no lack, I flatter myself, of boyish eloquence, the great advantage that would accrue to me from a residence in Europe which the liberality of the companies, in the matter of furnishing passes, would tend to prolong.

I think he became my convert, for he came to me, several hours afterward, with a long face, and gave me to understand that the railroad officials were in the habit of building no dreams of æsthetics that were not founded on a groundplan of dollars and cents.

At this I became--I do not know which to say--desperately vindictive or vindictively desperate. Anyway, the unfeeling conduct of those corporations induced, then and there, a state of mind which led me into an adventure the least calculated, probably, of any in this history to establish my claims as a moral hero. The next morning I brought my trunk down to the depot and had it checked through to New York. The rules seem not to have been so strictly observed then as they are now. The baggage-master in this instance, at least, taking for granted that I had already secured my ticket, did not ask me to show it; and I was at liberty to stroll about the station all day, listlessly.

Just before dusk a cattle-train arrived from the West and brought with it a lucky thought. I scanned the faces of the drovers till I found one that looked benevolent, and the owner of it I engaged in conversation. He was going on East with his cattle the next morning, and I made a plain statement of my case to him. When I had done, he patted me on the back in such a cordial and stalwart manner, that--as soon as I could get my breath--I took it all as a good augury. And so it was.

I wish I could reproduce more of the dialogue which took place between this honest Westerner and myself, at that first interview. Some of it, at least, I never shall forget, it impressed me as so extraordinary at the time. I can, however, convey no idea of the contrast between his mild kindly face and his harsh bovine voice. It may help you to a kind of silhouette view of the situation, if you will take the pains to imagine the frequent excursions of my puzzled attention from his face to his voice, during the scene which immediately followed.

He had given me to understand that he had eight car-loads of live stock, and that he was entitled to a drover’s pass for every four car-loads. Then he suddenly paused, thrust both hands into the pockets of his long-skirted coat, and, feeling about in those spacious alcoves for a silent moment as if in search of something, he asked, in an abrupt bass which seemed to issue from the depths of the coat-tails themselves,--

“How air you--on cattle?”

That was before the days of Mr. Bergh and his excellent society; but, having consulted the speaker’s benevolent face and not his voice, as the last authority on the meaning of his question, I answered that I was very kind to cattle as a general thing.

That, he assured me, was not exactly what he meant; he wanted to know whether I had ever done any “droving.” On my intimating that, although I had not had much experience, I was perfectly willing to be of service, “Never mind, never mind,” he said; “but can you play cards?”

“No,” was my ingenuous reply.

“Now that’s bad,” and he scratched his head vigorously. “Can you smoke, then?”

“A little,” faltered I.

My new-made friend seemed much pleased by this response, and continued,--

“All right; you jist git a lot of clay pipes and some tobaccy, and I’ll git you a pass!”

As I was turning in utter bewilderment to have his strange prescription filled, “I say, look a here,” he said; “take off all that nice harness, or you can’t pass for no cattle-man! I’ll lend you some old clothes and a pair of big boots. These stock conductors is right peert, they air. You’ll have to smoke a heap, and lay around careless in the caboose, or they’ll find you out.”

* * * * *

The next morning I took my seat in what he called the “caboose,”--a sort of passenger-car at the end of the train. When we had been under way about an hour, the burden of my own conscience, or of my friend’s boots, or the contemplation of my unsightly disguise, or the amount of tobacco I had smoked, made me deathly sick,--which, on the whole, was rather a fortunate circumstance. It explained to the conductor why I did not get out at the way-stations to tend my cattle, and it also enabled me to hide my face from the conductor, to whom I happened to be known.

I found, as most boys do, that I could smoke better the farther I got from home. What with stopping to let our cattle rest and other delays, it took us nearly a week to reach New York; but before three days had passed I could perform the astonishing feat of putting my friend’s boots out of the car window, and of smoking serenely the while, without touching my pipe with my hands.

All the hotels at which we stopped along the route seemed, like the crèmeries of Paris, to exult in the importance of a _spécialité_; and that was that they were supported almost entirely by drovers, and assumed, without a single exception that I can call to mind, the device and title of “The Bull’s Head.”

There was a smack of old times in the homely comforts as well as in the moderate charges of these quiet taverns. My expenses on the whole journey from Toledo to the sea were, if I recollect aright, a little over three dollars.