CHAPTER VII.
THE PULLMAN BOX CAR.
While loafing about the depot, waiting for another Philadelphia train, a string of empty coal flats and gondolas drew slowly past on another track. Tom's quick, practical andprofessionaleye immediately noticed them, and also the brand on the cars telling the road they belonged to.
"Hurrah!" said he, "we've made a close connection! Come on!" and in a short time Ben found himself at the bottom of a black, dusty coal-smeared gondola.
"Bully!" exclaimed Tommy. "Here we are and no one saw us get in, so if we keep quiet and lay low we are not likely to be disturbed."
This prediction proved correct, for they travelled the remainder of the night in the gondola without being noticed. The train went slow, and stopped often, switching frequently, but as they lay at the bottom of the car and there was no travelling over them by employees, they were not interfered with. Singularly enough, Ben fell asleep while the train was in motion, and slept well. The jolting of the gondola became rather conducive to his slumbers, than otherwise.
In the grey of the dawn the two got down at a side track, in the city of Easton, Pennsylvania, covered with coal dust and as black as chimney sweeps.
"We are across the State of New Jersey, anyway," said Tommy.
"That's encouraging," returned Ben. "If I make as good time right through, I shall win my wager easily."
"What wager?" asked Tommy.
Ben was momentarily confused, but answered that he had wagered with some friends that he could make St. Louis by the 22d of the month.
"Oh, that's easy enough done. Let us have a scrub up, and then get some chuck."
The "scrubbing up" proved a formidable operation. The coal dust seemed ground into their skins, and despite much rubbing under the spout of a pump, Ben differed materially in appearance from the young gentleman who had left New York city but a day before. Much of this was due to the rumpled and dirty condition of his clothes, which were all creased, and gave him the appearance of having been run through a mill of some sort.
The two travellers separated with the agreement to meet at the railway station in about an hour, and perfect plans for future operations. Ben was quite hungry. His long night's ride had given him a vigorous appetite that he felt would have to be appeased shortly. He also felt that the past forty-eight hours had wrought a great change in him. He was no longer himself, so to speak. A new man had been born within him. A callous, careless, independent man, that had not been in his possession before. He felt indifferent as to appearances, and the stares of strangers did not annoy him. He shuffled along with his hands in his pockets, and head down. Heslouched. A marked contrast to his usual erect deportment. In fact, he was becoming (though he did not know it) a tramp. It still was humiliating to have to ask for something to eat, but nature overcame his objections, and he proceeded to the back door of a comfortable cottage. The door was open, and a rough-looking, dirty man was seated at a table eating his breakfast.
"Well?" said this individual, surveying Ben surlily.
"I beg your pardon; but—but—I'd like to do something to earn a little breakfast, if—"
"That's enough!" interrupted the man. "Go work for your living, and earn it, as I have to do. Be off now, and see that you don't take any thing that don't belong to you. You tramps should be arrested. The country's overrun and ruined with you. Why don't you give up your lazy life and go to honest work like the rest of us?"
Poor Ben hastily left, and felt very bad about his reception. After a short time his mortification turned to anger, and he wished a score of times that he could have the dirty man all to himself in a quiet place for a short time. He moreover determined to get some breakfast if he had to visit every house in Easton. In fact the repulse, in a manner, did him good.
His next attempt was successful, and a hospitable housewife, after shooing her children into the house with her extended dress, gave him a very substantial repast on the back door step. She was evidently accustomed to back door guests, and said but little and asked no questions. They had ceased to be a novelty.
Thanking her in a gentlemanly manner,—something that called a look of surprise to the lady's kind face—our hero made his way to the depot, with a feeling of quiet rest in the region of his late hunger that was highly satisfactory and worth all the humiliation in the world. Who should he there discover seated on the depot steps, picking his teeth with a splinter and hugging a small bundle under his arm, but the dirty man that had refused him a breakfast. He was half inclined to go up and reproach him for his inhospitality; but thought better of the matter, and was passing on with a frown, when the dirty man looked up with a grin, and said:
"Get yer peck, pardy?"
"What?" said Ben, turning angrily upon him.
"Get your commissary filled? There, there. You needn't be angry at me. There wasn't enough for two—I swar there wasn't. I'd invited you in if thur hed been."
"Why you confounded puppy, you are nothing but a tramp yourself, then!" exclaimed Ben in indignant astonishment.
"Incourse," coolly replied the dirty man; "I never 'lowed I wus any thing else." And he grinned again.
Ben felt that this grin was contagious, and as his outraged sensibility would not permit him entering into fellowship with his brother professional, he moved away. Ultimately Tommy and he had a good laugh over the fellow's cool impudence.
Tommy shortly made his appearance, having met with his usual success, though he confessed to visiting six different houses before his appetite was appeased.
A freight train stood on a side track a short distance from the depot, and after a professional exploration, the boy returned with the intelligence that it numbered several "empties."
"It is a splendid chance," said he, enthusiastically. "I asked one of the yardmen and he says the train is made up for over the mountains. We might make Pittsburg on it."
A few moments later the two were safely ensconced in an empty car, having crawled through the window in the end, all unobserved. Crouching down in a corner they remained perfectly quiet, rarely speaking even in a whisper, lest they should attract attention from the outside. Several times footsteps were heard passing, and their coming and going were matters of the most intense anxiety to Ben, whose imagination made every sound a conductor's approach and an accompanying discovery. At last the train started; backed up on another track; switched around some cars; and then all remained quiet again for a few moments, until the engineer suddenly sounded "off brakes" with his whistle, and the voyagers were congratulating themselves on a start, when a dark object was hurled through the window, and following it, three ragged men, one after another, plunged through, headforemost; much the same as the clown goes through the baker's window, in the pantomime.
"Helloa! Blazes!" exclaimed the first to alight. "All the berths taken?"
"Hush," said Tom, "or you will give us away."
"That's all right. We're solid now. The train's in motion," said another; while the third stepped off the "wind up" to a familiar jig, in testimony to his utter indifference to noise.
Indeed the train being in motion the chances of discovery were greatly diminished in the voyagers' favor.
"Where you travelling, boss?" asked he of the antique carpet-bag, which proved to be the dark object that had first entered the window.
"St. Louis," answered Ben.
"St. Louis be blowed. I come from there three months ago. The town's a good town, but its always crowded. Better go South. Cold weather's coming on before long,
"And I sigh for the land,Where the orange blossoms bloom."
"And I sigh for the land,Where the orange blossoms bloom."
"And I sigh for the land,Where the orange blossoms bloom."
"And I sigh for the land,
Where the orange blossoms bloom."
And he wound up by singing these lines in a rich baritone voice.
"Where are you fellows going?" asked Tom.
"Cincinnati, sure's you breathe," answered one.
"An' then New Orleans an' the jetties! We're the United States Special Commission for ascertaining the depth of water in the South West Pass,—that's who we are!" said the terpsichorean artist; and another series of jig steps emphasized this important announcement.
"Hello, young fellow," exclaimed the third man, extending a nod of recognition to Tommy. "How de do. Got this fur, hev ye?"
Tommy recognized a fellow traveller who had journeyed from Hartford to New Haven in a Pullman palace box car with him. He recounted what had happened to him since they last met, and in return his old companion told him he had been to Albany, taken a look at the Legislature, saw the political bummers gathered there and felt ashamed of their company, departed for Troy to attend a municipal election, got on a glorious spree, been locked up, had the freedom of the outskirts of the city granted him at the police court, "beat" his way to New York on a North River boat, and was now migrating South to save the expenses of an overcoat.
From the conversation that followed, Ben learned that one was a printer, another a carpenter, and the terpsichorean artist an iron and brass moulder by trade and a variety performer by profession. They had several times obtained work during the summer, but the love of a vagabond life was so strong within them, that job after job had been deserted for this roving. He also obtained a glimpse of a fact that became more palpable, the more he associated during his tramp, with this class of American gypsies. It was, that underlying the rambling propensities,—nay the very instigator of those propensities—was the vice of drunkenness. In their quieter moments expressions escaped the trio that demonstrated a hearty contempt for the life they were leading, and a haunting desire to return to the paths of honest industry, and the comforts of a settled home. But however strong this last feeling may have been, it was evidently overruled by the thirst after those hell-born stimulants with which man is allowed to destroy the peace and prosperity of his fellow man. As the printer remarked to Ben:
"I tell you, boss, there's not a ragged coat on a dirty back, or a pair of torn shoes on the bruised and blistered feet of the thousands of tramps that are rambling around the country like wild men, but whiskey is the first cause of it!"
"Then why don't they stop using it?" asked Cleveland.
"Give it up!" he exclaimed. "As well ask them to give up life. So long as the cursed stuff is made, so long will men drink it, and the government that licenses and protects it are responsible for the vagabonds it makes. They're holding conventions, and wanting to know what the devil they're to do with the tramps? Shut up the distilleries and in two years there will be no tramps! Many men can not give up the use of liquor when left to themselves. It is not a habit, it is a cur—."
"Oh cheese your preaching! Here—this killed me father and I'll have revenge on it!" and with a savage laugh the moulder thrust a bottle into the printer's hand.
The printer, who was a man of middle age, looked at the liquor askance a moment, and addressed it as follows:
"Oh, you father of all curses! Murderer, thief, ravisher! Stealer of men's brains! Caterer for the gallows! Feeder of the jails! Soaked in the tears of widows, mothers and orphans! Iconoclast, breaking the images of all we love! Defying God, and defacing his handiwork! Daubing blood on the face of humanity! Smearing crime on the garments of society! Barring the door to Heaven! Paving the way to Hell! Curse you! Curse you! Curse those that make you! Curse those in power that allow you to exist! Fragments of Hell hurled into Nineteenth Century! How I hate you!—How I love you!" and with trembling hand, and glittering eye, he drank deep of the bottle's contents.
The liquor was then passed around, but when it came to Ben he refused it. In that box car and from those homeless vagabonds he had learned a lesson that he promised himself should last him a lifetime. It was "Total abstinence."Absolutely total:—the only safeguard against thediseaseof drunkenness.
Singular enough his rough companions did not take his refusal to drink with them amiss. The moulder said: "It's the best thing you ever did in your life to let it alone," which the carpenter indorsed, by remarking: "If I'd done it years ago, I'd not be here now."
But the printer said—rather irrelevantly, and quite profanely:
"We're all going to Hell anyway! What's the odds so long's you're happy!"
After awhile the three tramps sat down in a corner of the car, and one of them producing a ragged pack of cards, (which same, he stated, with pardonable pride, had been in every state of the Union, and on nearly all the railroads) they were soon engaged in the mysteries of that ancient game, "cut-throat old-sledge," the stakes being a pull at the bottle.
Ben felt drowsy, and having had but little sleep the previous night, stretched himself at full length on the car floor and was soon lost in a sound slumber. The travellers having securely fastened the end gate shut with a nail (to prevent other tramps from imposing their presence among them, and also to repel the curiosity of train employees,) kept remarkably quiet whenever the train stopped, which it frequently did, and so rode along in safety.