CHAPTER XIX.
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 thecrime, 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 istheirharvest-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 isinvention. Where seven men held stations and bound in a field, three men on aharvesternow do the same amount of work. What will you do with the idle four? Where three men labored on aharvester, one now drives and theautomatic bindermakes 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 seenher. 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."