This is the story of a man, a virile, strong, resourceful man, all of whose history from his youth to his untimely death thrills one at the reading and points lessons worth learning.
The most careful study and the most just comparison would doubtless concede to Washington Harrison Donaldson the high rank—high, indeed, in a double sense—of having been the greatest aeronaut the world has ever known.
While a few men have done some great deeds in aeronautics which he did not accomplish, nevertheless Donaldson did more things never even undertaken by any other aeronaut that any man who has ever lived. Indeed, much of his work would be deemed by mankind at large downright absurd, hair-brained, foolhardy, and reckless to the point of actual madness; and yet no man ever possessed a saner mind than Donaldson; no man was ever more fond of family, friends, and life in general, or normally more reluctant to undertake what he regarded as a needlessly hazardous task. His boldest and most seemingly reckless feats were to him no more than the every-day work of a man of a strong mind, of a stout heart, and of a perfectly trained body, who had so completely mastered every detail of his profession as gymnast, acrobat, and aeronaut, that he had come to have absolute faith in himself, downright abiding certainty that within his sphere of work not only must he succeed, but that, in the very nature of things it was quite impossible for him to fail.
Donaldson's story may well serve as an inspiration, as does that of every man who, with a cool head and high courage, takes his life in his hands for adventure into the world's untrodden fields. While he was regarded by average onlookers as little better than a "Merry Andrew," a public shocker, doing feats before the multitude to still the heart and freeze the blood, those whose fortune it was to know him intimately realized him to be a man of the most serious purpose, with a great faith in the future of aerial navigation. He seemed to be possessed by the conviction that it was one day to become wholly practicable and generally useful; for he was keen to do all he could to popularize and advance it, and to demonstrate its large measure of safety where practised under reasonable conditions.
To many still living his memory is dear—to all indeed who ever knew him well, and it is to his memory and to the surviving friends who held him dear I dedicate this little story.
Washington Harrison Donaldson was the son of David Donaldson, an artist of no mean ability of Philadelphia, where the boy was born October 10, 1840. The mother, of straight descent from a line of patriots active during the Revolution, gave the boy the name of Washington; the father, an ardent worker for General Harrison's candidacy for the presidency in the "Tippecanoe-and-Tyler-too" campaign, added the name of Harrison. It is not conceivable that this christening with two names so closely linked with notable deeds of high emprise in the early history of this country, had its influence upon the boy.
As a mere youth he showed the most adventurous spirit and ardent ambition to excel his mates, to do deeds of skill and dexterity that others could not do. When still a child he was running up an unsupported eight-foot ladder, and balancing himself upon the topmost round in a way to startle the cleverest professional athletes. A little later, getting hold of any old rope, stretching it in any old way as a "slack-rope," he was busy perfecting himself as a slack-rope walker. Naturally, school held him only a very few years, for his type of mind obviously was not that of a student.
While still in early youth, he got his father's consent to work in the parental studio, and persevered long enough to acquire some ability in sketching. Later he employed this art in illustrating some of his aerial voyages. During these studio days he studied legerdemain and ventriloquism, and became one of the most expert sleight-of-hand wizards and ventriloquial entertainers of his time.
Donaldson's first appearance before the public was at the old Long's Varieties on South Third Street in Philadelphia. His feats as a rope-walker have probably never been surpassed. In 1862 a rope twelve hundred feet long was stretched across the Schuylkill River at Philadelphia at a height of twelve hundred feet above the water. After passing back and forth repeatedly over this rope, he finished his exhibition by leaping from a rope into the river from a height of approximately ninety feet. Two years later he successfully walked a rope eighteen hundred feet long and two hundred feet high, stretched across the Genesee Falls at Rochester, N. Y. Five years later he was riding a velocipede on a tight-wire from stage to gallery of a Philadelphia theatre, the first to do this performance.
Thus his years were spent between 1857 and 1871; and great as were the dangers and severe the tasks incident to this period of his career, to him it was not work but the play he loved. While the work in itself was not one to emulate—for there are perhaps few less useful tasks than those that made up his occupation—nevertheless, he was training himself for his career; and the absolute mastery over it which he accomplished, the boldness with which he did it, the readiness, certainty, and complete success with which he carried out everything he undertook make a lesson worth studying.
Donaldson's career as an aeronaut was brief. His first ascent was made August 30, 1871; his last, July 15, 1875. The story of the first is characteristic of the man. In his lexicon there was no such word as "fail." His balloon was small, holding only eight thousand cubic feet of gas. The gas was of poor quality, and when ready to rise he found it impossible even to make a start until all ballast had been thrown from the basket; and when at length the start was made, it was only to alight in a few minutes on the roof of a neighboring house. Bent upon winning and doing at all hazards what he had undertaken, Donaldson quickly cast overboard all loose objects in the basket—ropes, anchors, provisions, even down to his boots and coat. Thus relieved of weight, he was able to make a voyage of about eighteen miles.
There are two essentials to safe ballooning: first, the easy working of the cord which controls the safety valve at the top of the netting, by which descent may be effected when the balloon is going too high; and surplus ballast, which may be thrown out to lighten the balloon when approaching the ground, to avoid striking the earth at dangerously rapid speed. Hence it followed that, his car having been stripped of every bit of weight to obtain the ascent, Donaldson's descent was so violent that he was not a little bruised before he got his balloon safety [Transcriber's note: safely?] anchored again upon the earth.
The difficulties and risks of this first trip, arising from the poor appliances he had, were enough to discourage, if not deter, a heart less bold than his, but to him a new difficulty only meant the letting out of another reef in his resolution to conquer it. Thus it was that immediately upon his return from this, his first trip, he not only announced that he would make another ascent the ensuing week, but that he would undertake something never previously undertaken in aerial navigation, namely, that he would dispense with the basket or car swung beneath the concentrating ring of every normal balloon, and in its place would have nothing but a simple trapeze bar suspended beneath the ring, upon which in mid-air, at high altitude, he proposed to perform all feats done by then most highly trained gymnasts in trapeze performances.
His experience on this first trip, to quote his own phraseology, was "so glorious that I decided to abandon the tight-rope forever."
The second ascent was made in a light breeze. When approximately a mile in height, to quote a chronicler:
"Suddenly the aeronaut threw himself backward and fell, catching with his feet on the bar, thus sending a thrill through the crowd; but with another spring he was upstanding on the bar, and then followed one feat after another—hanging by one hand, one foot, by the back of his head, etc., until the blood ceased to curdle in the veins of the awe-stricken crowd, and they gave vent to their feelings in cheer after cheer. His glittering dress sparkled in the sun long after his outline was lost to the naked eye."
Intending no long journey, Donaldson climbed from the trapeze into the concentrating ring, where he seized the cord operating the safety valve and sought to open the valve. But the valve stuck and did not open readily, thus when Donaldson gave a more violent tug at the cord in his effort to open the valve, a great rent was torn in the top of the gas bag, through which the gas poured, causing the balloon to fall with appalling rapidity. Long afterwards Donaldson said that this was the first time in his life that he had ever felt actually afraid. Luckily he dropped into the top of a large tree, which broke his fall sufficiently to enable him to land without any serious injury.
Donaldson's sincerity and downright joy in his work, and the poetic temperament, which in him was always struggling for utterance, are pointed out by a chronicler in the words added by him to the description Donaldson gave of his trip after his return to Norfolk in 1872:
"The people of Norfolk cannot form the remotest conception of the grand appearance of Norfolk from a balloon. The city looks almost surrounded by water, and the various tributaries to the Elizabeth River appear magnificently beautiful, looking like streams of silver. Floating over a field of foliage, the trees appear all blended together like blades of grass."
The chronicler adds:
"Donaldson seemed to be perfectly enraptured by his subject, as was evinced by the beaming expression of his countenance while relating his experience. The motion of the balloon he describes as delightful, particularly in ascent, as it appears to be perfectly motionless, and any object within view beneath looks as if it were receding from you."
As a token of appreciation of this particular exploit, a handsome gold medal was given to Donaldson by the citizens of Norfolk.
A later ascent from Norfolk resulted in one of the most perilous experiences ever endured by any aeronaut, and indeed developed conditions from which none could possibly have hoped to escape with life except a perfectly trained and fearless aeronaut. His experience on this trip he told as follows:
"After cutting the basket loose, the balloon shot up very rapidly. I pulled the valve cord and the gas escaped too freely. I was then almost at the water's edge, and going at the rate of one mile a minute. Quick work must be done, or a watery grave. I had either to cut a hole in the balloon or go to sea, and as there were no boats in sight, I chose the lesser evil. Seizing three of the cords, I swung out of the ring, into the netting, the balloon careening on her side. I climbed half way up the netting, opened my knife with my teeth, and cut a hole about two feet long. The instant I cut the hole the gas rushed out so fast that could scarcely get back to the ring. After reaching the ring I lashed myself fast to it with a rope. While I was climbing up the rigging to cut the hole in the side of the balloon, my cap fell off, and so fast did I descend that before I got half way down I caught up with and passed the cap. Continuing to descend, I struck the ground in a large corn field, and was dragged nearly a thousand feet, the wind blowing a perfect gale. Crashing against a rail fence, I was rendered insensible. When I came to, I found myself hanging to one side of a tree, and the balloon to the other side, ripped to shreds. This was thelast tree. I could have thrown a stone into the ocean from where I landed. On this trip I travelled ten miles in seven minutes.
"Many want to know if the wind blows hard up there. They do not stop to think that I am carried by the wind, and whether I am in a dead calm or sailing at the rate of one hundred miles an hour, I am perfectly still; and when I went the ten miles in seven minutes I did not feel the slightest breeze; and when I cannot see the earth it is impossible to tell whether I am going or hanging still."
Just as Donaldson was a bit of an artist and left many sketches illustrating his experiences, so also he was a bit of a poet and left many pieces describing in lofty thought, but crude versification, the sentiments inspired by his ascents. The following is one of them:
"There's pleasure in a lively trip when sailing through the air,The word is given, 'Let her go!' To land I know not where.The view is grand, 'tis like a dream, when many miles from home.My castle in the air, I love above the clouds to roam."
In prose Donaldson was very much more at home than in verse; indeed many of his descriptions equal in clearness and beauty anything ever written of the impressions that come to fliers in cloudland. Take, for example, the following:
"It's a pleasure to be up here, as I sit and look at the grand cloud pictures, the most splendid effects of light, unknown to all that cling to the surface of the earth. The ever-shifting scenes, the bright, dazzling colors, the soft roseate and purple hues, the sudden light and fiery sun . . . and on I go as if carried by spiritual wings, far above the diminutive objects of a liliputian world. We rise in the midst of splendor, where light and silence combine to make one wish he never need return."
Donaldson was a many-sided man—among other things, in no small measure a philosopher, as when he commented as follows:
"I have noticed on different occasions a class of people who were only half alive and who find fault with my exercise, which to them looks frightful. They [Transcriber's note: Their?] nervous system is not properly balanced. They have too much nerves for their system, which is caused by want of a little moderate exercise up where the air is pure, instead of which they spend hours in a place which they call their office. They sit themselves in a dark corner, hidden from the sun's rays, and in one position remain for hours, inhaling the poisonous air with the room full of carbonic acid gas, which is as poisonous to man as arsenic is to rats; and in addition to this, will fill their lungs with tobacco smoke, and to steady their nerves require a stimulation of perhaps eight or ten brandies a day. If I were as helpless as this class of people, then my life would be swinging by a thread, and I would wind up with a broken neck."
About as sound philosophy and scientific hygiene as could well be found.
And yet another side to his character: the kindly nature, the gentleness and generous thought for others, reluctance to cause needless injury or pain, which is always the characteristic of any man of real courage. This beautiful side of his nature he once hinted at as follows:
"I cannot look at a person cutting a chicken's head off, and as for shooting a poor, innocent bird for sport, I think it is a great wrong and should not be allowed. Did you ever think what a barbarous set we were—worse than Indians or Fiji Islanders! There is nothing living but what we torture and kill. As for fear . . . my candid opinion is that the only time one is out of danger is when sailing through the air in a balloon."
Early in 1873, after having made twenty-five or thirty ascents, and well-nigh exhausted people's capacity for sensations and excitements afforded by ballooning overterra firma, Donaldson began making plans for a balloon of a capacity and equipment adequate, in his judgment, to enable him to make a successful crossing of the Atlantic to England or the Continent. So soon as his plans became publicly known, Professor John Wise, who as early as 1843 had done his best to raise the funds necessary for a transatlantic journey by balloon, joined forces with Donaldson, and together they made application to the authorities of the city of Boston for an adequate appropriation. This was voted by one Board but vetoed by another. Thereupon,The Daily Graphictook up their proposition, and undertook the financing of the expedition under a formal contract executed June 27, 1873. As a consequence of this contract, Donaldson proceeded to build the largest balloon ever constructed, of a gas capacity of 600,000 cubic feet, and a lifting power of 14,000 pounds. The total weight of the balloon, including its car, lifeboat, and equipment, was 7,100 pounds, thus leaving approximately 6,000 pounds surplus lifting capacity for ballast, passengers, etc.
Of course, a liberal supply of provisions was to be carried, with tools, guns, and fishing tackle, to be available for meeting any emergency arising from a landing in a wild, unsettled region. Moreover, a carefully selected set of scientific instruments was embraced in the equipment for making observations and records of changing conditionsen route.
The inflation of this aerial monster began in Brooklyn at the Capitoline Grounds September 10, 1873. A high wind prevailed, and after the bag had received 100,000 cubic feet of gas, she became so nearly uncontrollable, notwithstanding 300 men and 100 sacks of ballast, each sack weighing 200 pounds, were holding her down, that Donaldson and his associates decided to empty her.
On the twelfth of September inflation was again undertaken, although a high wind again prevailed. When something more than half full, the bag burst, and the aeronauts concluded that she was of a size impossible to handle. The bag and rigging were thereupon taken in hand, and she was reduced one-half; that is, to a capacity of 300,000 cubic feet of gas.
The remodelling was finished early in October, and inflation of this new balloon was begun at 1 p.m. on Sunday, October 6, and by 10.30 p.m. of that day the inflation was completed, the life-boat was attached, and she was firmly secured for the night.
At nine the next morning the crew took their places in the boat. Donaldson as aeronaut; Alfred Ford as correspondent for theGraphic; George Ashton Lunt, an experienced seaman, as navigator. Ascent was made, without incident, the balloon drifting first to the north, and then to the southward toward Long Island Sound.
Unhappily this voyage was brief, and very nearly tragical in its finish. About noon the balloon entered the field of a storm of wind and rain of extraordinary violence, and before long the cordage, etc., was so heavily loaded with moisture, that although practically all available ballast was disposed of, the balloon descended in spite of them. The speed of the balloon was so great that Donaldson did not dare hazard a dash against some house, or into some forest or other obstacle, but selected a piece of open ground, and advised his companions to hang by their hands over the side of the boat and drop at the word. The word at length given by Donaldson, both he and Ford dropped—a distance of about thirty feet, happily without serious injury other than a severe shaking up. Lunt, curious about the distance and the effect of such a fall, as well as unfamiliar with the action of a balloon when relieved of weight, hung watching the descent of his companions—only to realise quickly that he was shooting up into the air like a rocket. Then he clambered back into the boat. However, it was not long before, again weighted and beaten down by the continuing rain, the balloon descended upon a forest, where Lunt swung himself into a tree-top, whence he dropped through its branches to the earth, practically unhurt.
Thus ended the transatlantic voyage of theGraphicballoon, a voyage that constitutes the only serious failure I can recall of anything in the line of his profession as an aeronaut that Donaldson ever undertook to do. This failure is not to be counted to his discredit, for precisely as a good soldier does not surrender until his last round of ammunition is spent, so Donaldson did not give in until his last pound of ballast was exhausted.
In all respects the most brilliant aerial voyage ever made by Donaldson was his sixty-first ascension, on July 24, 1874, a voyage which continued for twenty-six hours. This was the longest balloon voyage in point of hours ever made up to that time, and indeed it remained a world's record for endurance up in the air until 1900, and the endurance record in the United States, until the recent St. Louis Cup Race.
The ascent was made from Barnum's "Great Roman Hippodrome," which for some years occupied the site of what is now Madison Square Garden, in a balloon built by Mr. Barnum to attempt to break the record for time and distance of all previous balloon voyages. An account of this thrilling trip is given in the following chapter of this book.
The history of the ascent Donaldson made from Toronto, Canada, on June 23, 1875, is in itself a sufficient refutation of the charges made less than a month later, that on his last trip he sacrificed his passenger, Grimwood, to save his own life. On his Toronto trip he was accompanied by Charles Pirie, of theGlobe; Mr. Charles, of theLeader; and Mr. Devine, of theAdvertiser. On this occasion Donaldson accepted the three passengers under the strongest protest, after having told them plainly that the balloon was leaky, the wind blowing out upon the lake, and that the ascent must necessarily be a peculiarly dangerous one. Nevertheless, they decided to take the hazard. Later they regretted their temerity. Husbanding his ballast as best he could, nevertheless, the loss of gas through leakage was such that by midnight, when well over the centre of Lake Ontario, the balloon descended into a rough, tempestuous sea, and was saved from immediate destruction only by the cutting away of both the anchor and the drag rope. This gave them a temporary lease of life, but at one o'clock the car again struck the waters and dragged at a frightful speed through the lake, compelling the passengers to stand on the edge of the basket and cling to the ropes, the cold so intense they were well-nigh benumbed. At length they were rescued by a passing boat, but this was not until after three o'clock in the morning.
Of Donaldson's conduct in these hours of terrible tremity, a passenger wrote:
"But for his judicious use of the ballast, his complete control of the balloon as far as it could be controlled, his steady nerve, kindness, and coolness in the hour of danger, the occupants would never have reached land. . . . The party took no provisions with them excepting two small pieces of bread two inches square, which Mr. Devine happened to have in his pocket. At eleven at night, the Professor, having had nothing but a noon lunch, was handed up the bread. . . . About three o'clock in the morning, when the basket was wholly immersed in the water, and the inmates clinging almost lifelessly to the ropes, the Professor climbed down to them, and they were surprised to see in his hand the two small pieces of bread they had given him the night before. He had hoarded it up all night, and instead of eating it he said with cheery voice, 'Well, boys, all is up. Divide this among you. It may give you strength enough to swim.' There was not a man among them that would touch it until the Professor first partook of it. It was only a small morsel for each. . . . He said that he had but one life-preserver on board, and suggested we should draw lots for the man who should leave and lighten the balloon."
While this discussion was on, the boat approached that saved them.
This simple story of Donaldson's true courage, cheerfulness, self-denial, readiness to sacrifice himself for others, is no less than an epic of the noblest heroism that stands an irrefutable answer to the charge later made that Donaldson sacrificed Grimwood.
Three weeks later—to be precise, on the fifteenth of July—Donaldson and his beloved airship, theP. T. Barnum, made their last ascent, from Chicago. The balloon was already old—more than a year old—the canvas weakened and in many places rent and patched, the cordage frail. In short, the balloon was in poor condition to stand any extraordinary stress of weather.
His companion on this trip was Mr. Newton S. Grimwood, ofThe Chicago Evening Journal. Donaldson had expected to be able to take two men; and Mr. Maitland, of thePost & Mail, was present with the other two in the basket immediately before the hour of starting. At the last moment Donaldson concluded that it was unwise to take more than one, and required lots to be drawn. Maitland tossed a coin, called "Heads," and won; but Mr. Thomas, the press agent, insisted that the usual method of drawing written slips from a hat be followed, and on this second lot-casting Maitland lost his place in the car, but won his life.
The ascent was made about 5 p.m., the prevailing wind carrying them out over Lake Michigan. About 7 p.m., a tug-boat sighted the balloon, then about thirty miles off shore, trailing its basket along the surface of the lake. The tug changed her course to intercept the balloon, but before it was reached, probably through the cutting away of the drag rope and anchor, the balloon bounded into the air, and soon disappeared, and never again was aught of Donaldson or the balloonBarnumseen by human eye. A little later a storm of extraordinary fury broke over the lake—a violent electric storm accompanied by heavy rain.
Weeks passed with no news of the voyagers or their ship. A month later the body of Grimwood was found on the shores of Lake Michigan and fully identified.
The precise story of that terrible night will never be written, but knowing the man and his trade, sequence of incident is as plain to me as if told by one of the voyagers. Evidently the balloon sprung a leak early. The last ballast must have been spent before the tug saw her trailing in the lake. Then anchor and drag ropes were sacrificed. This would inevitably give the balloon travelling power for a considerable time,—time of course depending on the measure of the leak of gas,—but ultimately she must again have descended upon the raging waters of the lake, where Grimwood, of untrained strength, soon became exhausted while trying to hold himself secure in the ring, and fell out into the lake. Thus again relieved of weight, the balloon received a new lease of life, and travelled on probably, to a fatal final descent in some untrodden corner of the northern forest, where no one ever has chanced to stumble across the wreck. For had the balloon made its final descent into the lake, it would have been only after the basket was utterly empty, all the loose cordage cut away, and a type of wreck left that would float for weeks or months and would almost certainly have been found. Indeed, for months afterwards the writer and many others of Donaldson's friends held high hopes of hearing of him returned in safety from some remote distance in the wilds. But this was not to be.
One more incident and I have done.
Six or seven years ago I read in the columns of theSunan article copied from a Chicago paper, evidently written by some close friend of the unfortunate Grimwood, making a bitter attack upon Donaldson for having sacrificed his passenger's life to save his own. The story moved me so much that I wrote an open letter to the Sun over my own signature, in which I sought to refute the charge by recounting the story of Donaldson's noble conduct, and his constant readiness for self-sacrifice in other situations quite as dire.
A few days later, sitting in my office, I was frozen with astonishment when a written card was handed in to me bearing the name "Washington H. Donaldson"! As soon as I could recover myself, the bearer of the card was asked in. He was a man within a year or two of my friend's age at the time of his death, Wash Donaldson's very self in face and figure! He had the same bright, piercing eye, that looked straight into mine; the same lean, square jaws and resolute mouth; the same waving hair, the same low, cool, steady voice—such a resemblance as to dull my senses, and make me wonder and grope to understand how my friend could thus come back to me, still young after so many years.
It was Donaldson's son, a babe in arms at the time his father sailed away to his death!
In a few simple words he told me that he and his family lived in a small village. With infinite grief they had read the article charging his father with unmanly conduct—a grief that was the greater because they possessed no means to refute the charge. Brokenly, with tears of gratitude, he told of their joy in reading my statements in his father's defence, and how he had been impelled to come and try in person to express to me the gratitude he felt he could not write.
Poor though this man may be in this world's goods, in the record of his father's character and deeds he owns a legacy fit to give him place among the Peers of Real Manhood.
Through some mischance I have lost the address of Donaldson's son.Should he happen to read these lines I hope he will communicate with me.
In the history of contests since man first began striving against his fellows, seldom has a record performance stood so long unbroken as that of the good airshipBarnum, made thirty-three years ago. Of her captain and crew of five men, six all told, the writer remains the sole survivor, the only one who may live to see that record broken in this country.
TheBarnumrose at 4 p.m. July 26, 1874, from New York and made her last landing nine miles north of Saratoga at 6.07 p.m. of the twenty-seventh, thus finishing a voyage of a total elapsed time of twenty-six hours and seven minutes. In the interim she made four landings, the first of no more than ten minutes; the second, twenty; the third, ten; the fourth, thirty-five; and these descents cost an expenditure of gas and ballast which shortened her endurance capacity by at least two or three hours.
Tracing on a map her actual route traversed, gives a total distance of something over four hundred miles, which gave her the record of second place in the history of long-distance ballooning in this country, a record which she still holds.
So far as my knowledge of the art goes, and I have tried to read all of its history, theBarnum'svoyage of twenty-six hours, seven minutes was then and remained the world's endurance record until 1900; and it still remains, in point of hours up, the longest balloon voyage ever made in the United States.
The longest voyage in point of distance ever made in this country was that of John Wise and La Mountain, in the fifties, from St. Louis, Mo., to Jefferson County, N. Y., a distance credited under the old custom of a little less than twelve hundred miles, while the actual distance under the new rules is between eight hundred and nine hundred miles, the time being nineteen hours. This voyage also remained, I believe, the world's record for distance until 1900, and still remains the American record—and lucky, indeed, will be the aeronaut who beats it.
P. T. Barnum's "Great Roman Hippodrome," now for many years Madison Square Garden, was never more densely crowded than on the afternoon of July 26, 1874. Early in the Spring of that year Mr. Barnum had announced the building of a balloon larger than any theretofore made in this country. His purpose in building it was to attempt to break all previous records for time and distance, and he invited each of five daily city papers of that time to send representatives on the voyage. So when the day set for the ascent arrived, not only was the old Hippodrome packed to the doors, but adjacent streets and squares were solid black with people, as on afêteday like the Dewey Parade.
Happily the day was one of brilliant sunshine and clear sky, with scarcely a cloud above the horizon.
The captain of theBarnumwas Washington. H. Donaldson, by far the most brilliant and daring professional aeronaut of his day, and a clever athlete and gymnast. For several weeks prior to the ascent of theBarnum, Donaldson had been making daily short ascents of an hour or two from the Hippodrome in a small balloon—as a feature of the performance. Sometimes he ascended in a basket, at other times with naught but a trapeze swinging beneath the concentrating ring of his balloon himself in tights perched easily upon the bar of the trapeze. And when at a height to suit his fancy—of a thousand feet or more—many a time have I seen him do every difficult feat of trapeze work ever done above the security of a net.
Such was Donaldson, a man utterly fearless, but reckless only when alone, of a steadfast, cool courage and resource when responsible for the safety of others that made him the man out of a million best worth trusting in any emergency where a bold heart and ready wit may avert disaster.
Donaldson's days were never dull.
The day preceding our ascent his balloon was released with insufficient lifting power. As soon as he rose above neighboring roofs, a very high southeast wind caught him, and, before he had time to throw out ballast, drove his basket against the flagstaff on the Gilsey House with such violence that the staff was broken, and the basket momentarily upset, dumping two ballast bags to the Broadway sidewalk where they narrowly missed several pedestrians.
That he himself was not dashed to death was a miracle. But to him this was no more than a bit unusual incident of the day's work.
The reporters assigned as mates on this skylark in theBarnumwere Alfred Ford, of theGraphic; Edmund Lyons, of theSun; Samuel MacKeever, of theHerald; W. W. Austin, of theWorld(every one of these good fellows now dead, alas!) and myself, representing theTribune.
Lyons, MacKeever, and myself were novices in ballooning, but the two others had scored their bit of aeronautic experience. Austin had made an ascent a year or two before at San Francisco, was swept out over the bay before he could make a landing, and, through some mishap, dropped into the water midway of the bay and well out toward Golden Gate, where he was rescued by a passing boat. Ford had made several balloon voyages, the most notable in 1873, in the greatGraphicballoon.
After the voyage of theBarnumwas first announced and it became known that theTribunewould have a pass, everybody on the staff wanted to go. For weeks it was the talk of the office. Even grave graybeards of the editorial rooms were paying court for the preference to Mr. W. F. G. Shanks, that prince of an earlier generation of city editors, who of course controlled the assignment of the pass. But when at length the pass came, the enthusiasm and anxiety for the distinction waned, and it became plain that the piece of paper "Good for One Aerial Trip," etc., must go begging.
At that time I was assistant night city editor, and a special detail to interview the Man in the Moon was not precisely in the line of my normal duties. I was therefore greatly surprised (to put it conservatively) when, the morning before the ascent, Mr. Shanks, in whose family I was then living, routed me out of bed to say:
"See here, Ted, you know Barnum's balloon starts tomorrow on her trial for the record, but what you don't know is that we are in a hole. Before the ticket came every one wanted to go, from John R. G. Hassard down to the office boy. Now no one will go—all have funked it, and I suppose you will want to follow suit!"
Thus diplomatically put, the hinted assignment was not to be refused without too much personal chagrin.
So it happened that about 3.30 p.m. the next day I arrived at the Hippodrome, loaded down with wraps and a heavy basket nigh bursting with good things to eat and drink, which dear Mrs. Shanks had insisted on providing.
TheBarnumwas already filled with gas, tugging at her leash and swaying restlessly as if eager for the start. And right here, at first sight of the great sphere, I felt more nearly a downright fright than at any stage of the actual voyage; the balloon appeared such a hopelessly frail fabric to support even its own car and equipment. The light cord net enclosing the great gas-bag looked, aloft, where it towered above the roof, little more substantial than a film of lace; and to ascend in that balloon appeared about as safe a proposition as to enmesh a lion in a cobweb.
Already my four mates for the voyage were assembled about the basket, and Donaldson himself was busy with the last details of the equipment. My weighty lunch basket had from my mates even a heartier reception than I received, but their joy over the prospect of delving into its generous depths was short-lived. The load as Donaldson had planned it was all aboard, weight carefully adjusted to what he considered a proper excess lifting power to carry us safely up above any chance of a collision with another flagstaff, as on the day before above the Gilsey House. Thus the basket and all its bounty (save only a small flask of brandy I smuggled into a hip pocket) were given to a passing acrobat.
At 4 p.m. the old Hippodrome rang with applause; a brilliant equestrian act had just been finished. Suddenly the applause ceased and that awful hush fell upon the vast audience which is rarely experienced except in the presence of death or of some impending disaster! We had been seen to enter the basket, and people held their breath.
Released, the balloon bounded seven hundred feet the air, stood stationary for a moment, and then drifted northwest before the prevailing wind.
In this prodigious leap there was naught of the disagreeable sensation one experiences in a rapidly rising elevator. Instead it rather seemed that we were standing motionless, stationary in space, and that the earth itself had gotten loose and was dropping away beneath us to depths unknown. Every cord and rope of the huge fabric was tensely taut, the basket firm and solid beneath our feet. Indeed, the balloon, with nothing more substantial in her construction than cloth and twine, and hempen ropes and willow wands (the latter forming the basket), has always, while floating in mid-air free of the drag rope's tricks, the rigid homogeneity of a rock, a solidity that quickly inspires the most timid with perfect confidence in her security.
Ballast was thrown out by Donaldson,—a little. At Seventh Avenue and Forty-second Street our altitude was 2,000 feet. The great city lay beneath us like an unrolled scroll. White and dusty, the streets looked like innumerable strips of Morse telegraph paper—the people the dots, the vehicles the dashes. Central Park, with its winding waters, was transformed into a superb mantle of dark green velvet splashed with silver, worthy of a royalfête. Behind us lay the sea, a vast field of glittering silver. Before us lay a wide expanse of Jersey's hills and dales that from our height appeared a plain, with many a reddish-gray splash upon its verdant stretches that indicated a village or a town.
Above and about us lay an immeasurable space of which we were the only tenants, and over which we began to feel a grand sense of dominion that wrapped us as in royal ermine: if we were not lords of this aerial manor, pray, then, who were? Beneath us, lay—home. Should we ever see it again? This thought I am sure came to all of us. I know it came to me. But the perfect steadiness of the balloon won our confidence, and we soon gave ourselves up to the gratification of our enviable position; and enviable indeed it was. For who has not envied the eagle his power to skim the tree-tops, to hover above Niagara, to circle mountain peaks, to poise himself aloft and survey creation, or to mount into the zenith and gaze at the sun?
Indeed our sense of confidence became such that, while sitting on the edge of the basket to reach and pass Donaldson a rope he asked for, I leaned so far over that the bottle of brandy resting in my hip pocket slipped out and fell into the Hudson.
Oddly, Ford, who was the most experienced balloonist of the party after Donaldson himself, seemed most nervous and timid, but it was naught but an expression of that constitutional trouble (dizziness) so many have when looking down from even the minor height of a step-ladder. In all the long hours he was with us, I do not recall his once standing erect in the basket, and when others of us perched upon the basket's edge, he would beg us to come down. But mind, there was no lack of stark courage in Alfred Ford, sufficiently proved by the fact that he never missed a chance for an ascent.
But safe? Confident? Why, before we were up ten minutes, Lyons and MacKeever were sitting on the edge of the basket, with one hand holding to a stay, tossing out handfuls of small tissue paper circulars bearing "News from the Clouds." Many-colored, these little circulars as they fell beneath us looked like a flight of giant butter-flies, and we kept on throwing out handfuls of them until our pilot warned us we were wasting so much weight we should soon be out of easy view of the earth! Indeed, the balance of the balloon is so extremely fine that when a single handful of these little tissue circulars was thrown out, increased ascent was shown on the dial of our aneroid barometer!
At 4.30 p.m. we had drifted out over the Hudson at an altitude of 2,500 feet. Here Donaldson descended from the airy perch which he had been occupying since our start on the concentrating ring, when one of us asked how long he expected the cruise to last. He replied that he hoped to be able to sail theBarnumat least three or four days.
"But," he added, "I shall certainly be unable, to carry all of you for so long a journey, and shall be compelled to drop you one by one. So you had best draw lots to settle whom I shall drop first, and in what order the rest shall follow."
Sailing then 2,500 feet above the earth, Lyons voiced a thought racing from my own brain for utterance when he blurted out: "What the deuce do you mean by 'drop' us?" Indeed, the question must have been on three other tongues as well, for Donaldson's reply, "Oh, descend to the earth and let you step out then," was greeted by all five of us with a salvo of deep, lusty sighs of relief.
Then we drew lots for the order of our going, MacKeever drawing first,Austin second, Lyons third, Ford fourth, and I fifth.
Meantime, beneath us on the river vessels which from our height looked like the toy craft on the lake in Central Park were whistling a shrill salute that, toned down by the distance, was really not unmusical.
Having crossed the Hudson and swept above Weehawken, we found ourselves cruising northwest over the marshes of the Hackensack.
As the heat of the declining sun lessened, our cooling gas contracted and the balloon sank steadily until at 5.10 we were 250 feet above the earth and 100 feet of our great drag rope was trailing on the ground. Within hailing distance of people beneath us, a curious condition was observed. We could hear distinctly all they said, though we could not make them understand a word; our voices had to fill a sphere of air; theirs, with the earth beneath them, only a hemisphere. Thus the modern megaphone is especially useful to aeronauts.
Hereabouts our fun began. Many countrymen thought the balloon running away with us and tried to stop and save us—always by grasping the drag rope, bracing themselves, and trying literally to hold us; when the slack of the rope straightened, they performed somersaults such as our pilot vowed no acrobat could equal. And yet the balance of the balloon is so fine that even a child of ten can pull one down, if only it has strength enough to withstand occasional momentary lifts off the ground. Occasionally one more clever would run and take a quick turn of the rope about a gate or fence—and then spend the rest of the evening gathering the scattered fragments and repairing the damage.
And when there was not fun enough below, Donaldson himself would take a hand and put his steed through some of her fancy paces—as when, approaching a large lake, he told us to hold tightly to the stays, let out gas and dropped us, bang! upon the lake. Running at a speed of twelve or fifteen miles an hour, we hit the water with a tremendous shock, bounded thirty or forty feet into the air, descended again and literally skipped in great leaps along the surface of the water, precisely like a well-thrown "skipping stone." Then out went ballast and up and on we went, no worse for the fun beyond a pretty thorough wetting!
At 6.20 p.m. we landed on the farm of Garrett Harper in Bergen County, twenty-six miles from New York. After drinking our fill of milk at the farmhouse, we rose again and drifted north over Ramapo until, at 7.30, a dead calm came upon us and we made another descent. We then found that we had landed near Bladentown on the farm of Miss Charlotte Thompson, a charming actress of the day whose "Jane Eyre" and "Fanchon" are still pleasant memories to old theatre-goers. Loading our balloon with stones to anchor it, our party paid her a visit and were cordially received. An invitation to join us hazarded by Donaldson, Miss Thompson accepted with delight. I do not know if she is still living, but it she is, she cannot have forgotten her half-hour's cruise in the good airshipBarnum, wafted silently by a gentle evening breeze, the lovely panorama beneath her half hid, half seen through the purple haze of twilight.
After landing Miss Thompson at 8.18 we ascended for the night, for a night's bivouac among the stars. The moon rose early. We were soon sailing over the Highlands of the Hudson. Off in the east we could see the river, a winding ribbon of silver. We were running low, barely more than 200 feet high. Below us the great drag rope was hissing through meadows, roaring over fences, crashing through tree-tops. And all night long we were continually ascending and descending, sinking into valleys and rising over hills, following closely the contours of the local topography.
During the more equable temperature of night the balloon's height is governed by the drag rope. Leaving a range of hills and floating out over a valley, the weight of the drag pulls the balloon down until the same length of rope is trailing through the valley that had been dragging on the hill. This habit of the balloon produces startling effects. Drifting swiftly toward a rocky precipitous hillside against which it seems inevitable you must dash to your death, suddenly the trailing drag rope reaches the lower slopes and you soar like a bird over the hill, often so low that the bottom of the basket swishes through the tree-tops.
But, while useful in conserving the balloon's energy, the drag rope is a source of constant peril to aeronauts, of terror to people on the earth, and of damage to property. It has a nasty clinging habit, winding round trees or other objects, that may at any moment upset basket and aeronauts. On this trip our drag rope tore sections out of scores of fences, upset many haystacks, injured horses and cattle that tried to run across it, whipped off many a chimney, broke telegraph wires, and seemed to take malicious delight in working some havoc with everything it touched.
At ten o'clock we sighted Cozzen's Hotel, and shortly drifted across the parade ground of West Point, its huge battlemented gray walls making one fancy he was looking down into the inner court of some great mediaeval castle. Then we drifted out over the Hudson toward Cold Spring until, caught by a different current, we were swept along the course of the river.
As we sailed over mid-stream and two hundred feet above it, with the tall cliffs and mysterious, dark recesses of the Highlands on either hand, the waters turned to a livid gray under the feeble light of the waning moon. No part of our voyage was more impressive, no scene more awe-inspiring. It was a region of such weird lights and gruesome shadows as no fancy could people with aught but gaunt goblins and dread demons, come down to us through generations untold, an unspent legacy of terror, from half-savage, superstitious ancestors.
Suddenly Ford spoke in a low voice: "Boys, I was in nine or ten battles of the Civil War, from Gaines's Mill to Gettysburg, but in none of them was there a scene which impressed me as so terrible as this, no situation that seemed to me so threatening of irresistible perils."
Nearing Fishkill at eleven, a land breeze caught and whisked us off eastward. At midnight we struck the town of Wappinger's Falls—and struck it hard. Our visitation is doubtless remembered there yet. The town was in darkness and asleep. We were running low before a stiff breeze, half our drag rope on the ground. The rope began to roar across roofs and upset chimneys with shrieks and crashes that set the folk within believing the end of the world had come. Instantly the streets were filled with flying white figures and the air with men's curses and women's screams. Three shots were fired beneath us. Two of our fellows said they heard the whistle of the balls, so Donaldson thought it prudent to throw out ballast and rise out of range.
Here the moon left us and we sailed on throughout the remainder of the night in utter darkness and without any extraordinary incident, all but the watch lying idly in the bottom of the basket viewing the stars and wondering what new mischief the drag rope might be planning.
The only duty of the watch was to lighten ship upon too near descent to the earth, and for this purpose a handful of Hippodrome circulars usually proved sufficient. Indeed, only eight pounds of ballast were used from the time we left Miss Thompson till dawn, barring a half-sack spent in getting out of range of the Wappinger's Falls sportsmen, who seemed to want to bag us.
Ford and Austin were assigned as the lookout from 12.00 to 2.00, Lyons and myself from 2.00 to 3.00, and Donaldson and MacKeever from 3.00 to 4.00.
From midnight till 3.00 a.m. Donaldson slept as peaceful as a baby, curled up in the basket with a sandbag for a pillow. The rest of us slept little through the night and talked less, each absorbed in the reflections and speculations inspired by our novel experience.
At the approach of dawn we had the most unique and extraordinary experience ever given to man. The balloon was sailing low in a deep valley. To the east of us the Berkshires rose steeply to summits probably fifteen hundred feet above us. Beneath us a little village lay, snuggled cosily between two small meeting brooks, all dim under the mists of early morning and the shadows of the hills. No flush of dawn yet lit the sky. Donaldson had been consulting his watch, suddenly he rose and called, pointing eastward across the range:
"Watch, boys! Look there!"
He then quickly dumped overboard half the contents of a ballast bag. Flying upward like an arrow, the balloon soon shot up above the mountain-top, when, lo! a miracle. The phenomenon of sunrise was reversed! We our very selves instead had risen on the sun! There he stood, full and round, peeping at us through the trees crowning a distant Berkshire hill, as if startled by our temerity.
Shortly thereafter, when we had descended to our usual level and were running swiftly before a stiff breeze over a rocky hillside, Donaldson yelled:
"Hang on, boys, for your lives!"
The end of the drag rope had gotten a hitch about a large tree limb. Luckily Donaldson had seen it in time to warn us, else we had there finished our careers. We had barely time to seize the stays when the rope tautened with a shock that nearly turned the basket upside down, spilled out our water-bucket and some ballast, left MacKeever and myself hanging in space by our hands, and the other four on the lower side of the basket, scrambling to save themselves. Instantly, of course, the basket righted and dropped back beneath us.
And then began a terrible struggle.
The pressure of the wind bore us down within a hundred feet of the ragged rocks. Groaning under the strain, the rope seemed ready to snap. Like a huge leviathan trapped in a net, the gas-bag writhed, twisted, bulged, shrank, gathered into a ball and sprang fiercely out. The loose folds of canvas sucked up until half the netting stood empty, and then fold after fold darted out and back with all the angry menace of a serpent's tongue and with the ominous crash of musketry.
It seemed the canvas must inevitably burst and we be dashed to death. But Donaldson was cool and smiling, and, taking the only precaution possible, stood with a sheath-knife ready to cut away the drag rope and relieve is of its weight in case our canvas burst.
Happily the struggle was brief. The limb that held us snapped, and the balloon sprang forward in mighty bounds that threw us off our feet and tossed the great drag rope about like a whip-lash. But we were free, safe, and our stout vessel soon settled down to the velocity of the wind.
By this time we all were beginning to feel hungry, for we had supped the night before in mid-air from a lunch basket that held more delicacies than substantials. So Donaldson proposed a descent and began looking for a likely place. At last he chose a little village, which upon near approach we learned lay in Columbia County of our own good State.
We called to two farmers to pull us down, no easy task in the rather high wind then blowing. They grasped the rope and braced themselves as had others the night before, and presently were flying through the air in prodigious if ungraceful somersaults. Amazed but unhurt, they again seized the rope and got a turn about a stout board fence, only to see a section or two of the fence fly into the air as if in pursuit of us.
Presently the heat of the rising sun expanded our gas and sent us up again 2,000 feet, making breakfast farther off than ever. Thus, it being clear that we must sacrifice either our stomachs or our gas, Donaldson held open the safety valve until we were once more safely landed on mother earth, but not until after we had received a pretty severe pounding about, for such a high wind blew that the anchor was slow in holding.
This landing was made at 5.24 a.m. on the farm of John W. Coons near the village of Greenport, four miles from Hudson City, and about one hundred and thirty miles from New York.
Here our pilot decided our vessel must be lightened of two men, and thus the lot drawn the night before compelled us to part, regretfully, with MacKeever of theHerald, and Austin of theWorld. Ford, however, owing allegiance to an afternoon paper, theGraphic, and always bursting with honest journalistic zeal for a "beat," saw an opportunity to win satisfaction greater even than that of keeping on with us. So he, too, left us here, with the result that theGraphicpublished a full story of the voyage up to this point, Saturday afternoon, the twenty-fifth, theHeraldand theWorldtrailed along for second place in their Sunday editions, whileSunandTribunereaders had to wait till Monday morning for such "News from the Clouds" as Lyons and I had to give them, for wires were not used as freely then as now.
Our departing mates brought us a rare good breakfast from Mr. Coons' generous kitchen—a fourteen-quart tin pail well-nigh filled with good things, among them two currant pies on yellow earthen plates, gigantic in size, pale of crust, though anything but anaemic of contents. Lyons finished nearly the half of one before our reascent, to his sorrow, for scarcely were we off the earth before he developed a colic that seemed to interest him more, right up to the finish of the trip, than the scenery.
Bidding our mates good-bye, we prepared to reascend. Many farmers had been about us holding to our ropes and leaning on the basket, and later we realized we had not taken in sufficient ballast to offset the weight of the three men who had left us.
Released, the balloon sprang upward at a pace that all but took our breath away. Instantly the earth disappeared beneath us. We saw Donaldson pull the safety valve wide open, draw his sheath knife ready to cut the drag rope, standing rigid, with his eyes riveted upon the aneroid barometer. The hand of the barometer was sweeping across the dial at a terrific rate. I glanced at Donaldson and saw him smile. Then I looked back the barometer and saw the hand had stopped—at 10,200 feet! How long we were ascending we did not know. Certain it is that the impressions described were all there was time for, and that when Donaldson turned and spoke we saw his lips move but could hear no sound. Our speed had been such that the pressure of the air upon the tympanum of the ear left us deaf for some minutes. We had made a dash of two miles into cloudland and had accomplished it, we three firmly believed, in little more than a minute.
Presently Donaldson observed the anchor and grapnel had come up badly clogged with sod, and a good heavy tug he and I had of it to pull them in, for Lyons was still much too busy with his currant pie to help us. Nor indeed were the currant pies yet done with us, for at the end of our tug at the anchor rope, I found| had been kneeling very precisely in the middle of pie No. 2, and had contrived to absorb most of it into the knees of my trousers. Thus at the end of the day, come to Saratoga after all shops were closed, I had to run the gauntlet of the porch and office crowd of visitors at the United States Hotel in a condition that only needed moccasins and a war bonnet to make me a tolerable imitation of an Indian.
We remained aloft at an altitude of one or two and one half miles for three hours and a half, stayed there until the silence became intolerable, until the buzz of a fly or the croak of a frog would have been music to our ears. Here wasabsolute silence, the silence of the grave and death, a silence never to be experienced by living man in any terrestrial condition.
Occasionally the misty clouds in which we hung enshrouded parted beneath us and gave us glimpses of distant earth, opened and disclosed landscapes of infinite beauty set in grey nebulous frames. Once we passed above a thunderstorm, saw the lightning play beneath us, felt our whole fabric tremble at its shock—and were glad enough when we had left it well behind. Seen from a great height, the earth looked to be a vast expanse of dark green velvet, sometimes shaded to a deeper hue by cloudlets floating beneath the sun, splashed here with the silver and there with the gold garniture reflected from rippling waters.
Toward noon we descended beneath the region of clouds into the realm of light and life, and found ourselves hovering above the Mountain House of the Catskills. And thereabouts we drifted in cross-currents until nearly 4.00 p.m., when a heavy southerly gale struck us and swept us rapidly northward past Albany at a pace faster than I have ever travelled on a railway.
We still had ballast enough left to assure ten or twelve hours more travel. But we did not like our course. The prospects were that we would end our voyage in the wilderness two hundred or more miles north of Ottawa. So we rose to 12,500 feet, seeking an easterly or westerly current, but without avail. We could not escape the southerly gale. Prudence, therefore, dictated a landing before nightfall. Landing in the high gale was both difficult and dangerous, and was not accomplished until we were all much bruised and scratched in the oak thicket Donaldson chose for our descent.
Thus the first voyage of the good airshipBarnumended at 6.07 p.m. on the farm of E. R. Young, nine miles north of Saratoga.
A year later theBarnumrose for the last time—from Chicago—and to this day the fate of the stanch craft and her brave captain remains an unsolved mystery.
Life was never dull in Grant County, New Mexico, in the early eighties. There was always something doing—usually something the average law-abiding, peace-loving citizen would have been glad enough to dispense with. To say that life then and there was insecure is to describe altogether too feebly a state of society and an environment wherein Death, in one violent form or another, was ever abroad, seldom long idle, always alert for victims.
When the San Carlos Apaches, under Victoria, Ju, or Geronimo, were not out gunning for the whites, the whites were usually out gunning for one another over some trivial difference. Everybody carried a gun and was more or less handy with it. Indeed, it was a downright bad plan to carry one unless you were handy. For with gunning—the game most played, if not precisely the most popular—every one was supposed to be familiar with the rules and to know how to play; and in a game where every hand is sure to be "called," no one ever suspected another of being out on a sheer "bluff." Thus the coroner invariably declared it a case of suicide where one man drew a gun on another and failed to use it.
This highly explosive state of society was not due to the fact that there were few peaceable men in the country for there were many of them, men of character and education, honest, and as law-abiding as their peculiar environment would permit. Moreover, the percentage of professional "bad men"—and this was a profession then—was comparatively small. It was due rather to the fact that every one, no matter how peaceable his inclinations, was compelled to carry arms habitually for self-defence, for the Apaches were constantly raiding outside the towns, and white outlaws inside. And with any class of men who constantly carry arms, it always falls out that a weapon is the arbiter of even those minor personal differences which in the older and more effete civilization of the East are settled with fists or in a petty court.
The prevailing local contempt for any man who was too timid to "put up a gun fight" when the etiquette of a situation demanded it, was expressed locally in the phrase that one "could take a corncob and a lightning bug and make him run himself to death trying to get away." It is clearly unnecessary to explain why the few men of this sort in the community did not occupy positions of any particular prominence. Their opinions did not seem to carry as much weight as those of other gentlemen who were known to be notably quick to draw and shoot.
I even recall many instances where the pistol entered into the pastimes of the community. One instance will stand telling:
A game of poker (rather a stiff one) had been going on for about a fortnight in the Red Light Saloon. The same group of men, five or six old friends, made up the game every day. All had varying success but one, who lost every day. And, come to think of it, his luck varied too, for some days he lost more than others. While he did not say much about his losings, it was observed that temper was not improving.
This sort of thing went on for thirteen days. The thirteenth day the loser happened to come in a little late, after the game was started. It also happened that on this particular day one of the players had brought in a friend, a stranger in the town, to join the game, When the loser came in, therefore, he was introduced to the stranger and sat down. A hand was dealt him. He started to play it, stopped, rapped on the table attention, and said:
"Boys, I want to make a personal explanation to this yere stranger. Stranger, this yere game is sure a tight wad for a smoothbore. I'm loser in it, an' a heavy one, for exactly thirteen days, and these boys all understand that the first son of a gun I find I can beat, I'm going to take a six-shooter an' make him play with me a week. Now, if you has no objections to my rules, you can draw cards."
Luckily for the stranger, perhaps, the thirteenth was as bad for the loser as its predecessors.
Outside the towns there were only three occupations in Grant County in those years, cattle ranching, mining and fighting Apaches, all of a sort to attract and hold none but the sturdiest types of real manhood, men inured to danger and reckless of it. In the early eighties no faint-heart came to Grant County unless he blundered in—and any such were soon burning the shortest trail out. These men were never better described in a line than when, years ago, at a banquet of California Forty-niners, Joaquin Miller, the poet of the Sierras, speaking of the splendid types the men of forty-nine represented, said:
"The cowards never started, and all the weak died on the road!"
Within the towns, also, there were only three occupations: first, supplying the cowmen and miners whatever they needed, merchandise wet and dry, law mundane and spiritual, for although neither court nor churches were working overtime, they were available for the few who had any use for them; second, gambling, at monte, poker, or faro; and, third, figuring how to slip through the next twenty-four hours without getting a heavier load of lead in one's system than could be conveniently carried, or how to stay happily half shot and yet avoid coming home on a shutter, unhappily shot, or, having an active enemy on hand, how best to "get" him.
Thus, while plainly the occupations of Grant County folk were somewhat limited in variety, in the matter of interest and excitement their games were wide open and the roof off.
Nor did all the perils to life in Grant County lurk within the burnished grooves of a gun barrel, according to certain local points of view, for always it is the most unusual that most alarms, as when one of my cowboys "allowed he'd go to town for a week," and was back on the ranch the evening of the second day. Asked why he was back so soon, he replied:
"Well, fellers, one o' them big depot water tanks burnt plumb up this mawnin', an' reckonin' whar that'd happen a feller might ketch fire anywhere in them little old town trails, I jes' nachally pulled my freight for camp!"
But a cowboy is the subject of this story—Kit Joy. His genus, and striking types of the genus, have been cleverly described, especially by Lewis and by Adams (some day I hope to meet Andy) that I need say little of it here. Still, one of the cowboy's most notable and most admirable traits has not been emphasized so much as it deserves: I mean his downright reverence and respect for womanhood. No real cowboy ever wilfully insulted any woman, or lost a chance to resent any insult offered by another. Indeed, it was an article of the cowboy creed never broken, and all well knew it. So it happened that when one day a cowboy, in a crowded car of a train held up by bandits, was appealed to by an Eastern lady in the next seat,—
"Heavens! I have four hundred dollars in my purse which I cannot afford to lose; please, sir, tell me how I can hide it."
Instantly came the answer:
"Shucks! miss, stick it in yer sock; them fellers has nerve enough to hold up a train an' kill any feller that puts up a fight, but nary one o' them has nerve enough to go into a woman's sock after her bank roll!"
Kit Joy was a cowboy working on the X ranch on the Gila. He was a youngster little over twenty. It was said of him that he had left behind him in Texas more or less history not best written in black ink, but whether this was true or not I do not know. Certain it is that he was a reckless dare-devil, always foremost in the little amenities cowboys loved to indulge in when they came to town such as shooting out the lights in saloons and generally "shelling up the settlement,"—which meant taking a friendly shot at about everything that showed up on the streets. Nevertheless, Kit in the main was thoroughly good-natured and amiable.
Early in his career in Silver City it was observed that perhaps his most distinguishing trait was curiosity. Ultimately his curiosity got him into trouble, as it does most people who indulge it. His first display of curiosity in Silver was a very great surprise, even to those who knew him best. It was also a disappointment.
A tenderfoot, newly arrived, appeared on the streets one day in knickerbockers and stockings. Kit was in town and was observed watching the tenderfoot. To the average cowboy a silk top hat was like a red flag to a bull, so much like it in fact that the hat was usually lucky to escape with less than half a dozen holes through it. But here in these knee-breeches and stockings was something much more bizarre and exasperating than a top hat, from a cowboy's point of view. The effect on Kit was therefore closely watched by the bystanders.
No one fancied for a moment that Kit would do less than undertake to teach the tenderfoot "the cowboy's hornpipe," not a particularly graceful but a very quick step, which is danced most artistically when a bystander is shooting at the dancer's toes. Indeed, the ball was expected to open early. To every one's surprise and disappointment, it did not. Instead, Kit dropped in behind the tenderfoot and began to follow him about town—followed him for at least an hour. Every one thought he was studying up some more unique penalty for the tenderfoot. But they were wrong, all wrong.
As a matter of fact. Kit was so far consumed with curiosity that he forgot everything else, forgot even to be angry. At last, when he could stand it no longer, he walked up to the tenderfoot, detained him gently by the sleeve and asked in a tone of real sympathy and concern: "Say, mistah! 'Fo' God, won't yo' mah let yo' wear long pants?"
Naturally the tenderfoot's indignation was aroused and expressed, but Kit's sympathies for a man condemned to such a juvenile costume were so far stirred that he took no notice of it.
Kit was a typical cowboy, industrious, faithful, uncomplaining, of the good old Southern Texas breed. In the saddle from daylight till dark, riding completely down to the last jump in them two or three horses a day, it never occurred to him even to growl when a stormy night, with thunder and lightning, prolonged his customary three-hour's turn at night guard round the herd to an all-night's vigil. He took it as a matter of course. And his rope and running iron were ever ready, and his weather eye alert for a chance to catch and decorate with the X brand any stray cattle that ventured within his range. This was a peculiar phase of cowboy character. While not himself profiting a penny by these inroads on neighboring herds, he was never quite so happy as when he had added another maverick to the herd bearing his employer's brand, an increase always obtained at the expense of some of the neighbors.
One night on the Spring round-up, the day's work finished, supper eaten, the night horses caught and saddled, the herd in hand driven into a close circle and bedded down for the night in a little glade in the hills, Kit was standing first relief. The day's drive had been a heavy one, the herd was well grazed and watered in the late afternoon, the night was fine; and so the twelve hundred or fifteen hundred cattle in the herd were lying down quietly, giving no trouble to the night herders. Kit, therefore, was jogging slowly round the herd, softly jingling his spurs and humming some rude love song of the sultry sort cowboys never tire of repeating. The stillness of the night superinduced reflection. With naught to interrupt it, Kit's curiosity ran farther afield than usual.