A Search for America / by Frederick Philip Grove, e-Ed.2000 -- BOOK IV, CHAPTER I.
BOOK FOUR -- THE LEVEL

CHAPTER I.

I LEARN TO BEAT MY WAY.

 

B O O K     F O U R

T H E    L E V E L

              "None can be an impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground of what we should call voluntary poverty."

              -HENRY DAVID THOREAU

CHAPTER I.

I LEARN TO BEAT MY WAY.

VERYBODY, I suppose, has played with a half-grown pup. He tries to get at your fingers and to lie down under your hand. You push him away, into some corner of the room; as soon as he is on his feet again, he starts back for your hand. His pertinacity is wonderful. He will wag his tail, deprecatingly; he will perhaps feel aggrieved; he will even emit a growl or a bark; but he will start back for your hand.
I cannot help seeing myself like that. I had been on my way to Indianapolis. Why? It was the nearest centre of an industry of which I thought I had taken hold. The hand of fate had picked me up and thrown me into some far corner of the land. Hardly was I on my feet again, when I started back for my original goal.
I followed the track over which I had come. I struck a bee-line, walking the ties. This tramp back east was little of my own choosing. My wish and will had nothing to do with it. For more than a month I kept at it obstinately. Since I followed the track, I met few farms but many towns -- little outright hospitality, but many opportunities for occasional work -- "odd jobs". I had ten dollars or so in my pocket, and I held on to that. I adapted myself again.
Sometimes, when I came into these towns, I told the story of how I had been cast away in this corner of the world; sometimes I did not; but always I walked boldly in whenever I was hungry or when night fell. I picked a few houses and made a back-door canvass for work till I found it.
The chief result of my experience was the realization -- come to with something akin to amazement -- that it really

page 365

mattered very little where a person was. So long as I was content to go on with the kind of life I was leading, I could make some kind of a living anywhere. I do not think that such would have been possible in Europe.

Also, a lucky chance thrust a new trade upon me. One of the first women to whom I spoke in this way asked me whether I knew anything about pruning trees. She pointed to the cherished plantation in her front-yard with which a recent wind-storm had played havoc. It had never before struck me that I did know something about this art. I had grown up in a tree-nursery; I had never done any of the work myself; but I had looked on so often, and I had so often heard the directions given to "new hands" by a trained superintendent or foreman that I knew the underlying principles thoroughly; I felt sure I could adapt my hands to the mechanics of the trade. I undertook the work for this good lady; and when I finished, I felt it to be a success. She asked for my charge; and since I had worked at it for a day, getting my meals -- and good meals they were -- I asked for a dollar.
She exclaimed in surprise. "I should think it would be worth more than that! That is skilled labour! I should not have minded paying five dollars for what you have done."
She gave me two and a half; and I felt rich.
Henceforth, when I went into a town, I no longer asked for "work"; I went from house to house with this question, "Any trees to prune, madam?" And when I was asked for my terms, I replied, "Twenty-five cents an hour." If materials were needed -- wax, wire, cement -- I charged for them, of course, making it a point to discuss the problem in hand with the owner of the trees, so as to underline the fact that my work was that of an expert.
By this time it dawned upon me that I could also graft, bud, and transplant; and if, in this tramp, I had run across a tree-nursery, I might have been sidetracked again; my whole life might have been deflected into a different channel.

page 366

Financially speaking, I got ahead of the game and laid money by; geographically, of course, my progress was much retarded. And I believe I can say, not without taking a certain childlike pride in the fact, that for once a "peripatetic tree-pruner" was not a "tree-butcher". I even bought the best tools which the market afforded, though I limited my outfit to saw and knives; yes, I went to the extent of discontinuing the work as a regular trade when I judged the season too far advanced, though I still offered to remove dead limbs which were a menace to the welfare of trees and advised about early spring pruning.
At last I began to think of boarding a train. For the first time I questioned the wisdom of returning to the middle west. If I had thought things over more carefully when I first landed west of Springfield, and if at that time I had been in my later mood, I believe I should have gone west instead of east. But the baffled feeling of being railroaded out had prevented me from reasoning coolly. By the comparison of my behaviour with that of the pup I have already indicated that this tramp back east was undertaken by instinct; and instinct is as often wrong as it is right, for it is blind. Now I was nearing St. Louis. "Beer, Tobacco, and Boots" -- three things of which I knew nothing except as a consumer.
To the north there was the Missouri River. It was summer. Crops were ripening; the great northwestern wheatFields beckoned. But how to get there was a problem. Might I not, so I thought, look in upon those farms, upon the granary of the western world? Did I really know anything of America, even granted that I had to restrict my view of it to the view from below, to the perspective of the frog, unless I knew the life of the farm where farming is an industry, done on the large scale, not with the primitive methods of mere husbandry with which I was already more or less familiar?
Several days I spent in intense uncertainty, hesitating at every cross-roads where a trail led north. The economic problem had ceased to worry me. No longer was I going

page 367

to go hungry; no longer was I going to lie in the bush, under no other cover but that of the whirling snow unless I chose to do so.

I did not realize it at the time; but I had been a tramp; I was becoming a hobo.
The tramp is the outcast, the victim of his nature which is at variance with constituted society; he goes hungry and thirsty and without shelter by sheer necessity and in distress; he is unhappy and to be pitied; his rambles are always at random and lack purpose and plan.
The hobo is, at least in his own estimation -- and what else counts? -- the lord of the world; deliberately he follows his inclination; if constituted society is at variance with him, so much the worse for constituted society for it is the slave of convention and greed! The hobo never goes hungry and thirsty but lives on the fat of the land; he goes without shelter merely from choice, when the weather is golden and propitious; he is happy in his mode of life, strange as it may seem, and he pities you, gentle reader; work is to be found for the asking wherever he goes -- for he goes where it is to be found; he often rejects it because it is not to his liking, or because the pay or some other conditions are not up to standard; he travels, and his rambles are continent-wide, though following definite, well-laid-out channels; if he wishes to spend the winter, the inclement seasons, in softer climes and in idleness, he does so. He is often a coarser and de-sublimated Henry David Thoreau. There is poetry in the hobo's life; and strange to say, though his instincts are not those of the settled citizen, he still has or at any rate had a definite function in the nation's economy.
Of course, there are between the two types all stages of graduation, as we shall see; occasionally one finds a tramp among hobos, and a hobo among tramps, and individual hobos are often victims of very cruel conditions.
But before I go on with my story, I must once more speak of myself. For, quite independently from my haps and mishaps, I went at about this time through a series

page 368

of deductions which finally determined my life for the rest of my days.

By no trick in the chemistry of my nature, nor by any inclination or choice of my own was I a tramp or a hobo. No matter how much I had sometimes loved my rambles; no matter with how much longing I sometimes looked back with my mind's eyes on this or that scene -- in the mountains, along the river, or in the plains -- still there was in my heart, deep down, a craving for peace with society, a desire to take root somewhere and to fit myself into this scheme of life in the western hemisphere as a cog which furthered its design in some definite way. Although I saw suffering and injustice on every hand, I began to sense the great undercurrent of an evolution towards fairness, towards that which is morally right and true. Individual men and women might resist this current, might heartlessly, thoughtlessly step down on those who were less fortunate than they; they might be heartless and thoughtless as that freightcar had been heartless and thoughtless in throwing me into that corner of Missouri -- yet I began to see more and more clearly that the very essence of the nation's life was a recognition of that which is fair and just, and a firm resolve to help it along to a final victory. With these, the less obvious but, in the long-run, all-powerful tendencies I wished to side, I wished to ally myself if I permanently became an American. Money and glory in the eyes of the world seemed by this time very small things indeed. I no longer cared for them. But here was a task, and a task, so I thought, for which I was fitted. It was, after this, a question of how to go at it; and that became a problem which remained unsolved for a little while yet.
And then, one night, I had a revelation. In Europe I had dallied with the thought -- as a possible way out of my economic difficulties -- of fitting myself for what should always be an avocation but which at that time would have been no more than a profession for me; and though the thought had never led to anything beyond a dallying with

page 369

possibilities, I knew suddenly that this was my avocation and that it was to be my destiny. The thought took possession of me; it seemed to solve all my problems. I knew now that, whenever I chose to leave the life that I was leading, I could do so. I saw the gate which led out of the wilderness into the garden of civilization where I, too, might be useful in exterminating weeds and maybe even in planting the trees which would bear fruit. It is significant that I did not choose to do so at once and that I postponed it from choice. Henceforth I could plunge down into the very depths of humanity, knowing the while that I was merely rounding off what I now called my education in the "true humanities".

Thus, one day, I left the track of the railroad and struck north. In the course of a day or so I reached the Osage River and followed it, down to its confluence with the Missouri.
Now there began a strange trip along the river. I have said that, without knowing it, I had become a hobo. It is one of the distinguishing features of the hobo's travels that he neither goes alone nor necessarily afoot. I did not know that either at the time; but I was an apt learner, and I learned from a man who, by chance, was in my own position in as much as he happened to be, for the moment, alone.
I met him one evening, somewhere along the river, between St. Louis and Kansas City. When I came upon him, he was sitting on the river-bank and feeding a little fire over which he was cooking his supper.
He was not tall -- a strangely sallow-skinned man, his face framed in a brown-black beard of soft, curly hair. What struck me more than anything else was the resemblance he bore to Titian's paintings of the Lord of Christianity. His was the mild eye, his that exceeding delicacy of skin and features, that near-transparency of the flesh, his the traditional beard.
By his side, where he sat, lay a neatly-rolled bundle done up in waterproof canvas.

page 370

Altogether he reminded me of certain people whom I had seen in Russia; all of them belonged to the "Intelligentsia" of that country; and from what I knew of them -- which was not much -- most of them were fanatics, politically or religiously. Instinctively, I put him down as of Slavonic origin. There was something refined and gentle about him which attracted me. I could not help thinking of Tolstoy's Sergei Ivanovitch. I do not remember whether Tolstoy's description of this figure would have fitted him; but the picture I saw when I stepped up to his fire would have fitted the character.

"Mind if I sit down?" I asked.
He invited me by a motion of his hand, without a word.
It was a beautiful early-summer night. To the right, the river meandered over its wide flood-plain of pebbly rock -- to the left stretched the willow-clothed bank. The sun had just sunk down below the horizon; it was an hour for silence, not for talk: and his wordless gesture had something noble in it.
I had been thinking of camping out myself. I had brought a can of baked beans from the store in the last town which I had passed. I opened it and prepared to have my supper.
Meanwhile the stranger's eye appraised me, silently.
I stood up and looked out. There is about the lower valley of the Missouri a suggestion of width, of large spaces, of an infinite beyond which has always thrilled me. It did so that night.
I walked down to the edge of the water to fill my flask. But when I came back, the stranger raised his finger and shook it.
"No good," he said; and, pointing to the northwest, he added, "The city." He raised a little kettle. "Have some tea," he invited, "I have plenty."
"Thanks," I said, nearly in a whisper, for I was hushed by the wide silence of the landscape.
By the time we had eaten our supper there seemed to be a perfect understanding of mutual helpfulness between

page 371

us. Neither of us had spoken. But I had offered him some of my beans, and he had retaliated by sharing the meat which he had cooked, the boiled hock of a pig, seasoned to a nicety.

At last he unrolled his bundle, and so did I. He had a blanket and a pair of overalls in his. He was wearing a black suit which was rather neat for that of a tramp, for as such I had put him down in my ignorance. The duck in which his bundle was rolled was large enough for a man to lie on or to cover up with. This canvas he offered me when he saw that I had nothing in the line of bedding.
"You need a blanket," he said. "It's cold overnight along the river."
His English was perfect. I could not help wondering about his status. Neatness, delicacy, and refinement were features which I did not expect to find in people "on the tramp". Much against my nature I had been trying to suppress my leanings in that direction so as to fit myself better into the part I was playing. I accepted his offer of the canvas and rolled up. The quiet breathing of my companion soon showed that he was asleep.
Next morning, when I awoke, I found him up already. He had a fire going and was boiling water for tea. He smiled at me with a strangely brilliant smile which uncovered white and well-kept teeth.
"I have been away for water," he said.
I sat up. "Are you tramping it?" I asked.
His face was a study; it looked nearly pained. "Going north," he answered. "Harvest. You, too?"
"Yes," I said, "if I can get there. Where did you come from?"
"Florida," he replied and busied himself with the boiling water.
"Florida!" I thought with a gasp. "How did he manage to get there?"
He read the thought in my face; for he laughed and enquired, "Ever been up before?"
"Up?" I repeated.

page 372

"In the Dakotas".
I shook my head. "First time," I replied. And after a while I added, "How do you go? Walk it?"
He smiled again. "No," he said. "Beat it. By train."
This left me pretty much where I was, in darkness. But I did not say anything for a while. I had learned that most things come to him that waits.
We had our breakfast consisting of tea, with sugar and condensed milk, and of fresh bread. I was thinking hard, trying to find a way to make him yield me his secret. But there was no need, for, when he rolled up his bundle, he broke the silence.
"Want to come with me?" he asked. "We can be partners."
I did not then grasp the full significance of this word, nor the honour conferred upon me; but I accepted readily enough.
"If you don't mind," I said.
"Not at all," he answered.
So we both got our bundles ready, he swinging his, hanging from the handle of a stout walking-cane, over his shoulder; I breaking the stem of a willow for the same purpose. Thus we struck out to the west, away from the river, till we reached the track. There we walked the ties for a mile or two. It was on this stretch that he gave me his name.
"Call me Ivan," he said.
"My name is Phil," I reciprocated. And at last I asked, "You are Russian, are you not?"
He nodded. "Born in Russia; but I have my papers," meaning apparently that he was naturalized.
Mostly we walked in silence; there did not seem to be any need for words.
We came to a point where we saw a town ahead. To the right of the track stood the usual water-tank and a coal-bunker, a few hundred yards ahead. Ivan stopped and carefully studied the lay-out, shading his eyes with

page 373

his hand. I could not guess at his purpose, but I did not like to ask questions. I felt that I was in the hands of a competent guide and did not worry.

At last my companion, having satisfied himself as to the object of his investigations, pointed to the left, down the embankment of the track, and said, "We'll wait here. I think we'll make Kansas City to-day."
We cut slantways down the side of the road-bed, to a cluster of brush behind which we sat down for a patient wait. Ivan apparently had good store of everything; for after an hour or so he got out a little parcel and opened a can of sardines on which we lunched.
"Better have a bite now," he said; "we can't tell when we'll eat again."
Not long after that a train announced itself by a distant rumbling. At once Ivan was on the alert. He put his bundle into ship-shape and kept on the look-out. But above all he listened. The track stretched away in a curve to the southeast.
"Freight-train," he said before we saw it.
I was to find out that he could distinguish the sounds which trains make at great distances.
Then he nodded across the track where, a hundred yards to the northwest, the water-tank loomed.
"They'll stop for water and coal," he said. "We'll board a car."
The train appeared around the curve in the distance. Its rumbling grew louder. The side of the roadbed began to quiver as if in anticipation; and at last I watched the rails on the track, as slowly they began to heave and to sink when the engine approached. Ivan kept carefully out of sight, under the cover of the willows; and whatever he did, I did, too. No words were exchanged; there was tension in the very air. And slowly, with slackening speed, the heavy cars rolled by overhead. They were mostly box-cars with their doors closed and sealed; but in their rear followed flat-cars piled high with timbers. Those Ivan watched.

page 374

The train came to with a sudden roar of clashes and screaming buffers. The flat-cars were only a few steps to our right. But Ivan did not move as yet; and I watched him closely in order to do as he did. I should have hated to make a mistake. He gave no explanations, but the thing explained itself when I saw the legs of one or two members of the train-crew running up from the caboose on the other side of the train.
They had hardly passed opposite our hiding-place when Ivan nudged me. We ran. Ivan had already picked the car he wanted; and with extraordinary agility he boarded it by jumping on the coupler and climbing on to the timbers, flattening himself, so as not to be visible above the box-cars in front. I followed his example, but made the mistake of choosing the far side of the timber pile.
Then I heard Ivan's voice. "Come to this side," he said. "The station is on your side, ahead. Climb down again, the way you came, and come over here."
I did as directed.
"Lie down," he said when I joined him, "till we are past the station. Afterward we can sit up and be comfortable. "

I flattened myself between the timbers.
He spoke again. "It does not matter much if they do find us. But it will cost us a dollar. So long as nobody sees us, it's free."
I do not think I shall ever forget the exhilaration of that train-ride. To the right we had glimpses of the river; to the left we looked out upon farms and wooded hills. It was dusty, it is true; the engine seemed to throw out cinders by the shovelful; but it was the first voluntary train-ride which I had had since I had left New York; and like the first involuntary one it was free.
Shortly after the noon-hour, houses began to stand in clusters; then straggling clusters arranged themselves, unwillingly, so it seemed, into streets. We were going into the city. What with the sharp draft, the cutting cinders,

page 375

and the rough jolting, I felt dazed by that time; but I kept up a brave show.

"We'll drop off as soon as she slows down," my companion said. "We'll take a street-car into the city. You better buy yourself a blanket here, and a piece of oil-cloth to wrap it in. That's cheaper than duck."
"You are the doctor," I thought, rather exulting in this new lore of the road. What I said was, "Do we stay in the city overnight?"
"No," he answered, "I want to get out as soon as we can. We are behind the harvest as it is."
So the next time the train slowed down we climbed off to the coupling-gear between the cars; and there we waited till my companion thought the moment propitious to drop to the ground and to dive out to the side.
Then we quietly started to walk to the west, crossing the maze of tracks, and emerged in a dingy street beyond the round-houses. Ivan seemed to be perfectly familiar with the surroundings. We turned a few corners and came to a street with the double tracks of a street-car line. We waited and boarded a car.
In spite of my former cosmopolitan life I was awed by the city traffic and the city manners of the people. I felt like a prodigal son.
At the large and new Central Station we got off our car. My companion led the way to the waiting-room where he immediately began to study a time-table. When he joined me again, after a few minutes, he said, "We'll go out to-night. We may go as far as Omaha. I'll see."
"But," I objected, "I don't know whether I shall have enough money to pay my fare."
He smiled. "Don't need any money," he said. "Just wait. I want to wash."
It was about three in the afternoon.
After a thorough cleaning-up we left the station and went to a big department-store where I, on Ivan's advice, invested two dollars in a blanket and a few cents in a piece of oil-cloth.

page 376

"They charge you cut-throat prices for everything farther north," he said. "You will need it anyway. You don't want to horn in with the roughnecks."
This was the only piece of slang which I ever heard him use; it was expressive of the contempt which he meant to put into his words. Otherwise, syncopated as his language was, stripped of unnecessary words, it kept even in the most trivial every-day things to an astonishing level of clear English. "Horn in with the roughnecks" I found to mean sharing the bunks in the atrocious accommodations provided by the farmers of the northwest for their floating labour-supply.
A perverse desire to use the conveniences of the city prompted me to suggest going to a restaurant for our supper. But Ivan flouted the idea with a motion of his hand.
"No," he said, "no good. Need something solid. We'll have a hard night."
And, of course, I gave in to his better judgment.
We bought a supply of good things and returned to the waiting-hall of the station to consume part of them.
Ivan was quiet. He was resting up. His whole attitude showed that this was a serious business with him; that success or failure in any point might mean at least partial success or failure of the season's work. I did as he did. But for me it was no more than a lark -- a new experience, to be sure; yet one that was not very serious.
About nine o'clock in the evening Ivan became restless.
"Train leaves nine thirty," he said. "We'd better get ready."
In a dark corner of the waiting-hall he slung his bundle over his back, fastening it with a stout cord and pushing it under his left armpit. He also tied the bottom of his trouser-legs and the wrists of his sleeves with pieces of string. Lastly he pulled his cap securely down on his head. I imitated him in everything; and when we were ready, we left the station, lighting a cigarette as we did so.
For a while we walked briskly along, turning corners

page 377

and following glaringly lighted streets. Then we came into darker quarters along the river front; and Ivan's movements became more furtive. We passed under the arch of one of the bridges. It was very dark here, the bridge being lighted only by the red and green signal lights of the railroad. When we came out on the other side of the structure, Ivan stopped. I was now a prey to intense excitement. My heart pounded, and I had a lump in my throat. Instinctively I felt that there was adventure ahead, and that it would be a test of nerve and staying-power. Even Ivan, the mild and delicate one, seemed tense.

He started to climb up along one of the spans of the bridge, working with hands as well as feet. I followed. Several times we had to pull ourselves up by our hands alone, performing athletic feats of no mean merit, with the river darkly gurgling underneath.
At last we stood on the bridge; and at once Ivan eclipsed himself in the hollow of a huge H-shaped girder.
Then he spoke. "We'll ride the rods," he said, "on the flyer. If we are in luck, we shall go right through to Council Bluffs. We shall get there about five in the morning. The train runs slow here on the bridge. You watch me. Climb in beside me. When I get in, you walk alongside the car till I'm on the rods. I shall make room for you. I'll shout when I'm ready."
"All right," I said.
We waited another five minutes. Then there was some motion of shifting lights on the bridge in front.
"She's coming," said Ivan. "Keep out of the glare of the headlight. Don't get out of the shadows before I do. Got your gloves on?"
That moment the cruel pencil of the headlight touched the girders where we stood. The whole bridge with its sleepers and its thin bands of glittering steel seemed to leap out of the dark. Its floor began to vibrate and to swing rhythmically as the engine, belching steam and smoke in brief, angry snorts, struck rail after rail. It was

page 378

as if some giant monster were approaching, deliberately, carefully groping its way along a suspected path. The moving shadows of the girders were inky-black.

And suddenly the cloak of darkness fell over us again where we stood; the screeching and towering monster had passed us. The engineer was leaning sideways out of his cab, his eyes rigidly fixed ahead. There was an hysterical, uncanny temptation to shout at him; but I swallowed it down.
Slowly but irresistibly, baggage and mail-cars hove by. The first Pullman appeared. Ivan looked back and stepped out into the narrow aisle between the girders of the bridgespan and the shoulder-high edge of the moving cars.
"Third car," he said and began to walk slowly ahead, with me in his wake.
Suddenly all the brakes began to grind.
"Luck," said Ivan and halted. "She's going to stop."
The third car came by. Then the buffers squeaked, a rumbling noise ran through the monster; the cars seemed to rear as their connections telescoped together.
"Now, quick," said Ivan and dived behind the wheels.
"Come," he said again.
And half against my will I found myself diving in. I was just following him when the train moved with a jerk.
"Watch your feet," shouted Ivan. "Swing up."
The next moment I lay across the rods.* There were four of them. Like Ivan I was on my belly, holding on to the rods with my hands.
"Hook your feet under," shouted Ivan when we were getting under way, "we'll soon be off the bridge; then she'll turn loose."
Once more he shouted. "When she's going, hold your face down on your arms."
The rails were beginning to pound. The rods were by no means rigid. It felt oddly as if they were living things,

*This description was written many years ago, shortly, after a similar experience. To-day I search in vain for the rods; apparently there have been changes in construction.

page 379

trying to throw off their riders by bucking. I looked over at Ivan whom I could just see as a blacker bulk against the dark background.

Then it felt as if a restraining hand were withdrawn, or as if we were starting to go downhill.
Faster and faster came the blows of the rail-endings, like hammer-blows on the steel of the wheels. The air began to roar past us; and, as we were picking up speed, first a fine, cutting dust, then sand, and finally gravel was pelted up against my body, caught in the roaring whirl of the wildly rushing air.
I laughed, somewhat hysterically, and buried my face in my arms.
At last we were thundering along. The whole universe seemed to be one deafening bedlam of noise let loose. We swayed and swung as we were holding on for dear life, our hands getting sore from the pelting gravel, our eyes closed tight, our faces pressed down on our sleeves. The track seemed to be a succession of hills and valleys; the rods, a mere vibrating mass of whipping cords; our arms, springs now stretched to the snapping-point, now compressed beyond the power of re-expanding when the roadbed rose and pressed the steel-truck upward. I felt dazed and frightened beyond anything I had ever gone through; and I should surely have got out and relinquished the attempt had it been possible to do so. But as I thought of it, I saw myself lying on the sleepers, a mangled mass of bloody flesh and crushed bones. I did not believe that I could hold on for an hour. Long before that, I thought, my fingers would be numb; they would let go; and if they did, that would inevitably be the end. Again, I thought of Ivan if he could do it, I should be able to. And I clutched the rods with the effort of desperation.
Yet it seemed madness incarnate. I thought of the delightful tramp it might have been -- in the green river-valley with its flood-plain, its sandbanks, and its shady trees. And again I thought how slow it would have been -- what a snail's pace as compared with this tearing speed.

page 380

But then, that was life -- this was Purgatory at the very least, even if there was an escape, which as yet I could not know. And still, in dumb determination I held on, for hours and hours, so it seemed to me.

Then, after half an eternity of titanic effort and ceaseless sameness, broken only by the scream of the whistle which seemed oddly dull and ineffectual in this roaring noise, the train slowed down. Imperceptibly at first; then with an ever-increasing screeching of brakes close to my ear. The pelting against sore finger-knuckles and body became less violent; the knocking of the rods against knees and thighs less breathlessly frequent and inexorable; the rush of the air roaring past my face less like an irresistible blast.
We were rounding a huge curve; lights flashed by, seen through tightly closed lids; my arms and muscles relaxed.
Slower and slower we went; and at last I heard Ivan shout. I opened my eyes -- the lids seemed stiff with imbedded sand -- and looked across at him. He seemed ghastly pale in the flashes of light. His face was coated with dirt; his clothes, in their creases, stuffed with thick welts of sand and fine gravel.
"St. Joseph," he shouted. "Only stop. We've got to get off. They look the wheels over. Let's drop at the water-tank."
"All right," I shouted back.
When we got out, I could hardly trust my legs. I swayed as the voyageur sways who for the first time has weathered a storm at sea.
Ivan laughed. "Want to quit?" he asked.
"No," I said; I felt ashamed to own up.
We crossed several tracks to the left, away from the train, avoiding the lights. On the track next to the one on which our train had been running, several loose cars stood strung out in a casual-looking, disconnected line. As soon as we came up, abreast with them, we crossed back into their shadow and started to run.
The station with its glittering lights was just ahead.

page 381

Our train was moving up, now. I bent down and looked along under the cars at the crowded platform. St. Joseph, I thought -- we had not made more than fifty miles yet. I figured it must be about two hundred and fifty to Omaha.

"You hold on too tight," said Ivan. "When the car throws you to the right, she'll throw you back to the left. Let yourself go more. I'm not tired."
He jumped on to the coupling-gear of one of the idle cars and motioned me to do the same. We were opposite the station. If it had not been for the intervening glare of the sheaf of light from the engine of our train, we should have been in plain view of the waiting people. As it was, we saw them, but they did not see us. Then the engine passed us, and we were screened by the train. It stopped, and people began to run along on the far side, hurrying down to the day-coaches at the end of the train.
Again I felt nervous; we sat and waited. A labourer with oil-can and hammer ran along on our side, reaching in here and there with the spout of the oil-can and tapping the wheels with his hammer. Still we waited.
Then Ivan nudged me, jumped to the ground, and ran. I followed; and when we had climbed in again, I noticed that our relative position was reversed this time.
"All aboard!"
We saw the legs of the brake-man who stood quite close by. There was a general shuffling; the bell rang out; and with a jerk we started to glide along. I could plainly look out on the station-platform where still a few people lingered as we slipped by. A high building intervened. There was no light except from little, one-eyed lanterns hung to posts here and there. And at last, as we were getting under way again, streets flashed by in their nightly aspect; we closed and buried our eyes again.
Once more Inferno started; and this time it lasted for a matter of five or six hours. I heeded my companion's advice and strained my muscles less than I had done before; but, when at last, in the cool dawn of a summer day, we dropped off our rods, at the weirdly benighted-looking

page 382

grey station of Council Bluffs, I was hardly able to hold myself on my feet.

I staggered along like one drunk; and I was more than glad when Ivan threw his bundle down on the riverbank, so we could rest.
But we did not stay long. Ivan left me as soon as he thought the bakeshops were open. He wanted fresh bread for breakfast.
In half an hour or so he came back; we picked our things up and started on a short tramp in the river valley.
As soon as we were out of sight of any buildings -- on the opposite shore, Omaha was still in plain view -- we stopped again and made camp. We could not help laughing at each other; we were so black and dirty. But we had a bath in the river; and then we had breakfast.
I praised Ivan because he had thought of fresh bread; he laughed pleasantly, showing his snow-white teeth which were brightly set off by his soft, dark beard.
"I feel as if I could sleep for twenty-four hours," I said.
"Do," he answered; and we laughed "We shall wait till to-morrow morning anyway," said Ivan. "I don't suppose you want another night-ride again."
"Not just yet," I replied. "Later on. Since I've lived through this one, I won't mind any longer."
"Quick trip," said Ivan.
"Quick," I agreed, "but rough."
I did not know what our final destination might be; nor did Ivan. For the time being, I understood, he was trying to get to a certain town in South Dakota where there was going to be a meeting of some kind.
Next day we made Sioux City on a freight train; then we left the Missouri River, going straight north. We began to pass miles upon miles of waving wheatFields. Barley was ripe; whirring binders were cutting the crop. I suggested stopping and hunting for work. But Ivan shook his head.
"Small farms," he said, "poor grub. Too many layoffs

page 383

going from place to place. They pay more, too, up north; their season is shorter. Sometimes they will pay as much for haying as these fellows pay for stooking. We shall see at the camp."

He often alluded to "the camp" now, and one day I asked him about it.
"Oh," he said, "the hobos from all over the country come together there. We can find out what the wages are and where the crops are best. No use losing time in beating about."
I had, so far, only the vaguest idea of how things worked out in this great garnering of America's wheat-crop.
North of Sioux City our progress became slower. We had left the district of south-eastern Nebraska and Missouri where the net of railroads overlying the country was narrow-meshed and where traffic was heavy, fed as it was by great industries. Trains were not always forthcoming when we needed them; often we had to wait for many hours. But we went to the stations now when waiting and did not hide any longer; and when they came, we were not the only passengers who were travelling unbeknown though not unsuspected by their crews. Once or twice one of these "blind" passengers was caught; then, as a rule, a search was made by the train-crew over all the cars, and every one of the "bums" who was found was laid under contribution. Once, when the conductor was "grouchy" or conscientiously honest, every one of us was chased off a few who were not quick enough to take the hint being badly rough-handled before they at last escaped; we were a motley crowd as we stood there along the embankment, roundly cursing the crew for inhuman fools and destitute of common decency!
I cannot say but that, once I was hardened to this way of travelling, I enjoyed it hugely; especially the righteous indignation of the ever-increasing crowd when something was done which did not seem "fair" to them.
I remember one case with more than common distinctness.

page 384

All the passenger-trains along this line were day-trains. Ivan and I gave up waiting for them. It was not advisable to travel the rods in daylight; you cannot hide.
Ivan and I were sitting -- in a crowd of fifty or sixty others -- on the platform of a small way-station, waiting for a freight-train to turn up.
A passenger-train was due and appeared, not more than an hour or two behind schedule-time -- so much was usual on those lines.
When the train pulled out, we saw a dozen rod-riders in broad daylight before us; and like one man the whole assembly stood up and cheered them for their audacity.
The conductor had swung up on the step of the last car. When he heard our cheering and saw us wave our hands at the luckless fellows, he bent over to see what was wrong.
"Well, I'll be jiggered!" he exclaimed and jumped into the car to pull the signal line.
A few minutes later the train came to a stop; the rod-riders had to decamp in a hurry.
The train went merrily along without them; but they were more than mad; and though they were in a hopeless minority, they offered to fight the whole crowd of us, getting no satisfaction, however, beyond being laughed at.
I proposed in all seriousness to take up a collection for them and to pay their fare on the next accommodation; but they took that as an aggravation, thinking I was poking fun at them.
When at last, coming from nowhere, so it seemed to me, the news spread that a freight-train was approaching, the crowd which had been thronging the platform broke up. A pair here, a group of three there would walk along the track ahead. Ivan and I, too, picked up our bundles and started out. There was a grain-elevator not far from the little station-building. Ivan rounded its corner; we stood there, waiting.
Several times another group thought our post a likely place; but when they saw that it was occupied, they would turn and walk on. One member of such a group, on

page 385

catching sight of us, remarked contemptuously, "There seem to be bums around everywhere!"

Ivan and I looked at each other and burst out laughing.
It is characteristic of this unstable flood of floating labour that there is a great feeling of solidarity when they are together in a crowd. Then they are the hobos, as opposed to the great, contemptible mass of the respectable citizens; I should not wonder if I heard that nowadays they had formed a "hobos' union". But when we met them singly or in smaller groups, that feeling of solidarity was non-existent. Every individual feels himself better than his neighbour; his neighbour is a "bum"; he himself is the Lord of Creation. There are exceptions, of course, but they are few. Rarely has one of them, as Ivan did, simply and as a matter of course accepted me on a dead level. Those who did stand out in my memory as my friends.
More and more numerous did these crowds become. Oftener and oftener we saw more or less elaborate camping outfits along the track, at the outskirts of towns. Sometimes there would be camps for two or three, sometimes for a dozen, sometimes for a hundred men or more. There were men from all the corners of the world; Swedes, a decent lot, but clannish and none too articulate in English; Russians in number galore, sometimes not very clean; Germans who knew the language but mangled it; Austrians, Croatians, Armenians; but very few Latins. Slavs and Teutons -- in the wider sense which includes all the minor populations of northern Europe -- formed the mass of the foreign element; but Americans and Anglo-Saxons were about as numerous as all the other groups together.
Gradually there formed in my mind the impression of a vast exodus, or rather a vast confluence of numberless multitudes engaged in a pilgrimage to some Mecca.

Previous Chapter Contents Next Chapter