I lay in bed a few minutes longer, spent half an hour soaking in a warm bath, scrubbed myself with a rough towel until I was tingling all over, and went to the closet for my blue shirt and Levi’s. There would be no sense in wearing my good suit down to the stockyards. I was thinking about Littleton and the roundup, and didn’t notice that the Levi’s weren’t mine until I’d stepped into them and hauled them up. They were at least four inches too big around the waist, and the bottoms of the cuffs reached only to the calves of my legs.
For a second or two my mouth went dry as ashes, then I couldn’t help laughing. Poor old Lonnie! He must have been afraid I’d smell a mouse when he failed to come back from the men’s room, and that I might catch up with him before he got his stuff out of the hotel. He’d probably never turned the light on when he came into the room, but left the door open while he snatched the first shirt and pair of Levi’s he got his hands on, then grabbed up his outfit, bedroll, and bust, and got out of there as fast as he could. There was little doubt that he’d been playing big-shot for some girls all evening, and had finally had to tell them he was broke, while all the time my britches—with seven hundred dollars in the cuffs—were lying on Shiftless’s back seat.
Small as the doubt was, it was still enough to make me uneasy. I wasn’t a bit worried for fear Lonnie had taken my Levi’s intentionally, but I was worried for fear someone else might have done it. While he took girls to a show, or into some shop to buy them presents or ice cream, he’d have left Shiftless in the street. And if he were asleep in her down at the stockyards I could be in real trouble. There were always a lot of down-and-out bums hanging around the yards, and any one of them would swipe a shirt and pair of jeans if he could get away with them. And Lonnie wouldn’t wake up if they swiped the hat off his head.
My hands weren’t too steady when I took all the money I had left—$2.85—from the pocket of my suit britches, hauled the belt out of the loops, reefed Lonnie’s Levi’s around my waist, and turned down one fold of the cuffs.
On my way out of the hotel I stopped at the desk and left word that Lonnie should wait for me if he came in while I was away. Then, after I’d caught a streetcar for the stockyards, I knew that stopping had been a waste of time. Even if Lonnie should discover that he’d taken the wrong pair of Levi’s he wouldn’t bring them back and exchange—not after my having scared him about Shiftless. He’d never guess there was anything in the cuffs, so he’d simply throw them away, or trade them off to some bum who had a pair that were too big for him.
All the way to the stockyards I told myself what a fool I’d been for putting the pressure on Lonnie. And I told it to myself at least fifty times more as I spent the day searching every alley around the cattle pens, and enquiring at every office and weighing shack. But nobody had seen either Lonnie or a 1914 Ford of Shiftless’s description.
By late afternoon it occurred to me that Lonnie might have got in over his head the night before. If he’d picked up a couple of girls like those chickadees he’d spied when we came out of the restaurant, they could have led him into enough trouble that he might have been arrested. He wouldn’t have any better sense than to let them take him to some gyp joint and run up a bill he wouldn’t be able to pay. The more I thought of it the more it seemed to me that it might be all for the best. If he were in jail I could find him easily enough, and the cost of bailing him out and getting him squared away would be small as compared to the amount in the cuffs of my Levi’s. Then he couldn’t raise any objection to leaving town and driving me to Littleton. By driving straight through we could still make it in plenty of time for the roundup.
I’d already spent fifty cents in calling the hotel to find out if Lonnie had shown up, and by dusk I had only a quarter left. I’d spent all the rest of my $2.85 calling every police station in both Kansas City, Missouri and Kansas, but there was no record of either Lonnie or Shiftless anywhere. I’d called the last station before I’d admit to myself that I might have misjudged Lonnie right from the time he left me in the theater; that he might actually have headed for home as soon as he pawned his outfit. If he had he’d certainly left me stranded worse than I’d thought he would be. I already owed an eight-dollar hotel bill, and if I pawned everything I had it wouldn’t leave me enough to buy a railroad ticket to Littleton.
On the way back from the stockyards I thought of something I should have thought about the first thing that morning. There was a pretty sure way of finding out whether or not Lonnie had really left Kansas City. If he had been alone when he went to the garage for Shiftless he’d probably driven straight out of town; if there had been a girl with him he’d still be hiding out somewhere in the city and I could find him.
I went right to the garage from the streetcar, and got there just as the night man came on duty. When I asked him if he remembered Lonnie’s coming in, and whether or not he was alone, he said, “Yep! He was alone—lugging a bedroll and a statue rolled up in a pair of blue jeans. Only the hair was sticking out of the end. That’s how come I remember him so well. Seemed to be in an awful hurry. Asked me the best road to St. Joe, and how to get onto it.”
“What did he do with the statue?” I asked.
“Laid it on the back seat, right careful,” he told me, “and wedged it into a corner with his bed roll, so’s it wouldn’t jiggle off and get busted. What had he, stole it some place?”
“No,” I said, “it was his. Did you notice what time it was when he came in?”
“About an hour later’n this,” he told me. “Not long after I come on duty. Why? Wasn’t the flivver his? He had the claim check for it.”
“Yes, it’s his,” I said. “He’s a friend of mine and I just wondered if he’d left town yet.” Then I got out of there before he could ask me any more questions.
It appeared certain that I’d frightened Lonnie out of Kansas City, but knowing where he was bound for made me positive that I could overtake him. I’d never before known him to leave a city with as much as a dime in his pocket, and I didn’t believe he could do it twice in a row. Without me to watch after him in St. Joe, he’d be bound to get mixed up with some chickadee and go broke. Sooner or later he’d probably mooch enough gas to go on, but it might take him two or three days, and if I got up there soon enough I’d find him around the stockyards.
From the garage I hurried right back to the hotel, picked up my saddle and outfit, and wasted an hour lugging them to half the pawnshops on Twelfth Street. Every pawnbroker knew the saddle for an off-sized Oregon half-breed the moment he saw it, and the best I could get for the whole outfit was ten dollars.
Much as I’d wanted to go back to Littleton looking prosperous, there was only one thing I could do. I had to go back to the hotel, pay my bill, and take everything else I owned to the pawnshop. I didn’t have any better luck with the rest of my stuff than I did with the saddle. The suitcase had been scuffed up a little from jouncing around in Shiftless, my suit was too small for anyone but a skinny boy to wear, my bedroll looked a bit tacky, and the pawnbroker didn’t even know what my sculpturing tools were. All I could do was to keep the best and smallest tools, and take five dollars for the rest of the stuff.
I couldn’t afford to waste time in trying to hop freights, so I went to the depot, struck up an acquaintance with some of the boomers hanging around, and asked when there would be a mail train going to St. Joseph. They said the Denver mail train pulled out at eleven o’clock and St. Joe was its first stop, but there was no use in trying to hop the blind baggage on any mail train leaving Kansas City. They all left from the main depot, and the railroad police watched the front end like bloodhounds.
One of the boys said he’d help me by making a run for the front mail car just before the train pulled out. Then, while the cops were chasing him away, I could duck underneath and climb up onto the rods. To me that sounded ten times more dangerous than riding horse falls, so I decided to buy a ticket and ride an earlier train, but all it left me was a pocketful of small change.
&nb
sp; I wanted to reach St. Joe early enough to check the stockyards, then if I didn’t find Lonnie there, make a round of every garage, movie theater, and ice-cream parlor that evening, but the only train I could get out of Kansas City was a local that stopped at every flag station along the way. The Denver mail train went zooming past us at the last flag stop, and was standing in the St. Joseph depot when we pulled in. It blocked my way to the stockyards, so I hurried up the track to go around it. I’d nearly reached the engine when a railroad cop with a revolver slung at his hip stopped me. He made me stand where I was, and watched me like a weasel until the train was pulling out so fast that I couldn’t have flipped it if I’d wanted to.
When I got over to the stockyards it was easy to see that cowhand jobs were as scarce in the North as they had been in the South. There were three or four down-and-outers sleeping around every little feed pile. None of them had saddles, and less than half of them had bedrolls. I waked a boy at each feed pile, asked him how long he’d been around the yards, and if he’d seen a Ford like Shiftless or a boy who might have been Lonnie. No one had, and I knew it must be nearly two o’clock before I’d searched out every feed pile in the yards, so I lay down by one of them for a few hours sleep.
I was out before daylight, and by eleven o’clock that night I’d been to every garage and gasoline station from one end of St. Joseph to the other. I hadn’t missed a single movie theater, ice-cream parlor, or restaurant, but no one had seen a sign of Lonnie. Even though I’d been living on peanuts and canned salmon, I was down to my last dime, so there seemed nothing I could do but to go down to the depot and try my luck at flipping the midnight mail train for Denver. If I made it I could still reach Littleton before the roundup was over, and once there I knew I wouldn’t have any trouble in finding a job.
To kill a little time I stopped at each garage I came to on my way to the depot, just in hope I might find some night man who hadn’t been on duty when I made my first round. I found the right one when I had only a couple of blocks left to go. He was an old fellow, sitting in front of a little garage on a side street.
“Yeah, I seen ’em,” he said when I’d described Lonnie and Shiftless. “Kind of a chunky set boy, wearin’ a light gray suit with a dark pencil-stripe? He was driving a 1914 Ford that looked close to new. Arizona license plate. Stopped here to gas up night before last . . . about midnight as I recollect. Lost his way comin’ into town is how he got way off over here. Asked how to get back onto the road for Sioux City.”
“Was he alone?” I asked.
“Yeah, alone,” he told me. “Nice friendly sort of a boy . . . clever too. Cowboy artist, he said he was. Had a likeness he’d made of his own self . . . spittin’ image of him.”
“Did he have it wrapped up?” I asked.
“Yeah. Yeah. In a blue shirt and pair of overhauls. He was takin’ it home . . . present for his ma. Is he kin o’ yours?”
“No,” I said, “just a friend. I’d hoped to meet him while he was in town.”
“Don’t reckon he stopped over to see nobody,” the old man said. “Told me he had nigh onto eight hundred miles to make and aimed to do it in three days. Ought to be close to home by now.”
“Did he say where his home was?” I asked.
“Not that I recollect. Didn’t ask him.”
“Hope he makes it okay,” I said. “Didn’t seem short of cash, did he?”
“Wouldn’t know about that,” he said. “Paid for his gas out of a ten, so he couldn’ta been too hard up.”
“Did he have a saddle and cowhand outfit in the flivver?”
The old man shook his head. “None that I seen. Not lest it was on the floor in back. All I seen was a bedroll and the likeness I was tellin’ you of.”
There was no sense in asking any more questions, and even less sense in trying to follow Lonnie any farther, so I headed for the railroad tracks. I didn’t go to the depot, but circled around a couple of blocks to the north, crossed the tracks, and hid in a ditch a hundred yards beyond the place where the engine of the Denver mail train had stopped the night before.
It was nearly half an hour before the train pulled in, and as I waited for it I had a chance to do some of the thinking I should have done before getting into any such fix. There was nobody to blame but myself. I’d thought I was pretty smart when I’d been sitting there in the restaurant and putting the pressure on Lonnie to sell Shiftless. If I’d stopped to do a little thinking before passing out all my wise advice, I might have known what would happen. Lonnie had been in love with old Shiftless ever since the first day he’d seen her. And his affection had never cooled for a moment, not even when we discovered how worn-out and worthless she was.
As I lay there in the ditch I could almost see him again, up there in the mountains when we’d sheered off the half-moon key. Lazy as he was about everything else, he’d started off the next morning for a new key—knowing he might have to walk eighty miles to town and back—rather than run the risk of my abandoning the old wreck. I might have known that he cared more for that old flivver than for all the girls in the world, and that his taking them to ride had been more for a chance to show off Shiftless than for any other reason.
Even though Lonnie had taken my Levi’s by mistake—seven hundred dollars and all—I hadn’t really lost anything yet. There wasn’t the slightest doubt but that he was headed straight for home—wherever that might be. Unless he ran into a lot of bad luck on the way, the money he got for his outfit would be enough to see him through. And when he got there my Levi’s would still be wrapped around the plaster bust I had made for him. He might throw britches away because they were too small for him or needed washing, but his mother wouldn’t, and she wouldn’t wash them without unfolding the cuffs. I might not know where to find Lonnie, but he knew I was going to Littleton, and that I had plenty of friends there. He might swipe chickens and mooch a little money to spend on the girls, but I knew him well enough to know that when my seven hundred was discovered he’d get it back to me, one way or another.
The more I thought of it the more I realized that I wouldn’t have lost anything, even though my seven hundred were never found and returned. Less than eight months ago the specialists at the Boston hospital had given me only six months to live, but I was still alive, and had never felt healthier in my life. In the past two months I’d gained five pounds, and Mother had written that Dr. Gaghan was very pleased with my reports.
More than that, in a time when thousands of stout, healthy men were out of jobs and having to queue up in soup lines, or to take charity in order to feed their families, I’d been making money so fast I didn’t dare let my mother find out about it. With what I’d sent to Grace the family would be safe for a year, even if I didn’t send home another dime. But there was no fear of that; I had my sculpturing tools in my hip pocket, and my eye and hand were well practiced in the way to use them.
The mail train pulled in while I was still thinking back over the months Lonnie and I had spent together. I lay flat, and didn’t even let myself think until the mail sacks had been tossed aboard, the conductor swung his lantern, and the wheels began turning. I jumped to my feet and made my run at the instant the engine headlight passed me, and I was running at full speed when I grabbed the hand bar on the front end of the first mail car and flipped aboard. There was nothing to slow me down, for all I was carrying was one dime, the little Bible that had been my father’s, and my sculpturing tools.
The railroad cop who stopped me the night before was on duty again. He must have been in the service, and couldn’t have been out long enough to forget his army training. He shouted, “Halt!” before I’d taken five steps, and I heard the whiz of a bullet before I heard the bark of his gun. The shot was either wild or intentionally high. It didn’t even hit the train, but it did make my nerves jumpy for a few seconds. The mail train had picked up full speed before I could settle down comfortably in the deep, blind doorway of the mail car, knowing that no conductor or brakie could reach
me—and that there was no danger of the train stopping till it was far, far along the rails toward Littleton and the Fourth-of-July roundup.
About the Author
RALPH OWEN MOODY was born December 16, 1898, in Rochester, N. H. His father was a farmer whose illness forced the family to move to Colorado when Ralph was eight years old. The family’s life in the new surroundings is told from the point of view of the boy himself in Little Britches.
The farm failed and the family moved into Littleton, Colorado, when Ralph was about eleven. Soon after, the elder Moody died of pneumonia, leaving Ralph as the oldest boy, the man of the family. After a year or so—described in Man of the Family and The Home Ranch—Mrs. Moody brought her three sons and three daughters back to Medford, Mass., where Ralph completed his formal education through the eighth grade of grammar school. This is the period of Mary Emma & Company. Later, Ralph joined his maternal grandfather on his farm in Maine—the period covered in The Fields of Home.
A new series of books, about Ralph’s experiences as a young man, starts with Shaking The Nickel Bush.
In spite of his farming experience, Ralph Moody was not destined to be a farmer. He abandoned the land because his wife was determined to raise her family (they have three children) in the city.
“When I was twenty-one,” he writes, “I got a diary as a birthday present and I wrote in it that I was going to work as hard as I could, save fifty thousand dollars by the time I was fifty, and then start writing.” True to his word, he did start writing on the night of his fiftieth birthday.
—Adapted from the Wilson Library Bulletin
Ralph Moody, Shaking the Nickel Bush
Thank you for reading books on BookFrom.Net Share this book with friends