The Trail of 98 (4 page)

I was gaining in experience, and as I hurried down the canyon and the morning
burgeoned like a rose, my spirits mounted invincibly. It was the joy of the open
road and the care-free heart. Like some hideous nightmare was the memory of the
tunnel and the gravel pit. The bright blood in me rejoiced; my muscles tensed
with pride in their toughness; I gazed insolently at the world.

So, as I made speed to get the sooner to the orange groves, I almost set heel
on a large blue envelope which lay face up on the trail. I examined it and,
finding it contained plans and specifications of the work we had been at, I put
it in my pocket.

Presently came a rider, who reined up by me.

"Say, young man, you haven't seen a blue envelope, have you?"

Something in the man's manner aroused in me instant resentment. I was the
toiler in mud-stiffened overalls, he arrogant and supercilious in broadcloth and
linen.

"No," I said sourly, and, going on my way, heard him clattering up the
canyon.

It was about evening when I came onto a fine large plain. Behind me was the
canyon, gloomy like the lair of some evil beast, while before me the sun was
setting, and made the valley like a sea of golden
glaze. I stood, knight-errant-wise, on the verge of
one of those enchanted lands of precious memory, seeking the princess of my
dreams; but all I saw was a man coming up the trail. He was reeling homeward,
with under one arm a live turkey, and swinging from the other a demijohn of
claret.

He would have me drink. He represented the Christmas spirit, and his accent
was Scotch, so I up-tilted his demijohn gladly enough. Then, for he was very
merry, he would have it that we sing "Auld Lang Syne." So there, on the heath,
in the golden dance of the light, we linked our hands and lifted our voices like
two daft folk. Yet, for that it was Christmas Eve, it seemed not to be so mad
after all.

There was my first orange grove. I ran to it eagerly, and pulled four of the
largest fruit I could see. They were green-like of rind and bitter sour, but I
heeded not, eating the last before I was satisfied. Then I went on my way.

As I entered the town my spirits fell. I remembered I was quite without money
and had not yet learned to be gracefully penniless. However, I bethought me of
the time-cheque, and entering a saloon asked the proprietor if he would cash it.
He was a German of jovial face that seemed to say: "Welcome, my friend," and
cold, beady eyes that queried: "How much can I get of your wad?" It was his eyes
I noticed.

"No, I don'd touch dot. I haf before been schvindled. Himmel, no! You take
him avay."

I sank into a chair. Catching a glimpse of my
face in a bar mirror, I wondered if that
hollow-cheeked, weary-looking lad was I. The place was crowded with revellers of
the Christmastide, and geese were being diced for. There were three that
pattered over the floor, while in the corner the stage-driver and a red-haired
man were playing freeze-out for one of them.

I drowsed quietly. Wafts of bar-front conversation came to me. "Envelope ...
lost plans ... great delay." Suddenly I sat up, remembering the package I had
found.

"Were you looking for some lost plans?" I asked.

"Yes," said one man eagerly, "did you find them?"

"I didn't say I did, but if I could get them for you, would you cash this
time-cheque for me?"

"Sure," he says, "one good turn deserves another. Deliver the goods and I'll
cash your time-cheque."

His face was frank and jovial. I drew out the envelope and handed it over. He
hurriedly ran through the contents and saw that all were there.

"Ha! That saves a trip to 'Frisco," he said, gay with relief.

He turned to the bar and ordered a round of drinks. They all had a drink on
him, while he seemed to forget about me. I waited a little, then pressed forward
with my time-cheque.

"Oh that," said he, "I won't cash that. I was only joshing."

A feeling of bitter
anger welled up within me. I trembled like a leaf.

"You won't go back on your word?" I said.

He became flustered.

"Well, I can't do it anyway. I've got no loose cash."

What I would have said or done I know not, for I was nigh desperate; but at
this moment the stage-driver, flushed with his victory at freeze-out, snatched
the paper from my hand.

"Here, I'll discount that for you. I'll only give you five dollars for it,
though."

It called for fourteen, but by this time I was so discouraged I gladly
accepted the five-dollar goldpiece he held out to tempt me.

Thus were my fortunes restored. It was near midnight and I asked the German
for a room. He replied that he was full up, but as I had my blankets there was a
nice dry shed at the back. Alas! it was also used by his chickens. They roosted
just over my head, and I lay on the filthy floor at the mercy of innumerable
fleas. To complete my misery the green oranges I had eaten gave me agonizing
cramps. Glad, indeed, was I when day dawned, and once more I got afoot, with my
face turned towards Los Angeles.

Los Angeles will always be written in golden letters in the archives of my
memory. Crawling, sore and sullen, from the clutch of toil, I revelled in a
lotus life of ease and idleness. There was infinite sunshine, and the quiet of a
public library through whose open windows came the fragrance of magnolias.
Living was incredibly cheap. For seventy-five cents a week I had a little sunlit
attic, and for ten cents I could dine abundantly. There was soup, fish, meat,
vegetables, salad, pudding and a bottle of wine. So reading, dreaming and
roaming the streets, I spent my days in a state of beatitude.

But even five dollars will not last for ever, and the time came when once
more the grim face of toil confronted me. I must own that I had now little
stomach for hard labour, yet I made several efforts to obtain it. However, I had
a bad manner, being both proud and shy, and one rebuff in a day always was
enough. I lacked that self-confidence that readily finds employment, and again I
found myself mixing with the spineless residuum of the employment bureau.

At last the morning came when twenty-five cents was all that remained to me
in the world. I had just been seeking a position as a dish-washer, and had been
rather sourly rejected. Sitting solitary on the bench in that dreary place, I
soliloquized:

"And so it has come to
this, that I, Athol Meldrum, of gentle birth and Highland breeding, must sue in
vain to understudy a scullion in a third-rate hash joint. I am, indeed, fallen.
What mad folly is this that sets me lower than a menial? Here I might be snug in
the Northwest raising my own fat sheep. A letter home would bring me instant
help. Yet what would it mean? To own defeat; to lose my self-esteem; to call
myself a failure. No, I won't. Come what may, I will play the game."

At that moment the clerk wrote:

"
Man Wanted to Carry Banner.
"

"How much do you want for that job?" I asked.

"Oh, two bits will hold you," he said carelessly.

"Any experience required?" I asked again.

"No, I guess even you'll do for that," he answered cuttingly.

So I parted with my last quarter and was sent to a Sheeny store in Broadway.
Here I was given a vociferous banner announcing:

"Great retiring sale," and so forth.

With this hoisted I sallied forth, at first very conscious and not a little
ashamed. Yet by and by this feeling wore off, and I wandered up and down with no
sense of my employment, which, after all, was one adapted to philosophic
thought. I might have gone through the day in this blissful coma of indifference
had not a casual glance at my banner thrilled me with
horror. There it was in hideous, naked
letters of red:

"
Retireing Sale.
"

I reeled under the shock. I did not mind packing a banner, but a misspelt
one....

I hurried back to the store, resolved to throw up my position. Luckily the
day was well advanced, and as I had served my purpose I was given a silver
dollar.

On this dollar I lived for a month. Not every one has done that, yet it is
easy to do. This is how I managed.

In the first place I told the old lady who rented me my room that I could not
pay her until I got work, and I gave her my blankets as security. There remained
only the problem of food. This I solved by buying every day or so five cents'
worth of stale bread, which I ate in my room, washing it down with pure spring
water. A little imagination and lo! my bread was beef, my water wine. Thus
breakfast and dinner. For supper there was the Pacific Gospel Hall, where we
gathered nightly one hundred strong, bawled hymns, listened to sundry good
people and presently were given mugs of coffee and chunks of bread. How good the
fragrant coffee tasted and how sweet the fresh bread!

At the end of the third week I got work as an orange-picker. It was a matter
of swinging long ladders into fruit-flaunting trees, of sunshiny days and
fluttering leaves, of golden branches plundered, and
boxes filled from sagging sacks. There is no more
ideal occupation. I revelled in it. The others were Mexicans; I was "El Gringo."
But on an average I only made fifty cents a day. On one day, when the fruit was
unusually large, I made seventy cents.

Possibly I would have gone on, contentedly enough, perched on a ladder, high
up in the sunlit sway of treetops, had not the work come to an end. I had been
something of a financier on a picayune scale, and when I counted my savings and
found that I had four hundred and ninety-five cents, such a feeling of affluence
came over me that I resolved to gratify my taste for travel. Accordingly I
purchased a ticket for San Diego, and once more found myself southward
bound.

A few days in San Diego reduced my small capital to the vanishing point, yet
it was with a light heart I turned north again and took the All-Tie route for
Los Angeles. If one of the alluring conditions of a walking tour is not to be
overburdened with cash surely I fulfilled it, for I was absolutely penniless.
The Lord looks after his children, said I, and when I became too inexorably
hungry I asked for bread, emphasising my willingness to do a stunt on the
woodpile. Perhaps it was because I was young and notably a novice in vagrancy,
but people were very good to me.

The railway track skirts the ocean side for many a sonorous league. The
mile-long waves roll in majestically, as straight as if drawn with a ruler, and
crash in thunder on the sandy beach. There were glorious sunsets and weird
storms, with underhanded lightning stabs at the sky. I built little huts of
discarded railway ties, and lit camp-fires, for I was fearful of the crawling
things I saw by day. The coyote called from the hills. Uneasy rustlings came
from the sagebrush. My teeth, a-chatter with cold, kept me awake, till I cinched
a handkerchief around my chin. Yet, drenched with night-dews, half-starved and
travel-worn, I seemed to grow every day stronger and more fit. Between bondage
and vagabondage I did not hesitate to choose.

Leaving the sea, I came
to a country of grass and she-oaks very pretty to see, like an English park. I
passed horrible tule swamps, and reached a cattle land with corrals and solitary
cowboys. There was a quaint old Spanish Mission that lingers in my memory, then
once again I came into the land of the orange-groves and the irrigating ditch.
Here I fell in with two of the hobo fraternity, and we walked many miles
together. One night we slept in a refrigerator car, where I felt as if icicles
were forming on my spine. But walking was not much in their line, so next
morning they jumped a train and we separated. I was very thankful, as they did
not look over-clean, and I had a wholesome horror of "seam-squirrels."

On arriving in Los Angeles I went to the Post Office. There was a letter from
the Prodigal dated New York, and inclosing fourteen dollars, the amount he owed
me. He said:

There was no time to lose, as February was nearly over. I took a steerage
passage to San Francisco, resolving that I would mend my fortunes. It is so easy
to drift. I was already in the social slough, a hobo and an outcast. I saw that
as long as I remained
friendless and unknown nothing but degraded toil was open to
me. Surely I could climb up, but was it worth while? A snug farm in the
Northwest awaited me. I would work my way back there, and arrive decently clad.
Then none would know of my humiliation. I had been wayward and foolish, but I
had learned something.

The men who toiled, endured and suffered were kind and helpful, their masters
mean and rapacious. Everywhere was the same sordid grasping for the dollar. With
my ideals and training nothing but discouragement and defeat would be my
portion. Oh, it is so easy to drift!

I was sick of the whole business.

What with steamer fare and a few small debts to settle, I found when I landed
in San Francisco that once more I was flatly broke. I was arrestively seedy,
literally on my uppers, for owing to my long tramp my boots were barely holding
together. There was no letter for me, and perhaps it was on account of my
disappointment, perhaps on account of my extreme shabbiness, but I found I had
quite lost heart. Looking as I did, I would not ask any one for work. So I
tightened my belt and sat in Portsmouth Square, cursing myself for the many
nickels I had squandered in riotous living.

Two days later I was still drawing in my belt. All I had eaten was one meal,
which I had earned by peeling half a sack of potatoes for a restaurant. I slept
beneath the floor of an empty house out the Presidio way.