hard times—health restored—rabbit-catching—hunting in iowa—a gentleman tramp—the hobo business—free travelling.
it was certainly a hard struggle which ended in my breakdown in chicago and going to iowa, but i have never regretted going through it. i got small helps—first and last $150—and to be sure they came at opportune times. for instance, one of the remittances came just after the incident i mentioned about the penny saving-bank. we never starved, but i have eaten free lunches once in a while—that is, a good lunch you can get in most saloons, with a glass of beer, which you purchase for 5 cents.
i have borne these things in mind since i became an employer, and i can feel for poor fellows who are clamouring for work; for man must eat, and, if he is willing to work, he will have work, or some one will suffer. i have really once or twice had the thought flash through my mind to take my pistol and hold up the first man i met, if things got any worse than they were at the time. however, god has been very 65good to me, and i have always pulled through when things looked their blackest. it is in moments like this that one thinks of one’s family, and would die rather than bring disgrace on them. how any man with experience such as i have had could deny the existence of a god is more than i can understand, and yet lots of them pretend to do so.
my wife’s uncle had a farm a couple of miles from iowa city; he had also a vineyard. the family consisted of himself, wife, and five children, all grown up. most of their grapes they made into wine, of which they kept a liberal supply for home consumption, and the old man believed it to be a cure for everything. the first thing when we drove up to the door, he was there to welcome us with a jug of wine and some glasses. for the first month i was there it used to be, every couple of hours, “you are looking pale or tired; you must have a glass of wine,” and, willy-nilly, i had to down a tumblerful, as he did not believe in wineglasses. i drank more wine in the three months we stayed at his house than i have ever drunk before or since in my life. under this treatment, plenty of good food, and no worry, i was strong as a mule in no time. the boys were all great hunters, and, as work is very slack in wintertime on a farm, they had plenty of time to indulge 66themselves. at first i used to walk out about a mile and then go slowly home, but it was not long before i could carry my gun and keep up my end with any of them over ten or fifteen miles of heavy walking in the snow. my wife, too, bloomed out (she was much pulled down with looking after me), having nothing to do but eat and sleep and amuse herself. here i was initiated into the method of catching a rabbit alive in the snow. in the winter, after a rabbit has fed, he hunts up a nice place to keep warm and take his siesta. his method is as follows: after reaching the neighbourhood where he wishes to camp, he will stop in his tracks, crouch, and take a prodigious leap off to one side or the other; this he will continue till he has made eight or ten such jumps and reaches the place he had in his mind, when he will burrow a hole in the snow parallel with the surface and only about a foot underneath it, coil up, and go to sleep. this jumping business is to throw any coyote or fox off the track, and makes it a hard job even for a man to track him. we would come to one of these tracks, follow it, and, when we came to the jumping-off place, look carefully for the place he landed, and so on to his hole. now if the hole was very long and the snow loose, you generally had to get your rabbit with a gun as he bolted; but if there was a slight 67crust to the snow, and the hole fairly short, you quietly inserted your hand in the hole. then with a rush you followed up the hole with your hand and arm, and you had the rabbit by the hind-legs before he could kick his way out. i have seen the boys catch half-a-dozen rabbits in succession in this way, and even got pretty good at it myself. it is quite exciting, and should you miss him, you still have a chance with your gun.
the hunting of small game round iowa was very good—quail, rabbit, squirrels (red and black), and duck in the fall of the year. there was also excellent fishing to be had in the river, and splendid skating in the winter. we also had some luck with pole-cats, or skunks, as they are called, but skinning a skunk is worth all one gets for the hide. my uncle-in-law had a very fine colt, which had thrown all his boys, and when they found out i had broken horses on a ranch, they asked me to break him. i took him out into the deep snow, saddled and mounted him against his protests, but he could not do much in the way of bucking on account of the snow. after i had galloped him a mile or two through the drifts, he was as gentle as a cat, and i rode him back to the house. when i arrived, the boys were outside waiting for me; and to show them how quiet he was, i threw one leg over 68the horn of the saddle and joked them a little about their horsemanship. this was more than one of the boys could stand, so he threw a snowball at the horse from behind, which hit him on the inside of the flank. how i got my leg back into position i don’t know, for things were lively for a minute; but i managed to stick to him, though i wrenched my leg pretty severely, so as to stop my hunting for a few days.
it was here i met my first genuine hobo (tramp) in a social way, though i have met a few of the same breed since. he was a young man about twenty-three years of age, the only son of a wealthy widow, who loved the road for the road’s sake, though he would periodically come home for a breath of civilisation; and it was because of this i happened to meet him. his mother idolised him, and would have supplied him with all the money he needed to travel as a gentleman and see the world. but, as he used to tell me, it was such a relief to take off a white collar and dress like a tramp, besides the excitement and danger of the life. the only intimation his mother would get would be a note left on his pillow. he would walk down to the railroad water-tank some night dressed in his old clothes, and ride the truss-rods, or coupler, of the first freight which stopped for water, out of town to wherever it might happen to take him. 69for he told me he never planned his route beforehand. so he travelled, seeing many towns, where he stopped as fancy took him, and kept moving till his money gave out; then he went to work till he had a few dollars saved up, and then on the move again. he would write to his mother from different places, and when finally tired would head home. he had been coal-passer on the “whale-back” at the chicago fair, had herded sheep in the west, been barkeeper, and a hundred other things. he would talk hobo-talk, so that i could hardly understand a word he said; but, withal, he was as well-dressed, well-mannered, well-educated a young fellow as you will meet anywhere in the west. i met him again five years later, when he had gone broke on a tramp, and had got a job as chainman on a railroad survey in mexico.
this hobo business is not all cream, as my hobo friends have all told me. there is little fun in getting turned out of an empty box-car by an irate conductor at some water-tank twenty miles from the nearest town where you can get food; still less fun when, hanging on the ladder on the side of a box-car at night, trying to argue with a brakeman, he cuts short the argument by the simple expedient of stamping on your fingers, and you perforce have to take a wild jump off the moving train, hoping and praying that 70the landing may be soft. but in all this lies the fascination and excitement. even when all goes well, and you are carefully laid out on a plank across the truss-rods under a car, the flying gravel and sand make travelling, when rapid, uncomfortable. there is also always the danger (when you travel without knowing your destination) of running into some large terminal and being arrested by the police. still, there must be a huge fascination in the life to attract young fellows of this man’s position in life. it is not the loafing, as hoboes of this description are ready to work when they are out of funds, and do not steal for a living as some tramps will do.
it is always, of course, a point of honour with railroad men not to let a hobo travel on their train unless he is willing to pay something, and this a hobo will never do unless in the direst extremity. i once was witness of a rather amusing thing at a little wayside station in west texas. a freight pulled in while i was chatting with the station agent, and side-tracked to let the passenger train go by. when they stopped, besides the train crew three tramps got off, and when they first came in sight, the hind-brakeman and the station agent got into an argument as to where they had come from, the agent affirming that they had come in on the freight, and the brakeman sticking 71out that it was impossible, or he would have seen them, and that they must have walked. finally, they each bet some money, handing it to me, and decided to leave the matter with the tramps. when the latter came up, the brakeman asked them how they had come in, and one of them answered they “had come in on the train, and intended going out on it.” this answer, coming on top of the fact that he had lost the bet, so angered the brakeman that he started in to lick the tramp spokesman; but to our amusement and delight the tramp did him up brown. he was mad as a wet hen; and the last i saw of him, as the train pulled out, he was sitting on top of the caboose (guard’s van) threatening to kill the first tramp who got on the train. but what he had not seen, which added to our amusement, was the three tramps climb into an empty box-car before the train started.
some of these tramps are really “bad-men,” and will kill a trainman before they allow themselves to be ditched; but most of them are either like my hobo friend, or are working men out of employment and cash, moving to where work is more plentiful. most freight conductors carry these last for a small sum (contrary to railroad regulations), and i have seen twenty or thirty cotton-pickers in one empty car on 72their way to the cotton-fields. if you can convince the conductor that you are really destitute and hunting work, more likely than not he will not only carry you free, but feed you on the road as well. i have heard of this being done in many cases.
