_ The Denver Limited had backed into the depot shed at Chicago, and was loading when the Philosopher came through the gate. He was going down to Zero Junction where he was serving the company in the capacity of station agent. Patsy Daly was taking the numbers of the cars, and at his elbow walked a poorly-dressed man, and the Philosopher knew in a moment that the man wanted to ride.
The Philosopher, with a cigar in his mouth, strolled up and down catching snatches of the man's talk. In a little while he had gathered that the anxious stranger's wife lay dying in Cheyenne, and that he had been tramping up and down the land for six months looking for work. If Patsy could give him a lift to Omaha he could work his way over the U. P. where he knew some of the trainmen, having worked on the Kansas Pacific out of Denver in the early days of the road. His story was so lifelike and pathetic that Patsy was beginning to look troubled. If he could help a fellow-creature up the long, hard hill of life--three or four hundred miles in a single night--without straining the capacity of the engine, he felt that he ought to do it.
Patsy had gone to the head end (the stranger standing respectfully apart) to ask the engineer to slow down at the Junction, and let the agent off. He hoped the man might go away and try a freight train, but as the conductor turned back the unfortunate traveller joined him.
Now the eyes of Patsy fell upon the face of the Philosopher, and a brilliant thought flashed through his mind. He marvelled, afterwards, that he had not thought of it sooner.
"Here, old man," said Patsy, "take this fellow's testimony, try his case, and let me have your opinion in nine minutes--it's just ten minutes to leaving time."
Now it was the Philosopher to whom the prospective widower rehearsed his tale of woe.
There was not much time, so the station agent at Zero began by offering the man a cigar, which was accepted. In the midst of his sorrowful story the man paused to observe a handsome woman, who was at that moment lifting her dainty, silken skirts to step into the sleeper. The Philosopher had his eyes fastened to the face of the man, and he thought he saw the man's mustache quiver as though it had been agitated by the passing of a smothered smile.
"Well," the man was saying, "we had been married only a year when I lost my place and started out to look for work."
By this time he had taken a small pocket knife from his somewhat ragged vest, clipped the end off the cigar neatly, put the cut end between his teeth, and the knife back into his pocket. Without pausing in his narrative (he knew he had but nine minutes) he held out a hand for a match. The Philosopher pretended not to notice the movement, which was graceful and perfectly natural. As they turned, up near the engine, the sorrowful man went into his vest again and brought up a small, silver match-box which he held carefully in his closed fist, but which snapped sharply, as the knife had done when he closed it.
"Excuse me," said the Philosopher, reaching for the match-box, "I've lost my fire."
The melancholy man made a move towards his vest, paused, changed his mind, and passed over his lighted cigar.
"Go on," said the examining judge, when he had got his cigar going again.
Now at each turn the Philosopher quickened his pace, and the man, eager to finish his sad story, walked beside him with a graceful, springy walk. The man's story was so like his own--so like the tale he had told to Patsy when the strikers had chased him into a box car--that his heart must have melted, had it not been for the fact that he was becoming more and more convinced, as the story grew upon him, that the man was lying. Now and then he said to himself in spite of himself, "This must be true," for there were tears in the man's voice, and yet there were things about him that must be explained before he could ride.
"Patsy," said the Philosopher, pausing before the conductor, "if you'll stand half the strain, I'll go buy a ticket for this man to Cheyenne."
"N' no," said the man, visibly affected by this unexpected generosity, "n' no, I can't let you do that. I should be glad of a ride that would cost you nothing and the company nothing; but I can't--I can't take your money," and he turned away, touching the cuff of his coat, first to his right and then to his left eye.
Patsy sighed, and the two men walked again. Five minutes more and the big engine would begin to crawl from the great shed, and the voyager began wondering whether he would be on board. The engineer was going round the engine for the last time. The fireman had spread his fire and was leaning leisurely on the arm-rest. The Pullman conductors, with clean cuffs and collars, were putting away their people. The black-faced porters were taking the measures of men as they entered the car. Here comes a gray-haired clergyman, carrying a heavy hand-satchel, and by his side an athletic looking commercial tourist.
One of the black porters glides forward, takes the light hand-grip, containing the travelling man's tooth-brush, nightshirt, and razor, and runs up the step with it.
Now a train arrives from the West, and the people who are going away look into the faces of the people who are coming home, who look neither to the right nor left, but straight ahead at the open gates, and in three minutes the empty cars are being backed away, to be washed and dusted, and made ready for another voyage. How sad and interesting would be the story of the life of a day coach. Beaten, bumped, battered, and banged about in the yards, trampled and spat upon by vulgar voyagers, who get on and off at flag stations, and finally, in a head-end collision, crushed between the heavy vestibuled sleepers and the mighty engine.
But sadder still is the story of a man who has been buffeted about and walked upon by the arrogant of this earth, and to such a story the Philosopher was now listening. The man was talking so rapidly that he almost balled up at times, and had to go back and begin again. At times it seemed to him that the Philosopher, to whom he was talking, was giving little or no attention to his tale; but he was. He was making up his mind.
It is amazing the amount of work that can be done in ten minutes, when all the world is working. Tons of trunks had passed in and out, the long platform had been peopled and depopulated twice since the two men began their walk, and now another train gave up its human freight to the already crowded city.
Now, as they went up and down, the Philosopher, at each turn, went a little nearer to the engine. Only three minutes remained to him in which to render his decision, which was to help the unhappy man a half-thousand miles on the way to his dying wife, or leave him sadder still because of the failure--to pine and ponder upon man's inhumanity to man.
Patsy, glancing now and then at the big clock on the station wall, searched the sad face of his friend and tried to read there the answer to the man's prayer.
It would be that the man should ride, he had no doubt, for this story was so like the story of this same man, the Philosopher, with which he had come into Patsy's life, and Patsy had resolved never to turn his back upon a man who was down on his luck.
The Philosopher's face was indecipherable. Finally when they had come to the turning point in the shadow of the mail car, he stopped, leaned against the corner of the tank and said: "I can't make you out, and you haven't made out your case."
"I don't follow you," said the man.
"No? Well suppose I say, for answer, that I'll let you go--sneak away up through the yards and lose yourself; provided you promise not to do it again."
"You talk in riddles. What is it that I am not to do again? You say you have hit the road yourself, and you ought to have sympathy for a fellow out o' luck."
"I have, and that's why I'm going to let you go. Your story is a sad one, and it has softened my heart. It's the story of my own life."
"Then how can you refuse me this favor, that will cost you nothing?"
"Hadn't you better go?"
"No, I want you to answer me."
"Well, to be frank with you, you are not a tramp. You've got money, and you had red wine with your supper, or your dinner, as you would say."
The man laughed, a soundless laugh, and tried to look sad.
"You've got a gold signet ring in your right trousers pocket."
The man worked his fingers and when the Philosopher thought he must have the ring in his hand, he caught hold of the man's wrist, jerked the hand from his pocket, and the ring rolled upon the platform. When the man cut off the end of his cigar the Philosopher had seen a white line around one of the fingers of the man's sea-browned hand. Real tramps, thought the Philosopher, don't cut off the ends of their cigars. They bite them off, and save the bite. They don't throw a half-smoked cigar away, but put it, burning if necessary, in their pocket.
"What do you mean?" demanded the man, indignantly.
"Pick up your ring."
"I have a mind to smash you."
"Do, and you can ride."
"You've got your nerve."
"You haven't. Why did you stare at that lady's feet, when she was climbing into the car?"
"That's not your business."
"It's all my business now."
"I'll report you for this."
The man started to walk past the big station master, but a strong hand was clapped to the man's breast pocket and when it came away it held a small pocket memorandum.
"See what's in that, Patsy," said the Philosopher, passing the book to the conductor, who had gone forward for the decision.
The man made a move, as if he would snatch the book, but the big hand at his throat twisted the flannel shirt, and choked him. Patsy, holding the book in the glare of his white light, read the record of a man who had been much away from home. He had, according to the book, ridden with many conductors, whose names were familiar to Patsy, and had, upon divers occasions, noticed that sometimes some people rode without paying fare. In another place Patsy learned that trainmen and other employees drank beer, or other intoxicating beverages. A case in point was a couple of brakemen on local who, after unloading a half-dozen reapers and a threshing machine at Mendota, had gone into a saloon with the shipper and killed their thirst.
While Patsy was gleaning this interesting information the man writhed and twisted, fought and fumed, but it was in vain, for the hand of the Philosopher was upon his throat.
"Let me go," gasped the man, "an' we'll call it square, an' I won't report you."
"Oh! how good of you."
"Let me go, I say, you big brute."
"I wanted to let you go a while ago, and you wouldn't have it."
The man pulled back like a horse that won't stand hitched and the button flew from his cheap flannel shirt.
"I'm a goat," said the Philosopher, stroking the man's chest with his big right hand, "if he hasn't got on silk underwear."
"Come now, you fellahs," said the man changing his tune, "let me go and you'll always have a friend at Court."
"Be quiet," said the Philosopher, "I'm going to let you go, but tell me, why did you want to do little Patsy, that everybody likes?"
"Because Mr. Paul was so cock sure I couldn't. He bet me a case of champagne that I couldn't ride on the Omaha Limited without paying fare."
"And now you lose the champagne."
"It looks that way."
"Poor tramp!"
Patsy had walked to the rear of the train, shouted "All aboard," and the cars were now slipping past the two men.
"Have you still a mind to smash me?"
"I may be a wolf but this is not my night to howl."
"Every dog has his day, eh?"
"Curse you."
"Good night," said the Philosopher, reaching for a passing car.
"Go to--" said the tramp, and the train faded away out over the switches. _