“Any idea how to get there?” he queried; as if he had his doubts about the development of my bump of location.
But I had him there.
“Oh, yes. Dad used to take the train through Little Rock to Fort Worth, and on up into the Panhandle from there. Sometimes he took a steamer from here to Memphis. I think I’d like the river trip best.”
“All right,” he decided. “You shall go, my boy, just as soon as you can get ready. Now we’ll see about this guardianship matter.”
We saw about it in such wise that two days later I was the happy possessor of a ticket to Amarillo and a well-lined pocket-book. I had dinner with Bolton, and bade him good-bye quite cheerfully, for I felt a good deal as Columbus must have done when he turned the prow of his caravel away from Spanish shores. After leaving Bolton I went home after a grip I’d forgotten. The river boat on which I’d taken passage was due to leave at midnight.
And that midnight departure was what started one Bob Sumner up the Trouble Trail. It isn’t known by that name; it doesn’t show on any map that ever I saw; but the man who doesn’t have to travel it some time in his career—well, he’s in luck. Or perhaps one should reason by the reverse process. I daresay it all depends on the point of view.
[CHAPTER II—BY WAY OF THE “NEW MOON”]
Lights by the thousand speckled the night-enshrouded water-front when I reached the slip where my boat lay. On the huge roofed-in wharf freight-handlers swarmed like bees. The rumble of hand trucks and the tramp of feet rose to the great beams overhead and echoed back in a steady drone. Lamps fluttered on vibrating walls. Men moved in haste, throwing long shadows ahead and behind them. Boxes, bales, barrels, sacked stuff vanished swiftly down three separate inclines to the lower deck of the Memphis Girl, and from the depths of this freight-swallowing monster came the raucous gabble, freely garnished with profanity, of the toiling stevedores.
Out from under that vast sounding board of a roof the noise at once diminished in volume, and I passed through the heart of the dust and babel and gained the cabin deck of the Memphis. A steward looked over my ticket and guided me to the berth I had reserved. It was then half past nine; still two hours and a half to the time of departure. I took a look around the upper deck. Quite a number of passengers were already aboard. Some were gone to bed; others were grouped in the aft saloon. One or two poker games had started, and little groups were looking on. But of them all I knew not a soul. Youth hungers for companionship, and I was no exception to my kind. It may be a truism to say that nowhere can one be so completely alone as in a crowd; but the singularity of it never came home to me until that night. But we are always learning the old things and esteeming them new. I roamed about the Memphis, wishing I had stayed up town till the last minute. It had been my plan to go down and turn in; the ceremony of casting off was not one that interested me greatly. But now the whim was gone; a spirit of unrest, an impatience to be off, drove sleep from my mind. If you have ever known the dreary monotony of waiting for train or steamer to start when your whole being craves the restfulness of motion you will not wonder that I made one more round of the deck and saloons and then left the Memphis to roam aimlessly past the serried wharves that faced the stream.
I don’t recollect just how far I wandered. If the place had been strange to me I should likely have been more circumspect in my prowling. As it was, my only concern was to be at the S.S. Company’s wharf by midnight, and midnight was yet afar. So I poked along, stopping now and then to hang over a railing and peer across the dark sweep of the Mississippi toward the Illinois shore. Between, the lights of divers craft twinkled like fireflies, and tootings of major and minor keys with varying volume of sound went wailing through the night.