THE DEBUTANTE
CHAPTER IV
The Debutante
A year after the small happenings I have just related, great events began to cluster about Dic. They were truly great for him and of course were great for Rita.
Through Billy Little's aid Dic received an offer from an eastern horse buyer to lead a drove of horses to New York. The task was difficult, and required a man of health, strength, judgment, and nerve. The trip going would require two months, and the horses must be kept together, fed, cared for, and, above all, protected night and day from horse thieves, until after the Alleghanies were crossed. The horses were driven loose in herds of one hundred or more. Three men constituted a crew. In this instance Dic was to be in charge, and two rough horse-boys would be his assistants. It would have been impossible to drive the horses over the fenceless roads and through the leagues of trackless forest; therefore, they were led. The men would take turns about riding in advance, and the man leading would continually whistle a single shrill note which the horses soon learned to follow. Should the whistling cease for a moment, the horses would stop and perhaps stampede. This might mean forty-eight hours of constant work in gathering the drove, with perhaps the loss of one or more. If you will, for one hour, whistle a shrill note loud enough to reach the ears of a herd of trampling, neighing horses, you will discover that even that task, which is the smallest part of horse "leading," is an exhausting operation.
The work was hard, but the pay was good, and Dic was delighted with the opportunity. One of its greatest attractions to him was the fact that he would see something of the world. Billy Little urged him to accept the offer.
"A man," said he, "estimates his own stature by comparing it with those about him, and the most fatal mistake he can make is to underestimate his size. Self-conceit is ugly, but it never injured any one. Modesty would have ruined Napoleon himself. The measure of a man, like the length of a cloth-yard, depends upon the standard. Go away from here, Dic. Find your true standard. Measure yourself and return, if you wish. This place is as good as another, if a man knows himself; if he doesn't, he is apt to be deceived by the littleness of things about him. Yet there are great things here, too—greater, in some respects, than any to be found in New York; but the great things here are possibilities. Of course, possibilities are but the raw material. They must be manufactured—achieved. But achievement, my boy, achievement! that's the whole thing, after all. What would Cæsar Germanicus and Napoleon have been without possibilities? A ready-made opportunity is a good thing in its way, but it is the creation of opportunity out of crude possibilities that really marks and makes the man and stamps the deed. Any hungry fool would seize the opportunity to eat who might starve if he had to make his bread. Go out into the world. You have good eyes. It will not take long to open them. When they are opened, come back and you will see opportunities here that will make you glad you are alive."