The Treasure Trail

by Frank Lillie Pollock

He turned out his pockets. There was the five-dollar bill that he had saved from the wheel, and a quantity of loose silver,—eighty-five cents. With a lively emotion of pleasure he discovered another folded five-dollar bill in his pocketbook which he had not suspected. Ten dollars and eighty-five cents was the total amount. It was all that was left of his former capital, or it was the nucleus of his new fortunes, as he should choose to consider it.

At the memory of the promises he had made scarcely a hundred hours ago to Margaret Laurie, he shivered with shame and self-reproach, and in his remorse he realized more clearly than ever the truth of her words. He was wasting his life, his time, and his money; and already the endless chase of the rainbow’s end began to seem no longer desirable. In an access of gloom he foresaw years and years of such unprofitable existence as he had already spent, alternations of impermanent success and real disaster, of useless labour, of hardship that had lost its romance and come to be as sordid as poverty, and for the sum of it all, Failure. The fitful fever of such a life could have no place for the quiet and graceful pleasures that he had almost forgotten, but which seemed just then to lie at the basis of happiness and success; and suddenly in his mind there arose a vision of the old city on the Chesapeake Bay, its crooked and narrow streets named after long dead colonial princes, its shady gardens, the Southern indolence, the Southern quiet and perfume.

That was where Margaret was going, and there perhaps he had left what he should have clung to; and, as he turned this matter over in his mind, he remembered another fact of present importance. One of the men with whom he had worked on the Baltimore Mail had within the last year become its city editor. He had written offering Elliott a position should he want it, but Elliott had never seriously considered the proposition.

Now, however, he jumped at it. “The West’s too young for me,” he reflected. “I’d better get out of the game.” He would write to Grange for the job that night, and he would be in Baltimore long before Margaret would arrive there. No, he would start for the East that night without writing,—and then he was chilled by the memory of his reduced circumstances. A ticket to Baltimore would cost thirty-five dollars at least.

But the Westerner’s first lesson is to regard distance with contempt. Elliott had travelled without money before, but it was where he knew obliging freight conductors who would give him a lift in the caboose, while between the Mississippi and the Atlantic was new ground to him. Nevertheless he was unable to bring himself to regard the thousand odd miles as a real obstacle. He could walk to the Mississippi if he had to; it would be no novelty. Once on the river he could get a cheap deck passage to Pittsburg, or he might even work his passage. Probably, however, he could get a temporary job in St. Louis which would supply expenses for the journey. As for his baggage, it would go by express C. O. D., and he could draw enough advance salary in Baltimore to pay for it.

As he walked back to his hotel, he felt as if he were already in Baltimore, regardless of the long and probably hard road that had first to be travelled. That part of it, indeed, struck him rather in the light of a joke. A few rough knocks were needed to seal his good resolutions firmly this time, and the tramp to the Mississippi would be a sort of penance, a pilgrimage.

He debated whether to write to Margaret, and decided that he had better not. It would not be pleasant to confess; at least it would be preferable to wait until he was launched upon the new and industrious career which he had planned. He would write from Baltimore, not before.

That night he laid out his roughest suit, and it was still early the next morning when he tramped out of St. Joseph. His baggage was in the hands of the express company, and he carried no load; despite his penury he preferred to buy things than to “pack” them. He followed the tracks of the Burlington Railroad with the idea that this would give him a better and straighter route than the highway, as well as a greater certainty of encountering villages at regular intervals. He was unencumbered, strong, and hopeful, and he rejoiced, smoking his pipe in the cool air, as he left the last streets behind, and saw the steel rails running out infinitely between the brown corn-fields and the orchards, straight into the shining West.

For a long time Elliott remembered that day as one of the most enjoyable he ever spent. It was warm enough to be pleasant; the track, ballasted heavily with clay, made a delightfully elastic footpath; on either side were pleasant bits of woodland dividing the brown fields where the last year’s cornstalks were scattered, and farmhouses and orchards clustered on the rolling slopes. Where they lay beside the track the air was full of the hoarse “booing” of doves; and, after the rawness of the treeless plains, this seemed to Elliott a land of ancient comfort, of long-founded homesteads, and all manner of richness.

He had intended to ask for dinner at one of the farmhouses, where they would charge him only a trifle, but he developed a nervous fear of being taken for a tramp. Again and again he selected a house in the distance where he resolved to make the essay; approached it resolutely—and weakly passed by, finding some excuse for his hesitation. It was too imposing, or too small; it looked as if dinner were not ready, or as if it were already over; and all the time hunger was growing more acute in his vitals. About one o’clock, however, he came to a little village, just as his appetite was growing uncontrollable. He cast economy to the dogs, went to the single hotel, washed off the dust at the pump, and fell upon the hot country dinner of coarse food supplied in unlimited quantity. It cost twenty-five cents, but it was worth it; and after it was all over he strolled slowly down the track, and finally sat down in the spring sun and smoked till he softly fell asleep.