“Of course not!” declared Thropper. “You’d go in the caboose. We’d send you with a load of horses, you know. You’d be the man in charge; to feed them.”
“But I don’t know anything about horses, Thropper.”
“You don’t have to know anything about them,” he said, with a smile. “It’s just a technical way of expressing it. You see, when the horse-dealers send a carload of horses East, they are entitled to a representative to go along and take care of them. You’d be the representative. Gloomer could give you a line to an Indianapolis sales stable. They’d do the rest—as far as New York. What do you say!”
In a wild moment of incautious self-confidence, I responded:
“Anything to get to New York, Thropper.”
“It’s settled, then,” he responded. “Albert Priddy, horse chaperone, I salute thee,” and he gravely saluted me. “When will his lordship occupy his caboose?” he went on in good-humored raillery.
“As soon as I can get it!” I replied.
Chapter XIX. A Chapter
Which Has to do with a Series of
Exciting Affairs that Occurred
between the West and the East,
and Which are Better to Read
about than to Endure
THROPPER accompanied me to the wharf in Chicago where, so far as I was able to judge, we were to part forever. The manner of our parting was as follows:
Thropper insisted on carrying my suit-case, though his own was loaded to excess. On crossing a street to enter the railroad station, I half stumbled, blunderingly, under the heavy hoofs of a dray horse which a swearing driver had pulled shortly into the air, when Thropper, by a lunge at my back with his heavy suit-case, startled me into such action, that I lurched ahead and away from danger.