Soon after the sun rose—that I could tell by the appearance of things below me—some one came to the stable. It was the farmer or one of his men, I reckoned, but a man I knew it to be, by the unintelligible mumbling he kept up, a habit very frequently possessed by men when alone, though unconscious of it. As I lay perhaps less than a foot at times from the man’s head, I could hear and sometimes see every move he made; and when he was on the stool at the side of the cow, I could hear the see-sawing “swirr” of the milk streaming down in the pail, and I heartily wished I had a big panful of the rich life-giving fluid in my almost famished stomach. For the moment I was carried back to my old farm home and its happy days, when I had milk in plenty to drink, but had not the appetite for it that possessed me as I lay in the hay-loft.
While the farmer was in the stable I did not dare to stir, the hay being thick with seed and a fine substance that would shower below through the open floor at the slightest movement I made. Having finished his morning chores, the man left, and I had the barn to myself until about noon, as near as I could judge, when I was aroused from a sort of a doze by the voices of three young girls. They had come to hunt eggs, I heard them say, and right away I wondered if it would take them up in my hay-loft. How they did chatter; I thought the music of their happy voices was about the sweetest I had listened to in many days. I lay still, for the time being, forgetful of my surroundings, just feasting my ears, when suddenly my enjoyment was turned into apprehension; for the dear little girls had taken it into their heads to transfer the scene of their egg-hunting from the lower part of the barn to the hay-loft.
Sure enough, the next minute they came scrambling up on the hay, and finding none of the article of which they were in search, began to romp, tumble, chase each other, roll over and over, and in many other ways disport themselves in the hay over me, until the seed and dust well-nigh filled my ear that was uppermost and found a way into my clothing, while my nostrils were choked so that breathing was rendered most difficult. But that was not the worst of it, for I was suddenly seized with an almost ungovernable desire to sneeze. I trembled at what the consequences might be, were I to give way to this very natural rebellion of my much imposed upon nose. I speak of it now in an attempted vein of humor, but then it was a serious predicament in which I was placed. A real healthy, atmosphere-tearing sneeze might mean my undoing, after having come safely through many dangers to a point where I was beginning to believe that I would outwit my enemies. Once I choked back a spasm that caused my ears to snap and my eyes to bulge from their sockets. I could not possibly withstand another attack like that, I felt sure. I was in a desperate situation, when the girls, suddenly becoming weary of their romp, climbed down from the loft and ran laughing from the barn. I’ll warrant they hadn’t gone twenty paces, when I emitted a tornado of a sneeze that shook me from top to toe. What it would have done for me I fully realized upon hearing the stamping of hoofs among the startled cows below me. For a few minutes I lay quaking with dread, but after a little I was glad that I and the dumb brutes underneath were the only witnesses as to that sneeze. After the possibility of danger was passed, I couldn’t feel otherwise than gratified over the action of nature, which had relieved me of the awful tickling in my nostrils, and left in its stead the delicious sensation of clear respiration.
The afternoon wore on without my nerves receiving further shocks, as I continued in my nest of hay. The farmer came in and did his milking, which told me that it was nearly sunset; and after I heard the slamming of doors I concluded that it was about time for me to begin my next move on the road toward New York and freedom from the dread of momentary arrest. I was dull for want of sleep, and half ill with the constant gnawing in my food-craving stomach, but I knew that I must press on; so, leaving my nest, I cautiously let myself out of a rear door of the barn, and, hunting up a brook near by, washed myself hurriedly, put more water in my flask, and started through the barnyard to the road. Suddenly my heart was set to throbbing violently by coming close up to a man standing near a fence. It was no doubt the farmer who owned the place. It was too late to retrace my steps, so, putting on a bold front, I said “Good evening” and passed on. He may have answered, that I don’t know; but he did eye me curiously, as he had a perfect right to do, under the circumstances. I haven’t the least doubt that a man, a stranger in fact, walking hatless in a fellow’s premises about dark, is an occurrence not quite of the common order. It was gratifying to me to know that night had set in enough to hide from him the clay-washed clothing I wore and the abundance of hayseed and dust that did anything but adorn my hair.
After this experience my haste to get a hat was augmented very much, and, stopping at the first laborer’s shanty I came across, I bought one not worth more than five cents, though I handed him a script half-dollar. Indeed, I did not begrudge the money, for had he said ten dollars he would have been welcome to the amount, and even double that. To divert any suspicion that the fellow might have on seeing me without a hat, I glibly told him that I had lost it in crossing the railroad bridge, having come in contact with a heavy gust of wind, such was my confounded luck. Then bidding him a pleasant adieu, I cut a switch from a convenient bush and attempted, with not much success, to whip some of the clay-wash from my clothing. On finishing I still cut a sorry figure. Next I hunted up a small store, where I purchased a collar, comb and brush, and a stiff whisk broom. Again I found a secluded spot in a side street, where I worked my broom right vigorously. This time I had the satisfaction of making my clothes somewhat presentable. No Pullman car conductor ever worked his whisk broom as I worked mine in the effort to find real cloth through the veneering of mud. I’ve seen one of those negroes do more hustling after dust in a minute, when he knew there was none, with a big tip in sight, than any other class of servants under the sun. The dust he found wouldn’t have been much under a microscope, but in my case I trow it would have heaped up a tea-cup. With a clean collar and my hair combed and brushed as best I could, the sky having been the roof of my toilet room, I was ready to invest a little more money, so, seeking out another store, I fitted a becoming hat to my seeded locks and was helped into a topcoat good enough to keep it company. After this I began to have that feeling which the dude possesses, and, to better fit the rôle, I sought a barber-shop, where I asked to have my bristled face shaved, but declined the sympathetic barber’s invitation to have my hair “cut or trimmed.” Of all the men with “an eye to business,” I think the barber can discount the whole lot, in making one really believe that he hasn’t the slightest designs on money. He seems to think that his customer has arrived at the brink of committing the unpardonable sin if he doesn’t have his hair cut, and before the argument is finished, I’ll wager a hen’s egg against a prize hennery that the deluded one will accept his barber as a veritable oracle; and the most curious phase of all this is that the knight of the scissors has, through familiarity with the rôle, come to believe it himself. But I venture to say that he is nearly always round when the money is handed out. But, back to my barber.
It almost brought tears to my eyes to resist the mute appeal in his,—those eyes that were even more eloquently solicitous of my welfare than his lips. But for personal reasons I had to pain him, and presently I was stretched out in a chair and had my own way about it. Goodness knows this barber may not be justly accused by me of sparing his labor, for as I sat with my eyes closed most of the time, his hands appeared to move rapidly enough, but I vow they were not so active as was his voluble tongue. When he was not bombarding me, he was exchanging words with a pair of loungers in the shop, who, like some women, must gossip about something to pass the time away. I expected to hear the Cadiz bank affair discussed, though I thought it must have reached a stage of staleness by that time. Yet, when I heard the barber broach the subject, a slight tremor, despite an effort to control myself, went over me.
“Bright youngster that Dever,” he remarked to the loungers. I listened intently.
“Yes? Who?” queried one of them.
“Jim Dever’s boy, down on the Wheeling road. You know, I s’pose, he wuz the one that put the deputies on to the robbers. No? Well, he was up that night, an’ it bein’ moonlight he sees a man at the hencoop, an’ it turned out sure ’nough to be one of ’em. He got in his pants in a jiffy, followed th’ feller, and pretty soon he sees two deputies an’ tells ’em that he thinks th’ robbers are round. Th’ deputies get up to snuff, and next day a gang of the boys swoops down on ’em.”
“Got ’em all, I s’pose,” interposed one of the loungers.