A Son of the Middle Border

by Hamlin Garland

I replied, "The more I think about it, the more wonderful it all seems. It will enable you to see the mountains, and the great plains. You can visit Los Angeles and San Francisco. You can see the ocean. Frank is to play for a month in Frisco, and we can all meet at Uncle David's for Christmas."

The remainder of the summer was taken up with the preparations for this gorgeous excursion. Mother went back to help father through the harvest, whilst I returned to Boston and completed arrangements for my lecture tour which was to carry me as far north as Puget Sound.

At last in November, when the grain was all safely marketed, the old people met me in Kansas City, and from there as if in a dream, started westward with me in such holiday spirits as mother's health permitted. Father was like a boy. Having cut loose from the farm—at least for the winter, he declared his intention to have a good time, "as good as the law allows," he added with a smile.

Of course they both expected to suffer on the journey, that's what travel had always meant to them, but I surprised them. I not only took separate lower berths in the sleeping car, I insisted on regular meals at the eating houses along the way, and they were amazed to find travel almost comfortable. The cost of all this disturbed my mother a good deal till I explained to her that my own expenses were paid by the lecture committees and that she need not worry about the price of her fare. Perhaps I even boasted about a recent sale of a story! If I did I hope it will be forgiven me for I was determined that this should be the greatest event in her life.

My father's interest in all that came to view was as keen as my own. During all his years of manhood he had longed to cross the plains and to see Pike's Peak, and now while his approach was not as he had dreamed it, he was actually on his way into Colorado. "By the great Horn Spoons," he exclaimed as we neared the foot hills, "I'd like to have been here before the railroad."

Here spoke the born explorer. His eyes sparkled, his face flushed. The farther we got into the houseless cattle range, the better he liked it. "The best times I've ever had in my life," he remarked as we were looking away across the plain at the faint shapes of the Spanish Peaks, "was when I was cruising the prairie in a covered wagon."

Then he told me once again of his long trip into Minnesota before the war, and of the cavalry lieutenant who rounded the settlers up and sent them back to St. Paul to escape the Sioux who were on the warpath. "I never saw such a country for game as Northern Minnesota was in those days. It swarmed with water-fowl and chicken and deer. If the soldiers hadn't driven me out I would have had a farm up there. I was just starting to break a garden when the troops came."

It was all glorious to me as to them. The Spanish life of Las Vegas where we rested for a day, the Indians of Laguna, the lava beds and painted buttes of the desert, the beautiful slopes of the San Francisco Mountains, the herds of cattle, the careering cowboys, the mines and miners—all came in for study and comment. We resented the nights which shut us out from so much that was interesting. Then came the hot sand of the Colorado valley, the swift climb to the bleak heights of the coast range—and, at last, the swift descent to the orange groves and singing birds of Riverside. A dozen times father cried out, "This alone is worth the cost of the trip."

Mother was weary, how weary I did not know till we reached our room in the hotel. She did not complain but her face was more dejected than I had ever seen it, and I was greatly disturbed by it. Our grand excursion had come too late for her.

A good night's sleep and a hearty breakfast restored her to something like her smiling self and when we took the train for Santa Barbara she betrayed more excitement than at any time on our trip. "Do we really see the ocean?" she asked.