"Yes," I answered, making a virtue of necessity. "I am on my way to surrender for trial, and redeem my bail. Now you can understand my hurry."
Several of the passengers nodded, and the dealer said: "It's tolerably plain you can't go like that; they're that proud of themselves in Empress they'd lock you up. So I'll try to find you something in my gripsack. Still, while I concluded you never done the thing, I'd like to hear you say straight off you know nothing about the burning of Gaspard's Trail."
"Then listen a second," I answered. "You have my word for it, that I know no more what caused the fire than you do. You will be able to read my defense in the papers, and I need not go into it here."
"That's enough for me," was the answer. "Now, gentlemen, if you have got anything you can lend my friend here in your valises, I'll guarantee they're either replaced or returned. Some of you know me, and here's my business card."
It may be curious, but I saw that most of those present, and they were all apparently from parts of the prairie, fully credited my statement, and one voiced the sentiments of the rest when he said: "I'll do the best I can. If Mr. Ormesby had played the fire-bug, he wouldn't be so mighty anxious to get back to court again."
The position was humiliating, but no choice was left me. I must either accept the willing offers or enter Empress half naked, and accordingly I made a hasty selection among the garments thrust upon me. Twenty minutes spent in the lavatory, with the colored porter's assistance, produced a comforting change, and when I returned to the car, one of the most generous lenders surveyed me with pride as well as approval.
"You do us credit, Rancher, and you needn't worry about the thanks. We've no use for them," he said. "Hope you'll get off; but if you are sent up for burning down that place, I'll be proud of having helped to outfit a famous man."
Perhaps my face was ludicrous with its mingled expressions of gratitude and disgust at this naïve announcement, for a general laugh went up which I finally joined in, and that hoarse merriment gave me the freedom of the Colonist car. Rude burlesque is interspersed amid many a tragedy, and I had seen much worse situations saved by the grace of even coarse humor. Thereafter no personal questions were asked, and most of my fellow-travelers treated me with a delicacy of consideration which is much less uncommon than one might suppose among the plain, hard-handed men who wrest a living out of the prairie.
Night had closed in some time earlier when I strolled out across the platform of the car and leaned upon the rails of the first-class before it. Tired physically as I was, the nervous restlessness which followed the mental strain would, I think, have held me wakeful, even if there had been anything more than a bare shelf of polished maple, which finds out every aching bone, to sleep on. This, however, was not the case, for those who travel Colonist must bring their own bedding, or do without it. It was a glorious summer night, still and soft and effulgent with the radiance of the full moon which hung low above the prairie, while the sensation of the swift travel was bracing.
There was no doubt that the Accelerated was making up lost time; and the lurching, clanking, pounding, roar of flying wheels, and panting of mammoth engines both soothed and exhilarated me. They were in one sense prosaic and commonplace sounds, but—so it seemed to me that night—in another a testimony to man's dominion over not only plant and beast upon the face of the earth, but also the primeval forces which move the universe. Further, the diapason of the great drivers and Titanic snorting, rising and falling rhythmically amid the pulsating din, broke through the prairie's silence as it were a triumphant hymn of struggle and effort, and toil all-conquering, as dropping the leagues behind it the long train roared on. I knew something of the cost, paid in the sweat of tremendous effort, and part in blood and agony, of the smooth road along which the great machines raced across the continent.