CHAPTER XXIII
LIBERTY
Sleep had brought me a brief forgetfulness, but the awakening was not pleasant when I painfully straightened my limbs on the jolting platform, while the twin whistles shrieked ahead. Every joint ached from the previous day's exertions, my borrowed garments were clammy with dew, and I shivered in the cold draught that swept past the slowing cars. The sun had not cleared the grayness which veiled the east, and, frowned down upon by huge elevators which rose higher and higher against a lowering sky, the straggling town loomed up depressingly out of the surrounding desolation. The pace grew slower, a thicket of willows choked with empty cans and garbage slid by, then the rails of the stockyards closed in on each hand, and we jolted over the switches into the station, which was built, as usual, not in, but facing, the prairie town.
There was no sign of life in its ill-paved streets, down which the dust wisps danced; bare squares of wooden buildings, devoid of all ornamentation, save for glaring advertisements which emphasized their ugliness, walled them in, and the whole place seemed stamped with the dreariness which characterizes most prairie towns when seen early on a gloomy morning by anybody not in the best of spirits. My fellow-passengers were apparently asleep, but I was the better pleased, having no desire for speech, and I dropped from the platform as soon as the locomotive stopped. Hurrying out of the station, I did not turn around until a row of empty farm wagons hid the track, which action was not without results.
One hotel door stood open, but knowing that its tariff was not in accordance with my finances, I passed it by and patrolled the empty streets until the others, or a dry goods store, should make ready for business. One of the latter did so first, and when I entered a mirror showed that the decision was not unnecessary. The borrowed jacket was far too small, the vest as much too large, while somebody's collar cut chokingly into my sunburnt neck. Still, the prices the sleepy clerk mentioned were prohibitive, and after wasting a little time in somewhat pointed argument—of which he had the better—I strode out of the store, struggling with an inclination to assault him. Western storekeepers are seldom characterized by superfluous civility, and there are disadvantages attached to a life in a country so free that, according to one of its sayings, any man who cannot purchase boots may always walk barefooted.
"I don't know what the outfit you've got on cost you, and shouldn't wonder, by the way it fits, if you got it cheap," he said. "We don't turn out our customers like scarecrows, anyway, and if you'd had the money we would have tried to make a decent show of you."
I was nevertheless able, after almost emptying my purse, to replace at least the vest and jacket at a rival establishment, whose proprietor promised to forward the borrowed articles to their legitimate owners. I afterwards discovered that they never received them.
"You look smart as a city drummer, the top half of you, but it makes the rest look kind of mean. You want to live up to that coat," he said, after a critical survey.
"I can't do it at the price, unless you will take your chances of getting paid when the stock go East," I said; and the dealer shook his head sorrowfully.
"We don't trade that way with strangers, and I don't know you."
I was in a reckless mood, and some puerile impulse prompted me to astonish him. "My name is Henry Ormesby!"