A Struggle for a Fortune

by Harry Castlemon

“Then I will give you twenty plus ten, which makes thirty when I went to school. Come in and get it.”

“That is more than the dog is worth, but he is not for sale at any price. I need the dog more than you do. But I will tell you what I would like to have. He wants a piece of meat.”

“Well, if you won’t sell the dog, come in and fill him up on meat You wouldn’t look at forty dollars for that dog, would you?”

No, Nat thought that he would not sell the dog, and he went into the butcher shop and got a piece of meat that fairly made him open his eyes. He was not charged a cent for it, either. While the butcher was examining the dog and complimenting him, Nat managed to unclose one of his valises and crowd the meat into it, and no one was the wiser for what he had done.

Of course the victory that Benny had won brought him into notice along the street, and when he went into another store to buy his crackers and cheese, he had plenty of friends to admire him. But Nat got away as soon as he could, and felt much easier when he was walking down the track toward St. Louis.

“That’s a good name for you, Benny, and you will keep it as long as I have anything to do with you. Benny, the tramp. That’s what you are, Benny, and you must always come when I call you.”

Nat’s first care was to find a place where he could sit down and satisfy his appetite without having some one to talk to him about Benny. A mile further on he found it, and there he and Benny made away with enough meat and crackers and cheese to last them until night. While there a passenger train went along, and it went swiftly, too, as if the distance that lay between it and St. Louis was just nothing at all for it to accomplish. Nat sighed but he looked at Benny, and got up and followed after the train.

We might make this portion of our story still more interesting by telling of the wonderful scrapes that Nat and his money got into from the rough looking tramps who met him along the way and who wanted to know what was in his carpet-sacks, which he never allowed out of his grasp; but unfortunately Nat did not meet with any such adventures. It is true that one or two tramps—Nat was sure they were tramps although he had never seen one before—made some inquiries in regard to the contents of his valises, but the sight of the dog, which growled and showed his teeth every time one of them came up, induced them to be satisfied with what Nat had to say about it—that he had some tools which would be necessary to carry on his business when he got to St. Louis. He bought his food from farm houses which were scattered at intervals along the railroad, slept beside the fence or in deserted barns every time he got the chance, and finally, when he was thinking about taking one of his gold pieces to buy him another pair of shoes, for his bills, although he had held on to them “until the eagle hollered,” were all gone, he discovered, one night when the sun was about two hours high, some buildings in the distance, which were larger than any he had seen yet. By cautious inquiries at the next house at which he stopped to buy food, he learned that he was at his journey’s end. How his heart thrilled with the thought! He had been more than two weeks on the way, and to say that he was tired would be hardly saying enough. In a few days his money would be safe, and then he could lie down and sleep.

“But our labor is not over yet,” said Nat, as he separated the meat from the sandwiches that he had purchased and handed it to the dog. “Now is the time to look out for every person we meet. There is not one of them who would not knock me on the head to gain this money. And yet I am to find a good, honest lawyer in all this crowd of people!”

Nat did not know how he was going to succeed, whether or not he could find what he wanted in all that crowd, but he resolved to try it at the first opportunity. Arriving at a place where a road ran across the track he turned into it, making out with much difficulty some of the signs that graced the front ends of buildings as he walked along, and finally stopped at the front of a more pretentious building than the rest, for there was a sign that struck his eye; “Lodgings 50 cents.”