The trip up the bay would, no doubt, have been a pleasant one to Chase had he been in a frame of mind to enjoy it. But he was thinking of his home off in Louisiana, and of his friends, who now seemed farther away from him than ever before. If this man, who was accustomed to work and to “roughing it,” had been three years trying to get back to his home, how long at that rate would it take him, Chase asked himself.
When the steamer reached Vallejo he followed the others to the train, and was packed away in a box-car for Sacramento. At the company’s office he went through certain forms of agreement, which he could not have repeated when he came out if he had tried, and was then ordered into another box-car that was to take him to Independence. He travelled night and day, and, although he had no bed to sleep on, he had plenty to eat, and kept up his spirits by telling himself over and over again that every turn of the wheels brought him nearer to his home.
Arriving at Independence, he was put to work at once, and during the next month led a life of toil and hardship to which his experience on board the Petrel was mere boy’s play. The first thing he did when he had a few minutes’ leisure, was to hunt up the superintendent, or the “boss,” as the men called him, to whom he stated his troubles, and of whom he begged a stamped envelope, and a sheet of paper, and borrowed a lead-pencil. With these he wrote a long letter to his father, telling what he had done since leaving Bellville and what he intended to do, not forgetting to mention the amount which he thought would be necessary to take him home; and having given the letter into the hands of the superintendent, who promised to see that it was duly sent off, he went to work with a lighter heart than he had carried for many a day, believing that by the time his month had expired, the assistance he so much needed would be at hand.
“And when it does come, Brown,” said Chase, who had learned to look upon his new acquaintance with almost a brother’s affection, “you shall not be left out in the cold. If it hadn’t been for you I wouldn’t be here now, and I’ll see you through as far as my money will take us.”
It was well for the boy’s peace of mind that he did not know what became of that letter. The superintendent put it carefully away in his pocket, and took it out again—nearly eight weeks afterward, when the one who wrote it was hopelessly lost in the mountains near Fort Bolton.
Although Chase expected a happy deliverance out of all his troubles without any effort on his part to bring it about, neither he nor Brown neglected to post himself in everything that it might be necessary for them to know, in case they should be compelled to continue their journey without money to pay their fare on the stages. Among other things, they learned that the Union Pacific, which was slowly advancing to meet the road on which they were at work, had progressed beyond Cheyenne, and that between that point and Independence there were several trails and stage-routes, some longer and some shorter, but any one of which would lead them in the direction they wished to go. Their fellow-workmen assured them that it would not be much of a tramp across the country for a couple of healthy youngsters, and if at any time they got out of food, the first man they met would be willing to supply them, no matter whether they had money or not.
The month for which Chase and his friend had contracted wore slowly away, but the expected letter from Bellville did not arrive. Chase grew more and more impatient and anxious as the days passed, and when he was paid off at the end of the month, he would have been glad to renew his contract, but Brown would not listen. “Let’s put out and go to work when we reach the other road,” said he. “You can write to your father just as well from Cheyenne as you can from here. Your letter must have miscarried.”
Brown emphasized his advice by declaring that he was going whether Chase did or not. Cold weather was coming on, he said; the snow had fallen, during the previous winter, sixty feet deep over seven miles of the road-bed on which the rails had since been laid, and he did not like the idea of being shut out from home by any such barrier as that. He was bound to get through to the other side of the mountains before winter set in, come what might. So Chase reluctantly made up the small bundle of clothing and bedding he had purchased from the stores, put carefully away the slender stock of money that he had remaining after paying his board-bill and other debts he had contracted, and followed Brown, who stepped off with a light heart. The latter’s face was turned toward home once more, and that was enough to put him in the best of spirits.
“If we were in the settlements now,” said he, making an effort to bring Chase’s usual smile back to his face, “the folks would say of us: ‘Look at those two tramps; lock the dog in the hen-house.’ But out here, where there are better fellows than ourselves as poor as we, we are ‘emigrants,’ and people don’t think it necessary to watch us, lest we should steal everything they’ve got.”