This air was, no doubt, due chiefly to the large oval pictures painted, not without some skill, on its sides. One of these depicted the rescue of Daniel Boone by Kenton, who with the butt of a large musket was perpetually about to brain a murderous Indian; the other dealt with Smith’s unchanging obligation to Pocahontas.
I hardly think Keats had more lasting enjoyment of his Grecian urn with 'brede of marble men and maidens overwrought' than I of those pictures, where, not less than in the more classic example, I saw perpetually preserved what I took to be the most thrilling and desirable of moments, death forever arrested by unending loyalty and undying affection.
But, interesting as all this was, it was by no means the heart of that strange fascination with which, for so many years, I contemplated the old beetling vehicle. Its fascination lay for me in its daily journey to parts beyond the bounds of my narrow horizon. It plied faithfully every week-day of the year, an envoy extraordinary, ambassador plenipotentiary, between another world and mine. Some day I should see that world and know it.
It must not be supposed, however, that I had in mind only the town to which the 'bus journeyed, the mere inconsiderable county seat. Children’s imaginations, especially when the child is just emerging into all the glorious possibilities of womanhood, deal, not in towns, but in worlds. The world outside my own narrow bounds of life—that was what I meant to see and experience.
I can think of only one thing, besides the old 'bus, which roused my fancy to an equal degree, namely, the herds of dumb cattle which were driven past my home always once, and sometimes twice a week, to the stockyards which lay somewhere on the outskirts of my home town. If I close my eyes, I can still hear on hot afternoons the dark herds trampling past, a mass of broad backs and spreading horns and wide foreheads,—and dull or occasionally frightened eyes,—and the hurrying hoofs, scuffling the dust.
I had never seen the stockyards. I was never informed very particularly about them, and by some instinct, I suppose, I never inquired too carefully. But I knew this for another world also, and dread as it was, it fascinated me. I believe the hurrying herds stood to me for a kind of world of fearful reality that I meant some day to look into, and the old picture-painted 'bus for a world of romance, yonder, yonder over the dip of the horizon, which not less, some day, I was determined to know.
Just how I came to take my resolve, and the events which precipitated it—all this has no bearing on the story. The story begins just where I stood that hot day in June waiting for the 'bus by the dusty mullens beside the pike. I had walked a good mile outside the town so that none of the townspeople would see the beginning of my adventure.
The 'bus was late, I think, even allowing for my anxiety. It came in sight at last, at a slow beetling pace. I held up a slim finger. But not until he was alongside did the driver begin to draw in the long reins. I ran after the 'bus a few paces, opened the door, climbed the high steps with a beating heart, and got in.
The driver peeked through the little peek-hole in the roof to make sure I was safe; then he called to his horses, and the vehicle lunged ahead.
The only other passengers were an old man, unknown to me, who carried a basket of eggs, and an old woman who lived somewhere outside the town and whom I recognized as one we called the 'horse-radish woman.' She stood always on a Saturday at one corner of our town market, grinding and selling horse-radish roots, blinking with red eyes, and always wiping the tears from them before she could make you your change. I recognized her of course at once, but whether she knew me, I do not know. If she did, she gave not the least evidence of it, but looked out absently with squinted red-lidded eyes at the country as we jogged along.