“No,” was my ingenuous reply.
“Now that’s bad,” and he scratched his head vigorously. “Can you smoke, then?”
“A little,” faltered I.
My new-made friend seemed much pleased by this response, and continued,—
“All right; you jist git a lot of clay pipes and some tobaccy, and I’ll git you a pass!”
As I was turning in utter bewilderment to have his strange prescription filled, “I say, look a here,” he said; “take off all that nice harness, or you can’t pass for no cattle-man! I’ll lend you some old clothes and a pair of big boots. These stock conductors is right peert, they air. You’ll have to smoke a heap, and lay around careless in the caboose, or they’ll find you out.”
The next morning I took my seat in what he called the “caboose,”—a sort of passenger-car at the end of the train. When we had been under way about an hour, the burden of my own conscience, or of my friend’s boots, or the contemplation of my unsightly disguise, or the amount of tobacco I had smoked, made me deathly sick,—which, on the whole, was rather a fortunate circumstance. It explained to the conductor why I did not get out at the way-stations to tend my cattle, and it also enabled me to hide my face from the conductor, to whom I happened to be known.
I found, as most boys do, that I could smoke better the farther I got from home. What with stopping to let our cattle rest and other delays, it took us nearly a week to reach New York; but before three days had passed I could perform the astonishing feat of putting my friend’s boots out of the car window, and of smoking serenely the while, without touching my pipe with my hands.
All the hotels at which we stopped along the route seemed, like the crèmeries of Paris, to exult in the importance of a spécialité; and that was that they were supported almost entirely by drovers, and assumed, without a single exception that I can call to mind, the device and title of “The Bull’s Head.”
There was a smack of old times in the homely comforts as well as in the moderate charges of these quiet taverns. My expenses on the whole journey from Toledo to the sea were, if I recollect aright, a little over three dollars.