I didn't enjoy that trip to Frisco; business didn't seem so attractive when you once set out to find her, an' then again, I was broke. I don't mind bein' broke when I 'm on the range 'cause a feller can pick up a job anywhere; but I wasn't city-wise, an' I didn't know how long it would take me to track down the kind o' business I wanted to engage in.
I suppose cities must suit some folks, or they wouldn't keep on livin' in 'em; but cities sure don't suit me. I allus had a kind of an idea from what Slocum had told me that I'd enjoy the bankin' business, so I applied to the banks first. They're a blame offish set, bankers. They didn't laugh at me,—leastwise not until after I'd gone out,—but they didn't offer much encouragement. I tramped around that city for four days, an' by the time I finally got located in business my appetite was tearin' around inside my empty body till I couldn't sleep nights. Oh, it was not joyful! I had taken the position of porter in a mammoth big drygoods store, an' I was some glad when noon arrived; but no one called me to partake of dinner, so I went up to a young lad, an' sez, "Where do they spread it?"
"Spread what?" sez he.
"Dinner," sez I.
"I bring mine with me," sez he.
"Is the grub that rotten?" sez I.
"What grub?" sez he. "You surely don't think they serve meals here, do you?"
"Do you mean to tell me that I got to find myself, out of forty a month?" sez I.
He started to make up a joke, but I looked too famished to trifle with; so he explained to me that all we got was wages, an' we couldn't even sleep in the store. I was gettin' purty disgusted with business, but he told me that the man what owned the whole store had started in as a porter; so I went back an' portered harder than ever that afternoon, wonderin' what in thunder kind of a man it was who could save enough out of a porter's wages to buy a store like that. I was dressed some different from the rest o' the folks around there, so I attracted a lot of attention, an' the' wasn't much I did that wasn't enjoyed by more or less of a crowd. When quittin' time came I hustled up to the feller what had hired me an' told him I'd like to have my day's pay. "We don't pay until Saturday night," sez he, hustlin' out o' the store. I stood on the sidewalk thinkin'; an' what I was thinkin' of, was the nonsense 'at Sandy Fergoson had been talkin'. It didn't sound so foolish now.
The' was a little restaurant across the street, an' the owner of it had noticed me washin' the windows—he had seemed to enjoy it too. I went over an' told him that I would like to board with him if he would make me rates. He sized me up an' sez he would board me for six dollars a week. I didn't see how I could save enough to buy a store out of four dollars a week, an' after I got tired o' seein' the sights I'd have to rent a bed somewheres too; but what I needed then was food, so I agreed.