"Do you know Cleveland?" said I.
"You bet. Lived there ten years ago, had a job on a Lake steamer. I worked one summer on a boat."
The old tramp stared at me as if he had confessed a sin. "Worked like a mule," he added sententiously, and stared again. "I had a home there, and lived just like a married man. But when I wanted to move on to Pittsburg my girl wouldn't go."
"I expect you're the sort of man who has run away from a wife in Germany," said I.
"Naw, naw. Never married."
Then he began to talk of his loves and conquests. At his age you'd have thought his mind would not have been filled with such vanities. He evidently earned money now and then, and went on "sprees." He averred that he had not a dime now, and was altogether "on the nail." I had an idea, however, that he had hidden on him, somewhere, passage-money to take him to Germany, to get that army pension. The Germans are a cautious people. They are cautious and cogitative, yet I wonder what the old man thought of me as he stumped away, leaning on his heavy walking-stick. He had been twenty-seven years on the road, and was very shrewd and experienced in many ways. Perhaps for a moment he took me for a gentleman burglar. He was immensely curious to see what was in my sack, but he probably reflected—"Here is good hot, coffee, a fire, and a pleasant young man; make the most of it, and ask no inconvenient questions."
I put the fire out, shouldered my pack, and resumed the journey to Snow Shoe. The sun had risen, but his warmth was as yet shut away behind the wall of the mountains. The hoar-frost of night had not melted yet, and it was necessary to walk briskly to keep warm. It was so cold that I got to Snow Shoe before ten o'clock.
A feature of this tramping along the rails was the danger in crossing bridges. It was a single line, and as there were some twenty bridges over the flood of the river, there were twenty ordeals of trusting that no train would suddenly appear from a corner of the winding track and run me down. If a train had come whilst I was half-way across a bridge there was no refuge but the river, and I was always prepared to jump. For several nights after this bit of tramping I dreamed of crossing bridges, running on the sleepers and just passing the last beams as engines swept down on me. But it was pleasant climbing up so high, and feeling that within an hour or so Snow Shoe would be achieved. I had lived in the rumour of Snow Shoe for two days, and the name had come to correspond to something very beautiful in my mind. The sound of the name is pleasant to the ear, and every now and then, as I hurried along, I asked, "Snow Shoe, Snow Shoe, what shall I find there?" I imagined the pioneers who first came up this beautiful valley and gave to an Indian settlement the dainty name—through what virginal loveliness they had passed! Then I thought of the reporter-poet of Scranton who objected to the beauty of Nature because it was independent of man.
