A Day with a Tramp, and Other Days

by Walter A. Wyckoff

The present situation could be taken in at a glance. Four miles farther on the road was the town of Kearney, built out, for the most part, to the north of the line. The station at Buda was the conventional frame building, with a pen for cattle at one end and a fenced platform for transferring the stock to the cattle-cars. A siding ran for a hundred yards or more beside the main line, and a few steps beyond it and across the main-travelled road was the section-boss’s shanty, a lightly built wooden shell, unpainted and weather-stained. Near an end of the siding, with a few feet of rails spanning the distance between, stood a little structure not unlike an overgrown kennel, where the hand-car for the men and the section tools were housed. For a space about the station and the boss’s shanty and on either side the railway and the road it was clear, then began the inevitable corn that stood full-grown on the prairie as far as the eye could see.

The shadow of the station lay across the high prairie grass under its eastern wall, and there I lay down to rest.

If I had failed of work at Buda, I should have thought little of it and should have walked on as a matter of course to further search in Kearney or in the country about the town. But having found a job and knowing that I had only to rest until going to work in the morning, there came a feeling of languor which it was a luxury to indulge. As I lay there in the high prairie grass at the end of another stretch of nearly 200 miles of walking, and looked dreamily up at the sky and thought contentedly of my new post, every muscle relaxed, and the will to summon them to action seemed gone, until the mere thought of further effort for that day was an agony which one harbored for the edge it gave to the sense of ease.

It was difficult to respond even to a call to supper. But I got to my feet at six o’clock and joined the gang, and together, after storing the tools, we walked over to the boss’s shanty. On a bench outside the kitchen-door were tin basins and soap and water, with the usual roller towel, and soon we were waiting for a summons to the evening meal.

Already I was much attracted by Osborn and the section-hands. Tyler was a young American, a long-limbed youth with clear smooth muscles and an intelligent, expressive face that suggested breeding, while Sullivan was a full-faced, stocky Irishman, of five-and-twenty, ready and frank, and full of energy.

The shop that they talked as we waited outside was still the topic at the table when we were called to supper in the little front room of the cabin with its wooden walls papered with old journals. Never had I been adopted more naturally by any company of fellow-workmen. They asked my name and where I was from, and having learned that I had come from the East, they appeared satisfied with the account of myself and made me one of their number with perfect friendliness. Osborn’s father, a quiet old farmer, joined us, but we saw the women and children only as we passed through the kitchen. Osborn’s mother was there with her daughter-in-law and in one or other of them, perhaps in both, there was a singularly good cook and housekeeper.

One could see instantly the cleanliness of the house for all its shabbiness, and the supper to which we sat down was not only clean, but bountiful and good. We had soup and boiled chicken, with rich gravy, and potatoes and steaming green corn, besides white bread of the rarest and a sauce for dessert. I looked with a livelier interest at the women as we passed out, and I saw in the elder one a serene, sweet-faced, old farmer’s wife, so trim and neat that she might have stepped from a New England country side, while the younger woman, in her abounding vigor, appeared rather a product of the West.

Osborn and Tyler had turned the talk at supper to something that attracted them to Kearney for the evening, and almost immediately when the meal was ended they hitched an Indian pony that was Osborn’s to a light, rickety sulky and drove to town. Sullivan and I were left alone, for the old farmer had disappeared. We lit our pipes and sat down in the prairie grass with our eyes to the sunset. The horizon was aglow with crimson and gold that faded to a clear, cold green before changing to the purple in which the evening star was set. The keen gleam of electrics flashed out over the town, and a breeze rustled faintly among the crisping blades of corn.

Sullivan and I sat smoking lazily in the twilight. He had begun to tell me about himself, and my spirits were rising, for it was no furbished tale that I heard.

There is little marvel in leading men to talk of themselves, and workingmen are no exception; but there is a difference, which is all the difference in the world, between a narrative that is evidently inspired by the hope of impressing you, and one that is a spontaneous self-revelation.