Part 8 (1/2)
”Raise it fifty,” spoke up number four.
The other three ”saw the raise.”
”Three Jacks,” said the opener.
”Beats me,” said number two.
”Three queens here,” said number three.
”Bobtail,” spoke up number four.
”Makes no difference what you have,” broke in number three. ”I've the top hand, but the whole pot belongs to the boy. The low hand, though, shall go out and get the berries.”
As the train pulled out, the little barefoot drummer with $6.50 hobbled across the muddy street, the proudest boy in all Oregon; but he was not so happy as were his five big brothers in the receding car.
Brethren, did I say. Yes, Brethren! To the man on the road, every one he meets is his brother--no more, no less. He feels that he is as good as the governor, that he is no better than the boy who s.h.i.+nes his shoes. The traveling man, if he succeeds, soon becomes a member of the Great Fraternity--the Brotherhood of Man. The ensign of this order is the Helping Hand.
I once overheard one of the boys tell how he had helped an old Frenchman.
”I was down in Southern Idaho last trip,” said he. ”While waiting at the station for a train to go up to Hailey, an old man came to the ticket window and asked how much the fare was to b.u.t.te. The agent told him the amount--considerably more than ten dollars.
”'_Mon Dieu!_ Is it so far as that?' said the old man. '_Eh bien!_ (very well) I must find some work.'
”But he was a chipper old fellow. I had noticed him that morning offering to run a foot race with the boys. He wasn't worried a bit when the agent told him how much the fare to b.u.t.te was. He was really comical, merely shrugging his shoulders and smiling when he said: 'Very well, I must find some work.' Cares lighten care.
”The old man, leaving the ticket window, sat down on a bench, made the sign of a cross and took out a prayer book. When he had finished reading I went over and sat beside him. I talked with him. He was one of Nature's n.o.blemen without a t.i.tle. He was a French Canadian. He came to Montana early in the sixties and worked in the mines. Wages were high, but he married and his wife became an invalid; doctors and medicines took nearly all of his money. He struggled on for over thirty years, taking money out of the ground and putting it into pill boxes. Finally he was advised to take his wife to a lower alt.i.tude. He moved to the coast and settled in the Willamette Valley, in Oregon.
His wife became better at first; then she grew sick again. More medicine!
”Well, sir, do you know that old man--over seventy years of age--was working his way back to b.u.t.te to hunt work in the mines again. I spoke French to him and asked him how much money he had. 'Not much,' said he--and he took out his purse. How much do you suppose the old man had in it? Just thirty-five cents! I had just spent half a dollar for cigars and tossed them around. To see that old man, separated from his wife, having to hunt for work to get money so he could go where he could hunt more work that he might only buy medicine for a sick old woman and with just three dimes and a nickel in his purse--was too much for me! I said to myself: 'I'll cut out smoking for two days and give what I would spend to the old man.'
”I put a pair of silver dollars into the old man's purse to keep company with his three dimes and one nickel. It made them look like orphans that had found a home. '_Mon Dieu! Monsieur, vous etes un ange du ciel. Merci. Merci._' (My G.o.d, sir, you are an angel from Heaven. Thank you. Thank you.) said the old man. 'But you must give me your address and let me send back the money!'
”I asked my old friend to give me his name and told him that I would send him my address to b.u.t.te so he would be _sure_ to get it; that he might lose it if he put it in his pocket.
”He told me his name. I gave him a note to the superintendent at Pocatello, asking him to pa.s.s the old Frenchman to b.u.t.te. We talked until my train started. Every few sentences, the old man would say: '_Que Dieu vous benisse, mon enfant!_' (May G.o.d bless you, my boy!)
”As I stood on the back end of my train, pulling away from the station, the old man looked at me saying:
”'Adieu! Adieu!' Then, looking up into the sky, he made a sign of the cross and said: '_Que Dieu vous protege, mon enfant!_' (May G.o.d protect you, my boy!)
”That blessing was worth a copper mine.”
CHAPTER VI.
HOW TO GET ON THE ROAD.
Since starting on the road many have asked me: ”How can I get a job on the road?”
Young men and old men have asked me this--clerks, stock boys, merchants and students. Even wives have asked me how to find places for their husbands.
Let's clear the ground of dead timber. Old men of any sort and young men who haven't fire in their eyes and ginger in their feet need not apply. The ”Old Man,” who sits in the head office sizes up the man who wishes to go out on the road and spend a whole lot of the firm's money for traveling expenses with a great deal more care than the dean of a college measures the youth who comes to enter school. The dean thinks: ”Well, maybe we can make something out of this boy, dull as he is.
We'll try.” But the business man says: ”That fellow is no good. He can't sell goods. What's the use of wasting money on him and covering a valuable territory with a dummy?”