When was he coming back? Well, now, that was a question; he hadn't got
started yet, man. What he was figuring on wasn't the coming back part,
but the getting started.
The schoolma'am? Oh, he guessed she could get along without him, all
right. Seeing they mentioned her, would some of them tell her hello
for him--and so long?
This last was at the station, where they had ridden in a body to see
him off. Weary waved his hat as long as the town was in sight, and the
Happy Family ran their horses to keep pace with the train when it
pulled out, emptied their six-shooters into the air and yelled parting
words till the Pullman windows were filled with shocked, Eastern faces,
eager to see a real, wild cowboy on his native soil.
Then Weary went into the smoker, sought a place where he could stretch
the long legs of him over two seats, made him a cigarette and forgot to
smoke it while he watched the gray plains slide away behind him; till
something went wrong with his eyes. It was just four o'clock, and
school was out. The schoolma'am was looking down the trail, maybe--
At any rate she was a good many miles away from him now--so many that
even if he got off and had Glory right there and ran him every foot of
the way, he could not possibly get to her--and the way the train was
galloping over the rails, she was every minute getting farther off,
and-- What a damn fool a man can make of himself, rushing off like
that when, maybe--
After that, a fellow who traveled for a San Francisco wine house spoke
to him pleasantly and Weary thrust vain longings from him and was
himself again.
For two months he wandered aimlessly and, then, not quite at the point
of going back and not being rich or an idler by nature, he started out,
one gloomy morning in late November, looking for work. He was in
Portland and the city was strange to him, for he had dropped off a
north-bound train the night before.
People hurried past without a glance in his direction, and even after
two months this made him lonesome, coming as he did from a place where
every man hailed him jovially by his adopted name.
There was little that he could do--or would do. He tried digging
ditches for the city, along with a motley collection of the sons of all
nations but his, seemingly.
The first day be blistered both hands and got a "crick" in his back.
The second day, he quit.
On the third day, he brought up at the door of a livery stable. A man
with a slate-colored, silk waistcoat was standing aggressively in the
doorway, one hand deep in his pocket and the other energetically
punctuating the remarks he was making to a droop-shouldered hostler.
Some of the remarks were interesting in the extreme and Weary,
listening, drew a deep sigh of thankfulness that they were not directed
at himself, because his back was still lame and his hands sore, and in
Portland law-abiding citizens are not supposed to "pack" a gun.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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