He had his bundle slung over his back and his eighty dollars pinned tightly in an inside pocket. Underneath it his heart beat fast and high; he was young and he was free—the open road stretched out before him, and perpetual adventure beckoned to him. Every pilgrimage that he had ever read of helped to make up the thrill that stirred him, as he stood on the ridge and gazed at the old farmhouse, and waved his hand, and turned and began his journey.
The horse was needed for the plowing, and so Samuel walked the six miles to the village, and from there the mail stage took him out to the solitary railroad station. He had three hours to wait here for the train, and so he decided that he would save fifteen cents by walking on to the next station. Distance was nothing to Samuel just then.
Halfway to his destination there was a fire in a little clearing by the track, and a young man sat toasting some bread on a stick.
“Hello!” he said. “You're hittin' her lively.”
“Yes,” said Samuel. The stranger was not much older than he, but his clothing was dirty and he had a dissipated, leering face.
“You're new at this game, aren't you?” said he.
“What game?” asked Samuel.
The other laughed. “Where ye goin'?”
“To New York.”
“Goin' to hoof it all the way?”
“No!” gasped the boy. “I'm just walking to the next station.”
“Oh, I see! What's the fare?”
“Six thirty-seven, I think.”
“Humph! Got the price, hey!”
“Yes—I've got the price.” Samuel said this without pride.
“Well, you won't have it long if you live at that rate,” commented the stranger. “Why don't you beat your way?”
“How do you mean?” asked Samuel.
“Nobody but a duffer pays fare,” said the other. “There'll be a freight along pretty soon, and she stops at the water tank just below here. Why don't you jump her?”
Samuel hesitated. “I wouldn't like to do that,” he said.
“Come,” said the other, “sit down.”
And he held out a piece of his toast, which Samuel accepted for politeness' sake. This young fellow had run away from school at the age of thirteen; and he had traveled all over the United States, following the seasons, and living off the country. He was on his way now from a winter's holiday in Mexico. And as Samuel listened to the tale of his adventures, he could not keep the thought from troubling him, how large a part of eighty dollars was six thirty-seven. And all in a single day.
“Come,” said the young fellow; and they started down the track. The freight was whistling for brakes, far up the grade. And Samuel's heart thumped with excitement.
They crouched in the bushes, not far beyond the tank. But the train did not stop for water; it only slowed down for a curve, and it thundered by at what seemed to Samuel an appalling rate of speed. “Jump!” shouted the other, and started to run by the track. He made a leap, and caught, and was whirled on, half visible in a cloud of dust.
Samuel's nerve failed him. He waited, while car after car went by. But then he caught hold of himself. If anyone could do it, so could he. For shame.
He started to run. There came a box-car, empty, with the door open, and he leaped and clutched the edge of the door. He was whirled from his feet, his arms were nearly jerked out of him. He was half blinded by the dust, but he hung on desperately, and pulled himself up. A minute more and he lay gasping and trembling upon the floor of the car. He was on his way to the city.
After a while, Samuel began to think; and then scruples troubled him. He was riding free; but was he not really stealing? And would his father have approved of his doing it? He had begun his career by yielding to temptation! And this at the suggestion of a young fellow who boasted of drinking and thieving! Simply to start such questions was enough, with Samuel; and he made up his mind that when he reached the city the first thing he would do would be to visit the office of the railroad, and explain what he had done, and pay his fare.
Perhaps an hour later the train came to a stop, and he heard some one walking by the track. He hid in a corner, ashamed of being there. Some one stopped before the car, and the door was rolled shut. Then the footsteps went on. There came clankings and jarrings, as of cars being shifted, and then these ceased and silence fell.
Samuel waited for perhaps an hour. Then, becoming restless, he got up and tried the door. It was fast.
The boy was startled and rather dazed. He sat down to think it out. “I suppose I'm locked in till we reach New York,” he reflected. But then, why didn't they go?
“Perhaps we're on a siding, waiting for the passenger train to pass,” was his next thought; and he realized regretfully that he would have been on that train. But then, as hour after hour passed, and they did not go on, a terrible possibility dawned upon him. He was left behind—on a siding.
Two or three trains went by, and each time he waited anxiously. But they did not stop. Silence came again, and he sat in the darkness and waited and wondered and feared.
He had no means of telling the time; and doubtless an hour seemed an age in such a plight. He would get up and pace back and forth, like a caged animal; and then he would lie down by the door, straining his ears for a sound—thinking that some one might pass, unnoticed through the thick wall of the car.
By and by he became hungry and he ate the scanty meal he had in his bundle. Then he became thirsty—and he had no water.
The realization of this made his heart thump. It was no joking matter to be shut in, at one could not tell what lonely place, to suffer from thirst. He sprang up and began to pound and kick upon the door in a frenzy.
But he soon tired of that and crouched on the floor again listening and shivering, half with fear and half with cold. It was becoming chillier, so he judged it must be night; up here in the mountains there was still frost at night.
There came another train, a freight, he knew by the heavy pounding and the time it took to pass. He kicked on the door and shouted, but he soon realized that it was of no use to shout in that uproar.
The craving for water was becoming an obsession. He tried not to think about it, but that only made him think about it the more; he would think about not thinking about it and about not thinking about that—and all the time he was growing thirstier. He wondered how long one could live without water; and as the torment grew worse he began to wonder if he was dying. He was hungry, too, and he wondered which was worse, of which one would die the sooner. He had heard that dying men remembered all their past, and so he began to remember his—with extraordinary vividness, and with bursts of strange and entirely new emotions. He remembered particularly all the evil things that he had ever done; including the theft of a ride, for which he was paying the penalty. And meantime, with another part of his mind, he was plotting and seeking. He must not die here like a rat in a hole. There must be some way.
He tried every inch of the car—of the floor and ceiling and walls. But there was not a loose plank nor a crack—the car was new. And that suggested another idea—that he might suffocate before he starved. He was beginning to feel weak and dizzy.
If only he had a knife. He could have cut a hole for air and then perhaps enlarged it and broken out a board. He found a spike on the floor and began tapping round the walls for a place that sounded thin; but they all sounded thick—how thick he had no idea. He began picking splinters away at the juncture of two planks.
Meantime hunger and thirst continued to gnaw at him. At long intervals he would pause while a train roared by, or because he fancied he had heard a sound. Then he would pound and call until he was hoarse, and then go on picking at the splinters.
And so on, for an unknown number of hours, but certainly for days and nights. And Samuel was famished and wild and weak and gasping; when at last it dawned upon his senses that a passing train had begun to make less noise—that the thumping was growing slower. The train was stopping.
He leaped up and began to pound. Then he realized that he must control himself—he must save his strength until the train had stopped. But suppose it went on without delay? He began to pound again and to shout like a madman.
The train stopped and there was silence; then came sounds of cars being coupled—and meantime Samuel was kicking and beating upon the wall. He was almost exhausted and in despair—when suddenly from outside came a muffled call—“Hello!”
For a moment he could not speak. Then “Help! Help!” he shrieked.
“What's the matter?” asked the voice.
“I'm locked in,” he called. .
“How'd you get in?”
“They locked me in by accident. I'm nearly dead.”
“Who are you?”
“I was riding in the car.”
“A tramp, hey? Serves ye right! Better stay there!”
“No! No!” screamed the boy, in terror. “I'm starving—I've been here for days. For heaven's sake let me out—I'll never do it again.”
“If I let you out,” said the voice, “it's my business to arrest you.”
“All right,” cried Samuel. “Anything—but don't leave me here.”
There was a moment's silence. “Have you got any money?” asked the voice.
“Yes. Yes—I've got money.”
“Don't yell so loud. How much?”
“Why—what?”
“How much?”
“I've got eighty dollars.”
“All right. Give it to me and I'll let you out.”
Frantic as he was, this staggered Samuel. “I can't give you all my money,” he cried.
“All right then,” said the other. “Stay there.”
“No, no!” he protested. “Wait! Leave me just a little.”
“I'll leave you five dollars,” said the voice. “Speak up! Quick!”
“All right,” said Samuel faintly. “I'll give it to you.”
“Mind! No nonsense now!”
“No. Let me out!”
“I'll bat you over the head if you try it,” growled the voice; and the boy stood trembling while the hasp was unfastened and the door was pushed back a little. The light of a lantern flashed in through the crack, blinding him.
“Now hand out the money,” said the stranger, standing at one side for safety.
“Yes,” said Samuel, fumbling with the pin in his waistcoat. “But I can't see to count it.”
“Be quick! I'll count it!”
And so he shoved out the wad. Fingers seized it; and then the light vanished, and he heard the sound of footsteps running.
For a moment he did not understand. Then, “Give me my five dollars!” he yelled, and rolled back the door and leaped out. He was just in time to see the figure with the lantern vanish among the cars up the track.
He started to run up the track and tripped over a tie and fell headlong beginning to move, and the light of the lantern was nowhere to be seen.
All books are sourced from Project Gutenberg