LADRONE TRAVELS IN STATE1

HAMLIN GARLAND

WITH a little leisure to walk about and talk with the citizens of Seattle, I became aware of the great change which a year had brought. The boom of the gold-seeker was over. The talk was now upon the Spanish war; the business of outfitting was no longer paramount. The reckless hurrah, the splendid exultation, were gone. Men were sailing to the north, but they now embarked quietly, methodically, in business fashion.

In Seattle, as all along the line, the talk a year ago had been almost entirely on gold hunting. Every storekeeper had advertised "Klondike Goods," but these signs were now rusty and faded. The fever was over; the reign of the humdrum was restored. It is safe to say that the North will never again witness such a furious rush of men as that which took place between August, '97, and June, '98. Gold is still in the North, and it will continue to be sought, but the attention of the people is directed elsewhere.

I took the train next day and passed my horse, Ladrone, in his car in the night somewhere; and as I looked from my window at the fires blazing in the forest, my fear of his burning came upon me again. At Spokane I waited a day in great anxiety for him to arrive. At last the train drew in and I sought his car. Someone had closed his door, and as I nervously forced it open, fearing he was suffering for air, he greeted me with that glad chuckling whinny which a gentle horse uses toward his master.

He had plenty of hay, but was hot and thirsty, and I hurried (at risk of life and limb) to bring him water. His eyes shone with delight as he saw me coming with the big bucket of cool drink.

Leaving him with his tub filled with hay and water, I once more bade him goodby and started him for Helena, five hundred miles

away.

1 From Hamlin Garland's The Trail of the Gold-Seekers. Used by permission of the author.

At Missoula, the following evening, I rushed into the ticket office and shouted, "Where is 54?”

The clerk knew me and smilingly extended his hand.

"How de do? She has just pulled out. The horse is all O.K. We gave him fresh water and feed.”

I thanked him and returned to my train.

Reaching Livingston in the early morning, I found that I must wait nearly all day for the train. This was no hardship, however, for it enabled me to return once more to the plain. All the old familiar presences were there. The splendid sweep of brown, smooth hills, the glory of clear sky, the crisp exhilarating air, appealed to me with great power after my long stay in the cold green mountains of the North.

I walked out a few miles from the town over the grass, brittle and hot (from which the clapping grasshoppers rose in swarms), and dropping down on the point of a mesa relived again, in drowse, the joys of other days. Gold seeking in the Rocky Mountains seemed marvelously simple and easy compared to even the best sections of the Northwest. The long journey of the Forty-niners had not only been incredibly more splendid and dramatic, but it had had the allurement of a land of eternal summer lying beyond the final great range; whereas the long trail I had just passed, grim and monotonous, led toward an everincreasing ferocity of cold and darkness to the Arctic Circle, to the silence of winter and death.

When the train came crawling down the pink and purple slopes of the hills at sunset, I was ready for my horse. Bridle in hand, I raced after the big car while it was being drawn up into the freight yards. As I galloped, I held excited controversy with the head brakeman. I asked that the car be sent to the platform. He objected. I insisted and the car was thrown in. I entered, and while Ladrone called a glad welcome I knocked out some bars, bridled him, and said, "Come, boy, now for a gambol."

He followed me without the slightest hesitation out across a

plank to the platform and down the steep slope to the ground. There I mounted him without waiting for saddle and away we flew.

He was gay as a bird! His neck arched and his eyes and ears were quick as those of a squirrel. We galloped down to the Yellowstone River, and as he thrust his dusty nozzle deep into the clear mountain water I rejoiced with him. Then away he raced, snorting with pleasure until our fifteen minutes were up.

I was glad to quit. He was too active for me to enjoy riding without a saddle. Right up to the door of the car he trotted, seeming to understand that his journey was not yet finished. He entered unhesitatingly and took his place. I battened down the bars, nailed the doors into place, then filled his tub with water, mixed him a bran mash, and sent him on, this time with perfect confidence. He was actually getting fat on his prison fare, and too wise to allow himself to be bruised by the jolting of the cars.

The bystanders, seeing a horse traveling in such splendid loneliness, asked, "Runnin' horse?" and I (to cover my folly) replied evasively, "He can run a little for good money." This satisfied everyone that he was a sprinter and quite explained the luxury of his private car.

At Bismarck I found myself once more ahead of "54" and waited all day for my horse to appear. As the time of the train drew near, I borrowed a huge pail and tugged it, filled with water, out beside the track and there sat for three hours, expecting the train each moment. At last it came, but Ladrone was not there. His car was missing. I rushed into the office of the operator: "Where's the horse in 13,238?" I asked.

"I don't know," answered the agent, in the tone of one who didn't care.

Visions of Ladrone sidetracked somewhere and perishing for want of air and water filled my mind. I waxed warm.

"That horse must be found at once," I demanded.

The clerks and operators wearily looked out of the window.

The idea of anyone being so concerned about a horse was to them insanity or worse. I insisted. I banged my fist on the table. At last one of the young men yawned languidly, looked at me with dim eyes, and as one brain cell coalesced with another he matured an idea.

"Rheinhart had a horse this morning on his extra."

"Did he? maybe that's the one."

They discussed this probability with lazy indifference. At last they condescended to include me in their conversation.

I insisted on their telegraphing till they found that horse, and with an air of distress and saint-like patience the agent wrote out a telegram and sent it. Thereafter he could not see me; nevertheless I persisted. I returned to the office each quarter of an hour to ask if an answer had come to the telegram. At last it came. Ladrone was ahead and would arrive in St. Paul nearly twelve hours before me. I then telegraphed the officers of the road to see that he did not suffer and composed myself as well as I could for the long wait.

At St. Paul I hurried to the freight office and was greatly relieved to find the horse had been put in a railway stable. I sought the building and there, among the big dray horses, looking small and trim as a racer, stood my lost horse, eating merrily on some good Minnesota timothy. He was just as much at ease there as in the car or on the boat or on the marshes of the Skeena valley, but he was still a half-day's ride from his final home.

Again I bustled about fitting up another car. Once more and for the last time I sweated and tugged, getting feed, water, and bedding while the railway hands marveled and looked askance. At last someone said, "Does it pay to bring a horse like that so far?"

"Pay!" I shouted, thoroughly disgusted, "No! Does it pay to feed a dog for ten years? Does it pay to bring up a child? Payno; it does not pay. I'm amusing myself. You drink beer because you like to. You use tobacco-I don't. I

squander my money on a horse." I said a good deal more than the case demanded, being hot and dusty and tired and — I had broken loose. The clerk escaped through a side door.

At last I closed the bars on my gray and saw him wheeled out into the grinding, jolting tangle of cars, where the engines cried out like untamable flesh-eating monsters. The light was falling, the smoke thickening, and it was easy to imagine a tragic fate for that patient and lonely horse.

Delay in getting the car made me lose my train, and I was obliged to take a late train which did not stop at my home. I was still paying for my horse out of my own bone and sinew. At last the luscious green hills, the thick grasses, the tall cornstalks and the portly haystacks of my native valley came in view, and they never looked so abundant, so generous, so entirely sufficing to man and beast as now in returning from a land of cold green forests, sparse grass, and icy streams.

At ten o'clock another huge freight train rolled in. Ladrone's car was sidetracked and sent to the chute. For the last time he felt the jolt of the car. In a few minutes I had his car opened and a plank laid.

"Come, boy!" I called. "This is home!"

He followed me as before, so readily, so trustingly, my heart responded to his affection. I swung to the saddle.

With neck arched high and with a proud and lofty stride, he left the door of his prison behind him. His fame had spread through the village. On every corner stood my fellow citizens, marveling to see us pass.

As I reached the door to the old barn, I said to Ladrone, "Enter! Your days of thirst, of hunger, of cruel exposure to rain and snow are over. Here is food that shall not fail" — and

he seemed to understand.

It might seem absurd if I were to give expression to the relief and deep pleasure it gave me to put that horse into that familiar

stall.

He had been with me more than four thousand miles. He