University of Virginia Library

13. CHAPTER XIII.

IN the party of which our travelers found themselves members,
was Duff Brown, the great railroad contractor, and
subsequently a well-known member of congress; a bluff,
jovial Bost'n man, thick-set, close shaven, with a heavy jaw
and a low forehead—a very pleasant man if you were not in his
way. He had government contracts also, custom houses and
dry docks, from Portland to New Orleans, and managed to
get out of congress, in appropriations, about weight for weight
of gold for the stone furnished.

Associated with him, and also of this party, was Rodney
Schaick, a sleek New York broker, a man as prominent in
the church as in the stock exchange, dainty in his dress,
smooth of speech, the necessary complement of Duff Brown
in any enterprise that needed assurance and adroitness.

It would be difficult to find a pleasanter traveling party,
one that shook off more readily the artificial restraints of
Puritanic strictness, and took the world with good-natured
allowance. Money was plenty for every attainable luxury,
and there seemed to be no doubt that its supply would continue,
and that fortunes were about to be made without a
great deal of toil. Even Philip soon caught the prevailing

spirit; Harry did not need any inoculation, he always talked
in six figures. It was as natural for the dear boy to be rich
as it is for most people to be poor.

The elders of the party were not long in discovering the
fact, which almost all travelers to the west soon find out, that
the water was poor. It must have been by a lucky premonition
of this that they all had brandy flasks with which to
qualify the water of the country; and it was no doubt from
an uneasy feeling of the danger of being poisoned that they
kept experimenting, mixing a little of the dangerous and
changing fluid, as they passed along, with the contents of the
flasks, thus saving their lives hour by hour. Philip learned
afterwards that temperance and the strict observance of Sunday
and a certain gravity of deportment are geographical
habits, which people do not usually carry with them away
from home.

Our travelers stopped in Chicago long enough to see that
they could make their fortunes there in two week's time, but
it did not seem worth while; the west was more attractive;
the further one went the wider the opportunities opened.
They took railroad to Alton and the steamboat from there to
St. Louis, for the change and to have a glimpse of the river.

“Isn't this jolly?” cried Henry, dancing out of the barber's
room, and coming down the deck with a one, two, three step,
shaven, curled and perfumed after his usual exquisite fashion.

“What's jolly?” asked Philip, looking out upon the dreary
and monotonous waste through which the shaking steamboat
was coughing its way.

“Why, the whole thing; it's immense I can tell you. I
wouldn't give that to be guaranteed a hundred thousand cold
cash in a year's time.”

“Where's Mr. Brown?”

“He is in the saloon, playing poker with Schaick, and that
long haired party with the striped trousers, who scrambled
aboard when the stage plank was half hauled in, and the big
Delegate to Congress from out west.”

“That's a fine looking fellow, that delegate, with his glossy

black whiskers; looks like a Washington man; I shouldn't
think he'd be at poker.”

“Oh, its only five cent ante, just to make it interesting,
the Delegate said.”

“But I shouldn't think a representative in Congress would
play poker any way in a public steamboat.”

“Nonsense, you've got to pass the time. I tried a hand
myself, but those old fellows are too many for me. The
Delegate knows all the points. I'd bet a hundred dollars he
will ante his way right into the United States Senate when
his territory comes in. He's got the cheek for it.”

“He has the grave and thoughtful manner of expectoration
of a public man, for one thing,” added Philip.

“Harry,” said Philip, after a pause, “what have you got
on those big boots for; do you expect to wade ashore?”

“I'm breaking 'em in.”

The fact was Harry had got himself up in what he thought
a proper costume for a new country, and was in appearance

a sort of compromise between a dandy of Broadway and a
backwoodsman. Harry, with blue eyes, fresh complexion,
silken whiskers and curly chestnut hair, was as handsome as
a fashion plate. He wore this morning a soft hat, a short cutaway
coat, an open vest displaying immaculate linen, a leathern
belt round his waist, and top-boots of soft leather, well
polished, that came above his knees and required a string
attached to his belt to keep them up. The light hearted
fellow gloried in these shining encasements of his well shaped
legs, and told Philip that they were a perfect protection
against prairie rattle-snakes, which never strike above the
knee.

The landscape still wore an almost wintry appearance
when our travelers left Chicago. It was a genial spring day
when they landed at St. Louis; the birds were singing, the
blossoms of peach trees in city garden plots, made the air
sweet, and in the roar and tumult on the long river levee
they found an excitement that accorded with their own
hopeful anticipations.

The party went to the Southern Hotel, where the great
Duff Brown was very well known, and indeed was a man of
so much importance that even the office clerk was respectful
to him. He might have respected in him also a certain vulgar
swagger and insolence of money, which the clerk greatly
admired.

The young fellows liked the house and liked the city; it
seemed to them a mighty free and hospitable town. Coming
from the East they were struck with many peculiarities.
Everybody smoked in the streets, for one thing, they noticed;
everybody “took a drink” in an open manner whenever he
wished to do so or was asked, as if the habit needed no concealment
or apology. In the evening when they walked
about they found people sitting on the door-steps of their
dwellings, in a manner not usual in a northern city; in front
of some of the hotels and saloons the side walks were filled
with chairs and benches—Paris fashion, said Harry—upon
which people lounged in these warm spring evenings, smoking,

always smoking; and the clink of glasses and of billiard
balls was in the air. It was delightful.

Harry at once found on landing that his back-woods custom
would not be needed in St. Louis, and that, in fact, he
had need of all the resources of his wardrobe to keep even
with the young swells of the town. But this did not much
matter, for Harry was always superior to his clothes. As
they were likely to be detained some time in the city, Harry
told Philip that he was going to improve his time. And he
did. It was an encouragement to any industrious man to see
this young fellow rise, carefully dress himself, eat his breakfast
deliberately, smoke his cigar tranquilly, and then repair
to his room, to what he called his work, with a grave and
occupied manner, but with perfect cheerfulness.

Harry would take off his coat, remove his cravat, roll up
his shirt-sleeves, give his curly hair the right touch before
the glass, get out his book on engineering, his boxes of instruments,
his drawing-paper, his profile paper, open the book of
logarithms, mix his India ink, sharpen his pencils, light a
cigar, and sit down at the table to “lay out a line,” with the
most grave notion that he was mastering the details of engineering.
He would spend half a day in these preparations
without ever working out a problem or having the faintest
conception of the use of lines or logarithms. And when he
had finished, he had the most cheerful confidence that he had
done a good day's work.

It made no difference, however, whether Harry was in his
room in a hotel or in a tent, Philip soon found, he was just
the same. In camp he would get himself up in the most
elaborate toilet at his command, polish his long boots to the
top, lay out his work before him, and spend an hour or longer,
if anybody was looking at him, humming airs, knitting his
brows, and “working” at engineering; and if a crowd of gaping
rustics were looking on all the while it was perfectly satisfactory
to him.

“You see,” he says to Philip one morning at the hotel
when he was thus engaged, “I want to get the theory of this

thing, so that I can have a check on the engineers.”

“I thought you were going to be an engineer yourself,”
queried Philip.

“Not many times, if the court knows herself. There's
better game. Brown and Schaick have, or will have, the
control for the whole line of the Salt Lick Pacific Extension,
forty thousand dollars a mile over the prairie, with extra for
hard-pan—and it'll be pretty much all hard-pan I can tell you;
besides every alternate section of land on this line. There's
millions in the job. I'm to have the sub-contract for the
first fifty miles, and you can bet it's a soft thing.”

“I'll tell you what you do, Philip,” continued Harry, in a
burst of generosity, “if I don't get you into my contract,
you'll be with the engineers, and you just stick a stake at the
first ground marked for a dêpot, buy the land of the farmer
before he knows where the dêpot will be, and we'll turn a
hundred or so on that. I'll advance the money for the payments,
and you can sell the lots. Schaick is going to let me
have ten thousand just for a flyer in such operations.”

“But that's a good deal of money.”

“Wait till you are used to handling money. I didn't come
out here for a bagatelle. My uncle wanted me to stay East
and go in on the Mobile custom house, work up the Washington
end of it; he said there was a fortune in it for a smart
young fellow, but I preferred to take the chances out here.
Did I tell you I had an offer from Bobbett and Fanshaw to
go into their office as confidential clerk on a salary of ten
thousand?”

“Why didn't you take it?” asked Philip, to whom a salary
of two thousand would have seemed wealth, before he
started on this journey.

“Take it? I'd rather operate on my own hook,” said Harry,
in his most airy manner.

A few evenings after their arrival at the Southern, Philip
and Harry made the acquaintance of a very agreeable gentleman,
whom they had frequently seen before about the hotel corridors,
and passed a casual word with. He had the air of a

man of business, and was evidently a person of importance.

The precipitating of this casual intercourse into the more
substantial form of an acquaintanceship was the work of the
gentleman himself, and occurred in this wise. Meeting the
two friends in the lobby one evening, he asked them to give
him the time, and added:

“Excuse me, gentlemen—strangers in St. Louis? Ah, yes—
yes. From the East, perhaps? Ah, just so, just so. Eastern
born myself—Virginia. Sellers is my name—Eschol Sellers.
Ah—by the way—New York, did you say? That reminds me;
just met some gentlemen from your State a week or two ago
—very prominent gentlemen—in public life they are; you
must know them, without doubt. Let me see—let me see.
Curious those names have escaped me. I know they were
from your State, because I remember afterward my old friend
Governor Shackleby said to me—fine man, is the Governor
—one of the finest men our country has produced—said he,
`Colonel, how did you like those New York gentlemen?—

not many such men in the world, Colonel Sellers,' said the
Governor—yes, it was New York he said—I remember it
distinctly. I can't recall those names, somehow. But no
matter. Stopping here, gentlemen—stopping at the Southern?”

In shaping their reply in their minds, the title “Mr.” had
a place in it; but when their turn had arrived to speak, the
title “Colonel” came from their lips instead.

They said yes, they were abiding at the Southern, and
thought it a very good house.

“Yes, yes, the Southern is fair. I myself go to the Plant-er's,
old, aristocratic house. We Southern gentlemen don't
change our ways, you know. I always make it my home
there when I run down from Hawkeye—my plantation is in
Hawkeye, a little up in the country. You should know the
Planter's.”

Philip and Harry both said they should like to see a hotel
that had been so famous in its day—a cheerful hostelrie,
Philip said it must have been where duels were fought there
across the dining-room table.

“You may believe it, sir, an uncommonly pleasant lodging.
Shall we walk?”

And the three strolled along the streets, the Colonel talking
all the way in the most liberal and friendly manner, and with
a frank open-heartedness that inspired confidence.

“Yes, born East myself, raised all along, know the West—
a great country, gentlemen. The place for a young fellow of
spirit to pick up a fortune, simply pick it up, it's lying round
loose here. Not a day that I don't put aside an opportunity,
too busy to look into it. Management of my own property
takes my time. First visit? Looking for an opening?”

“Yes, looking around,” replied Harry.

“Ah, here we are. You'd rather sit here in front than go
to my apartments? So had I. An opening, eh?”

The Colonel's eyes twinkled. “Ah, just so. The whole
country is opening up, all we want is capital to develope it.
Slap down the rails and bring the land into market. The

richest land on God Almighty's footstool is lying right out
there. If I had my capital free I could plant it for millions.”

“I suppose your capital is largely in your plantation?”
asked Philip.

“Well, partly, sir, partly. I'm down here now with reference
to a little operation—a little side thing merely. By the
way gentlemen, excuse the liberty, but it's about my usual
time”—

The Colonel paused, but as no movement of his acquaintances
followed this plain remark, he added, in an explanatory
manner,

“I'm rather particular about the exact time—have to be in
this climate.”

Even this open declaration of his hospitable intention not
being understood the Colonel politely said,

“Gentlemen, will you take something?”

Col. Sellers led the way to a saloon on Fourth street under
the hotel, and the young gentlemen fell into the custom of
the country.

“Not that,” said the Colonel to the bar-keeper, who shoved
along the counter a bottle of apparently corn-whiskey, as if
he had done it before on the same order; “not that,” with a
wave of the hand. “That Otard if you please. Yes. Never
take an inferior liquor, gentlemen, not in the evening, in
this climate. There. That's the stuff. My respects!”

The hospitable gentleman, having disposed of his liquor,
remarking that it was not quite the thing—“when a man has
his own cellar to go to, he is apt to get a little fastidious
about his liquors”—called for cigars. But the brand offered
did not suit him; he motioned the box away, and asked for
some particular Havana's, those in separate wrappers.

“I always smoke this sort, gentlemen; they are a little
more expensive, but you'll learn, in this climate, that you'd
better not economize on poor cigars.”

Having imparted this valuable piece of information, the
Colonel lighted the fragrant cigar with satisfaction, and then

[ILLUSTRATION]

"NOT THAT."

[Description: 499EAF. Page 131. In-line image of a group of men around a saloon bar talking with the bar keeper.] carelessly put his fingers into his right vest pocket. That
movement being without result, with a shade of disappointment
on his face, he felt in his left vest pocket. Not finding
anything there, he looked up with a serious and annoyed air,
anxiously slapped his right pantaloon's pocket, and then his
left, and exclaimed,

“By George, that's annoying. By George, that's mortifying.
Never had anything of that kind happen to me before.
I've left my pocket-book. Hold! Here's a bill, after all.
No, thunder, it's a receipt.”

“Allow me,” said Philip, seeing how seriously the Colonel
was annoyed, and taking out his purse.

The Colonel protested he couldn't think of it, and muttered
something to the bar-keeper about “hanging it up,” but the
vender of exhilaration made no sign, and Philip had the
privilege of paying the costly shot; Col. Sellers profusely
apologizing and claiming the right “next time, next time.”

As soon as Eschol Sellers had bade his friends good night
and seen them depart, he did not retire to apartments
in the Planter's, but took his way to his lodgings with a
friend in a distant part of the city.