had asked Bob to get another herdsman and drive the cattle steadily towards Kansas City: he consented, and for hours before we went to the saloon, Bob had been trekking north. I intended to rejoin him some five or six miles further on and drive slowly for the rest of the night. Somehow or other, I felt that the neighborhood was unhealthy for us. The gambling saloon was lighted by three powerful oil lamps: two over the faro table and one over the bar. Jo stationed himself at the bar while Bent and Charlie went to the table. I walked about the room trying to play the indifferent among the twenty or thirty men scattered about.
Suddenly, about ten o'clock, Charlie began disputing with the banker: they both rose, the banker drawing a big revolver from the table drawer in front of him. At the same moment Charlie struck the lamp above him and I saw him draw his gun just as all the lights went out (leaving us in pitch darkness). I ran to the door and was carried through it in a sort of mad stampede. A minute afterwards Bent joined me and then Charlie came rushing out at top speed with Jo hard after him. In a moment we were at the corner of the street where we had left our ponies and were off: one or two shots followed; I thought we had got off scot free, but I was mistaken. We had ridden hell for leather about an hour when Charlie without apparent reason pulled up and swaying, fell out of his saddle: his pony stopped dead and we all gathered round the wounded man. «I'm finished,» said Charlie in a weak voice, «but I've got my money back and I want you to send it to my mother in Pleasant Hill, Missouri. It's about a thousand dollars, I guess.» «Are you badly hurt?» I asked. «He drilled me through the stomach first go off,» Charlie said, pointing, «and I guess I've got it at least twice more through the lungs: I'm done.»
«What a pity, Charlie!» I cried; «you'll get more than a thousand dollars from your share of the cattle: I've told Bob that I intend to share equally with all of you. This money must go back, but the thousand shall be sent to your mother, I promise you.» «Not on your life!» cried the dying man, lifting himself up on one elbow.
«This is my money: it shan't go back to that oily sneak thief!» The effort had exhausted him; even in the dim light we could see that his face was drawn and grey: he must have understood this himself, for I could just hear his last words: «Goodbye, boys!» His head fell back, his mouth opened: the brave boyish spirit was gone. I couldn't control my tears: the phrase came to me: «I better could have lost a better man,» for Charlie was at heart a good fellow! I left Bent to carry back the money and arrange for Charlie's burial, leaving Jo to guard the body: in an hour I was again with Bob and had told him everything. Ten days later we were in Kansas City, where I was surprised by unexpected news. My second brother, Willie, six years older than I was, had come out to America and hearing of me in Kansas, had located himself in Lawrence as a real estate agent; he wrote asking me to join him. This quickened my determination to have nothing more to do with cow-punching. Cattle, too, we found, had fallen in price and we were lucky to get ten dollars a head for our bunch, which made a poor showing from the fact that the Indians had netted all the best. There was about six thousand dollars to divide:
Jo got five hundred dollars and Bent, Bob, Charlie's mother and myself divided the rest. Bob told me I was a fool: I should keep it all and go down south again; but what had I gained by my two years of cow-punching? I had lost money and caught malarial fever; I had won a certain knowledge of ordinary men and their way of living and had got more than a smattering of economics and of medicine; but I was filled with an infinite disgust for a merely physical life. What was I to do now? I'd see Willie and make up my mind.
Chapter IX. Student Life and Love
Thatrailway journey to Lawrence, Kansas, is as vivid to me now as if it had taken place yesterday; yet it all happened more than fifty years ago. It was a blazing hot day and in the seat opposite to me was an old grey- haired man who appeared to be much troubled by the heat: he moved about restlessly, mopped his forehead, took off his vest and finally went out, probably to the open observation platform, leaving a couple of books on his seat. I took one of them up heedlessly-it was The Life and Death of Jason, by William Morris. I read a page or two, was surprised by the easy flow of the verse, but not gripped, so I picked up the other volume: Laus Veneris: Poems and Ballads by Algernon Charles Swinburne. It opened at the Ancatoria, and in a moment I was carried away, entranced as no poetry before or since has ever entranced me. Venus herself spoke in the lines: Alas! that neither rain nor snow nor dew Nor all cold things can purge me wholly through, Assuage me nor allay me, nor appease, Till supreme sleep shall bring me bloodless ease, Till Time wax faint in all her periods, Till Fate undo the bondage of the Gods To lay and slake and satiate me all through, Lotus and Lethe on my lips like dew, And shed around and over and under me Thick darkness and the insuperable sea. I haven't seen the poem since and there may be verbal inaccuracies in my version, but the music and passion of the verses enthralled me; and when I came to The Leper, the last stanzas brought hot tears to my eyes; and in the Garden of Proserpine, I heard my own soul speaking with divine if hopeless assurance. Was there ever such poetry? Even the lighter verses were charming: Remembrance may recover And time bring back to time The name of your first lover, The ring of my first rhyme: But rose-leaves of December, The storms of June shall fret; The day that you remember, The day that I forget. And then the gay defiance: In the teeth of the glad salt weather, In the blown wet face of the sea; While three men hold together, Their Kingdoms are less by three. And the divine songs to Hugo and to Whitman and the superb Dedication, the last verse of it a miracle: Though the many lights dwindle to one light, There is help if the Heavens have one; Though the stars be discrowned of the sunlight And the earth dispossessed of the Sun: They have moonlight and sleep for repayment When refreshed as a bride and set free; With stars and sea-winds in her raiment Night sinks on the sea. My very soul was taken; I had no need to read them twice: I've never seen them twice; I shall not forget them so long as this machine lasts. They flooded my eyes with tears, my heart with passionate admiration. In this state the old gentleman came back and found me, a cowboy to all appearance, lost, tear-drowned in Swinburne. «I think that's my book,» he said calling me back to dull reality. «Surely,» I replied bowing;
«but what magnificent poetry, and I never heard of Swinburne before.»
«This is his first book, I believe,» said the old gentleman, «but I'm glad you like his verses.» «Like,» I cried, «who could help adoring them?» and I let myself go to recite the Prosperpine:
From too much love of living, From hope and fear set free, We thank with brief thanksgiving Whatever Gods may be That no life lives forever, That dead men rise up never, That even the weariest river Winds somewhere safe to sea.
«Why, you've learned it by heart!» cried the old man in wonder. «Learned,» I repeated, «I know half the book by heart: if you had stayed away another half hour, I'd have known it all,» and I went on reciting for the next ten minutes. «I never heard of such a thing in my life,» he cried. «Fancy a cowboy who learns Swinburne by merely reading him. It's astounding! Where are you going?» «To Lawrence,» I replied. «We're almost there,» he added, and then,
«I wish you would let me give you the book. I can easily get another copy and I think it ought to be yours,» I thanked him with all my heart and in a few minutes more got down at Lawrence station, then as now far outside the little town, clasping my Swinburne in my hand.
I record this story not to brag of my memory, for all gifts are handicaps in life, but to show how kind western Americans were to young folk, and because the irresistible, unique appeal of Swinburne to youth has never been set forth before, so far as I know. In a comfortable room at the Eldridge House, in the chief street of Lawrence, I met my brother. Willie seemed woefully surprised by my appearance. «You're as yellow as a guinea, but how you've grown,» he cried. «You may be tall, but you look ill, very ill!» He was the picture of health and even better looking than I had remembered him: a man of five feet ten or so, with good figure and very handsome dark face: hair, small moustache, and goatee beard jet black; straight thin nose and superb long hazel eyes with black lashes: he might have stood for the model of a Greek god, were it not that his forehead was narrow and his eyes set close. In three months he had become enthusiastically American. «America is the greatest country in the world»; he assured me from an abysmal ignorance, «any young man who works can make money here; if I had a little capital I'd be a rich man in a very few years; it's some capital I need, nothing more.» Having drawn my story out of me, especially the last phase when I divided up with the boys, he declared I must be mad. «With five thousand dollars,» he cried, «I could be rich in three years, a millionaire in ten. You must be mad; don't you know that everyone is for himself in this world? Good gracious! I never heard of such insanity: if I had only known!» For some days I watched him closely and came to believe that he was perfectly suited to his surroundings, eminently fitted to succeed in them. He was an earnest Christian, I found, who had been converted and baptized in the Baptist Church; he had a fair tenor voice and led the choir; he swallowed all the idiocies of the incredible creed,
