A Man for the Ages Part 44

"'I'll give ye four hundred dollars for a hogs in good Michigan money,'

he said.

"'If ye can't steal a horse you're willin' to buy one,' I says.

"'No, sir. I only come to buy,' says he.

"I flopped him sudden and asked him why he was putting on the bridle.

"He owned up then. Said a man had hired him to steal the horse.

"'That man has got to have a hoss,' he said. 'He'll give ye any price ye want to ask. If you'll give me a few dollars I'll take ye to him.'

"'You go and bring him here and I'll talk to him,' I said.

"I let the feller go. I didn't suppose he'd come back but he did. Came a little before sunrise with that well dressed feller we saw at the tavern.

"'Do you want to buy a horse?' I says.

"'Yes, sir, I've got to get to Chicago to-day if possible.'

"'What's your hurry?'

"'I have engagements to-morrow and land to sell.'

"'How did ye get here?'

"'Came up from Tazewell County to-day on a horse. It died last evening.'

"'What's your name?' I says.

"He handed me a card on which I read the words 'Lionel Davis, Real Estate, Loans and Insurance, 14 South Water Street, Chicago, Ill.'

"'There's one branch o' your business that isn't mentioned on the card,'

I says.

"'What's that?' says he.

"'Horse-thief,' says I. 'You sent that feller here to steal a horse and he got caught.'

"'Well I told him if he'd get me a good horse I'd give him five hundred dollars and that I didn't care how he got him. The fact is I'm desperate.

I'll give you a thousand dollars for one of your horses.'

"'You couldn't buy one of 'em at any price,' I said. 'There's two reasons. I wouldn't do business with a horse-thief and no money would tempt me to sell an animal to be ridden to death.'

"The two thieves had had enough of us and they got out."

That night our party camped on the sh.o.r.e of the Kankakee and next day they met the contractors. Lincoln joined the latter party and Harry and Samson went on alone. Late that afternoon they crossed the nine mile prairie, beyond which they could see the shimmer of the lake and the sunlit structures of the new city. Pink and white moccasin flowers and primroses were thick in the gra.s.s. On the lower ground the hoofs of their horses plashed in wide stretches of shallow water.

Chicago looked very bare on the high prairie above the lake. It was Mr.

William Cullen Bryant who said that it had the look of a huckster in his shirt-sleeves.

"There it is," said Samson. "Four thousand, one hundred and eighty people live there. It looks like a st.u.r.dy two-year-old."

The houses were small and cheaply built and of many colors. Some were unpainted. Near the prairie they stood like people on the outer edge of a crowd, looking over one another's shoulders and pushing in a disordered ma.s.s toward the center of interest. Some seemed to have straggled away as if they had given up trying to see or hear. So to one nearing it the town had a helter-skelter look.

Our travelers pa.s.sed rough boarded houses with grand-looking people in their dooryards and on their small porches--men in broadcloth and tall hats and ladies in silk dresses. It was six o'clock and the men had come home to supper. As the hors.e.m.e.n proceeded larger buildings surrounded them, mostly two stories high. There were some stores and houses built of red brick. Beyond the scatter of cheap, wooden structures they came to streets well laid out and crowded and busy and "very soft" to quote a phrase from the diary. Teams were struggling in the mud, drivers shouting and lashing. Agents for hotels and boarding-houses began to solicit the two hors.e.m.e.n from the plank sidewalks. The latter were deeply impressed by a negro in scarlet clothes, riding a horse in scarlet housings. He carried a scarlet banner and was advertising in a loud voice the hour and place of a great land sale that evening.

A sound of many hammers beating upon boards could be heard above the noises of the street and behind all was the constant droning of a big steam saw and the whir of the heavy stones in the new grist mill. It was the beginning of that amazing diapason of industry which accompanied the building of the cities of the West.

They got out in the livery stable of the City Hotel and at the desk of the latter asked about the price of board. It was three dollars a day and no politeness in the offer.

"It's purty steep," said Samson. "But I'm too hungry for argument or delay and I guess we can stand it to be nabobs for a day or so."

"I shall have to ask you to pay in advance," the clerk demanded.

Samson drew out the pig's bladder in which he carried his money and paid for a day's board.

Samson writes that Harry spent half an hour washing and dressing himself in the clean clothes and fine shoes which he had brought in his saddle-bags and adds:

"He was a broad-shouldered, handsome chap those days, six feet and an inch high and straight as an arrow with a small blond mustache. His clothes were rumpled up some and he wore a gray felt hat instead of a tall one but there was no likelier looking lad in the new city."

After supper the office of the hotel was crowded with men in tall hats and tail coats smoking "seegars" and gathered in groups. The earnestness of their talk was signalized by little outbursts of profanity coupled with the name of Jackson. Some denounced the President as a traitor. One man stood in the midst of a dozen others delivering a sort of oration, embellished with n.o.ble gestures, on the future of Illinois. His teeth were clenched on his "seegar" that tilted out of the corner of his mouth as he spoke. Now and then he would pause and by a deft movement of his lips roll the "seegar" to the other corner of his mouth, take a fresh grip on it and resume his oration.

Samson wrote in his diary:

"He said a lot of foolish things that made us laugh."

Twenty years later he put this note under that entry:

"The funny thing about it was really this; they all came true."

The hotel clerk had a _Register of the Residents of the City of Chicago_ wherein they found the name and address of John Kelso. They went out to find the house. Storekeepers tried to stop them as they pa.s.sed along the street with offers of land at bargains which would make them millionaires in a week. In proceeding along the plank sidewalks they were often ascending or descending steps to another level.

They went to a barber shop and got "trimmed and shaved." For change the barber gave them a sort of shinplaster money, each piece of which bore the legend: "Good for one shave or ten cents at the Palace Shaving Parlors, 16 Dearborn Street, Chicago, Ill." The barber a.s.sured them it was as good as coin anywhere in the city which they found to be true. The town was flooded with this "red dog money" issued by stores or work-shops and finding general acceptance among its visitors and inhabitants. On the sidewalks were emigrant families the older members of which carried heavy bags and bundles. They were followed by troops of weary, dirty children.

On La Salle Street they found the home of Jack Kelso. It was a rough boarded small house a story and a half high. It had a little porch and dooryard enclosed by an unpainted picket fence. Bim in a handsome, blue silk gown came running out to meet them.

"If you don't mind I'm going to kiss you," she said to Harry.

"I'd mind if you didn't," said the young man as he embraced her.

"We must be careful not to get the habit," she laughed.