Samuel the Seeker | Page 6

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