The Easiest Way | Page 3

of which
he had read and knew nothing, and his desperation grew, until one day

he summoned up enough courage to run away.
On foot, with nothing to eat, and only an occasional hitch behind a
friendly teamster's wagon, he bravely made his way to Bismarck, fifty
miles distant where, after nearly starving to death, he enlisted the
sympathies of a kindly grocer, who gave him two dollars a week and
his board to run errands. This was not much better than what he had
escaped from, but John did not care. At least it was the dawn of
independence. Industrious and faithful, he was rewarded in due time by
promotion and eventually he might have become a partner and married
the grocer's daughter, but unfortunately, or fortunately, as may be, his
restless spirit made this programme impossible of realization.
Twenty years of age, and six feet tall in his stockings, he had muscles
like steel and nerves of iron. A tall, finely-built type of Western
manhood, he had a frank, open face, with clean-cut features, a strong
mouth, and alert, flashing eyes, that denoted a quick, nervous energy.
In repose his face was serious; when he smiled, revealing fine strong
teeth, it was prepossessing. He wore his hair rather long, and with his
loose corduroy jacket, top boots, and cowboy hat, suggested the
Western ranchman. The girls of Bismarck were all in love with him,
and his mere presence doubled the business of the store, but the young
man resisted all feminine blandishments. He was ambitious, dissatisfied
and restless, A voice within him told him that Nature intended him for
something better than selling potatoes; so, taking affectionate leave of
the grocer, he went away.
Ten years passed. He prospered and saw a good deal of the world. He
traveled East and West, North and South. He was in Canada and down
in Mexico; he visited London, Berlin, Paris, New York and San
Francisco. His money all gone, he drifted for a time, trying his versatile
hand at everything that offered itself. He went to sea and sailed around
the Horn before the mast, he enlisted in the army and saw active service
in the Philippines. He was cowboy for a Western cattle king, and there
he learned to break wild bronchos without a saddle and split apples
with a revolver bullet at a hundred yards. He was among the pioneers in
the gold rush to Alaska and played faro in all the tough mining towns.

Sworn in as sheriff, he one day apprehended single-handed, a gang of
desperate outlaws, who attempted to hold up a train.
It was a rough and dangerous life. He was thrown in with all sorts of
men, most of them with criminal records. He loved the excitement, yet
he never allowed his tough associates to drag him down to their own
level. He drank with them, gambled with them, but he never made a
beast of himself, as did some of the others. He always managed to keep
his own hands clean, he never lost his own self regard. He was quick on
the trigger and in time of overheated argument could go some distance
with his fists. Utterly fearless, powerful in physique, he was at all times
able to command respect. Above all, he was a respecter of women. He
never forgot what his mother once said to him. He was only a lad at the
time, but her words had never faded from his memory: "Sonny," she
said, "never forget that your mother was a woman." And he never had.
In all his relations with women in later life, he had remembered the
injunction of the mother he loved. When other men spoke lightly of
women in his presence he showed disapproval, if their character was
attacked he championed their cause, if confronted with proofs, he flatly
refused to consider them. Yet he was neither a prig nor a prude. He
enjoyed a joke as well as any one, but at the same time he did not let
his mind run in only one channel, as some men do. He pitied rather
than blamed the wretched females who frequented the miners' camps.
More sinned against than sinning, was his humane judgment of these
unhappy outcasts, and when he could, he helped them. Many a besotted
creature had him to thank when the end came and short shrift little
better then that accorded a dead dog awaited her--that at least she got a
decent burial. The boys knew his attitude on the woman question, and it
was a tribute to the regard in which they held him that, in his hearing at
least, they were decent.
Meantime, John Madison was educating himself. There was no limit to
his ambition. With the one idea of