Newport daily independent., 1911-03-04

ease. Beside him in his nest was
 quart bottle of very poor whisky and
 a paper bag of bread and cheese. MT.
 Ruggles, in his private car, was on
 his trip south for the winter season.
 For week that car was trundled
 southward, shifted, laid over, and
 manipulated after the manner of roll | ing stock, but Chicken stuck to 1t,
 leaving it only at necessary times to
 satisfy his hunger and thirst. He
 knew it must go down to the cattle
 country, and San Antonio, in the heart
 of it, was his goal. There the air
 was salubrious and mild; the people indulgent and long-suffering. The bar
 tenders there would not kick him. If
 he should eat too long or too often
 at one place they would swear at him
 as if by rote and without heat. They
 swore so drawlingly, and they rarely | paused short of their full vocabulary, l which was copious, so that Chicken l had often gulped a good meal during l the process of the vituperative pro- | hibition. The season there was al- ways springlike; the plazas were, pleasant at night, with music and 1 gayety; exceut during the slight and | infrequently cold snaps one could
 sleep comfortably out of doors in cage the interiors should develop inbospi-
 tality
 At Texarkana the car was switched | to the l. & G. N. Then still south
 ward it trailed until, at length, 1t
 crawled across the Colorado bridge at Austin, and lined out, straight as l an arrow for the run to San An tonic
 l When the freight halted at that l town Chicken was fast asleep. In ten minutes it was off again for Laredo, l the end of the road. Those empty | cattle cars were for distribution along l the line at points from which the
 ranches shipped their stock.
 When Chicken awoke his car was stationary. Looking out between the
 night. Scrambling out, he saw his | car with three others abandoned on a little siding in a wild and lonesome country. A cattle pen and chute l stood on one side of the track The l railroad bisected vast, dim ocean | of prairie in the midst of which | Chicken, with his futile rolling stock, was as completely stranded as was l Robinson Crusoe with his land-locked | boat.
 A white post stood near the rails.
 Going up to it, Chicken read the let l ters at the top, s. A. 90 Laredo was l nearly as far to the south. He was l almost a hundred miles from any | town. Coyotes began to yelp in the
 mysterious sea around him. Chicken felt lonesome. He had lived in Bos- ton without an education, In Chicago
 without nerve, in Philadelphia with
 out sleeping place, in New York
 without pull, and in Pittsburg sober,
 and yet he had never felt so lonely as now
 Suddenly through the intense si- lence, he heard the whicker of a
 horse. The sound came from the side of the track toward the east and Chicken began to explore timorously in that direction. He stepped high along the mat of curly mesquite grass, for he was afraid of everything there
 might be in this wilderness-sn snakes,
 rats, brigands, centipedes, mirages, cowboys, fandangoes, tarantulas, ta-
 males-he had read of them in the story papers. Rounding a clump of prickly pear that reared high it's fam tastic and menacing array of rounded heads, he was struck to shivering ter .. TOT by snort and a thunderous plunge, as the horse. himself startled,
 bounded away some fifty yards, and then resumed his grazing. But here was the one thing in the desert that Chicken did not fear. He had been reared on a farm; he had handled horses, understood them, and could ride.
 Approaching slowly and speaking soothingly, he followed the animal, which, after it's first flight seemed gentle enough, and secured the end of the twenty-foot lariat that dragged after him in the grass. It required
 him but a few moments to contrive tn rope into an ingenious nose-bridle, after the style of the Mexican borsal.
 In another he was upon the horses
 back and off at splendid lope, giv-
 ing the animal free choice of direc-
 tion. He will take me somewhere" said Chicken to himself.
 It would have been thing of joy,
 that untrammeled gallop over the
 moonlit prairie, even to Chicken, who
 loathed exertion. but that his mood was not for it. His head ached; a
 growing thirst was upon him; the
 somewhere" whither his lucky mount
 might convey him was full of dismal 1 peradventure
 And now he noted that the horse moved to definite goal. Where the
 prairie lay smooth he kept his course
 straight as an arrows toward the 1 east. Delected by hill or arroyo or
 impracticable spinous brakes. he