my idea? Here is your Irish stew, and–er–it gives me the greatest
pleasure to send it to you, and I hope that you will enjoy the charity as
much as I enjoy conferring it.”
A blush rose in Brady’s white cheeks and flowed slowly backward to his
ears and upward toward his forehead, but he said nothing and began to eat
his food under the embarrassment of a general silence and the sense that
all eyes were fastened upon him. Barrow whispered to Tracy:
“The old man’s been waiting for that. He wouldn’t have missed that
chance for anything.”
“It’s a brutal business,” said Tracy. Then he said to himself, purposing
to set the thought down in his diary later:
“Well, here in this very house is a republic where all are free and
equal, if men are free and equal anywhere in the earth, therefore I have
arrived at the place I started to find, and I am a man among men, and on
the strictest equality possible to men, no doubt. Yet here on the
threshold I find an inequality. There are people at this table who are
looked up to for some reason or another, and here is a poor devil of a
boy who is looked down upon, treated with indifference, and shamed by
humiliations, when he has committed no crime but that common one of being
poor. Equality ought to make men noble-minded. In fact I had supposed
it did do that.”
After supper, Barrow proposed a walk, and they started. Barrow had a
purpose. He wanted Tracy to get rid of that cowboy hat. He didn’t see
his way to finding mechanical or manual employment for a person rigged in
that fashion. Barrow presently said:
“As I understand it, you’re not a cowboy.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Well, now if you will not think me too curious, how did you come to
mount that hat? Where’d you get it?”
Tracy didn’t know quite how to reply to this, but presently said,
“Well, without going into particulars; I exchanged clothes with a
stranger under stress of weather, and I would like to find him and re-
exchange.”
“Well, why don’t you find him? Where is he?”
“I don’t know. I supposed the best way to find him would be to continue
to wear his clothes, which are conspicuous enough to attract his
attention if I should meet him on the street.”
“Oh, very well,” said Barrow, “the rest of the outfit, is well enough,
and while it’s not too conspicuous, it isn’t quite like the clothes that
anybody else wears. Suppress the hat. When you meet your man he’ll
recognize the rest of his suit. That’s a mighty embarrassing hat, you
know, in a centre of civilization like this. I don’t believe an angel
could get employment in Washington in a halo like that.”
Tracy agreed to replace the hat with something of a modester form, and
they stepped aboard a crowded car and stood with others on the rear
platform. Presently, as the car moved swiftly along the rails, two men
crossing the street caught sight of the backs of Barrow and Tracy, and
both exclaimed at once, “There he is!” It was Sellers and Hawkins.
Both were so paralyzed with joy that before they could pull themselves
together and make an effort to stop the car, it was gone too far,
and they decided to wait for the next one. They waited a while; then it
occurred to Washington that there could be no use in chasing one horse-
car with another, and he wanted to hunt up a hack. But the Colonel said:
“When you come to think of it, there’s no occasion for that at all.
Now that I’ve got him materialized, I can command his motions. I’ll have
him at the house by the time we get there.”
Then they hurried off home in a state of great and joyful excitement.
The hat exchange accomplished, the two new friends started to walk back
leisurely to the boarding house. Barrow’s mind was full of curiosity
about this young fellow. He said,
“You’ve never been to the Rocky Mountains?”
“No.”
“You’ve never been out on the plains?”