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CHAPTER XXIII.
Arrival at the Transfer Track of South Omaha

One dark, dismal, rainy morning, a little before daylight, I arrived with the remnant of our stock train on the stockyards transfer at South Omaha. The conductor and brakeman ordered me out of the way-car. So picking up my belongings I got out in the mud and rain and looked around for some shelter. There was a lot of railroad tracks and switches, but no houses or hotels, or anyone to inquire from, as I had learnt by experience that conductors, brakemen and switchmen never give any information to stockmen in a dark, rainy night.

So after wandering up and down the tracks for a ways, and not being able to find out which way the town lay I got on top of the stock cars, and huddling down in my rain-soaked rags I prepared to wait till daylight. The rain was very cold, and after a bit turned to snow and chilled me to the bone. But I was afraid to leave the stock cars, as I had never been there before and was sure to get lost if I left the stock, as the town is quite a ways from the transfer. I thought of Dillbery Ike, Packsaddle Jack and old Chuckwagon in the other world, and wondered why I should be left shivering in this awful storm, suffering the pangs of hunger and cold, while doubtless they had more fire than they really needed. No matter what their condition was in the other world, it was bound to be better than mine. Even the sheepmen's condition in the other world couldn't be much worse, though some claim there is a hell set apart a-purpose for sheepmen on the other side.

My clothes were all worn out long ago; my beard had grown down to my knees and the hair on my head having never been cut since we started, now reached to my waist, and, of course, it and my beard was some protection from the storm. But I realized that if I stayed where I was it would only be a short time till I should meet my comrades who had gone before, and I thought it would be proper to make some preparations for the other world. I never had prayed or went to church much, 'cause a cowman don't have any chance to attend to these, as there is always either some calves to brand Sundays, or else some of the neighbors coming visiting. But I remembered a passage of scripture I had heard when a boy, and it came back to me now and kept ringing in my ears: "Forgive thine enemy." I never had an enemy in my whole life that I knew of, without it was this blamed railroad, and while I wasn't sure they was enemies, yet they had dealt me more misery than anyone, except it might be this stockyards company that was keeping me and my stock out on this transfer, starving and freezing in the storm after me and my steers had all got to be Rip Van Winkles getting that far on the road. I studied over the matter and could see it would be too great a job to forgive them both at the same time, and, of course, couldn't tell how much forgiveness the stockyards company would have to have, as I hadn't got through with them yet. There might be so much against them before they got my cattle unloaded that it would be impossible to forgive it.

It was very lucky, as it turned out afterwards, that I had this forethought, because, as I take it, forgiveness only comes from the heart no matter what your lips say, and your heart is the blamedest thing to control in forgiveness, as well as love, and when that stockyards company finally got around to bring my cattle in and unload them, I reckon it would have been impossible for any mortal man with the least spark of vitality left in his veins to have forgiven them. They have tried over and over to explain it to me by saying that when they built the transfer tracks and unloading chutes, their receipts only run about 1,500 to 2,000 cattle a day, with about the same number of hogs and about 200 sheep. And, now in the fall of the year, their receipts of cattle run up to 7,000 to 12,000 a day, with the same number of hogs and 20,000 to 25,000 of sheep, and they are trying to handle them with the same facilities they had to start with. So they are pretty near always so far behind in unloading stock in the busy season that it takes all the slack business season to finish unloading the stock that accumulated during the rush.

Having made up my mind to put off forgiving the stockyards company till some future date, I turned all my attention to forgiving the railroad company. I had noticed a good many religious people when some one had done them an injury and they couldn't get at them any other way they would pray for them. And while they generally asked the Lord to forgive them, yet they always told their side of the story in such a way that if the Lord was anyways easily prejudiced, he would be pretty tolerable slow about handing out any unsought-for clemency to their enemies, as they always started in by telling of all the mean things their enemies had ever done in order to remind the Lord what a big contract it was. After studying the matter over I thought this would be the proper way to pray for the railroad company. But after I got started telling the Lord what mean things they had done, I see 'twas no use to try to finish unless I'd hand the matter down to future generations, as one life wouldn't be long enough to get fairly started in.

The Inferno of the Transfer

All night long I had heard voices on all sides of me and apparently the owners of them were in the direst distress. Some were praying undoubtedly, but the most were cursing. A few were crying and moaning with the cold and I thought for a long time I must have got into an inferno of lost souls, and added to my sufferings in the storm in which I had come close to death was the terror of listening to these distressing cries, and I longed for daylight to appear so these horrors would be explained.

Daylight began to appear while I was thinking about these things, and I could see other stock trains near me, and on every train I could see one or more miserable wretches like myself huddled down on top of a car in the snow and cold rain, and the only sign of life you could detect was when they took spells of shivering. One of them was pretty close, and I hailed him once or twice, and finally he roused up enough to answer me; but the poor, shivering wretch was so numb with the cold he didn't sense much of anything, and when I asked him why all the shippers stayed out all night with their cattle, place of going into town, he said lots of times cattle were so tired when they got to Omaha and they were so long about getting them to the chutes, that there was more danger of their getting down after they got to the transfer and getting tramped to death than before. Then he said lots of stockmen who tried to get to town from the transfer in the night and had got killed, and some got their legs cut off by trains that were all the time switching on the transfer tracks. He said if the Humane Society took half the pains to protect the shippers that they did the stock being shipped he thought it would be better. He said a shipper was a human being even if he did look like a orangoutang just dragged out of a Chicago sewer when he got through to Omaha with a shipment of livestock. I thought maybe he was getting personal, so told him he didn't look so fine himself; that I thought anyone who resembled a jackass in a Wyoming blizzard hadn't any call to make reflections on other people's looks. Just then the switch engine coupled onto his train and hauled him and his stock off to the unloading chutes, and I was kinda glad he was gone, as I had conceived a dislike to him anyway. I can't bear anyone who makes disagreeable reflections and comparisons on one's personal appearance when one isn't looking their best, especially a person who ain't got anything to brag of themselves.

The Farmer's Prayer

I looked on the other side of me and saw another stock train with a group of four or five stockmen on top the cars. They were huddled down together in the snow and wet, and I thought at first one of them was making a speech, but soon discovered he was praying. It turned out one of their number was dying from ill health and the exposure of the night before, they having been there all night waiting for the switch engine to haul them to the chutes. They were a bunch of Nebraska farmers who had bought some feeders in Omaha sometime previous, shipped them out to their farms a couple hundred miles west, fed up their corn crop and was bringing the cattle back. The man that was praying seemed to be a son and partner of the dying man, and was telling the Lord the whole transaction from a to izard. Whether he was doing this to relieve his own feelings, or whether he thought the Lord would size his father up as an honest man in place of a sucker, it's hard to tell. Anyway, you could tell by his prayer that him and his dying father had got the worst of the deal all the way through. What I heard of his prayer run something like this:

"O Lord, Thou knowest how Thy humble servants have been the victims of designing and unscrupulous men. Thou knowest, Lord, how a hooked-nosed Sheeny first induced Thy poor servants to buy of him a lot of crooked-backed, narrow-hipped, long-tailed, high-on-the-rump, ewe-necked, dehorned, Southern steers, and how they had kept them off of water for seven days, waiting for a sale, and then let them drink till their stomachs was like unto bass drums, when they weighed them up to Thy deceived servants, and then, O Lord, Thy wretched servants, not having any money to pay for them, we had to go to a grasping commission man and, O Lord, Thou knowest how he did charge us usury cent for cent and all kinds of percent, how he figured up interest on the cost of the steers, then figured interest on that interest, then figured interest on the interest that he had figured on the interest, then figured a commission for buying them, then another commission for selling them, then figured the interest on the commission, then figured the interest on the interest that he had figured on the commission; and, how when we had got these steers home, two of them were dead, three were cripples, five were lump jaws, and how their feet were so large, and they had such wise, old-fashioned countenances, we were behooved to look into their mouths to determine by their teeth how old they were, and Thy astonished servants discovered that in place of two year-olds, as was represented, they were a great many times two years old; and how many times when we had a little fat on their ribs, they saw someone afoot, and becoming frightened, ran round and round the feed lots till they were poorer than ever, and some there was that escaping over the fence were never seen by Thy servants any more, they having disappeared over the hills and in adjacent corn fields; and Thou knowest how we were always sober, law-abiding citizens till we were inveigled into buying these imitation steers, and since that time have lived in a constant round of excitement, terror and riot."

The switch engine now coupled on to the dying man's stock train and pulled it away to the chutes, so I didn't hear the last of the prayer. Probably his commission man heard it after he got through explaining why the steers didn't bring any more money.

CHAPTER XXIV.
THE FINAL ROUNDUP

 
Two railroad men of mighty brain,
The steadfast friends of true cowmen;
No matter which the first you name,
We all love George Crosby and Charlie Lane.
 
 
And if in this story, they should see
Some mentioned evil, for which a remedy
That's in their power and can be used,
They'll fix it so the shipper is less abused.
 
 
Of all things needed, and it's a crying shame,
Is some kind of toilet room on each stock train;
In regard to fires, let the shippers agree,
Whether they'll be froze or roasted into eternity.
 
 
Have a call-boy escort with lantern bright,
When at division stations we come in darkest night;
To save our anxiety, fear and doubt,
Put us on the right way-car that's going out.
 
 
To the stockyards company a suggestion could be made,
If they expect to keep and gain more trade;
When our cattle are delivered on their transfer track,
Try and unload them, or else we'll ship them back.
 
 
If one or two of these evils should be wiped away
By these suggestions in this humble lay,
Then will I rejoice and forget the days of toil
When I composed this work and burnt the midnight oil.