Now, Trubiggs was a warm-hearted rogue, and he liked the society of what he called "white people." He laughed, poked a Pittsburg stogie at Mr. Wrenn, and consented: "All right. I'll fix you up. Have a smoke. Pay me the five Friday, or pay it to my foreman when he puts you on the cattle-boat. I don't care a rap which. You're all right. Can't bluff you, eh?"
And, further bluffing Mr. Wrenn, he suggested to him a lodging-house for his two nights in Boston. "Tell the clerk that red-headed Trubiggs sent you, and he'll give you the best in the house. Tell him you're a friend of mine."
When Mr. Wrenn had gone Mr. Trubiggs remarked to some one, by telephone, "'Nother sucker coming, Blaugeld. Now don't try to do me out of my bit or I'll cap for some other joint, understand? Huh? Yuh, stick him for a thirty-five-cent bed. S' long."
The caravan of Trubiggs's cattlemen who left for Portland by night steamer, Friday, was headed by a bulky-shouldered boss, who wore no coat and whose corduroy vest swung cheerfully open. A motley troupe were the cattlemen--Jews with small trunks, large imitation-leather valises and assorted bundles, a stolid prophet-bearded procession of weary men in tattered derbies and sweat-shop clothes.
There were Englishmen with rope-bound pine chests. A lewd-mouthed American named Tim, who said he was a hatter out of work, and a loud-talking tough called Pete mingled with a straggle of hoboes.
The boss counted the group and selected his confidants for the trip to Portland--Mr. Wrenn and a youth named Morton.
Morton was a square heavy-fleshed young man with stubby hands, who, up to his eyes, was stolid and solid as a granite monument, but merry of eye and hinting friendliness in his tousled soft-brown hair. He was always wielding a pipe and artfully blowing smoke through his nostrils.
Mr. Wrenn and he smiled at each other searchingly as the Portland boat pulled out, and a wind swept straight from the Land of Elsewhere.
After dinner Morton, smoking a pipe shaped somewhat like a golf-stick head and somewhat like a toad, at the rail of the steamer, turned to Mr. Wrenn with: "Classy bunch of cattlemen we've got to go with. Not!... My name's Morton."
"I'm awful glad to meet you, Mr. Morton. My name's Wrenn."
"Glad to be off at last, ain't you?"
"Golly! I should say I am!"
"So'm I. Been waiting for this for years. I'm a clerk for the P. R. R. in N' York."
"I come from New York, too."
"So? Lived there long?"
"Uh-huh, I--" began Mr. Wrenn.
"Well, I been working for the Penn. for seven years now. Now I've got a vacation of three months. On me. Gives me a chance to travel a little. Got ten plunks and a second-class ticket back from Glasgow. But I'm going to see England and France just the same. Prob'ly Germany, too."