g store he knew of in the same
block. There Chicken, with a parental air, passed over the dollar
and called for the medicine, while the boy crunched his candy, glad
to be relieved of the responsibility of the purchase. And then
the successful investor, searching his pockets, found an overcoat
button--the extent of his winter trousseau--and, wrapping it
carefully, placed the ostensible change in the pocket of confiding
juvenility. Setting the youngster's face homeward, and patting him
benevolently on the back--for Chicken's heart was as soft as those
of his feathered namesakes--the speculator quit the market with a
profit of 1,700 per cent. on his invested capital.

Two hours later an Iron Mountain freight engine pulled out of the
railroad yards, Texas bound, with a string of empties. In one of the
cattle cars, half buried in excelsior, Chicken lay at ease. Beside
him in his nest was a quart bottle of very poor whisky and a paper
bag of bread and cheese. Mr. Ruggles, in his private car, was on his
trip south for the winter season.

For a week that car was trundled southward, shifted, laid over, and
manipulated after the manner of rolling stock, but Chicken stuck
to it, 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
bartenders 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, which was copious, so that Chicken had
often gulped a good meal during the process of the vituperative
prohibition. The season there was always spring-like; the plazas
were pleasant at night, with music and gaiety; except during the
slight and infrequent cold snaps one could sleep comfortably out of
doors in case the interiors should develop inhospitability.

At Texarkana his car was switched to the I. and G. N. Then still
southward it trailed until, at length, it crawled across the
Colorado bridge at Austin, and lined out, straight as an arrow, for
the run to San Antonio.

When the freight halted at that town Chicken was fast asleep. In ten
minutes the train was off again for Laredo, the end of the road.
Those empty cattle cars were for distribution along the line at
points from wh