Page:Cherokee Trails (1928).pdf/13



When men went up to Kansas City to market their cows, they rode in what certain stylish conductors called the way-car, cowboys and cattlemen the caboose, or sometimes the calaboose. That is, they rode there to vary riding on top, which they preferred in good weather, and catch a few winks of sleep between proddings-up along the way.

Going home was another thing. Then everybody rode in the smoking-car on one long, blue, much-punched, all-inclusive shipper's pass, with plenty of greasy grub in paper sacks, much bottled cheer, and usually an assortment of prod-poles which they clung to as carefully as if saplings no longer grew, or these seasoned and tried ones had some especial quality which no amount of search through the forests of the earth could replace.

These prod-poles they stood around to tumble down, in the violent agitation of stopping and starting, and crack passengers on the heads, or stowed beneath seats to impede passengers' feet, cluttering things up in a general way to the disgust of trainmen and testy gentlemen who frequented smoking-cars. But trainmen were a wise generation—from experience—in those days, and passengers more tolerant and democratic, perhaps, than now, when prod-poles in day coaches are unknown.

Things went along serenely as a general thing when