Chapter VII.

I wish I could persuade myself that I was capable of picturing the

events of the week after we reached Chicago.

We arrived, if I remember rightly, on a Wednesday and put our cattle and

horses in the stockyards near the Michigan Street depot. As I have

related, we sold on Thursday and Friday about three-fifths of the

cattle. I wanted to sell all, but followed the judgment of the Boss and

sold three hundred head and put a little over five thousand dollars in

my banking account.

On Saturday night the alarm bells began to ring and awoke me. I slipped

into my breeches, shirt and boots and a youthful curiosity exciting me,

I raced downstairs, got Blue Devil from the stable and rode out to the

fire. I was infinitely impressed by the rapidity with which the firemen

acted and the marvelous efficiency of the service. Where in England

there would have been perhaps half a dozen fire-engines, the Americans

sent fifty, but they all found work and did it magnificently. At one

o’clock the fire was out and I returned to the hotel through two or

three miles of uninjured streets. Of course, I told Reece and Ford all

about it the next day. To my astonishment, no one seemed to pay much

attention; a fire was so common a thing in the wooden shanties on the

outskirts of American towns that nobody cared to listen to my epic.

Next night, Sunday, the alarm bell began ringing about eleven o’clock: I

was still dressed in my best. I changed into my working clothes, I do

not know why, put my belt about me with a revolver in it and again took

out the mare and rode to the fire. When still a quarter of a mile away,

I realized that this fire was much more serious than that of the

previous night: first of all, a gale of wind was blowing right down on

the town. Then, when I wondered why there were so few fire-engines, I

was told that there were two other fires and the man with whom I talked

did not scruple to ascribe them to a plot and determination to burn down

the town! “Them damned foreign anarchists are at the bottom of it,” he

said, “three fires do not start on the very outskirts of the town with a

gale of wind blowing, without some reason.”

And indeed, it looked as if he were right. In spite of all the firemen

could do, the fire spread with incredible rapidity. In half an hour I

saw they were not going to master it soon or easily and I rode back to

get Reece, who had told me that he would have come with me the previous

night if he had known where the fire was. When I got back to the hotel,

Reece had gone out on his own and so had Dell and the Boss. I went back

to the fire. It had caught on in the most extraordinary way. The wooden

streets now were all blazing; the fire was swallowing block after block

and the heat was so tremendous that the fire-engines could not get

within two hundred yards of the blaze. The roar of the fire was

unearthly.

Another thing I noticed almost immediately: the heat was so terrific

that the water decomposed into its elements and the oxygen gas in the

water burned vehemently on its own account. The water, in fact, added

fuel to the flames. As soon as I made sure of this, I saw that the town

was doomed and walked my pony back a block or two to avoid flying

sparks.

This must have been about three or four o’clock in the morning. I had

gone back about three blocks when I came across a man talking to a group

of men at the corner of a street. He was the one man of insight and

sense I met that night. He seemed to me a typical, down-east Yankee: he

certainly talked like one. The gist of his speech was as follows:

“I want you men to come with me right now to the Mayor and tell him to

give orders to blow up at least two blocks deep all along this side of

the town; then, if we drench the houses on the other side, the flames

will be stopped: there’s no other way.”

“That’s sense”, I cried, “that’s what ought to be done at once. There’s

no other way of salvation; for the heat is disintegrating the water and

the oxygen in the water is blazing fiercely, adding fuel to the flames.”

“Gee! that’s what I have been preaching for the last hour”, he cried.

A little later fifty or sixty citizens went to the Mayor, but he

protested that he had no power to blow up houses and evidently, too,

shirked the responsibility. He decided, however, to call in some of the

councilmen and see what could be done. Meanwhile I went off and wandered

towards the Randolph Street bridge and there saw a scene that appalled

me.

Some men had caught a thief, they said, plundering one of the houses and

they proceeded to string the poor wretch up to a lamp-post.

In vain I pleaded for his life, declared that he ought to be tried, that

it was better to let off ten guilty men than hang one innocent one, but

my foreign accent robbed my appeal, I think, of any weight and before my

eyes the man was strung up. It filled me with rage; it seemed to me a

dreadful thing to have done: the cruelty of the executioners, the hard

purpose of them, shut me away from my kin. Later I was to see these men

from a better angle.

By the early morning the fire had destroyed over a mile deep of the town

and was raging with unimaginable fury. I went down on the lakeshore just

before daybreak. The scene was one of indescribable magnificence: there

were probably a hundred and fifty thousand homeless men, women and

children grouped along the lake shore. Behind us roared the fire; it

spread like a red sheet right up to the zenith above our heads, and from

there was borne over the sky in front of us by long streamers of fire

like rockets: vessels four hundred yards out in the bay were burning

fiercely, and we were, so to speak, roofed and walled by flame. The

danger and uproar were indeed terrifying and the heat, even in this

October night, almost unbearable.

I wandered along the lake shore, noting the kind way in which the men

took care of the women and children. Nearly every man was able to erect

some sort of shelter for his wife and babies, and everyone was willing

to help his neighbor. While working at one shelter for a little while, I

said to the man I wished I could get a drink.

“You can get one”, he said, “right there”, and he pointed to a sort of

makeshift shanty on the beach. I went over and found that a publican had

managed to get four barrels down on the beach and had rigged up a sort

of low tent above them; on one of the barrels he had nailed his shingle,

and painted on it were the words, “What do you think of our hell? No

drinks less than a dollar!” The wild humor of the thing amused me

infinitely and the man certainly did a roaring trade.

A little later it occurred to me that our cattle might possibly burn, so

I went out and hurried back to the Michigan Street stockyards. An old

Irishman was in charge of the yard, but though he knew me perfectly

well, he refused to let me take out a steer. The cattle were moving

about wildly, evidently in a state of intense excitement. I pleaded with

the man and begged him, and at length tied my mare up to the lamp-post

at the corner and went back and got into the stockyard when he wasn’t

looking. I let down two or three of the bars and the next moment started

the cattle through the opening. They went crazy wild and choked the

gateway. In five minutes there were ten or twelve dead cattle in the

entrance and the rest had to go over them. Suddenly, just as I got

through the gap, the mad beasts made a rush and carried away the rails

on both sides of the gateway. The next moment I was knocked down and I

had just time to drag myself through the fence and so avoid their myriad

trampling heels.

A few minutes later, I was on Blue Devil, trying to get the cattle out

of the town and on to the prairie. The herd broke up at almost every

corner but I managed to get about six hundred head right out into the

country.

I drove them on the dead run for some miles. By this time it was

daybreak and at the second or third farmhouse I came to, I found a

farmer willing to take in the cattle. I bargained with him a little and

at length told him I would give him a dollar a head if he kept them for

the week or so we might want to leave them with him. In two minutes he

brought out his son and an Irish helper and turned the cattle back and

into his pasture. There were six hundred and seventy-six of them, as

near as I could count, out of practically two thousand head.

By the time I had finished the business and returned to the hotel, it

was almost noon and as I could get nothing to eat, I wandered out again

to see the progress of the fire. Already I found that relief trains were

being sent in with food from all neighboring towns and this was the

feature of the next week in starving Chicago.

Strangely enough, at that time the idea was generally accepted that a

man or woman could only live three days without food. It was years

before Dr. Tanner showed the world that a man could fast for forty days

or more. Everyone I met acted as if he believed that if he were fully

three days without food, he must die incontinently. I laughed at the

idea which seemed to me absurd, but so strong was the universal opinion

and the influence of the herd-sentiment, that on the third day I too

felt particularly empty and thought I had better take my place in the

bread line. There were perhaps five thousand in front of me and there

were soon fifty or sixty thousand behind me. We were five deep moving to

the depot where the bread trains were discharging, one after the other.

When I got pretty close to the food wagons, I noticed that the food

supply was coming to an end, and next moment I noticed something else.

Again and again women and girls came into our bread line and walked

through the lines of waiting men, who, mark you, really believed they

were going to die that night if they could not get food, but instead of

objecting they one and all made way for the women and girls and

encouraged them: “Go right on, Madam, take all you want:” “This way,

Missee, you won’t be able to carry much, I’m afraid”;—proof on proof, it

seemed to me, of courage, good humor and high self-abnegation. I went

into that bread line an Irish boy and came out of it a proud American,

but I did not get any bread that night or the next. In fact, my first

meal was made when I ran across Reece on the Friday or Saturday after:

Reece, as usual, had fallen on his feet and found a hotel where they had

provisions—though at famine prices.

He insisted that I should come with him and soon got me my first meal.

In return, I told him and Ford of the cattle I had saved. They were, of

course, delighted and determined next day to come out and retrieve them.

“One thing is certain,” said Ford, “six hundred head of cattle are worth

as much today in Chicago as fifteen hundred head were worth before the

fire, so we hain’t lost much.”

Next day I led Reece and the Boss straight to the farmer’s place, but to

my surprise he told me that I had agreed to give him two dollars a head,

whereas I had bargained with him for only one dollar. His son backed up

the farmer’s statement and the Irish helper declared that he was sorry

to disagree with me, but I was mistaken; it was two dollars I had said.

They little knew the sort of men they had to deal with. “Where are the

cattle?” Ford asked, and we went down to the pasture where they were

penned. “Count them, Harris,” said Ford, and I counted six hundred and

twenty head. Fifty odd had disappeared, but the farmer wanted to

persuade me that I had counted wrongly.

Ford went about and soon found a rough lean-to stable where there were

thirty more head of Texan cattle. These were driven up and soon

disappeared in the herd; Reece and I began to move the herd towards the

entrance. The farmer declared he would not let us go, but Ford looked at

him a little while and then said very quietly, “You have stolen enough

cattle to pay you. If you bother with us, I will make meat of

you—see!—cold meat”, and the farmer moved aside and kept quiet.

That night we had a great feast and the day after Ford announced that he

had sold the whole of the cattle to two hotel proprietors and got nearly

as much money as if we had not lost a hoof.

My five thousand dollars became six thousand, five hundred.

The courage shown by the common people in the fire, the wild humor

coupled with the consideration for the women, had won my heart. This is

the greatest people in the world, I said to myself, and was proud to

feel at one with them.

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ON THE TRAIL!