Читать книгу Cowboy Life on the Sidetrack - Benton Frank - Страница 14

Table of Contents

He said his father was a poor Methodist preacher in a little country place in western Kansas where he was born. Said they lived there many years because they was so durn poor they couldn't get away. His father's salary was paid promptly every month in contributions and consisted of one sack of cornmeal, one sack of potatoes, two gallons sorghum molasses, four old crowing hens, seven jack rabbits, one quart choke cherry jelly and one load of dried buffalo chips for fuel. He said his father was one of the most patient beggars he ever saw, that he took up collections at all times and on all occasions, morning, noon and night—week days and Sundays he passed the hat. He had seventeen different kinds of foreign missions to beg for. He had twenty-one different kinds of home missions to beg for, and while it was the poorest community he ever saw, most people too poor to have any tea or coffee, or overshoes for winter or shoes in summer, yet his father begged so persistently that he got worlds of flannels for the heathens in Africa, any amount of bibles for the starving children in New York City and all kinds of religious literature for the reconcentrados in India.

Finally his mother died of nothing on the stomach, his father and a woman missionary went to Chicago, his nine brothers and sisters was bound out and adopted by different people, and he, the oldest child, was taken in charge by a professional bone picker, and although he was only 10 years old at the time, yet he picked up bones on Kansas prairies summer and winter for two years till a bunch of cowpunchers came along and took him away from the bone picker. He said he never had anything much to eat till he got into this cow camp, and just eat roast veal, baking powder biscuits, plum duff and California canned goods till all the cowboys stopped eating to look at him, and one of them asked his name, and when he said Jacob, they immediately nicknamed him Eatumup Jake.

He said he never had seen any of his folks since all this happened, but one night he had a dream, just as plain as day. He thought he was in a big city and a one-legged man with blue glasses was following him, and when he stopped the man said: "Jacob, I'm your father," and he asked him how he lost his leg, what he was wearing blue glasses for (a placard saying he was blind), and why he held out a tincup, and his father said: "I aint lost any leg, it's tied up inside my pants leg, and I'm wearing glasses so people can't see my eyes." And he said his father told him that his training as a Methodist preacher had peculiarly fitted him for a professional beggar.

When Eatumup Jake finished telling his story he fell to weeping and wept very bitterly for a long time, and when I tried to comfort him by telling him a man wasn't to blame for what his folks done, he said no, but cowmen were to blame when they fell so durn low as to spend the best part of their lives on a special stock train associating with a hobo and two sheepmen.