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Updated: May 28, 2025
I was twenty-three years of age, and eager to revisit the plain whereon my father with the faith of a pioneer, was again upturning the sod and building a fourth home. And yet, Son of the Middle Border I had discovered that I was also a Grandson of New England. The Land of the Straddle-Bug The movement which had begun three years before was now at its height.
Some distance off in this latter direction the vista between the buildings was cut across by the straddle-bug structure of one of the Elevated roads. All this Mr. Leary comprehended in a quick glance about him, and then he turned on the culprit cabman with rage in his heart. "See here, you!" he snapped crossly, jerking the other by the shoulder. "What do you mean by bringing me away off here!
If he even see a straddle-bug start to go anywheres, he would bet you how long it would take him to get to to wherever he was going to, and if you took him up, he would foller that straddle-bug to Mexico but what he would find out where he was bound for and how long he was on the road. Lots of the boys here has seen that Smiley, and can tell you about him.
All questions were answered, all doubts stilled. We arose with the sun and having eaten our rude breakfast set forth, some six miles to the west, to mark the location of our claims with the "straddle-bugs." The straddle-bug, I should explain, was composed of three boards set together in tripod form and was used as a monument, a sign of occupancy.
The vast, treeless level, so alluring in May and June, had become an oppressive weight to those most sensitive to the weather, and as the air grew chill and the skies overcast, the women turned with apprehensive faces to the untracked northwest, out of which the winds swept pitilessly cold and keen. The land of the straddle-bug was gray and sad.
Fake 'em, and forge 'em, and bribe and blackmail for 'em and then stand up to me and pull the pious plate-pusher stuff about being straight. Oh, my Gawd! It'd make a straddle-bug spit at the sun, to hear you. Why, I'm no saint, but the medical line was too strong for my stomach. I got out of it." "Yes, you did, you dirty little dollar-snatcher! You got put of it into jail for peddling raw gin ."
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