THE CRISIS
“Fifty miles!”
Rex repeated these words to himself as he stood on the platform of the
station and looked after the swiftly vanishing cars.
How soon that train would cover them! It seemed such a simple thing to
stay on board and be carried there, so cruel to be left behind simply
for the lack of a little more money.
It was still quite early in the morning. People were coming down to
take the train to the city. They had all been in their beds and had a
good night’s sleep doubtless. They were much better fitted for a long
tramp than was he, who had not been to bed at all.
But he must set off at once. He asked the baggage man to tell him the
road to Philadelphia.
“Sure, there it is, in front of you,” replied the other, pointing to
the gleaming steel rails.
“No, no; I mean the carriage road,” returned Rex.
The man looked surprised, but gave him directions how to find it, and
presently Rex was tramping down its dusty length.
“But I can never get there by to-night, nor by to-morrow night either,”
he kept saying to himself. “And I shall have to eat, and my money will
not hold out till then.”
Again he thought of telegraphing—this time to Sydney. But where should
he stay while he was waiting for the answer? Then he remembered how ill
Syd still looked, and he recalled the doctor’s inquiry that afternoon
in the office as to whether he had had a shock.
No; he must leave telegraphing as the very last resort of all.
He trudged on, and presently saw a tramp coming towards him.
“Good morning,” said the fellow, halting where he came up. “What time
is it, boss?”
Rex had just looked at his watch, so without taking it out he told the
time.
The man took a step closer to him, but just then a cloud of dust
appeared in the road, and a buggy came into view. The tramp moved on
without a word.
This incident did not tend to make Rex any more comfortable in mind.
And now his body was beginning to rebel.
His stomach felt light, his heart heavy, and his limbs appeared to be
weighted with lead. Coming to a spot where trees grew by the roadside
he halted and stretched himself on the grass to rest.
He was no longer sleepy, but so tired. He felt that he was going to be
ill.
The thought terrified him. Sick out here on the highway, only a few
cents in his pockets, and not a friend anywhere about!
It was growing hot and he was getting hungry. His breakfast had been a
very light one. The last regular meal he had eaten was on the Chicago
Limited. How long ago that seemed now!
He took out his money and counted it over. There was but sixteen cents
left. He felt that he could eat that much worth for his very next meal.
There seemed to be no way out of it but to telegraph home, and he had
better do it, he decided, before he was too ill to attend to it.
But there was no place now from which to send a message. He must keep
on till he came to the next town.
He rose to his feet and had taken but a few steps when some one came up
from behind and touched him on the shoulder.
He turned quickly, in fear of another tramp. It was a tramp truly, but
a mere boy, not much older than himself. He was very pale and sickly
looking, his clothes were torn in two or three places and his shoes
were worn clear down to the uppers.
He did not speak. He stood there looking at Rex, amazement depicted in
his gaze.
“I—I made a mistake,” he stammered out at last “I thought you were one
of us. I saw you lying down there under the tree. Your shoes were all
dusty. I knew you’d been tramping.”
But Rex did not feel astonished. He felt so ill and faint that his head
swam, and he began to totter.
“I’ll have to lie down again, I guess,” he said weakly.
He had just time to move aside out of the dust when he fell like a log.
“What’s the matter? Are you sick?”
The shabby looking youth had dropped to one knee beside Rex and was
looking down at him with pitying eyes.
“Yes,” was all Rex had strength to murmur.
Then he closed his eyes and did not care what became of him. The
strange lad let his other knee sink to the earth and remained in this
attitude for several minutes, gazing earnestly at Rex.
“Poor chap,” he muttered. “I can’t make out what he’s doing tramping
the country this way. He don’t look poor. What’ll I do with him?”
The first thing to be done, evidently, was to get him out of the sun,
which beat down on the spot where he had fallen with fierce intensity.
The stranger bent over, and exerting all his strength lifted Rex in his
arms and bore him back along the road to the grassy strip under the
trees where he had recently been lying.
Rex opened his eyes for an instant when he felt himself raised from the
ground. Then, when he saw the pity in the plain face looking down into
his, he closed them again with a little sigh.
And now once more the strange youth sat contemplating the boy, who
seemed to be a tramper like himself, but who, in every other respect,
was so vastly different.
He noted the fine, delicately chiseled features, the smallness of his
feet, the whiteness and smoothness of his hands. He had seen boys like
this before, but he had never before touched one, never had one of them
dependent on him, as it were, as this fellow appeared to be now.
Miles Harding did not know just what to do with the responsibility. And
yet he was happy at having it; he felt glad that he had been able to do
that little thing of carrying the boy from the sun into the shade.
It was not often that he was able to do anything for anybody. He was
always in need of having something done for himself.
He tried to think of something else he might do. He noticed that Rex’s
head did not seem to rest very comfortably.
He took off his coat and started to make a roll of it for a pillow. But
he stopped when he had it half finished.
“Maybe he wouldn’t like that,” he muttered, looking down at the garment
as he unrolled it again.
It had been made for a man. There were rents in two places and
plentiful sprinklings of grease spots.
The day was growing steadily warmer. Even under the tree one felt the
heat.
“He wouldn’t catch cold without his own,” Miles murmured, and he bent
over Rex and lifted him gently while he tried to take off his coat.
Rex opened his eyes and looked at him again as if in protest.
“I was going to make a pillow for you out of your coat,” Miles
explained. “You don’t feel able to walk till we get to a house, do
you?”
Rex slowly shook his head. He was in that condition which sometimes
comes to those in seasickness, when he didn’t care whether he lived or
died.
“Have you got pain?” went on Miles.
“Only when I walk,” answered Rex; then, as if talking, too, hurt him,
he closed his eyes and sank back upon the pillow the other made for him
out of his coat.
Meantime clouds had been gathering in the west. Miles had been too much
occupied with his unexpected charge to notice them. But now he looked
up and saw the threatening aspect of the heavens with troubled
countenance.
He rose to his feet and strode out into the middle of the road, looking
first in one direction, then the other.
His eye brightened as he saw a buggy coming from the westward.
He watched impatiently, till it came up, and then saw that it contained
two men. He held up his hand as a signal for them to stop. But the
driver, who had been talking earnestly with his companion, cut the
horse with his whip, shook his head and drove on.
Miles remained there, standing in the road, a hopeless droop coming
over his whole figure.
“They think I want to beg of them, I suppose,” he told himself. “What
shall I do?”
Already the sun had gone under the cloud masses and the air was much
cooler. The wind rose and began to rustle the leaves.
Quite a distance off down the road, in the direction whence the buggy
had come, the red tops of two chimneys could be seen peeping above the
trees.
“He can’t stay here in the rain,” Miles muttered. “I must try to get
him to that house.”
He turned to Rex again. He took the coat from under his head and made
him put it on.
“It’s going to storm,” he said, “I’m going to carry you to that house.”
“You can’t,” was all Rex had strength to say.
“I’m going to try,” returned Miles, and he gathered Rex up in his arms
just as the wind came sweeping down upon them in a gust that was
ominous of that which was to follow.