My brother and I had just ridden off the range, when Uncle Jake told
us that a tramp was hanging about the corrals and wished to speak with
us.
"He looks like hell," concluded Uncle Jake.
We found him, a minute later, curled up on a heap of straw on the
shady side of our big barn. He got up as we approached, and stared at
us with a curious derisive intentness of glance, slightly
disconcerting.
"You are Englishmen," he said quietly.
The man's voice was charming, with that unmistakable quality which
challenges attention even in Mayfair, and enthrals it in the
wilderness. We nodded, and he continued easily: "It is late, and some
twenty-six miles, so I hear, to the nearest town. May I spend the
night in your barn. I don't smoke--in barns."
While he was speaking, we had time to examine him. His appearance was
inexpressibly shocking. Dirty, with a ragged six weeks' growth of dark
hair upon his face, out at heel and elbows, shirtless and shiftless,
he seemed to have reached the nadir of misery and poverty. Obviously
one of the "broken brigade," he had seemingly lost everything except
his manners. His amazing absence of self-consciousness made a clown of
me. I blurted out a gruff "All right," and turned on my heel, unable
to face the derisive smile upon the thin, pale lips. As I walked
towards the house, I heard Ajax following me, but he did not speak
till we had reached our comfortable sitting-room. Then, as gruffly as
I, he said, "Humpty Dumpty--after the fall!"
We lit our pipes in silence, sensible of an extraordinary depression
in the moral atmosphere. Five minutes before we had been much elated.
The spring round-up of cattle was over; we had sold our bunch of
steers at the top price; the money lay in our small safe; we had been
talking of a modest celebration as we rode home over the foothills.
Now, to use the metaphor of a cow county, we had been brought up with
a sharp turn! Our prosperity, measured by the ill-fortune of a fellow-
countryman, dwindled. Ajax summed up the situation: "He made me feel
cheap."
"Why?" I asked, conscious of a similar feeling. Ajax smoked and
reflected.
"It's like this," he answered presently. "That chap has been to the
bottom of the pit, but he bobs up with a smile. Did you notice his
smile?"
I rang the bell for Quong, our Chinese servant. When he came in I told
him to prepare a hot bath. Ajax whistled; but as Quong went away,
looking rather cross, my brother added, "Our clothes will fit him."
The bath-house was outside. Quong carried in a couple of pails full of
boiling water; we laid out shaving tackle, an old suit of grey
flannel, a pair of brown shoes, and the necessary under-linen. A blue
bird's-eye tie, I remember, was the last touch. Then Ajax shrugged his
shoulders and said significantly, "You know what this means?"
"Rehabilitation."
"Exactly. It may be fun for us to rig out this poor devil, but we must
do more than feed and clothe him. Have you thought of that?"