HE rapidly overtook a bent and doggedly tramping figure; no common
wanderer, he recognized, as he drew nearer. The others decent suit was
eminently presentable, his felt hat brushed, his shoes comparatively
new. He turned upon Anthony a countenance as expressionless, as
darkly-stained, as a chipped and rusted effigy of iron; deep lines fell
back across the dingy cheeks; his lipless mouth was, apparently, another
such line; and his eyes, deeply sunk in the skull, were the eyes of a
dead man. Yet they were not blind; they saw.
He halted, and surveyed Anthony with a lowered, searching curiosity,
clenching with a strained and surprising force the knob of a black
stick. Anthony met his scrutiny with the salutation of youth and the
road; but the other made no reply; his countenance was as blank as
though no word had been spoken. Then a sudden flicker of hot light
burned in the dull depths of his gaze, his worn face quivered with
a swift malignancy, an energy of suspicion, of hatred, that touched
Anthony's heart with a cold finger of fear.
“What's your name?” he demanded, his entire being strained in an agony
of attention.
Anthony informed him with scrupulous exactitude.
He seemed, for a moment, to doubt Anthony's identity; then the fire
died, his eyes grew blank; his grasp relaxed on the stick, and, bent,
dogged, he continued on his way.
The repellent contraction of Anthony's heart expanded in a light and
careless curiosity, youthful contempt mingled with the gayety of his
morning mood, and he hastened his steps until he had again overtaken his
inquisitor.
“That's a good cane you've got,” he observed of the stout shaft and
rounded head.
Its owner grasped it by the lower end, and swung the head against his
hand. “Lead,” he pronounced somberly. “It would crumble your skull like
an egg.”
Again fear stirred vaguely in Anthony: the entire absence of emotion
in the sanguinary, the dull, matter-of-fact voice were inhuman, tainted
with madness; the total detachment of those deliberate words had been
appalling.
“I thought,” he continued, “that you might have been Alfred Lukes,
but you're too young.” As he pronounced that name his grasp tightened
whitely about the lead knob. The conviction seized Anthony that it was
fortunate he was not the individual in question.
“You want Alfred?” he asked in an attempted jocularity.
“He murdered my boy,” the other answered simply. “Him and another. They
asked James into a boat to go fishing. Boys will always go fishing; he
was only eleven.” He stopped in the middle of the road, and produced a
small package folded in oiled silk. It proved to be a derringer, of an
old-fashioned model, with two, short black barrels, one atop the other.
“Loaded,” he said, “to put against his face.” Then he rewrapped the
weapon and returned it to its place of concealment. “I've been looking
for Alfred Lukes for nineteen years,” he recommenced his dogged
progress, “in trains and saloons and stores. Nineteen years ago James
was found in the river.” He was silent for a moment, then, “One eye was
torn out,” he added in his weary voice. He turned his blank and terrible
gaze upon Anthony, upon the sparkling morning. The derringer dragged
slightly upon his coat, the stick--that stick which could crush a skull
like an egg--made its trailing signature in the dust. A mingled loathing
and pity took possession of Anthony; he recoiled from the corroding and
secret horror of that nineteen year Odyssey of a torturing and impotent
spirit of revenge, from the infinite black tide that had swept over the
stooping figure at his side, the pitiless memory that had destroyed its
sanity.
“It was on Sunday; James had on his nice blue suit and a new, red silk
necktie... they found it knotted about his throat... as tight as a big
man could make it.”
A sudden impulse overcame Anthony to run, to leave far behind him this
sinister, animated speck on the sunny road, under the dusty branches
burdened with ripening fruit, thrilling with the bubbling notes of
birds. But, as his gaze fell again upon his companion, he saw only
an old man, gaunt with suffering, hurrying toward the noon. A deep,
cleansing compassion vanquished the dread, and, spontaneously, he spoke
of his own lighter affairs, of California, his destination.
“I have never been west of Chicago,” the other interposed. “I hadn't the
money; the walking is dreadfully hard; the sun on those plains hurt my
head. Do you suppose James Lukes is in California?” he asked, pausing
momentarily in his rapid shamble.
In his careless, youthful egotism, Anthony ignored the query. He
wondered aloud where he could board a through train to the West.
“Have you got your ticket?”
Anthony tapped complacently upon the pocket that held the wallet. They
were walking now through a wood that flowed to the rim of the road, and
a turn hid either vista. A stream ran through the rank greenery of the
bottom, crossed by a bridge of loosely bolted planks. Anthony paused,
intent upon the brown, sliding water beneath him, the minute minnows
balancing against the stream. In that closed place of broken light the
cool stillness was profound. The stream fled past its weeds without a
gurgle, the leaves hung motionless, as though they had been stamped from
metal... he might have been, with his companion, within a charmed circle
of everlasting tranquillity. Then:
“I wonder if Alfred Lukes is in California?” the latter resumed; “I've
never got there, the fare... too expensive, the sun hurt my head.”
Anthony lit a Dulcina, and expelled a cloud of blue smoke that rose
compactly in the motionless air. “California,” he repeated, sunk in
thought; “I wonder--”
“California's a big place,” Anthony hazarded.
“If he was there I'd find him.” Then, in his mechanical and
dispassionate voice, he cursed Alfred Lukes with the utmost foulness.
One heated word, the slightest elevation of his even tones, would have
made the performance human, intelligent, but the deadly monotony, the
impersonal accents, were as harrowing as though a mummy had ground out
of its shrunken and embalmed interior a recital of prehistoric hatred
and wrong; it resembled a phonograph record of incalculable depravity.
He stood beyond the bridge, resting upon his stick, with his unmoved
face turned toward Anthony. His hat cast a deep shade over his eyes;
but, below, in a wanton patch of sunlight, his lipless mouth trembled
greyly.
“California,” he repeated still again, then, “I must get there.” He
shifted his hand lower upon the stick, and moved nearer to Anthony by a
step; the patch of sunlight shifted up to his hat and fled.
“You could try the freight cars,” Anthony suggested. The stooping,
neatly-brushed figure, the stony countenance, had become, in an
intangible manner, menacing, obscurely dangerous. The fingers were drawn
like a claw about the club. Then the arm relaxed, he seemed to shrink
into hopeless resignation. Beyond the leafy arcade Anthony could now
see the countryside spread out in sunny fields, fleecy, white clouds
shifting in the sea of blue.... Suddenly a great flame shot up before
his eyes, a stunning shock fell upon his head, and the flame went out
in a whirling darkness that swept like a black sea over a continent of
intolerable pain. He heard, as if from an immense distance, a thin voice
pronounce the single word, “California.”