Charley didn't have any more signs of fits, and began laughing and
talking about gold mines. The trouble was with little Albert. He was
almost as big as me. You see, all the time I'd been calling him little
Albert, he'd been growing up. He was so heavy I couldn't keep up with
Joe and Charley. I was all out of breath. So I told them they'd have to
take turns in carrying him, which they said they wouldn't. Then I said
I'd leave them and they'd get lost, and the mountain lions and bears
would eat them. Charley looked like he was going to have a fit right
there, and Joe said, "Give him to me." And after that we carried him in
turn.
We kept right on up that mountain. I don't think there was any gold
mine, but we might 'a' got to the top and found it, if we hadn't lost
the trail, and if it hadn't got dark, and if little Albert hadn't tired
us all out carrying him. Lots of feebs are scared of the dark, and Joe
said he was going to have a fit right there. Only he didn't. I never saw
such an unlucky boy. He never could throw a fit when he wanted to. Some
of the feebs can throw fits as quick as a wink.
By and by it got real black, and we were hungry, and we didn't have no
fire. You see, they don't let feebs carry matches, and all we could do
was just shiver. And we'd never thought about being hungry. You see,
feebs always have their food ready for them, and that's why it's better
to be a feeb than earning your living in the world.
And worse than everything was the quiet. There was only one thing worse,
and it was the noises. There was all kinds of noises every once in a
while, with quiet spells in between. I reckon they were rabbits, but
they made noises in the brush like wild animals--you know, rustle
rustle, thump, bump, crackle crackle, just like that. First Charley got
a fit, a real one, and Joe threw a terrible one. I don't mind fits in
the Home with everybody around. But out in the woods on a dark night is
different. You listen to me, and never go hunting gold mines with
epilecs, even if they are high-grade.
I never had such an awful night. When Joe and Charley weren't throwing
fits they were making believe, and in the darkness the shivers from the
cold which I couldn't see seemed like fits, too. And I shivered so hard
I thought I was getting fits myself. And little Albert, with nothing to
eat, just drooled and drooled. I never seen him as bad as that before.
Why, he twisted that left eye of his until it ought to have dropped out.
I couldn't see it, but I could tell from the movements he made. And Joe
just lay and cussed and cussed, and Charley cried and wished he was
back in the Home.
We didn't die, and next morning we went right back the way we'd come.
And little Albert got awful heavy. Doctor Wilson was mad as could be,
and said I was the worst feeb in the institution, along with Joe and
Charley. But Miss Striker, who was a nurse in the drooling ward then,
just put her arms around me and cried, she was that happy I'd got back.
I thought right there that mebbe I'd marry her. But only a month
afterward she got married to the plumber that came up from the city to
fix the gutter-pipes of the new hospital. And little Albert never
twisted his eye for two days, it was that tired.
Next time I run away I'm going right over that mountain. But I ain't
going to take epilecs along. They ain't never cured, and when they get
scared or excited they throw fits to beat the band. But I'll take little
Albert. Somehow I can't get along without him. And anyway, I ain't going
to run away. The drooling ward's a better snap than gold mines, and I
hear there's a new nurse coming. Besides, little Albert's bigger than I
am now, and I could never carry him over a mountain. And he's growing
bigger every day. It's astonishing.
THE HOBO AND THE FAIRY
He lay on his back. So heavy was his sleep that the stamp of hoofs and
cries of the drivers from the bridge that crossed the creek did not
rouse him. Wagon after wagon, loaded high with grapes, passed the bridge
on the way up the valley to the winery, and the coming of each wagon was
like an explosion of sound and commotion in the lazy quiet of the
afternoon.
But the man was undisturbed. His head had slipped from the folded
newspaper, and the straggling unkempt hair was matted with the foxtails
and burrs of the dry grass on which it lay. He was not a pretty sight.
His mouth was open, disclosing a gap in the upper row where several
teeth at some time had been knocked out. He breathed stertorously, at
times grunting and moaning with the pain of his sleep. Also, he was very
restless, tossing his arms about, making jerky, half-convulsive
movements, and at times rolling his head from side to side in the burrs.
This restlessness seemed occasioned partly by some internal discomfort,
and partly by the sun that streamed down on his face and by the flies
that buzzed and lighted and crawled upon the nose and cheeks and
eyelids. There was no other place for them to crawl, for the rest of the
face was covered with matted beard, slightly grizzled, but greatly
dirt-stained and weather-discoloured.
The cheek-bones were blotched with the blood congested by the debauch
that was evidently being slept off. This, too, accounted for the
persistence with which the flies clustered around the mouth, lured by
the alcohol-laden exhalations. He was a powerfully built man,
thick-necked, broad-shouldered, with sinewy wrists and toil-distorted
hands. Yet the distortion was not due to recent toil, nor were the
callouses other than ancient that showed under the dirt of the one palm
upturned. From time to time this hand clenched tightly and spasmodically
into a fist, large, heavy-boned and wicked-looking.
The man lay in the dry grass of a tiny glade that ran down to the
tree-fringed bank of the stream. On either side of the glade was a
fence, of the old stake-and-rider type, though little of it was to be
seen, so thickly was it overgrown by wild blackberry bushes, scrubby
oaks and young madrono trees. In the rear, a gate through a low paling
fence led to a snug, squat bungalow, built in the California Spanish
style and seeming to have been compounded directly from the landscape of
which it was so justly a part. Neat and trim and modestly sweet was the
bungalow, redolent of comfort and repose, telling with quiet certitude
of some one that knew, and that had sought and found.
Through the gate and into the glade came as dainty a little maiden as
ever stepped out of an illustration made especially to show how dainty
little maidens may be. Eight years she might have been, and, possibly, a
trifle more, or less. Her little waist and little black-stockinged
calves showed how delicately fragile she was; but the fragility was of
mould only. There was no hint of anæmia in the clear, healthy complexion
nor in the quick, tripping step. She was a little, delicious blond,
with hair spun of gossamer gold and wide blue eyes that were but
slightly veiled by the long lashes. Her expression was of sweetness and
happiness; it belonged by right to any face that sheltered in the
bungalow.
She carried a child's parasol, which she was careful not to tear against
the scrubby branches and bramble bushes as she sought for wild poppies
along the edge of the fence. They were late poppies, a third generation,
which had been unable to resist the call of the warm October sun.
Having gathered along one fence, she turned to cross to the opposite
fence. Midway in the glade she came upon the tramp. Her startle was
merely a startle. There was no fear in it. She stood and looked long and
curiously at the forbidding spectacle, and was about to turn back when
the sleeper moved restlessly and rolled his hand among the burrs. She
noted the sun on his face, and the buzzing flies; her face grew
solicitous, and for a moment she debated with herself. Then she tiptoed
to his side, interposed the parasol between him and the sun, and
brushed away the flies. After a time, for greater ease, she sat down
beside him.
An hour passed, during which she occasionally shifted the parasol from
one tired hand to the other. At first the sleeper had been restless,
but, shielded from the flies and the sun, his breathing became gentler
and his movements ceased. Several times, however, he really frightened
her. The first was the worst, coming abruptly and without warning.
"Christ! How deep! How deep!" the man murmured from some profound of
dream. The parasol was agitated; but the little girl controlled herself
and continued her self-appointed ministrations.
Another time it was a gritting of teeth, as of some intolerable agony.
So terribly did the teeth crunch and grind together that it seemed they
must crash into fragments. A little later he suddenly stiffened out. The
hands clenched and the face set with the savage resolution of the dream.
The eyelids trembled from the shock of the fantasy, seemed about to
open, but did not. Instead, the lips muttered:
"No; by God, no. And once more no. I won't peach." The lips paused, then
went on. "You might as well tie me up, warden, and cut me to pieces.
That's all you can get outa me--blood. That's all any of you-uns has
ever got outa me in this hole."
After this outburst the man slept gently on, while the little girl still
held the parasol aloft and looked down with a great wonder at the
frowsy, unkempt creature, trying to reconcile it with the little part of
life that she knew. To her ears came the cries of men, the stamp of
hoofs on the bridge, and the creak and groan of wagons heavy-laden. It
was a breathless California Indian summer day. Light fleeces of cloud
drifted in the azure sky, but to the west heavy cloud banks threatened
with rain. A bee droned lazily by. From farther thickets came the calls
of quail, and from the fields the songs of meadow larks. And oblivious
to it all slept Ross Shanklin--Ross Shanklin, the tramp and outcast,
ex-convict 4379, the bitter and unbreakable one who had defied all
keepers and survived all brutalities.
Texas-born, of the old pioneer stock that was always tough and stubborn,
he had been unfortunate. At seventeen years of age he had been
apprehended for horse-stealing. Also, he had been convicted of stealing
seven horses which he had not stolen, and he had been sentenced to
fourteen years' imprisonment. This was severe under any circumstances,
but with him it had been especially severe, because there had been no
prior convictions against him. The sentiment of the people who believed
him guilty had been that two years was adequate punishment for the
youth, but the county attorney, paid according to the convictions he
secured, had made seven charges against him and earned seven fees. Which
goes to show that the county attorney valued twelve years of Ross
Shanklin's life at less than a few dollars.
Young Ross Shanklin had toiled in hell; he had escaped, more than once;
and he had been caught and sent back to toil in other and various hells.
He had been triced up and lashed till he fainted, had been revived and
lashed again. He had been in the dungeon ninety days at a time. He had
experienced the torment of the straightjacket. He knew what the humming
bird was. He had been farmed out as a chattel by the state to the
contractors. He had been trailed through swamps by blood hounds. Twice
he had been shot. For six years on end he had cut a cord and a half of
wood each day in a convict lumber camp. Sick or well, he had cut that
cord and a half or paid for it under a whip-lash knotted and pickled.
And Ross Shanklin had not sweetened under the treatment. He had sneered,
and cursed, and defied. He had seen convicts, after the guards had
manhandled them, crippled in body for life, or left to maunder in mind
to the end of their days. He had seen convicts, even his own cell-mate,
goaded to murder by their keepers, go to the gallows cursing God. He had
been in a break in which eleven of his kind were shot down. He had been
through a mutiny, where, in the prison yard, with gatling guns trained
upon them, three hundred convicts had been disciplined with
pick-handles wielded by brawny guards.
He had known every infamy of human cruelty, and through it all he had
never been broken. He had resented and fought to the last, until,
embittered and bestial, the day came when he was discharged. Five
dollars were given him in payment for the years of his labour and the
flower of his manhood. And he had worked little in the years that
followed. Work he hated and despised. He tramped, begged and stole, lied
or threatened as the case might warrant, and drank to besottedness
whenever he got the chance.
The little girl was looking at him when he awoke. Like a wild animal,
all of him was awake the instant he opened his eyes. The first he saw
was the parasol, strangely obtruded between him and the sky. He did not
start nor move, though his whole body seemed slightly to tense. His eyes
followed down the parasol handle to the tight-clutched little fingers,
and along the arm to the child's face. Straight and unblinking, he
looked into her eyes, and she, returning the look, was chilled and
frightened by his glittering eyes, cold and harsh, withal bloodshot, and
with no hint in them of the warm humanness she had been accustomed to
see and feel in human eyes. They were the true prison eyes--the eyes of
a man who had learned to talk little, who had forgotten almost how to
talk.
"Hello," he said finally, making no effort to change his position. "What
game are you up to?"
His voice was gruff and husky, and at first it had been harsh; but it
had softened queerly in a feeble attempt at forgotten kindliness.
"How do you do?" she said. "I'm not playing. The sun was on your face,
and mamma says one oughtn't to sleep in the sun."
The sweet clearness of her child's voice was pleasant to him, and he
wondered why he had never noticed it in children's voices before. He sat
up slowly and stared at her. He felt that he ought to say something, but
speech with him was a reluctant thing.
"I hope you slept well," she said gravely.
"I sure did," he answered, never taking his eyes from her, amazed at the
fairness and delicacy of her. "How long was you holdin' that contraption
up over me?"
"O-oh," she debated with herself, "a long, long time. I thought you
would never wake up."
"And I thought you was a fairy when I first seen you."
He felt elated at his contribution to the conversation.
"No, not a fairy," she smiled.
He thrilled in a strange, numb way at the immaculate whiteness of her
small even teeth.
"I was just the good Samaritan," she added.
"I reckon I never heard of that party."
He was cudgelling his brains to keep the conversation going. Never
having been at close quarters with a child since he was man-grown, he
found it difficult.
"What a funny man not to know about the good Samaritan. Don't you
remember? A certain man went down to Jericho--"
"I reckon I've been there," he interrupted.
"I knew you were a traveller!" she cried, clapping her hands. "Maybe you
saw the exact spot."
"What spot?"
"Why, where he fell among thieves and was left half dead. And then the
good Samaritan went to him, and bound up his wounds, and poured in oil
and wine--was that olive oil, do you think?"
He shook his head slowly.
"I reckon you got me there. Olive oil is something the dagoes cooks
with. I never heard of it for busted heads."
She considered his statement for a moment.
"Well," she announced, "we use olive oil in our cooking, so we must be
dagoes. I never knew what they were before. I thought it was slang."
"And the Samaritan dumped oil on his head," the tramp muttered
reminiscently. "Seems to me I recollect a sky pilot sayin' something
about that old gent. D'ye know, I've been looking for him off'n' on all
my life, and never scared up hide or hair of him. They ain't no more
Samaritans."
"Wasn't I one?" she asked quickly.
He looked at her steadily, with a great curiosity and wonder. Her ear,
by a movement exposed to the sun, was transparent. It seemed he could
almost see through it. He was amazed at the delicacy of her colouring,
at the blue of her eyes, at the dazzle of the sun-touched golden hair.
And he was astounded by her fragility. It came to him that she was
easily broken. His eye went quickly from his huge, gnarled paw to her
tiny hand in which it seemed to him he could almost see the blood
circulate. He knew the power in his muscles, and he knew the tricks and
turns by which men use their bodies to ill-treat men. In fact, he knew
little else, and his mind for the time ran in its customary channel. It
was his way of measuring the beautiful strangeness of her. He calculated
a grip, and not a strong one, that could grind her little fingers to
pulp. He thought of fist-blows he had given to men's heads, and
received on his own head, and felt that the least of them could shatter
hers like an eggshell. He scanned her little shoulders and slim waist,
and knew in all certitude that with his two hands he could rend her to
pieces.
"Wasn't I one?" she insisted again.
He came back to himself with a shock--or away from himself, as the case
happened. He was loth that the conversation should cease.
"What?" he answered. "Oh, yes; you bet you was a Samaritan, even if you
didn't have no olive oil." He remembered what his mind had been dwelling
on, and asked, "But ain't you afraid?"
She looked at him uncomprehendingly.
"Of ... of me?" he added lamely.
She laughed merrily.
"Mamma says never to be afraid of anything. She says that if you're
good, and you think good of other people, they'll be good, too."
"And you was thinkin' good of me when you kept the sun off," he
marvelled.
"But it's hard to think good of bees and nasty crawly things," she
confessed.
"But there's men that is nasty and crawly things," he argued.
"Mamma says no. She says there's good in every one."
"I bet you she locks the house up tight at night just the same," he
proclaimed triumphantly.
"But she doesn't. Mamma isn't afraid of anything. That's why she lets me
play out here alone when I want. Why, we had a robber once. Mamma got
right up and found him. And what do you think! He was only a poor hungry
man. And she got him plenty to eat from the pantry, and afterward she
got him work to do."
Ross Shanklin was stunned. The vista shown him of human nature was
unthinkable. It had been his lot to live in a world of suspicion and
hatred, of evil-believing and evil-doing. It had been his experience,
slouching along village streets at nightfall, to see little children,
screaming with fear, run from him to their mothers. He had even seen
grown women shrink aside from him as he passed along the sidewalk.
He was aroused by the girl clapping her hands as she cried out.
"I know what you are! You're an open air crank. That's why you were
sleeping here in the grass."
He felt a grim desire to laugh, but repressed it.
"And that's what tramps are--open air cranks," she continued. "I often
wondered. Mamma believes in the open air. I sleep on the porch at night.
So does she. This is our land. You must have climbed the fence. Mamma
lets me when I put on my climbers--they're bloomers, you know. But you
ought to be told something. A person doesn't know when they snore
because they're asleep. But you do worse than that. You grit your teeth.
That's bad. Whenever you are going to sleep you must think to yourself,
'I won't grit my teeth, I won't grit my teeth,' over and over, just like
that, and by and by you'll get out of the habit.
"All bad things are habits. And so are all good things. And it depends
on us what kind our habits are going to be. I used to pucker my
eyebrows--wrinkle them all up, but mamma said I must overcome that
habit. She said that when my eyebrows were wrinkled it was an
advertisement that my brain was wrinkled inside, and that it wasn't good
to have wrinkles in the brain. And then she smoothed my eyebrows with
her hand and said I must always think _smooth_--_smooth_ inside, and
_smooth_ outside. And do you know, it was easy. I haven't wrinkled my
brows for ever so long. I've heard about filling teeth by thinking. But
I don't believe that. Neither does mamma."
She paused, rather out of breath. Nor did he speak. Her flow of talk had
been too much for him. Also, sleeping drunkenly, with open mouth, had
made him very thirsty. But, rather than lose one precious moment, he
endured the torment of his scorching throat and mouth. He licked his dry
lips and struggled for speech.
"What is your name?" he managed at last.
"Joan."
She looked her own question at him, and it was not necessary to voice
it.
"Mine is Ross Shanklin," he volunteered, for the first time in forgotten
years giving his real name.
"I suppose you've travelled a lot."
"I sure have, but not as much as I might have wanted to."
"Papa always wanted to travel, but he was too busy at the office. He
never could get much time. He went to Europe once with mamma. That was
before I was born. It takes money to travel."
Ross Shanklin did not know whether to agree with this statement or not.
"But it doesn't cost tramps much for expenses," she took the thought
away from him. "Is that why you tramp?"
He nodded and licked his lips.
"Mamma says it's too bad that men must tramp to look for work. But
there's lots of work now in the country. All the farmers in the valley
are trying to get men. Have you been working?"
He shook his head, angry with himself that he should feel shame at the
confession when his savage reasoning told him he was right in despising
work. But this was followed by another thought. This beautiful little
creature was some man's child. She was one of the rewards of work.
"I wish I had a little girl like you," he blurted out, stirred by a
sudden consciousness of passion for paternity. "I'd work my hands off.
I ... I'd do anything."
She considered his case with fitting gravity.
"Then you aren't married?"
"Nobody would have me."
"Yes they would, if...."
She did not turn up her nose, but she favoured his dirt and rags with a
look of disapprobation he could not mistake.
"Go on," he half-shouted. "Shoot it into me. If I was washed--if I wore
good clothes--if I was respectable--if I had a job and worked
regular--if I wasn't what I am."
To each statement she nodded.
"Well, I ain't that kind," he rushed on.
"I'm no good. I'm a tramp. I don't want to work, that's what. And I like
dirt."
Her face was eloquent with reproach as she said, "Then you were only
making believe when you wished you had a little girl like me?"
This left him speechless, for he knew, in all the deeps of his new-found
passion, that that was just what he did want.
With ready tact, noting his discomfort, she sought to change the
subject.
"What do you think of God?" she asked.
"I ain't never met him. What do you think about him?"
His reply was evidently angry, and she was frank in her disapproval.
"You are very strange," she said. "You get angry so easily. I never saw
anybody before that got angry about God, or work, or being clean."
"He never done anything for me," he muttered resentfully. He cast back
in quick review of the long years of toil in the convict camps and
mines. "And work never done anything for me neither."
An embarrassing silence fell.
He looked at her, numb and hungry with the stir of the father-love,
sorry for his ill temper, puzzling his brain for something to say. She
was looking off and away at the clouds, and he devoured her with his
eyes. He reached out stealthily and rested one grimy hand on the very
edge of her little dress. It seemed to him that she was the most
wonderful thing in the world. The quail still called from the coverts,
and the harvest sounds seemed abruptly to become very loud. A great
loneliness oppressed him.
"I'm ... I'm no good," he murmured huskily and repentantly.
But, beyond a glance from her blue eyes, she took no notice. The silence
was more embarrassing than ever. He felt that he could give the world
just to touch with his lips that hem of her dress where his hand rested.
But he was afraid of frightening her. He fought to find something to
say, licking his parched lips and vainly attempting to articulate
something, anything.
"This ain't Sonoma Valley," he declared finally. "This is fairy land,
and you're a fairy. Mebbe I'm asleep and dreaming. I don't know. You and
me don't know how to talk together, because, you see, you're a fairy and
don't know nothing but good things, and I'm a man from the bad, wicked
world."
Having achieved this much, he was left gasping for ideas like a stranded
fish.
"And you're going to tell me about the bad, wicked world," she cried,
clapping her hands. "I'm just dying to know."