encountered on the sunken ways of life. She was no fairy. She was flesh
and blood, and the possibilities of wreckage were in her as they had
been in him even when he lay at his mother's breast. And there was in
her eagerness to know.
"Nope," he said lightly, "this man from the bad, wicked world ain't
going to tell you nothing of the kind. He's going to tell you of the
good things in that world. He's going to tell you how he loved hosses
when he was a shaver, and about the first hoss he straddled, and the
first hoss he owned. Hosses ain't like men. They're better. They're
clean--clean all the way through and back again. And, little fairy, I
want to tell you one thing--there sure ain't nothing in the world like
when you're settin' a tired hoss at the end of a long day, and when you
just speak, and that tired animal lifts under you willing and hustles
along. Hosses! They're my long suit. I sure dote on hosses. Yep. I used
to be a cowboy once."
She clapped her hands in the way that tore so delightfully to his heart,
and her eyes were dancing, as she exclaimed:
"A Texas cowboy! I always wanted to see one! I heard papa say once that
cowboys are bow-legged. Are you?"
"I sure was a Texas cowboy," he answered. "But it was a long time ago.
And I'm sure bow-legged. You see, you can't ride much when you're young
and soft without getting the legs bent some. Why, I was only a
three-year-old when I begun. He was a three-year-old, too, fresh-broken.
I led him up alongside the fence, clumb to the top rail, and dropped
on. He was a pinto, and a real devil at bucking, but I could do
anything with him. I reckon he knowed I was only a little shaver. Some
hosses knows lots more 'n' you think."
For half an hour Ross Shanklin rambled on with his horse reminiscences,
never unconscious for a moment of the supreme joy that was his through
the touch of his hand on the hem of her dress. The sun dropped slowly
into the cloud bank, the quail called more insistently, and empty wagon
after empty wagon rumbled back across the bridge. Then came a woman's
voice.
"Joan! Joan!" it called. "Where are you, dear?"
The little girl answered, and Ross Shanklin saw a woman, clad in a soft,
clinging gown, come through the gate from the bungalow. She was a
slender, graceful woman, and to his charmed eyes she seemed rather to
float along than walk like ordinary flesh and blood.
"What have you been doing all afternoon?" the woman asked, as she came
up.
"Talking, mamma," the little girl replied "I've had a very interesting
time."
Ross Shanklin scrambled to his feet and stood watchfully and awkwardly.
The little girl took the mother's hand, and she, in turn, looked at him
frankly and pleasantly, with a recognition of his humanness that was a
new thing to him. In his mind ran the thought: _the woman who ain't
afraid_. Not a hint was there of the timidity he was accustomed to
seeing in women's eyes. And he was quite aware, and never more so, of
his bleary-eyed, forbidding appearance.
"How do you do?" she greeted him sweetly and naturally.
"How do you do, ma'am," he responded, unpleasantly conscious of the
huskiness and rawness of his voice.
"And did you have an interesting time, too?" she smiled.
"Yes, ma'am. I sure did. I was just telling your little girl about
hosses."
"He was a cowboy, once, mamma," she cried.
The mother smiled her acknowledgment to him, and looked fondly down at
the little girl. The thought that came into Ross Shanklin's mind was the
awfulness of the crime if any one should harm either of the wonderful
pair. This was followed by the wish that some terrible danger should
threaten, so that he could fight, as he well knew how, with all his
strength and life, to defend them.
"You'll have to come along, dear," the mother said. "It's growing late."
She looked at Ross Shanklin hesitantly. "Would you care to have
something to eat?"
"No, ma'am, thanking you kindly just the same. I ... I ain't hungry."
"Then say good-bye, Joan," she counselled.
"Good-bye." The little girl held out her hand, and her eyes lighted
roguishly. "Good-bye, Mr. Man from the bad, wicked world."
To him, the touch of her hand as he pressed it in his was the capstone
of the whole adventure.
"Good-bye, little fairy," he mumbled. "I reckon I got to be pullin'
along."
But he did not pull along. He stood staring after his vision until it
vanished through the gate. The day seemed suddenly empty. He looked
about him irresolutely, then climbed the fence, crossed the bridge, and
slouched along the road. He was in a dream. He did not note his feet nor
the way they led him. At times he stumbled in the dust-filled ruts.
A mile farther on, he aroused at the crossroads. Before him stood the
saloon. He came to a stop and stared at it, licking his lips. He sank
his hand into his pants pocket and fumbled a solitary dime. "God!" he
muttered. "God!" Then, with dragging, reluctant feet, went on along the
road.
He came to a big farm. He knew it must be big, because of the bigness of
the house and the size and number of the barns and outbuildings. On the
porch, in shirt sleeves, smoking a cigar, keen-eyed and middle-aged, was
the farmer.
"What's the chance for a job?" Ross Shanklin asked.
The keen eyes scarcely glanced at him.
"A dollar a day and grub," was the answer.
Ross Shanklin swallowed and braced himself.
"I'll pick grapes all right, or anything. But what's the chance for a
steady job? You've got a big ranch here. I know hosses. I was born on
one. I can drive team, ride, plough, break, do anything that anybody
ever done with hosses."
The other looked him over with an appraising, incredulous eye.
"You don't look it," was the judgment.
"I know I don't. Give me a chance. That's all. I'll prove it."
The farmer considered, casting an anxious glance at the cloud bank into
which the sun had sunk.
"I'm short a teamster, and I'll give you the chance to make good. Go and
get supper with the hands."
Ross Shanklin's voice was very husky, and be spoke with an effort.
"All right. I'll make good. Where can I get a drink of water and wash
up?"
THE PRODIGAL FATHER
I
Josiah Childs was ordinarily an ordinary-appearing, prosperous business
man. He wore a sixty-dollar, business-man's suit, his shoes were
comfortable and seemly and made from the current last, his tie, collars
and cuffs were just what all prosperous business men wore, and an
up-to-date, business-man's derby was his wildest adventure in head-gear.
Oakland, California, is no sleepy country town, and Josiah Childs, as
the leading grocer of a rushing Western metropolis of three hundred
thousand, appropriately lived, acted, and dressed the part.
But on this morning, before the rush of custom began, his appearance at
the store, while it did not cause a riot, was sufficiently startling to
impair for half an hour the staff's working efficiency. He nodded
pleasantly to the two delivery drivers loading their wagons for the
first trip of the morning, and cast upward the inevitable, complacent
glance at the sign that ran across the front of the building--CHILDS'
CASH STORE. The lettering, not too large, was of dignified black and
gold, suggestive of noble spices, aristocratic condiments, and
everything of the best (which was no more than to be expected of a scale
of prices ten per cent. higher than any other grocery in town). But what
Josiah Childs did not see as he turned his back on the drivers and
entered, was the helpless and mutual fall of surprise those two worthies
perpetrated on each other's necks. They clung together for support.
"Did you catch the kicks, Bill?" one moaned.
"Did you pipe the head-piece?" Bill moaned back.
"Now if he was goin' to a masquerade ball...."
"Or attendin' a reunion of the Rough Riders...."
"Or goin' huntin' bear...."
"Or swearin' off his taxes...."
"Instead of goin' all the way to the effete East--Monkton says he's
going clear to Boston...."
The two drivers held each other apart at arm's length, and fell limply
together again.
For Josiah Childs' outfit was all their actions connotated. His hat was
a light fawn, stiff-rimmed John B. Stetson, circled by a band of Mexican
stamped leather. Over a blue flannel shirt, set off by a drooping
Windsor tie, was a rough-and-ready coat of large-ribbed corduroy. Pants
of the same material were thrust into high-laced shoes of the sort worn
by surveyors, explorers, and linemen.
A clerk at a near counter almost petrified at sight of his employer's
bizarre rig. Monkton, recently elevated to the managership, gasped,
swallowed, and maintained his imperturbable attentiveness. The lady
bookkeeper, glancing down from her glass eyrie on the inside balcony,
took one look and buried her giggles in the day book. Josiah Childs saw
most of all this, but he did not mind. He was starting on his vacation,
and his head and heart were buzzing with plans and anticipations of the
most adventurous vacation he had taken in ten years. Under his eyelids
burned visions of East Falls, Connecticut, and of all the home scenes he
had been born to and brought up in. Oakland, he was thoroughly aware,
was more modern than East Falls, and the excitement caused by his garb
was only to be expected. Undisturbed by the sensation he knew he was
creating among his employés, he moved about, accompanied by his manager,
making last suggestions, giving final instructions, and radiating fond,
farewell glances at all the loved details of the business he had built
out of nothing.
He had a right to be proud of Childs' Cash Store. Twelve years before he
had landed in Oakland with fourteen dollars and forty-three cents. Cents
did not circulate so far West, and after the fourteen dollars were gone,
he continued to carry the three pennies in his pocket for a weary while.
Later, when he had got a job clerking in a small grocery for eleven
dollars a week, and had begun sending a small monthly postal order to
one, Agatha Childs, East Falls, Connecticut, he invested the three
coppers in postage stamps. Uncle Sam could not reject his own lawful
coin of the realm.
Having spent all his life in cramped New England, where sharpness and
shrewdness had been whetted to razor-edge on the harsh stone of meagre
circumstance, he had found himself abruptly in the loose and
free-and-easy West, where men thought in thousand-dollar bills and
newsboys dropped dead at sight of copper cents. Josiah Childs bit like
fresh acid into the new industrial and business conditions. He had
vision. He saw so many ways of making money all at once, that at first
his brain was in a whirl.
At the same time, being sane and conservative, he had resolutely avoided
speculation. The solid and substantial called to him. Clerking at eleven
dollars a week, he took note of the lost opportunities, of the openings
for safe enterprise, of the countless leaks in the business. If, despite
all this, the boss could make a good living, what couldn't he, Josiah
Childs, do with his Connecticut training? It was like a bottle of wine
to a thirsty hermit, this coming to the active, generous-spending West
after thirty-five years in East Falls, the last fifteen of which had
been spent in humdrum clerking in the humdrum East Falls general store.
Josiah Childs' head buzzed with the easy possibilities he saw. But he
did not lose his head. No detail was overlooked. He spent his spare
hours in studying Oakland, its people, how they made their money, and
why they spent it and where. He walked the central streets, watching the
drift of the buying crowds, even counting them and compiling the
statistics in various notebooks. He studied the general credit system of
the trade, and the particular credit systems of the different districts.
He could tell to a dot the average wage or salary earned by the
householders of any locality, and he made it a point of thoroughness to
know every locality from the waterfront slums to the aristocratic Lake
Merritt and Piedmont sections, from West Oakland, where dwelt the
railroad employés, to the semi-farmers of Fruitvale at the opposite end
of the city.
Broadway, on the main street and in the very heart of the shopping
district, where no grocer had ever been insane enough to dream of
establishing a business, was his ultimate selection. But that required
money, while he had to start from the smallest of beginnings. His first
store was on lower Filbert, where lived the nail-workers. In half a
year, three other little corner groceries went out of business while he
was compelled to enlarge his premises. He understood the principle of
large sales at small profits, of stable qualities of goods, and of a
square deal. He had glimpsed, also, the secret of advertising. Each week
he set forth one article that sold at a loss to him. This was not an
advertised loss, but an absolute loss. His one clerk prophesied
impending bankruptcy when butter, that cost Childs thirty cents, was
sold for twenty-five cents, when twenty-two-cent coffee was passed
across the counter at eighteen cents. The neighbourhood housewives came
for these bargains and remained to buy other articles that sold at a
profit. Moreover, the whole neighbourhood came quickly to know Josiah
Childs, and the busy crowd of buyers in his store was an attraction in
itself.
But Josiah Childs made no mistake. He knew the ultimate foundation on
which his prosperity rested. He studied the nail works until he came to
know as much about them as the managing directors. Before the first
whisper had stirred abroad, he sold his store, and with a modest sum of
ready cash went in search of a new location. Six months later the nail
works closed down, and closed down forever.
His next store was established on Adeline Street, where lived a
comfortable, salaried class. Here, his shelves carried a higher-grade
and a more diversified stock. By the same old method, he drew his crowd.
He established a delicatessen counter. He dealt directly with the
farmers, so that his butter and eggs were not only always dependable but
were a shade better than those sold by the finest groceries in the city.
One of his specialties was Boston baked beans, and so popular did it
become that the Twin Cabin Bakery paid him better than handsomely for
the privilege of taking it over. He made time to study the farmers, the
very apples they grew, and certain farmers he taught how properly to
make cider. As a side-line, his New England apple cider proved his
greatest success, and before long, after he had invaded San Francisco,
Berkeley, and Alameda, he ran it as an independent business.
But always his eyes were fixed on Broadway. Only one other intermediate
move did he make, which was to as near as he could get to the Ashland
Park Tract, where every purchaser of land was legally pledged to put up
no home that should cost less than four thousand dollars. After that
came Broadway. A strange swirl had come in the tide of the crowd. The
drift was to Washington Street, where real estate promptly soared while
on Broadway it was as if the bottom had fallen out. One big store after
another, as the leases expired, moved to Washington.
The crowd will come back, Josiah Childs said, but he said it to himself.
He knew the crowd. Oakland was growing, and he knew why it was growing.
Washington Street was too narrow to carry the increasing traffic. Along
Broadway, in the physical nature of things, the electric cars, ever in
greater numbers, would have to run. The realty dealers said that the
crowd would never come back, while the leading merchants followed the
crowd. And then it was, at a ridiculously low figure, that Josiah Childs
got a long lease on a modern, Class A building on Broadway, with a
buying option at a fixed price. It was the beginning of the end for
Broadway, said the realty dealers, when a grocery was established in its
erstwhile sacred midst. Later, when the crowd did come back, they said
Josiah Childs was lucky. Also, they whispered among themselves that he
had cleared at least fifty thousand on the transaction.
It was an entirely different store from his previous ones. There were no
more bargains. Everything was of the superlative best, and superlative
best prices were charged. He catered to the most expensive trade in
town. Only those who could carelessly afford to pay ten per cent. more
than anywhere else, patronised him, and so excellent was his service
that they could not afford to go elsewhere. His horses and delivery
wagons were more expensive and finer than any one else's in town. He
paid his drivers, and clerks, and bookkeepers higher wages than any
other store could dream of paying. As a result, he got more efficient
men, and they rendered him and his patrons a more satisfying service. In
short, to deal at Childs' Cash Store became almost the infallible index
of social status.
To cap everything, came the great San Francisco earthquake and fire,
which caused one hundred thousand people abruptly to come across the Bay
and live in Oakland. Not least to profit from so extraordinary a boom,
was Josiah Childs. And now, after twelve years' absence, he was
departing on a visit to East Falls, Connecticut. In the twelve years he
had not received a letter from Agatha, nor had he seen even a photograph
of his and Agatha's boy.
Agatha and he had never got along together. Agatha was masterful. Agatha
had a tongue. She was strong on old-fashioned morality. She was
unlovely in her rectitude. Josiah never could quite make out how he had
happened to marry her. She was two years his senior, and had long ranked
as an old maid She had taught school, and was known by the young
generation as the sternest disciplinarian in its experience. She had
become set in her ways, and when she married it was merely an exchange
of a number of pupils for one. Josiah had to stand the hectoring and
nagging that thitherto had been distributed among many. As to how the
marriage came about, his Uncle Isaac nearly hit it off one day when he
said in confidence: "Josiah, when Agatha married you it was a case of
marrying a struggling young man. I reckon you was overpowered. Or maybe
you broke your leg and couldn't get away."
"Uncle Isaac," Josiah answered, "I didn't break my leg. I ran my
dangdest, but she just plum run me down and out of breath."
"Strong in the wind, eh?" Uncle Isaac chuckled.
"We've ben married five years now," Josiah agreed, "and I've never known
her to lose it."
"And never will," Uncle Isaac added.
This conversation had taken place in the last days, and so dismal an
outlook proved too much for Josiah Childs. Meek he was, under Agatha's
firm tuition, but he was very healthy, and his promise of life was too
long for his patience. He was only thirty-three, and he came of a
long-lived stock. Thirty-three more years with Agatha and Agatha's
nagging was too hideous to contemplate. So, between a sunset and a
rising, Josiah Childs disappeared from East Falls. And from that day,
for twelve years, he had received no letter from her. Not that it was
her fault. He had carefully avoided letting her have his address. His
first postal money orders were sent to her from Oakland, but in the
years that followed he had arranged his remittances so that they bore
the scattered postmarks of most of the states west of the Rockies.
But twelve years, and the confidence born of deserved success, had
softened his memories. After all, she was the mother of his boy, and it
was incontestable that she had always meant well. Besides, he was not
working so hard now, and he had more time to think of things besides his
business. He wanted to see the boy, whom he had never seen and who had
turned three before his father ever learned he was a father. Then, too,
homesickness had begun to crawl in him. In a dozen years he had not seen
snow, and he was always wondering if New England fruits and berries had
not a finer tang than those of California. Through hazy vistas he saw
the old New England life, and he wanted to see it again in the flesh
before he died.
And, finally, there was duty. Agatha was his wife. He would bring her
back with him to the West. He felt that he could stand it. He was a man,
now, in the world of men. He ran things, instead of being run, and
Agatha would quickly find it out. Nevertheless, he wanted Agatha to come
to him for his own sake. So it was that he had put on his frontier rig.
He would be the prodigal father, returning as penniless as when he
left, and it would be up to her whether or not she killed the fatted
calf. Empty of hand, and looking it, he would come back wondering if he
could get his old job in the general store. Whatever followed would be
Agatha's affair.
By the time he said good-bye to his staff and emerged on the sidewalk,
five more of his delivery wagons were backed up and loading.
He ran his eye proudly over them, took a last fond glance at the
black-and-gold letters, and signalled the electric car at the corner.
II
He ran up to East Falls from New York. In the Pullman smoker he became
acquainted with several business men. The conversation, turning on the
West, was quickly led by him. As president of the Oakland Chamber of
Commerce, he was an authority. His words carried weight, and he knew
what he was talking about, whether it was Asiatic trade, the Panama
Canal, or the Japanese coolie question. It was very exhilarating, this
stimulus of respectful attention accorded him by these prosperous
Eastern men, and before he knew it he was at East Falls.
He was the only person who alighted, and the station was deserted.
Nobody was there expecting anybody. The long twilight of a January
evening was beginning, and the bite of the keen air made him suddenly
conscious that his clothing was saturated with tobacco smoke. He
shuddered involuntarily. Agatha did not tolerate tobacco. He half-moved
to toss the fresh-lighted cigar away, then it was borne in upon him that
this was the old East Falls atmosphere overpowering him, and he resolved
to combat it, thrusting the cigar between his teeth and gripping it with
the firmness of a dozen years of Western resolution.
A few steps brought him into the little main street. The chilly, stilted
aspect of it shocked him. Everything seemed frosty and pinched, just as
the cutting air did after the warm balminess of California. Only several
persons, strangers to his recollection, were abroad, and they favoured
him with incurious glances. They were wrapped in an uncongenial and
frosty imperviousness. His first impression was surprise at his
surprise. Through the wide perspective of twelve years of Western life,
he had consistently and steadily discounted the size and importance of
East Falls; but this was worse than all discounting. Things were more
meagre than he had dreamed. The general store took his breath away.
Countless myriads of times he had contrasted it with his own spacious
emporium, but now he saw that in justice he had overdone it. He felt
certain that it could not accommodate two of his delicatessen counters,
and he knew that he could lose all of it in one of his storerooms.
He took the familiar turning to the right at the head of the street, and
as he plodded along the slippery walk he decided that one of the first
things he must do was to buy sealskin cap and gloves. The thought of
sleighing cheered him for a moment, until, now on the outskirts of the
village, he was sanitarily perturbed by the adjacency of dwelling houses
and barns. Some were even connected. Cruel memories of bitter morning
chores oppressed him. The thought of chapped hands and chilblains was
almost terrifying, and his heart sank at sight of the double
storm-windows, which he knew were solidly fastened and unraisable, while
the small ventilating panes, the size of ladies' handkerchiefs, smote
him with sensations of suffocation. Agatha'll like California, he
thought, calling to his mind visions of roses in dazzling sunshine and
the wealth of flowers that bloomed the twelve months round.