THE DERELICT
The tramp walked down the road, first on the grizzled grass, then, the
earth under it baked to an iron hardness, back on the softened dust. He
passed Tito Murano's cottage with dogs and chickens and little Muranos
sporting about the kitchen door and then noticed a diminishing of trees
and a sudden widening of the prospect. From here the road dwindled to a
trail that sloped to the marsh which spread before him. He sat down on a
bank by the roadside and looked at it.
Under the high, unsullied heavens it lay like an unrolled map,
green-painted, divisions and subdivisions marked by the fine tracings of
streams. His eye traveled down its length to where in a line,
ruler-straight, it met the sky, then shifted to its upper end, a jagged
point reaching to the hills. He had heard of it on the ranches where he
had been picking fruit--"It's easy traveling till you reach the tules,
but it's some pull round _them_." He gauged the distance round the point,
and oaths, picturesque and fluent, came from him. He had sixteen dollars
in the lining of his coat, and for days as he tramped and worked, he saw
this hoard expended in San Francisco--a bath, clean linen, and a dinner,
a dinner in a rotisserie with a pint of red wine and a cigar. He saw no
further than that--sixteen dollars' worth of comfort and good living.
Now he was like a child deprived of its candy. He ached with fatigue, his
feet were blistered, his throat dry as a kiln. Throwing off his hat, he
leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, and cursed the marsh as if it
were a living thing, cursed it with a slow, unctuous zest, spat out upon
it the venom and wrath that had accumulated within him.
Seeing him thus, his hat off, sullen indifference replaced by a malign
animation, he was a very different being from the man who had accosted
Mark. A dangerous chap beyond doubt, dangerous from a dark soul and a
stored power of malevolence. His face, vitalized with rage, was handsome;
a narrow forehead, the hair receding from the temples, a high-bridged
nose with wide-cut nostrils, lips thin and fine, moving flexibly as they
muttered. It matched with what the voice had told Mark, was not the face
of the brutalized hobo or low-bred vagrant, but beneath its hair and dirt
showed as the mask of a man who might have fallen from high places. Even
his curses went to prove it. They were not the dull profanities of the
loafer, but were varied, colorful, imaginative, such curses as might come
from one who had read and remembered.
Suddenly they stopped and his glance deflected, alert and
apprehensive--his ear had caught a low crooning of song. It came from a
small boy who, a little wooden boat in his hand, was advancing up the
slope. This was Tito Murano, Junior, Tito's first-born, nine years old,
softly footing it home after a joyous hour along the edge of the tules.
Tito's mother was Irish, but the Latin strain had flowered forth strong
in her son. He was bronze-brown, with a black bullet head and eyes like
shoe buttons. A pair of cotton trousers and a rag of shirt clothed him
and his feet were bare and caked with mud. A happy day behind him and the
prospect of supper made his heart light and he gave forth its joy in
fresh, bird-sweet carolings.
He did not see the tramp and a sharp, "Hey, there, kid," made him halt,
startled, gripping the treasured boat against his breast. Then he made
out the man, and stood staring, poised to run.
"Is there any way of getting across this infernal place?" The tramp's
hand swept the prospect.
Bashfulness held Tito speechless, and he stood rubbing one foot across
the other.
The man's eyes narrowed with a curious, ugly look.
"Are you deaf?" he said very quietly.
A muttered negative came from the child. The question contained a quality
of scorn that he felt and resented.
"I want to cross the marsh, get to the railway. What's the best
way to go?"
Tito's arm made a sweeping gesture round the head of the tules.
"That. There's a trail. You go round."
"Good God--that's _miles_. How do people go, the people here, when they
want to get to the other side?"
"That way." Tito repeated his gesture. "But they don't go often, and they
mostly rides."
The man gave a groaning oath, picked up his hat, then cast it from him
with fury, and, planting his elbows on his knees, dropped his forehead on
his hands. Tito was sorry for him, and advanced charily, his heart full
of sympathy.
"The duck shooters have laid planks," he murmured encouragingly.
The man raised his head.
"Planks--where?"
Tito indicated the marsh.
"All along. They lay 'em when they come to shoot and then they let 'em
lay. Nobody don't ever go there 'cept the duck shooters."
"You mean I can get across by the planks?"
Tito forgot his bashfulness and drew nearer. He was emboldened by the
thought that he could help the tramp, give assistance as man to man.
"_You_ couldn't. It's all mud and water, and turns too, like you was
goin' round in rings. But _I_ could--I bin acrost, right over to the
Ariel Club." He pointed to a small white square on the opposite
side. "That's where. The railroad's a ways beyont that, but it ain't
awful far."
The man looked and nodded, then smiled, a slight curling of his lip, a
slight contraction of the skin round his eyes.
"If you show me the way I'll give you a quarter," he said, turning the
smile on Tito.
Tito did not like the smile; it suggested a dog's lifted lip when
contemplating battle. Also he had been forbidden to go into the marsh;
some of the streams were deep, the mud treacherous. But a quarter had
seldom crossed his palm. He saw himself spending it at the crossroads
store, and, tucking his boat up under his arm, said manfully:
"All right--I'll get you over before sundown."
They started, the child running fleet-footed ahead, the man following
with long strides. There was evidently a way and Tito knew it. His black
head bobbed along in front, now a dark sphere glossed by the sunlight,
now an inky silhouette against the white shine of water. There were
creeks to jump and pools to wade--the duck shooters' planks only spanned
the deep places--and the way was hard.
Once the tramp stopped, surly-faced, and measured the distance to the
Ariel Club house. It seemed but little nearer. He told Tito so, and the
child, pausing to look back, cheered him with heartening phrases. But it
was a hard pull, crushing through the dense growth, staggering on the
slippery ooze, and he began to mutter his curses again. Tito, hearing
them, made no reply, a little scared in the sun-swept loneliness with the
swearing in his ears.
Finally the man, floundering on a bank of mud, slipped and fell to his
knees. He groveled, his hands caked, and when he rose a fearful stream of
profanity broke from him. Tito stopped, chilled, peering back between the
rushes. If it had been a rancher or one of the boys he would have
laughed. But he had no inclination to laugh at the staggering figure,
with the haggard, sweat-beaded face and furious eyes.
"I said it was long, but we're gettin' there. We're halfway acrost now,"
his little pipe, mellow-sweet, was in strange contrast with what had
come before.
"You're a liar, a damnable liar. You've led me into the middle of
this--place that you don't know any more of than I do."
His eyes, ranging about in helpless desperation, saw, some distance
beyond, a rise of dry ground. The sight appeared to divert him, and he
stood looking at it. He had the appearance of having forgotten Tito, and
the child, uneasy at this sudden stillness as he was ready to be at
anything the tramp did, said with timid urgence:
"Say, come on. I got to get home for supper or I'll get licked."
For answer the man moved in an opposite direction, to where the stream
widened. He saw there was deep water between him and the dry place, but
he wanted to get there, rest, smoke, unroll his blanket and sleep. Tito's
uneasiness increased.
"You're goin' the wrong way," he pleaded. "You can't get round there,
it's all water."
Suddenly the man turned on him savagely. His brooding eyes widened and
their look, a threatening glare, made the boy's heart quail.
"Get out," he shouted, "get out, I'm done with you. You're a fakir."
Tito retreated, crushing the rushes under his naked feet, his face
extremely fearful.
"But I was takin' you. I sure was--"
"Get out. You don't know anything about it. You're a liar."
"I do. I was takin' you straight--and you promised me a quarter."
"To hell with you and your quarter. Didn't you hear me say get out?"
The thought of the quarter gave Tito a desperate courage; his voice rose
in a protesting wail:
"But I done half already--you're halfway acrost. You'd oughter give me a
dime. I've done more than a dime's worth."
The tramp, with a smothered ejaculation, bent and picked up a bit of
iron, relic of some sportsman's passage. Tito saw the raised hand and
ducked, hearing the missile hurtle over his head and plop into the water
behind him. It frightened him, but not so much as the man's face. Like a
small, terrified animal he bent and fled. The breaths came quick from
his laboring breast, and as he ran, his head low, the rushes swaying
together over his wake, sobs burst from him, not alone for fear, but for
his lost quarter.
The sun was the dazzling core of a golden glow when he crept on to the
dry ground, mud-soaked, tear-streaked, his wooden boat still in his hand.
His terror was over and he padded home in deep thought, inventing a lie.
For if his parents knew of his wanderings he would be beaten and sent to
bed without supper.
The tramp picked his way round to the stream that separated him from the
desired ground, slipped out of his clothes and, putting them in the
basket, plunged in the current. On the opposite bank he stood up, a lean,
shining shape, the sunlight gilding his wet body, till it looked like a
statue of brass. The bath refreshed him; he would eat some fruit he had
in his basket, take a smoke, and rest there for the night.
Still wet, he pulled on his clothes, stretched out, and drawing a pear
from the basket began to eat it. As he did so his glance explored the
place and brought up on a mark at the water's edge. It interested him,
and still gnawing the pear, he crawled down to it--a footprint, large and
as clearly impressed as if cast in plaster. Not far from it was a
triangular indentation, its point driven deep--the mark of a boat's prow.
Both looked fresh, the uppressed outlines of mud crisp and flakey, which
would happen quickly under such a sun. Among his fellow vagrants he had
learned a good deal about the tules, one fact, corroborated by the child,
that at this season no one ever disturbed their loneliness. Still
squatting he glanced about--at the foot of the rush wall behind him were
two burnt matches. Men had recently been there, come in a boat, and
smoked; there were no traces of a fire.
To perceptions used to the open dealings of an unobservant honesty, it
would have signified nothing. But to his, trained for duplicity, learned
in the ways of a world where concealments were a part of life, it carried
a meaning. His face took on an animal look of cunning, his movements
became alert and stealthy. Rising to his feet, he moved about, staring,
studying, saw other footprints and then a break in the rushes at the
back. He went there, parted the broken spears and came on a space where
some were cut away, the ground disturbed, and still moist.
Half an hour later, the sun, sending its last long shafts across the
marsh, played on a strange picture--a tramp, white-faced, with trembling
hands, and round him, on the ground, about his sprawled legs, falling
from his shaking fingers, yellow in the yellow light, gold, gold, gold!