IN THE WOODS
“What are you doing to-night?” Tom asked, scrutinizing the old man
curiously. Then without waiting for an answer he said in his hearty way,
“I tell you what you do; come back to camp with me and look us over,
knock around there for a day or two and rest up. Nothing but spring
water, absolutely guaranteed,” he added pleasantly. “We keep open house
at camp, you know, and you’ll be welcome. What d’you say? It’s only
about six miles from here across fields.”
“I walked as much as twenty mile a day,” the old man said. “I walked
nigh on a thousand mile in the last ten year, I reckon.”
“Well, you’re about due for a little rest,” laughed Tom. “Come on back
with me and meet the bunch, they’re just a lot of kids.”
“I travelled one summer with a circus,” the old man said.
“So?” said Tom.
“I sold needles one summer,” the old man added. “I got two dollars for
being in a moving picture. You didn’t happen to see that picture?”
“N—no, I didn’t,” Tom answered thoughtfully. The crisp, disinterested
way in which the old man enumerated his experiences seemed to preclude
the possibility of getting him to discourse upon them. He delivered
himself of random items, out of his apparently miscellaneous fund of
adventures, in such a choppy way as to seem both amusing and
disconcerting.
Tom suspected that his memory might be good enough to recall salient
things, but not details. Moreover, it is very hard to discourse
familiarly with one who does not look at you. Personal intercourse is
quite as much with the eyes as with the voice. Tom had an amused sense
of the handicap to conversation in the little old man’s queer way of
talking, as if making dogmatic announcements to the world at large.
“Well, let’s stroll down to camp,” he said, rising. “When I meet a
person who’s travelled as much as you have, I feel as if I want to know
him better. Come on, what do you say we start?”
It was not until this request, accompanied by physical evidence of Tom’s
intention to go, that the old man arose and started to accompany him.
Tom could then see how small and wizened his companion was. Yet there
was an odd contradiction, something grotesque and laughable, in his spry
carriage. He was evidently a hardened pedestrian. With each step he
jammed his cane down on the ground with a vigor that was quite
inspiring. It seemed to bespeak a strength of character out of keeping
with his shrivelled little body and his shabby raiment.
As there seemed no hope of responsive conversation with his eccentric
companion, Tom tried to beguile him with an account of the _Goodfellow_.
“Just been down to Catskill to look at a boat,” he said. “Some boat,
I’ll say; regular little yacht. Belongs to a fellow named Homer that
lives over the river. I’d like to own that boat. Two thousand buys it
and it’s giving it away. You know these rich fellows have always got to
be getting something new and poor fellows get the benefit—if they’re not
too poor.”
“That’s what were offered for my boy,” said the old man. Tom had thought
to get away from that topic.
“Two thousand, huh?”
“A man is worth more’n a boat,” said old Dyker.
“Oh sure,” said Tom. “But that boat’s worth a good deal more than two
thousand. I’m plum crazy about that boat, it’s got everything on it you
can think of. It’s named _Goodfellow_. Pretty good name, hey?”
“Old Merrick, he were rich,” was all the old man said. Tom construed
this as an indirect reflection against young Homer, because he was in
the same hated class as the late Mr. Merrick.
As they made their way along, Tom fell to wondering what were the facts
about this dark business which the little old man cherished in his
memory. It was impossible to get a rational and consecutive account out
of him, but evidently a tragedy had occurred some years back and not the
least sad effect of it, whatever it was, was that it had set this poor
old creature’s wits askew and made him a wanderer.
From his own account he had tramped as far as the metropolis where he
must have cut a strange figure with his shabby, rustic clothes and his
crazy stick. Tom pictured him trudging down Broadway striking the
sidewalk resolutely with his cane, heedless of the gaping throng. No
wonder the moving picture people had used him.
Even now, as he trudged along beside him, bent and wizened and pathetic
with a hundred dubious signs of lonesome poverty, there was a vigor
about him which made him at once both ludicrous and picturesque. His
whole being seemed so concentrated on the task of walking that Tom
refrained from putting on him the added burden of conversation.
The first crimson glow of sunset was on the summit of the hills to the
west and as this faded to the sombre shade of twilight, the countryside
seemed suddenly to be pervaded by a stillness which by contrast
emphasized every sound along the wayside. The pounding of the old man’s
stick upon the stony road seemed more aggressively audible, and Tom
glanced amusedly sideways now and again, smiling at his companion’s
intentness.
Across the fields a laden hay wagon was lumbering homeward and its
towering, disordered burden changed color in the witchery of the
twilight as it moved slowly out of the dying golden area. The voices of
the men seemed crisp and clear like voices heard across the water.
Before the wayfarers, the road seemed clear cut and ribbon-like as it
wound away into the black woods.
Here the arched and intertwined boughs made a dim tunnel in which a
refreshing coolness was always felt. A shadowy calm—this stretch of a
mile or so. It was always dusk in this foliage-covered way and in the
twilight it was all but dark. There was the pungent odor of damp leaves
and rotting wood.
The slight sound made by travelers here reechoed as if a score of
spectral voices were complaining of the strangers’ intrusion into their
domain. The place was called Ghost’s Trail and with reason, for one had
but to pause where a death’s head was graven on a wayside stone and call
aloud, when there answered a wailing chorus out of the solemn depths. It
was said that two large rocks were responsible for these ghostly
medleys. But some there were who found the explanation in a murder which
had once been committed at this lonely spot.
Be this as it might, there was something eery about this sequestered way
which afforded a short cut to Temple Camp. The playing of the shadows
conjured up queer figures which often seemed like human forms lurking
among the trees. Such was Tom’s first impression of a moving object
ill-concealed beyond a trunk.
Soon, however, as the travelers came abreast of the tree, there emerged
a gaunt figure, surprised into reluctant exposure, and trembling
visibly. It was the figure of a youngish man in the last extreme of
emaciation and shabbiness, but Tom could make no guess as to his age for
before he could glimpse the face the stranger was already hurrying along
the path in the direction from which our travelers had come. What Tom
did notice with surprise was that old Caleb Dyker stood stark still,
staring back at the almost fleeing form.
“You know him?” Tom asked. But his companion did not answer, only stood,
as it seemed transfixed, staring at the apparition.
“You know him?” he repeated curiously.
“That you, Joey?” the old man called in the high pitched, broken voice
of age. The moment seemed tense though Tom did not know why.
“Joey—that you?”
But the hurrying figure neither turned nor answered.