“HERE’S LUCK”
By evening the country knew the whole extraordinary story and only a
legal formality was necessary officially to clear Anson Dyker of the
stigma and peril which he had known for fifteen years. His rash flight
in boyish panic so long ago had taken him to South America, and when he
had wandered back, the courage to go and give himself up was lacking.
He told Tom these things as they hiked down to Mead’s whence they rode
to West Hurley station and caught the train into Kingston. Here they
waited for the West Shore train to Catskill.
He had been all over the country since the murder, worked in a mining
camp in the West, in a lumber camp in Michigan. He had been as far as
the islands of the south Pacific in his lonely wanderings. The recurrent
resolve to return and give himself up had ebbed away as the crime became
a dead letter.
He felt that he was another man living in another world. The rash boy he
remembered grew dim, and finally disappeared altogether. Then had come
the war giving him the opportunity he craved—concealment in the roar of
battle, safety. And in the end he had braved the danger of recognition
and gone to work on the old mountain which he remembered as a favorite
haunt of his innocent boyhood.
Tom could not discover that Anson bore any resentment against Ganley
because the latter had not given himself up and cleared his comrade. He
seemed to have a forbearance, a largeness of charity, which was divine.
Perhaps his rough, wandering, adventurous life had made him _big_, to
use one of Audry’s favorite words. So possibly Tom was right in his
rather awkwardly expressed theory that the vast outdoors, and the hazard
and adventure, are the best teachers. Whalen, victim of injustice, had a
kind of seasoned goodness and tolerance about him which you may not
learn from books on character building....
They alighted from the train at Catskill, and scanned the river for a
glimpse of the faithful _Goodfellow_. But she had been brought ashore
and was under official guard while a morbid throng crowded about staring
at her and trying to look into her little cabin. Tom glimpsed her from a
distance and it touched him to think of the gallant little _Goodfellow_
under arrest.
None of the good people thereabouts knew who the rough looking man was
who accompanied Tom Slade through an unfrequented street, and the two
were soon upon the familiar road leading to Temple Camp. Poor Tom was in
mortal fear lest the monster of the law intervene to spoil his program.
But no one interfered with them.
And so in a little while they came in sight of the little crystal spring
by the wayside where hikers from Temple Camp often paused for a cooling
drink. Just as before, Tom could see the wall which seemed respectfully
to step aside so as to allow the spring to make its kindly presence
known to the thirsty wayfarer.
And just exactly as before, upon one of the hospitable stone projections
which served as seats, Tom and Anson Dyker beheld a wizened little old
man sitting like a funny statue, his two aged hands resting upon an
outlandish cane. It seemed as if he had been sitting there all this
time; that _he_ was real and Overlook Mountain but a dream.
“Out for a stroll, Pop?” Tom asked.
“You’re the one I met here,” said old Caleb, with that crisp style of
announcement which had always amused Tom.
“You tell ’em I am,” said Tom.
“I’m the one told you this was good water; I live in that camp now.”
“Still walking, I see.”
“Man came to camp wanted to take my picture.”
“Get out! Look here, Pop, I liked this water so well that I brought a
friend of mine here to try it.”
“The Ashokan Reservoir is poison,” old Caleb said.
Tom was just about to present Anson in a mock way of introduction, when
the whole matter passed out of his hands. He could not have described
what happened. He had an uncomfortable feeling of being an outsider. He
saw Anson in a new light, infinitely gentle, with an unutterable joy
welling up within him. He saw him sitting sideways on the wall, arm
around the poor old shoulders. He heard him saying, “It’s just me,
granp’, don’t you know me? It’s Anse.”
He was slow in understanding, but he understood. He showed no emotion,
but rather an accustomed familiarity with his grandson which went to
Tom’s heart. But his old withered hands trembled and with one of them he
adjusted his old octagon-shaped steel spectacles and looked straight at
his grandson. It was so unusual for him to look at any one individually
that the act seemed filled with pathos. Tom wondered how they were going
to explain everything to make it comprehensible to his mind.
Fortunately it was not necessary to explain. Old Caleb was of an age and
condition where reasons are not necessary, where only facts count. He
did not even ask where Anson came from or how he and Tom had met. But he
clung to him as a child clings, as if he feared he might run away. And
when he had struggled through the first shock he scrutinized his
grandson in a sternly critical way, and seeming reassured of his
identity he released one hand and took a fresh hold with the other. Old
Caleb did not pour out his soul, but he hung on. And in the alternate
clutching of those two withered hands there was all the pathos of
reunion. Anson smiled at Tom and submitted. The fugitive was caught and
held at last....
“So that’s your name, is it—Anse?” said Tom. “Well then, Anse, you see
where I’m sitting down, here on the ground? This is just the way I sat
talking with Pop two months ago. And I told him that wherever you were I
was going to drink your health in good, pure, innocent, spring water.;
Didn’t I, Pop?”
“I was in a movie,” said old Caleb; “I got two dollars, Anse. You didn’t
happen to see that play?”
“So now,” said Tom, winking at Anson, “so now I’m going to drink to your
health again. Down with the Ashokan Reservoir! May it dry up—only it
never does.”
And just as before, how long ago it seemed, Tom kneeled down, made a cup
of his two hands, and took a long drink of the innocent, cool,
refreshing water.
THE END