The Landloper: The Romance of a Man on Foot
“Where did you hide the plunder?”
“She said she fed a tramp. She left him at the back door. You're the
sneak,” indorsed the panting emissary.
“If you will take me back to the house you may get some new light on the
affair,” suggested their captive. “You need not drag me there. I'll go
with much pleasure.”
The mistress of the despoiled home, red of eyes, hurrying from her sink
with a cold compress in her trembling hands, viewed Farr from her back
door.
“That isn't the man. I never saw him before. Oh, he is in awful pain.
Why doesn't that doctor get here? But there doesn't seem to be anything
broken. He took my pocketbook, too, with two dollars and twenty-seven
cents in it. And it's every cent of money we've got by us. And it may be
weeks before he can go to work again. Troubles don't come singly. That
mis'able, fat, greasy thief! After I had fed him--even gave him pie!”
“As I told you, gentlemen, it was a fat tramp. I saw him run away into
the woods.”
“If you call yourself a man why didn't you chase him?” inquired the
contractor, with disgust.
“I took no interest in his affairs--no interest whatever,” stated Farr,
with languid tone.
“You don't care much what happens to anybody else, you hog!”
“My interest in other persons is very limited.”
“You'll stand by and see one of your kind run away with the property of
poor folks, will you? You meet him later and get your whack?” asked the
big man.
“No,” said Farr, mildly. He directed compelling gaze into the eyes of
his detractor. “And you do not think so yourself.”
“Perhaps not. But you're worse. You have just said it. You're a selfish
renegade!”
“Peculiarly selfish, hard, and unfeeling.”
“And wouldn't turn your hand over to do a good turn for anybody?”
“I don't think so.”
“I'll tell you what I think _I'll_ do--I'll detail four of my men to
ride you out of this town on a rail.”
“I wouldn't call them off their jobs if I were you! I overheard you say
that you are short of time and men. By the way, you offered me a job.
I'll take it.”
The contractor blinked and hesitated.
“If after a half-day you find I'm not worth the money I'll pass on and
you'll have a half-day's work free.”
“Get on to the job, then.”
Through the open door Farr could see the woman of the house wringing
cloths at the sink.
He stepped to the door and addressed her. “Madame, will you take a
boarder? I'm going to do your husband's work on the job yonder. I will
pay liberally. In your present difficulties the money may help. I'll be
small trouble.”
“We need the money terribly,” she said, after pondering. “Yes, I will
take you. In the face you do not look like a tramp!”
“I thank you,” said Farr. “If you will give me some food in my hands
I'll take myself out of your way.”
That afternoon Jared Chick came over the hill where the trowels clinked
and the great derrick complained with its pulleys. He carried his armor
on his back.
He stopped and watched for some time his former companion of the road,
who was sweating over his man's toil.
“May I have sixty seconds off to speak with that man yonder?” Farr asked
the contractor. “It partly concerns your business.”
The big man nodded surly assent.
“Thee sees I have taken off the armor for a time. I will wear it in the
city where horses and people are not so silly. What is thee doing here?”
“I have no time to talk about myself, Friend Chick. I want to ask you if
you are still of the same mind about your mission?”
“I am.”
“Then throw down that hardware and come to work on this job. A man has
been hurt here--his wife is in need. Earn some money and give it to
them.”
“But my mission concerns the world--the wide world.”
“Real selfishness's chief excuse! Here's something ready to your hand.
Will you do it?”
“But thee told me thee would not go forth and do good!”
“No matter about me. I am not a professional knight-errant! Will you do
this?”
“Ten seconds more!” warned the boss.
“I cannot change my plans so suddenly,” protested Chick.
“A knight-errant should not have plans! My time is up and I have work.
Good-by, Friend Chick!”
The young man went back to his task and the Quaker passed on, muttering
reaffirmation of his own high aims.
“And how could I expect a vagrant to understand?” he asked himself.
The vagrant toiled two weeks at his heavy task and when the man Jose was
about again the volunteer slipped away without farewell.
He left on the table of his under-the-eaves bedroom in the Jose house
all the pay he received for his work, to the last penny.
“He wasn't what he seemed to be,” ran the burden of Mrs. Jose's various
disquisitions on this strange guest. “He ate his vittles and asked no
questions, and was out from underfoot, and was always willing to set up
with my husband and give me a snippet of rest and a wink of sleep; and
he read out of little books all the time--he had 'em stuffed into his
pockets. And there needn't anybody tell _me_! He left all his pay on the
table, every cent of it, and stole away without waiting for no thanks
from nobody!”
IV
FARR, THE FAT TRAMP, AND A SUIT OF CLOTHES
On a balmy forenoon a jovial-appearing old gentleman went jogging out
of the mill city of Marion and along a country road in his two-wheeled
chaise. He sat erect and he was tall above the average of men, and he
was very neat in his attire.
“I wish,” he mused, “that the men who could really appreciate a
good outfit of clothing and could use the same properly were not so
infernally touchy. As it is, cranky human nature drives me out on an
expedition like this--and I'm afraid I am just as cranky as the rest of
'em, otherwise I wouldn't be doing this!”
The old gentleman hummed a song under his breath and slapped his reins
against the flanks of the plodding horse to keep time. He came into a
piece of woodland. He seemed to take cheery and fresh interest in this
place. He poked his rubicund face out from the shadow of the chaise's
canopy and peered to right and to left. There was a smile in his puckery
eyes. When there were trees ahead of him, trees behind him, and trees
all about he pulled his old horse to a standstill.
He listened, squinted quizzically through the glass of his chaise's rear
curtain, and then climbed down. From a box at the rear of the vehicle he
secured various articles of clothing and draped them over his arm.
There was a frock-coat, not too badly worn, trousers in good repair,
waistcoat, and a shirt. He also took out of the box a pair of shoes and
a hat. With this load he went to the roadside and began to rig out a
fence-post. When the garments were hung on it and the broad-brimmed,
black, slouch-hat had been jauntily set on top of the post, anybody
could see that the old gentleman was thus disposing of some of his own
extra clothing. He was wearing a similar hat and a frock-coat, himself,
and the decorated post took on a bizarre and slouchy resemblance to its
decorator.
He went back to the chaise and found a nickel alarm-clock in the box. He
wound this up carefully and propped it on a rail of the fence near the
clothing.
Before he could escape from the vicinity of the exhibit and get into
his chaise a wagon came rattling around the bend of the road. There were
firkins and jars in the rear of this wagon and the driver was plainly a
farmer-man.
He pulled up short and then saluted the old gentleman with a stab of
forefinger at his hat-brim.
“Any trouble, Judge?” he inquired, affably.
“None at all,” replied the old gentleman, edging away from the fully
garbed fence-post.
“Airing 'em out, hey?” A jab of the forefinger toward the garments.
“No, leaving them out.”
All at once the old gentleman appeared to remember something else. He
took off his hat and produced a placard. He straightened it and stuck it
into a crack in a fence-rail. Its legend was “Help Yourself.”
“You're giving them clothes away, are you, Judge Peterson?”
“I am leaving them here for any one who chooses to take them. Do you
want first pick, Jolson?”
“Not me! I ain't taking charity hand-me-downs from any man, Judge. If
it's a polite question, why are you giving away your duds this way?”
“I think you have just answered that question, Jolson. I offered you
these clothes. Your nose went into the air. Other men have acted in the
same way in the past when I have offered to give a fellow a good suit.
I don't want to hurt other folks' feelings. I don't want to have my own
feelings hurt. So, let any man help himself when no one is looking.”
“I'll take the alarm-clock, if you say so,” volunteered Jolson. “It'll
help to rout me out of bed at milking-time.”
“No, you cannot have the clock, Jolson. I have tinkered it so that
it will purr a little every half-hour. It will call attention to the
clothes. You see, a good many men rush through life without looking to
right or left, and so they miss a lot of opportunities.”
Jolson clucked to his horse and rattled away down the road, muttering
sour remarks.
The old gentleman, with the air of a man who has satisfied his
philanthropic ambitions, climbed into his chaise and followed the
farmer.
The brisk breeze flirted the tails of the frock-coat and the trousers
legs tried out a modest little gig as if some of the jocose spirit of
the old gentleman had remained with the garments he had discarded.
There were several passers before another half-hour had elapsed.
The trousers kicked out quite hilariously when a young couple drove by
in a buggy. The girl was pretty, and companionship with her might have
suited even a judge's garments. But the young man and the girl were
quite absorbed in each other, and the trousers kicked and the frock-coat
flirted ineffectually.
A peddler's cart passed very slowly, but the driver did not look up from
a paper filled with figures.
There were others to whom the judge's garments offered themselves
mutely, but no one glanced that way and the clock was discreetly silent.
The breeze died down and the trousers and the coat hung with a sort of
homeless, homesick, and wistful air. One might have thought they were
trying to conceal themselves when the next person appeared, so still
were they. He was not an inviting person--not such a new lord and master
as a judge's garments might be expected to welcome.
He was grossly fat and his own trousers were lashed about his bulging
waist with a frayed belt; his coat was sun-faded, a greasy Scotch cap
was pulled over to one side on his head with the peak hauled down upon
his ear, and he scuffed along in boots that were disreputable. Surely, a
most unseemly and unwholesome character to be wrapped in the habiliments
of a judge! But just then, with that cursed inappropriateness of
inanimate things, the clock jangled its alarm.
The tramp--there was no mistaking that gait and that general air of the
vagrant--snapped himself about, located the noise, stared at the post,
and then hurried to it. He made sure that there was no one in sight. He
scooped all into his arms, climbed the fence and trotted into the woods.
He kept looking behind him as if he feared pursuit. It was plain from
his disturbed demeanor that he was much perplexed and was chased by the
uncomfortable thought that he was stealing this property. He bestowed so
much attention behind him that he paid but little attention to what was
ahead of him, and so he ran down into a little bowl of a valley among
the trees and stopped short there, for he had come upon a man.
It was the man who called himself Walker Farr.
The man was kneeling beside a tiny fire, toasting bread on the end of a
beech twig. He held the twig in one hand and an open book in the other.
He looked up without changing his position when the tramp came charging
down the hillside.