The Project Gutenberg EBook of Anything Once, by Douglas Grant This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: Anything Once Author: Douglas Grant Illustrator: Paul Stahr Release Date: December 9, 2009 [EBook #30640] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ANYTHING ONCE *** Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net He drank deeply, then struggled to a sitting posture, his face whitening beneath its tan. ANYTHING ONCE BY DOUGLAS GRANT AUTHOR OF “THE SINGLE TRACK,” “BOOTY,”“THE FIFTH ACE,” ETC. Frontispiece by PAUL STAHR New York W. J. Watt & Company PUBLISHERS COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY W. J. WATT & COMPANY PRESS OF BRAUNWORTH & CO. BOOK MANUFACTURERS BROOKLYN, N. Y. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. A Roadside Meeting 1 II. Partners 17 III. The Vendor Of Everything 41 IV. Under The Big Top 55 V. Concerning An Omelet 69 VI. The Red Note-Book 83 VII. Revelations 99 VIII. Journey’s End 118 IX. The Long, Long Trail 138 ANYTHING ONCE ANYTHING ONCE CHAPTER I A Roadside Meeting The white dust, which lay thick upon the wide road between rolling fields of ripened grain, rose in little spirals from beneath the heavy feet of the plodding farm-horses drawing the empty hay-wagon, and had scarcely settled again upon the browning goldenrod and fuzzy milkweed which bordered the rail fences on either side when Ebb Fischel’s itinerant butcher-jitney rattled past. Ebb Fischel’s eyes were usually as sharp as the bargains he drove, but the dust must have obscured his vision. Otherwise he would have seen the man lying motionless beside the road, with his cap in the ditch and the pitiless sun of harvest-time caking the blood which had streamed from an ugly cut upon his temple. But the meat-cart jolted on and out of sight, and for a long time nothing disturbed the stillness except the distant whirring of a reaper and nearer buzzing of a fat, inquisitive bluebottle fly, which paused to see what this strange thing might be, and then zoomed off excitedly to tell his associates. At length there came a dry rustling in the tall standing wheat in the field on the opposite side of the road, and a head and shoulders appeared above the topmost fence-rail. It was a small head covered with tow-colored hair, which had been slicked back and braided so tightly that the short, meager cue curled outward and up in a crescent, as though it were wired, and the shoulders beneath the coarse blue-and-white striped cotton gown were thin and peaked. The girl darted a swift, furtive glance up and down the road, and suddenly thrust a bundle tied in a greasy apron between the rails, letting it fall in the high, dusty weeds by the roadside. Next she climbed to the top of the fence, and for a moment perched there, displaying a slim length of coarse black stocking above clumping, square-toed shoes at least two sizes too large for her. She looked like a very forlorn, feminine Monte Cristo indeed, as she scanned the world from her vantage-point, and yet there was a look of quiet satisfaction and achievement in her incongruously dark eyes which told of a momentous object accomplished. Then all at once they stared and softened as she caught sight of that still figure lying across the road, and in two bounds she was beside him and lifted his head against her sharp knees. She noted only casually that he was a clean- shaven, tanned young man with brown hair bleached by the sun to a warm gold, and that he wore shabby, weather- beaten clothes. Had she realized that those same worn, faded garments bore the stamp of one of New York’s most exclusive tailors! that the boots were London-made, and the golf-stockings which met the corduroy knickerbockers came from one of Scotland’s famous mills, it would have meant just exactly nothing in her young life. Her immediate attention was concentrated upon the jagged gash which ran unpleasantly close to his temple, and which had begun to bleed afresh as she raised his head. The girl looked about her again and saw that a short distance ahead the road was bisected by a bridge of planks with willows bordering it at either side. She pulled at the strings which held a blue sunbonnet dangling between her narrow shoulder-blades, regarded the sleazy headgear ruefully, and then spying the cap in the ditch, she deposited her burden gently upon the grass once more and scrambled over to investigate her find. The cap had an inner lining of something which seemed to be like rubber, and the girl flew off down the road to return with her improvised bowl filled with clear, cold spring water. Dropping on her knees beside the unconscious figure, she poured the contents of the cap over his face and head. The young man sputtered, gasped, moaned a little, and opened astonished brown eyes upon her. “How–how the devil did you come here?” he asked ungallantly. “Over the fence.” Her reply was laconic, but it bore an unmistakable hint that further query along that line would be highly unwelcome. “Just you lay still while I git some more water, an’ I’ll tie up that head of yourn.” The young man’s hand went unsteadily to his aching brow and came away brightly pink, so he decided to take this uncomely vision’s advice, and remained quiescent, wondering how he himself had come to be there, and what had happened to him. According to the map, he had surely been on the right road, yet it had as assuredly not looked like this one; the other had been a broad, State highway, while this─ He closed his burning eyes to shield them from the glare of the sun, and a confused memory returned to him of that invitingly green, shady pasture which had tempted him as a short cut toward the next village, and of something which thundered down upon him from behind and lifted him into chaos. Good Lord, and he had only six days left! “You’d better take a drink of this first an’ I kin use the rest on your head.” A composed, practical voice advised by his side, and he looked up gratefully into the snub-nosed, freckled face of his benefactress as she held the brimming cap to his lips. He drank deeply, then struggled to a sitting posture, his face whitening beneath its tan at the sudden wrench of pain which twisted the muscles of his back. “Kin you hold the cap steady?” The girl thrust it into his hands without waiting for a reply, and, sitting down with her back to him, calmly turned back the hem of her gown and tore a wide strip from the coarse but immaculately white cambric petticoat beneath. Dipping it into the water, she bandaged his head not unskilfully, and then rose. “There! I gotta git you over to the shade of them trees, or you’ll have sunstroke. Wait till I fetch somethin’.” She ran across the road and returned with her greasy bundle under one arm, offering the other to him with a gesture 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 as frank as it was impersonal. “Lean on me, an’ try to git along–and please kinder hurry!” She added the last with a note of sudden urgency in her tones and the same furtively darting glance with which she had swept the road from the fence-top, but the young man was too deeply engrossed with his painful effort to rise to observe the look, although her change of tone aroused his curiosity. Was this scrawny but good-natured kid afraid some of her people would catch her talking to a stranger by the roadside? Somehow he managed to hobble, with her aid, across the little bridge and down the bank of the swiftly racing brook at its farther side to a nest in the dense thicket of willow-shoots which completely screened them from the road. The girl eased him down then upon the sward, and, seating herself beside him, unrolled the apron she had carried. “It’s the ham that’s greased it all up like that,” she remarked. “I’d have brought a pail, only I didn’t want to take any more ’n I had to.” The young man gasped with astonishment as the contents of the apron-bundle were exposed: a whole ham glistening with the brown sugar in which it had been baked, a long knife, a huge loaf of bread, and, wrapped separately in a piece of newspaper, a bar of soap, a box of matches, and a bit of broken comb. “When there’s lots of them, ham sandwiches, together with spring water, ain’t so bad, an’ it’s near noon,” the girl observed, beginning to cut the loaf into meager slices with a practised hand. “I should’ve made them thicker, but I forgot.” A starving gleam had come into the young man’s eyes at the sight of food, but he paused with the sandwich half-way to his lips to glance keenly at his companion. “You’ve enough here for an army,” he declared. “Were you taking it to men working in the fields somewhere?” “No,” she replied without hesitation, but with the same air of finality with which she had responded to his first question. “You can rest easy here till sundown, when the men begin to come in from the harvestin’, an’ then if you holler real loud some of them will maybe stop an’ give you a lift on your way. There’s a railroad about four miles from here, an’ the slow freight goes by along about ten.” The slow freight! So the girl thought he was a tramp! The young man smiled, and glanced down ruefully at his shabby attire. Well, so had others thought, whom he had encountered in his journey. But who and what was the girl herself? She had asked no questions as to how he had come to the condition in which she found him, but had nursed his hurt, brought him to this cool resting-place; and was sharing her food with him as unconcernedly as though she had known him all her life. That quantity of provisions, the package of humble toilet articles, and her furtiveness and haste to get away from the open road all pointed to one fact–the girl was running away. But from whom or what? She had taken him at his face value, and he had no right in the world to question her, at least without giving some sort of account of himself. “I have no intention of traveling by rail,” he assured her. “A little while before you found me–I don’t quite know how long–I was crossing that pasture which adjoins the wheat-field, thinking that this road might be a short cut to Hudsondale, when something came after me from behind and butted me over the fence. I think my head must have been cut open by striking against a stone, for I don’t remember anything more until you poured that water over my face.” The girl nodded. “I seen the stone with blood on it right near you; you must have bumped off it an’ turned over,” she averred. “Anybody who goes traipsin’ through old Terwilliger’s pasture is apt to meet up with that bull of his.” So she had reasoned his predicament out without asking any of the questions that another girl would have heaped upon him. He turned to her suddenly with a fresh spark of interest in his eyes. “How did you know that I didn’t belong here?” he demanded. The corners of her lips curled upward in a comical little grimace of amusement, and he realized that before they had been set in a straight line far too mature for her evident youth. “No grown men ’round these parts wears short pants, an’, anyhow, I knew you were different from the way you talk; somethin’ like the welfare workers, with the hell an’ brimstone left out,” the girl replied soberly. “I’m goin’ to talk like you some day.” It was the first remark she had made voluntarily concerning herself, and he was quick to seize his advantage. “Who are you, young lady? You’ve been awfully kind to me, and I don’t know to whom my gratitude is due.” “Not to anybody.” She turned her head away slightly, but not before he saw a flush mount beneath the superficial coating of freckles, and marveled at the whiteness of her skin. Hers was not the leathery tan of the typical farmer’s daughter, inured to all weathers, yet her hands, although small, were toil-worn, and there was an odd incongruity between her dark eyes and the pale, flaxen hue of that ridiculous wisp of a braid. “I didn’t do any more for you than I’d do for a dog if I found him lyin’ there.” Her naïve sincerity robbed the statement of its uncomplimentary suggestion, and the young man chuckled, but persisted. “What is your name? Mine is James–er–Botts.” “Lou Lacey. It was ’L’ day, you know, an’ there was a teeny bit of lace on my dress. I ain’t ever had any since.” She added the last with unconscious pathos in her tones, but in his increasing interest and mystification the man who called himself “Botts” was unaware of it. What on earth could she mean about L day, and if she were running away why did she appear so serenely unconcerned about the future as her manner indicated? He felt that he must draw her out, and he seemed to have hit upon the right method by giving confidence for confidence; but just how much could he tell her about himself? James Botts’s own face reddened. “I’m walking to my home in New York,” he explained. “But I’m late; I ought to make it by a certain date, and I 8 9 10 11 12 13 don’t think I’ll be able to, since my encounter with Terwilliger’s bull. Where do you live? I mean, where are you going? Where is your home?” “Nowheres,” Lou Lacey replied offhandedly, following with her eyes the graceful swoop of a dragonfly over the tumbling waters of the little stream. “Great Scott!” The astounded young man sat up suddenly, with his hand to his head. “Why, everybody has a home, you know!” “Not everybody,” the girl dissented quietly. “But–but surely you haven’t been walking the roads?” There was genuine horror in his tones. “Where did you come from this morning when you found me?” “From Hess’s farm, back up the road a piece,” she replied with her usual unemotional literalness. “I been there a week, but I didn’t like it, so I came away. The welfare workers got me that place when my time was up.” Her time! Good Heavens, could this little country girl with her artless manner and candid eyes be an ex-convict? Surely she was too young, too simple. Yet the gates of hideous reformatories had clanged shut behind younger and more innocent-appearing delinquents than she. His eyes wandered over her thin, childish figure as she sat there beside him, still intent upon the movements of the glittering dragonfly, and he shuddered. Those horrible, shapeless shoes might very well have been prison-made, and the striped dress was exactly like those he had seen in some pictures of female convicts. Her freckles, too, might have been the result of only a few days’ exposure to the sun, and he had already observed the whiteness of the skin beneath; that whiteness which resembled the prison pallor. Could it be that her very gawkiness and frank simplicity were the result not of bucolic nature, but of dissimulation? Every instinct within the man cried out against the thought, but a devil of doubt and uncertainty drove him on. “I thought that didn’t look like the dress of a farmer’s daughter!” He essayed to laugh, but it seemed to him that there was a grating falsetto in his tones. “You haven’t worked in the garden much, either, have you?” “Garden!” Lou sniffed. “They promised the welfare workers that they’d give me outdoor chores to build me up, but when I got there I found I had to cook for eighteen farm-hands, as well as the family, an’ wait on them, an’ clean up an’ all. Said they’d pay me twelve dollars a month, an’ I could take the first month’s money out by the week in clothes, an’ for the first week all they gave me was this sunbonnet an’ apron. I left them the other dress an’ things I had, an’ I figgered the rest of the money they owed me would just about pay for this ham an’ bread an’ the knife an’ soap. The comb was mine.” She added the last in a tone of proud possession, and James Botts asked very soberly: “The welfare workers found this position for you, Lou Lacey? But where did they find you?” “Why, at the institootion,” she responded, as though surprised that he had not already guessed. “I ain’t ever been anywhere else; I’ve always been a orphin.” 14 15 16 CHAPTER II Partners For a moment James Botts turned his head away lest she see the deep red flood of shame which had suffused his face. Poor little skinny, homely, orphan kid, thrown out to buck the world for herself, and stopping in her first flight from injustice to help a stranger, only to have him think her a possible criminal! He was glad that his back twinged and his head throbbed; he ought to be kicked out into the ditch and left to die there for harboring such thoughts. He was a cur, and she–hang it! There was something appealing about her in spite of her looks. Perhaps it was the sturdy self-reliance, which in itself betrayed her utter innocence and ignorance of the world, that made a fellow want to protect her. In his own circle James Botts had never been known as a Sir Galahad, but he had been away from his own circle for exactly nineteen eventful days now, and in that space of time he had learned much. His heart went out in sympathy as he turned once more to her. But at the moment Lou Lacey seemed in no momentary need of sympathetic understanding. She was pursuing a hapless frog with well-directed shots of small pebbles, and there was an impish grin upon her face. “How old are you?” he asked suddenly. Lou shrugged. “I don’t know. About seventeen or eighteen, I reckon; at least, they told me six years ago that I was twelve, an’ I’ve kept track ever since. When I was sixteen, though, and it was time for me to be got a place somewhere, the matron put me back a couple of years; we were gettin’ more babies from the poor-farm than usual, an’ I was kinder handy with them. She had to let me go now because one of the visitin’ deaconesses let out that she’d seen me there sixteen years ago herself, an’ I was toddlin’ round then. Oh, I missed him!” The frog, with a triumphant plop, had disappeared beneath a flat, submerged stone, and Lou turned to note her companion’s pain-drawn face. “I’m goin’ to fix that bandage on your head again,” she declared as she sprang to her feet. “Is your back hurtin’ you very much?” “Not very.” He forced a smile, but his face was grave, for, despite his suffering, the problem which this accidental meeting had forced upon him filled his thoughts. What was he to do with this girl? In spite of the statement that she had “kept track” of her last few years he could not credit the fact that she was approximately eighteen; fourteen would be nearer the guess he would have made, and it was unthinkable that a child like that should wander about the country alone. He could not bear the thought of betraying her innocent confidences by handing her over to the nearest authorities; it would mean her being held as a vagrant and possibly sent to the county poor-farm. Perhaps the people with whom she had been placed were not so bad, after all; if he took her back and reasoned with them, insisted upon their keeping to their bargain, and giving her lighter tasks to perform. Then he remembered his own appearance, and smiled ruefully. Instead of listening they would in all probability set the dog on him. Perhaps he could persuade her to return of her own accord. “The people you were working for; their name was ‘Hess’?” he asked. She nodded as she finished fastening the cool compress about his forehead. “Henry Hess an’ his wife, Freida, an’–an’ Max.” Something in the quality of her tone more than her hesitation made him demand sharply: “Who is Max?” “Their son.” Her voice was very low, but for the first time it trembled slightly. “You don’t like him, do you?” He waited a moment, and then added abruptly: “Why not?” “Because he’s a–a beast! I don’t want to talk about him! I don’t want even to remember that such things as he is can be let live!” James Botts turned and looked at her and then away, for the childish figure had been drawn up tensely with a sort of instinctive dignity which sat not ill upon it, and from her dark eyes insulted womanhood had blazed. “I’d like to go back and lick him to a standstill!” to his own utter amazement Botts heard his own voice saying thickly. The fire had died out of Lou’s face and she replied composedly: “What for? He don’t matter any more, does he? We’re goin’ on.” The last sentence recalled his problem once more to his mind. What in the world was he to do with this young creature whom fate had thrust upon his hands? Four quarters and a fifty-cent piece represented his entire capital at the moment, and if he did put her into the hands of the county authorities until his journey was completed and he could make other arrangements for her, it would mean a delay on his part now, when every hour counted for so much just now. “Do you know how far we are from Hudsondale?” he asked. “Not more’n two miles, the farm-hands used to walk there often of an evenin’ to the movies.” The girl had cleaned her knife in the brook and was now wrapping it in the apron, together with the remains of their repast. “They say that not more’n twenty miles from there you can see the big river, but I ain’t ever been.” “That’s the way I was going,” he observed thoughtlessly. “From Hudsondale to Highvale, and right on down the west bank of the river to New York.” Lou sat back on her heels reflectively. 17 18 19 20 21 22 “All right,” she said at last. “I ain’t ever figgered on goin’s far as New York, but I might as well go there as anywhere, and I guess I kin keep up with you now your back’s kinder sprained. We’ll go along together.” James Botts gulped. “Certainly not!” he retorted severely, when he could articulate. “It’s utterly out of the question! You’re not a little child any longer, and I’m not old enough to pose as your father. You must think what people would say!” “Why must I?” Her clear eyes shamed him. “What’s it matter? I guess two kin puzzle out the roads better than one, an’ if I have been in a brick house with a high fence an’ a playground between where never a blade of grass grew, for about eighteen years, it looks to me as if I could take care of myself a lot better ’n you kin!” “But you don’t understand!” he groaned. “There are certain conditions that I can’t very well explain, and if I did you’d think I had gone crazy.” “Maybe,” Lou observed non-committally, but she settled herself on the bank once more with such an air of resigned anticipation that he felt forced to continue. “You know an army has to obey orders, don’t you?” he floundered on desperately. “Well, I’m like a one-man army; there are a lot of rules I’ve got to follow. This is Monday afternoon, and I must reach New York by midnight on Saturday; that’s ninety miles or more, and you never could make it in the world. I’ve got just a dollar and a half, and I mustn’t beg, borrow, or steal food or a lift or anything, but work my way, and never take any job that’ll pay me more than twenty-five cents. “Of course, if people invite me to get up and ride with them for a little I can accept, or if they offer me food, but I can’t ask. Even the money I earn in quarters here and there I mustn’t use for traveling, but only to buy food or medicine or clothes with. And the worst of it is that I cannot explain to a soul why I’m doing all this.” Lou regarded him gravely, and opened her lips to speak, but closed them again and for an appreciable moment there was silence. “Well, I don’t see anythin’ in that that says you can’t have somebody travelin’ along with you,” she remarked, and that odd little smile flashed again across her face. “It don’t make any difference to me what you can or can’t do. I’m foot-loose!” Not until later was the meaning of that final statement to be made manifest to her companion; the one fact upon his mind was that nothing he had said had moved her an iota from her original decision. They would go along together. Well, why not? It was obvious that he could not send her back to the Hess farm nor hand her over to the authorities. His own appearance would not be conducive to confidence in his assurances if he attempted to leave her in the care of some country woman until he could return and make proper arrangements for her, and the only alternative was that she must tramp the roads by herself until she found work, and that was out of the question. At least, he could protect her, and she looked wiry in spite of her skinniness; it was as possible that she might make the distance as he, with his aching back. But on one point he was determined: when they neared the suburbs of New York he would telephone to a certain gray-haired, aristocratically high-nosed old lady and persuade her to send out her car for this waif. The child had been kind to him, and he would protect her from all harm, but not for all the gilt-edged securities in Wall Street would he have the story of his knight-errantry get abroad, nor the unprepossessing heroine of it revealed to his friends. The old lady would find some suitable position for her, and, as she evidently possessed no reputation of any sort at the moment, a six-day journey in his company could harm it no more if the truth became known than if she had tramped upon her way alone. “All right,” he said. “We’ll be partners, and I’ll do my best to look out for you.” She laughed outright, a merry, tinkling little laugh like the brook rippling over the pebbles at her feet, and the man involuntarily stared. It was the sole attractive thing about her that he had observed. “Reckon it’ll be me that’ll look after you!” she retorted. “Oh, there’s somethin’ comin’! Duck in here, quick!” Seizing her bundle, she wiggled like an eel through the willow thicket until she was completely hidden from view, and Botts followed as well as he was able, with one hand fending off the supple young shoots from whipping back upon his wounded forehead. He had heard nothing, yet the girl’s quick ears had caught the faint creaking of a cart along the road, and now a cheerful but somewhat shrill whistle came to him in a vaguely reminiscent strain. “That’s Lem Mattles,” Lou whispered as she reached behind him and drew the willows yet more screeningly about their trail. “He’s whistlin’ ‘Ida-Ho’; it’s the only tune he can remember.” “Who is he?” demanded her companion. “The Hess’s next-door neighbor. She’ll stop him right away an’ ask if he’s seen me on the road, an’ they’ll all be after me, but they’ll never think of the old cow-trail; one of the hands showed it to me an’ told me it led clear to Hudsondale, an’ came out by the freight-yards.” For a moment she paused with a little catch in her breath. “Think you kin make it, Mr. Botts?” “Sure!” He smiled and held out his hand. “We’re partners now, and I’m ‘Jim’ to my friends, Lou.” “All right, Jim,” she responded indifferently, but she laid her little work-worn hand in his for a brief minute. “Come on.” With the bundle under her arm once more she led the way, and her partner followed her to where the brook dwindled and the thicket gave place to a stretch of woodland, between the trees of which a faint, narrow trail could be discerned. “We’re all right now if we kin keep on goin’,” announced Lou. “Nobody comes this way any more, an’ the feller said that the tracks runs through the woods clear to the Hunkie settlement by the yards. Feelin’ all right, Jim?” 23 24 25 26 27 28 “I guess so.” Jim put his hand to his side, where each breath brought a stab of pain, but brought it down again quickly lest her swift glance catch the motion. “It’s pretty in here, isn’t it?” “It’s longer,” replied Lou practically. “An’ the sun’s gittin’ low. Let’s hurry.” There was little further talk between them, for Jim had already discovered that his companion was not one to speak unless she had something to say, and he was breathing in short snatches to stifle the pain. The track wound endlessly in and out among the trees, and in the dim light he would have lost it altogether more than once had it not been for her light touch upon his arm. At length the track turned abruptly through the thinning trees and led down to a rough sort of road, on either side of which ramshackle wooden tenements leaned crazily against each other, with dingy rags hanging from lines on the crooked porches. Slatternly, dark-skinned women gazed curiously at them as they passed. From somewhere came the squalling of a hurt child and a man’s oath roughly silencing it, while through and above all other sounds came the bleating of a harmonica ceaseless reiterating a monotonous, foreign air. The sun had set, and from just beyond the squalid settlement came the crash and clang of freight-cars being shunted together. In spite of his pain, Jim realized that nowhere in this vicinity could his self-constituted companion rest for the night; open fields or dense woodland were safer far for her. “Let us cross the tracks and push on up that hill road a little,” he suggested. “We can’t stay here, and they’ll think we are tramps if they catch us by the railroad.” “I guess that’s what we are.” Lou wrinkled her already upturned nose. “But the country would be nicer again, if you ain’t give out.” He assured her doggedly that he had not, and they crossed the tracks and started up the steep hill road past the coal- dump and the few scattered cottages to where the woodland closed in about them once more. Jim picked up a stout stick and leaned heavily upon it as they plodded along, while the twilight deepened to darkness and the stars appeared. The girl’s step lagged now, but she kept up in little spurts and set her lips determinedly. At length they came to another stream, a rushing mill-race this time, with an old mill, moss-covered and fallen into decay beside it, and by tacit consent they sank down on the worn step. “I don’t believe we can go any farther,” Jim panted. “I guess this is as good a place as any to camp for the night, and you can sleep in there.” He indicated the sagging door behind him, and Lou followed his gesture with a reluctant eye. Jim noted the glance and, misunderstanding it, added hastily: “I don’t believe there are any rats in there, but if you’ll lend me your matches I’ll see.” “Rats!” she repeated in withering scorn. “There was plenty of them in the insti–where I come from. I was just thinkin’ maybe somebody else was sleepin’ there already.” She handed over the matches and Jim pushed open the door and entered, feeling carefully for rotten boards in the decayed flooring. A prolonged survey by the flickering light of the matches assured him that the ancient, cobwebbed place was deserted, and he turned again to the door, but its step was unoccupied and nowhere in the starlight could he discern a flutter of that blue-and-white striped dress. Could she have run away from him? At the thought a forlorn sense of loneliness swept over him greater than he had known since he had started upon his tramp. She was tired out; could he in some way have frightened her, or had a mad spirit of adventure sent her on like a will-o’-the-wisp into the night? “Lou!” he called, and his voice echoed back. “Lou!” All at once he noticed what he had not observed before–a single light by the roadside in a clearing ahead. Perhaps she had gone there for more secure shelter. His cogitations were abruptly interrupted by a dog’s excited barking, subdued by distance, but deep-throated. The sound came from the direction of the clearing, and, taking up his heavy stick, Jim hobbled to the road. If Lou had got into any trouble─ The barking turned to growls; horrible, crunching growls which brought his heart up into his throat as he broke into a run, forgetting his pain. He had not gained the top of the rise in the road, however, when the growls gave place to wild yelps and howls which rapidly diminished in the distance and presently Lou appeared holding carefully before her something round and white which gleamed in the starlight. “Good Heavens!” he exclaimed when she neared him. “What on earth have you been doing?” “Git on back ’round the other side of the mill!” ordered Lou. “I gotta go slow or I’ll spill it.” “What is it?” But she vouchsafed him no reply until they reached a ledge of rock over the tumbling stream, well out of sight of that light on the hill. Then she set down the object she was carrying and he saw that it was a bright tin pan, filled almost to the brim with milk. “I thought it would go good with our bread an’ ham,” she explained ingenuously. “I figgered from what I learned at that Hess place that they’d leave some out in the summer cellar to cream, for they ain’t got any spring-house, an’ they won’t be likely to miss one pan out of fifteen. Besides, there’s nothin’ in them rules you told me that stops me from beggin’ or borrowin’, or stealin’, either, an’ if I give you some of this you ain’t got any call to ask me where it come from.” This feminine logic left Jim almost speechless, but he managed to gasp out: “The dog! Didn’t he attack you?” “I guess that was what he intended, but I put down the pan an’ fit him off.” She added, with evident pride. “I never spilled a drop, either!” “Good Lord!” Jim ejaculated. “I believe you’d do anything once!” 29 30 31 32 33 34 “I b’lieve I would, provided I wanted to,” Lou agreed placidly. Then her tone changed. “There’s somebody comin’ up the road from Hudsondale like all in creation was after ’em.” Indeed, the sound of a horse’s mad gallop up the steep road by which they had come was plainly to be heard increasing in volume, and the grating jar of wheels as though a wagon were being thrown from side to side. “Think it’s a runaway?” Jim rose and strained his eyes into the darkness at the farther end of the bridge. “No; driver’s drunk, maybe,” Lou responded. “The horse’s dead beat an’ he’s lashin’ it on. Listen!” Jim heard the wild gallop falter and drop into a weary trot, only to leap forward again with a wild scramble of hoofs on the rocky road as though the wretched animal was spurred on by sudden pain, and he clenched his hands. As though reading his thoughts, Lou remarked: “Only a beast himself would treat a horse that way. The folks at the farm where I was treated theirs somethin’ terrible. If he don’t look out he’ll go over the side of the bridge.” Jim had already started for the road in front of the mill, and Lou followed him, just as a perilously swaying lantern came to view, showing an old-fashioned carriage of the “buggy” type containing a single occupant and drawn by a horse which was streaked with lather. The light wagon hit the bridge with a bounce which almost sent it careening over into the rushing stream below, and at the same moment Lou uttered an odd exclamation, more of anger than fear, and straightened up to her full height. “It’s Max!” she informed Jim. “You git back behind the mill; you ain’t fit to fight─” “What do you take me for?” Jim demanded indignantly. “Max Hess, eh? The fellow who treated you so badly back at that farm? I wanted to get him this morning, the hound! You go straight back into the mill yourself, and leave me to handle him.” But he was too late. The wagon had crossed the bridge and halted in front of them so suddenly that the horse slid along for a pace upon his haunches. “Got yer!” a thick voice announced triumphantly, as a burly figure wrapped the reins around the whip socket and lumbered to the ground. “Yah! I thought there was a feller in it, somewheres!” He approached them with menacingly clenched fists, but Jim asked coldly: “Are you addressing this young woman?” “Young thief, you mean! She’s gotter come─” But Jim, too, had advanced a pace. “Take that back and get in your wagon and beat it,” he announced distinctly, with a calmness which the other mistook for mildness. “If your name is Hess, this young woman is not going back with you, and I warn you now to be off.” “So that’s it, is it?” the heavy voice sneered. “She’s my mother’s hired girl, an’ she stole a lot o’ food an’ ran away this mornin’. Comes o’ takin’ in an asylum brat─” “Take that back, too, you blackguard!” Jim’s voice was beginning to shake. “Take nothin’ back, ’cept Lou! What’s she doin’ with you, anyway? Might ha’ knowed she was this sort─” He got no further, for something landed like a hammer upon his nose and the blood streamed down between his thick lips, choking him. With an inarticulate roar of rage he lowered his bull neck and drove at the other man, but the other man wasn’t there! Then another light, stinging blow landed upon his fat face and he flailed out again with a force that turned him completely around, for again his adversary had danced out of his way. Every drop of bad blood in the lout was aroused now, for he was the bully and terror of his community, and he could not understand this way of fighting, nor why his own blows failed to land when this tramp could dodge in and punish him apparently whenever he chose. Jim was many pounds lighter, and although the science of boxing was not unknown to him, he was dog-tired and his wrenched back agonized him at every move. The sheer weight of the other man was bearing him down, and Hess seemed to realize it, for with a grunt of satisfaction he swung in and landed a stiff body blow which staggered his adversary. Hess’s left eye was closed, and his lips split, but he hammered at his man relentlessly, and at length caught him with a blow which brought him to his knees. All the bully’s blood-lust boiled at sight of his half-fallen victim, and he drew back his heavily shod foot for a murderous kick, but it was never delivered. Something caught that foot from behind and tripped him heavily into the dust, then landed upon him like a wildcat and bit and tore at him until with a scream of pain he managed to throw it off. Even as he struggled to his feet it sprang again upon him, kicking and clawing, and he turned quickly, and scrambling into the buggy seat, gathered up the reins. Lou stood where he had torn himself from her grasp, listening to the volley of oaths and clatter of horses’s feet until both had been swallowed up in the distance. Then she turned to where Jim stood swaying, with one hand pressed to his side, and the blood from the reopened cut upon his forehead making his face look ghastly in the starlight. “Well,” she remarked with satisfaction. “I guess he got more ’n he come for, an’ we’ve seen the last of him!” “But Lou!” There was admiration and awe in his tones. “Your method of fighting isn’t in the Queensberry rules, although I must say it was effective. I was going to try to protect you, and it turned out the other way!” “Don’t know what queen you’re talkin’ about, nor what rules she made, but when I fight, I fight with everything I’ve got,” Lou declared with finality. “Come and let me fix up your head again, an’ we’ll have supper.” An hour later and throughout the night, a slim little figure, rolled in a man’s shabby coat, lay sleeping peacefully in a corner of the mill, while on the doorstep in his shirt sleeves and with a stout cudgel across his knees, a weary man drowsed fitfully, on guard. 35 36 37 38 39 40 CHAPTER III The Vendor of Everything When Lou awakened the next morning at dawn it was her turn to find herself deserted, but the fact failed to arouse any misgivings in her mind. She had found in her brief experience with menfolks that they were mostly queer, one way or another, but this one was dependable, and she felt no doubt that he would turn up when he got ready. Unwrapping her bundle, she took the apron, soap, and broken comb, and wandered down the bank of the stream until in the seclusion beneath the bridge she came upon a pool formed by outjutting rocks, where she performed her limited toilet. Then, scrubbing the greasy apron vigorously, she hung it on a bramble bush behind the mill to dry, and scuttling across the road, made for the woods back of the house where she had committed her nocturnal depredation. An hour later when Jim came slowly up the hill road from the direction of Hudsondale, he saw a tiny smudge of smoke rising from a rock well hidden in the rank undergrowth at the edge of the stream, and approaching it found Lou industriously brushing her coat with a broom which she had improvised of small twigs tied together. Beside her, carefully cradled in her sunbonnet, were half a dozen new-laid eggs. “Good morning.” He greeted her with a little bow, and sank down on the rock. “Were you frightened to find yourself left all alone?” “Oh, no. I knew you would come back,” she replied serenely. Then, as she noted his glance fall upon the eggs she added in swift self-defense: “You needn’t think I stole those; I found them back in the woods a piece. O-oh!” He had carried a large paper package under his arm, and now as he unwrapped it her wonderment changed to swift rapture. It contained an overall apron of bright pink check, a cheap straw hat, and a remnant of green ribbon. “I ain’t had a pink dress since I was ten!” Her dark eyes were perilously glistening. “I’d almost have died for one, but you had to wear blue after that, ’count of doin’ work ’round. Oh, an’ that hat! I kin put that ribbon on it as easy as─” She halted suddenly and lowered her eyelashes, adding: “But you hadn’t any call to buy them for me; I can’t pay you back right now.” Jim’s reply was irrelevant. “Why, your eyes aren’t black, after all! They’re violet-blue, the deepest blue I ever saw!” Then he caught himself up, reddening furiously, and after a moment said in a casual tone: “That’s all right about the things, Lou; you can pay me when you get some work to do. Now, go fix yourself up, and we’ll have breakfast.” When she had disappeared into the mill he cursed himself for a fool. The child had trusted him as a comrade; what would she think if he began paying her compliments? What had come over him, anyway? He had seen women with violet-blue eyes in more countries than one; beautiful women with every enhancement which breeding and wealth could bestow. It must have been sheer surprise in discovering any attribute of prettiness at all about so uncompromisingly homely a girl as poor little Lou. With this reassuring reflection he set about replenishing the fire, and presently his companion reappeared. The large, flapping hat sat oddly upon her small head with its tightly drawn-back hair, but the straight lines of the all-enveloping pink gown brought out the slender curves of her childish figure, and she didn’t seem quite so gawky, after all, as she moved toward him over the rocks. “My, you look nice!” he said cheerfully. “I’ve brought some rolls from─” “We’ll keep them for later,” Lou interrupted him firmly. “There’s still the end of the bread left, and goodness knows where we’ll eat again!” They breakfasted gaily, drinking the remainder of the milk first and then boiling the eggs in the pan, but Lou’s remark about their next meal had made Jim think seriously of the immediate future. He had assumed a responsibility which he must fulfill, and his progress thus far under the handicaps he had spoken of had been difficult enough alone. The little pink apron-frock had cost half of his capital, the hat twenty-five cents more, and the ribbon a dime. Five cents in addition for the rolls had left but thirty-five of the preciously hoarded pennies, and he was ninety miles from home, with a host of petty, but formidable, restrictions barring his way, and an adopted orphan on his hands. He had been forced to turn his head sharply away when he passed the village tobacco store, for every nerve cried out for the solace of a good pipe, but he felt more than repaid for the sacrifice by Lou’s honest rapture over the poor things he had been able to get for her. Breakfast finished, and the remainder of the ham stowed away in the milk-pan, they carefully skirted the house on the rise of the hill, and coming out once more upon the road, they forged ahead. The strained muscles of Jim’s back and side were still sore, but they troubled him less than the lack of a smoke, and for Lou it was as though a new world had opened before her eyes. The pleasant, wheat-growing valley had been left behind them, and the road from being hilly grew steeper and more steep until it became a mere rutted trail over the mountains. More or less dilapidated farm-houses, each with its patch of cleared ground, appeared now and then, and before the gate of one of these a huge, canvas-covered wagon stood, bearing the ambitious legend: TRAVELING DEPARTMENT STORE BENJ. PERKINS A genial-looking fat man in a linen duster and a wide-brimmed hat was just clambering in over the wheel when he spied the two pedestrians gazing at the turnout, and called good-naturedly: “Want a lift? I’m goin’ inter New Hartz.” “Thanks. That is just where we are going, too,” Jim replied promptly. “It’s awfully good of you to take us along.” “Git right in; plenty of room with me on the front seat here,” the proprietor of the extraordinary department store responded heartily. “Yer sister ’d be nigh tuckered out ef you tried ter walk her inter town on a hot day like this.” 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 Jim hoisted Lou in over the big wheel and as he climbed up beside her the driver slapped the reins over the broad backs of the two horses, and they were off. “You are Mr. Perkins?” Jim asked, ignoring the assumption of Lou’s relationship to him. “That’s me!” The other glanced at the fresh bandage about the young man’s head which Lou had applied just before they started out, and inquired: “You git hurt, some ways?” Jim explained briefly, and changed the subject with a haste which would have been significant to a less obtuse host. “You seem to have a little of everything back here in the van, Mr. Perkins.” “Reckon I hev,” the other agreed complacently. “From a spool of thread to a pitchfork, and from a baby rattle to wax funeral wreaths, there ain’t nothin’ the folk hereabout hev use for that I don’t carry. The big ottermobile order trucks don’t hurt my business none; I ben workin’ up my trade around here fer twenty year.” Mr. Perkins paused to draw a pipe and tobacco sack from his pocket, and Jim’s throat twitched. After filling the pipe the genial pedler offered the sack. “Hev some?” Jim hesitated, and his face reddened, but at last he shook his head determinedly. “Thanks; I–I don’t smoke.” Lou, who had hunched about in her seat to stare at the assorted array of articles in the body of the van, turned and looked curiously at him. Surely that hard bulge in the coat upon which she had slept on the previous night had been the bowl of a pipe! The eyes which Jim had called “violet blue” narrowed for an instant in puzzled wonderment, then blurred as with swift understanding she glanced down at the new pink apron and stroked it softly. But Jim had gone on talking rather nervously. “You don’t get much trade around here, do you? Not many houses in these mountains.” “Oh, here and thar,” Mr. Perkins replied easily. “Here and thar.” The conversation which ensued was all Greek to Lou, who took off her hat, leaned her head against the side of the van, and went peacefully to sleep. She was awakened by a hand gently shaking her shoulder and found that the van had been halted in the middle of a maple-lined street before a big house which bore a sign labeled: “Congress Hotel.” Busy little shops shouldered it on either side, and a band-stand stood in the open square. “Come down, Lou.” Jim stood on the sidewalk reaching up for her hands. “This is New Hartz.” Mr. Perkins was not in the van, but as Lou scrambled over the wheel he appeared from the door of the hotel. “Young man, I wish I was goin’ further, but I ain’t, and I want ter talk a little business with you.” He drew Jim aside. “You and your sister wouldn’t ha’ ben walkin’ it in from Hudsonvale if you could ha’ paid ter come any other way.” “No, Mr. Perkins.” Jim backed away smilingly. “We couldn’t think of–of borrowing, but thanks for the ten-mile lift into New Hartz.” “Glad ter hev your company.” Mr. Perkins suddenly dived around to the back of the van and his voice came to them muffled from the depths of its interior. “Wait jest a minute.” He emerged, red and perspiring, with a small package wrapped in a square of something shimmering and white in his hands, which he offered to the wondering Lou. “It’s jest a little present fer you, miss,” he said. Lou accepted it gravely. “Thank you, sir,” she said primly. “You ain’t got any call to give me this, not after bringin’ us all the way from Hudsondale.” “I guess I can make a little present if I’m a mind ter, ter a pretty little girl like you.” Mr. Perkins turned to Jim. “Wish yer both luck on your way.” They took leave of the kindly little fat man and moved off up the village street and beyond the inevitable car tracks to the dwindling country road once more. In the shade of a big tree at a crossroads, Lou glanced up at her companion. “Could we set down here for a spell?” she asked. “I ain’t tired, Jim, but I feel like I’d die if I can’t open this!” She gestured with Mr. Perkins’s gift, and Jim dropped laughingly on the grass. “Of course. Let’s see what’s in it.” Gravely she seated herself beside him and unknotted the square of white. It contained three little handkerchiefs with pink borders, a small bottle of particularly strong scent, and a string of beads remotely resembling coral. The square in which the articles had been wrapped proved to be a large white silk handkerchief with an American flag stamped in the corner. “That must be for you, Jim,” Lou said slowly. As in a trance she slipped the string of beads over her hea...