The Landloper, Holman Day [books for 7th graders TXT] 📗

law are more often the devil's playground than the abode of real justice. I have worked hard, I have read many books, I have stored information in my mind, I have laid up money enough. You behold my armor--I have wrought at it patiently for a long time."
"Expect to have 'em throw things at you?"
But the blacksmith, replying, gave no sign that he resented this brusque humor.
"It is well known that it is hard to attract the attention of the world from its own affairs. For instance, if I had stood in the yard to-day, dressed as a plain man, thee would have passed on thy way--providing father had been chopping up kindling-wood instead of a coffin. If I had stopped thee and started to explain my views thee would have paid little attention to me. Isn't that so?"
"It's so."
"Well, then, thee have my theory and know my plan and have noted how it has worked," said Mr. Chick.
"I don't want to discourage you in a good thing, but how long do you think a policeman would let you stand on a street corner?"
"I shall find places where I can deliver my message without offending."
"There's another point--a rather delicate point to consider, Brother Chick. There are plenty of persons who are a bit dull when they are examining a man's motives, but who think they are almighty smart in detecting a man's mental failings; when somebody does anything they wouldn't do they say he's crazy."
The blacksmith turned his serene face and smiled at Farr.
"I appeal to thy good judgment, sir. Would thee, after talking with me, even if I do wear iron outside my wool garments, send me to an asylum?"
"No," acknowledged Farr, "I don't believe I would send you to an asylum."
"Thank thee! I believe thee can speak quite generally for the average man."
"But the armor scheme--it's a little risky, Friend Chick."
"But it has been the trade-mark of unselfishness ever since the days of the Crusaders," declared Mr. Chick. "Why shouldn't its significance be revived in these modern times? At any rate," he added, with Yankee shrewdness, "it's necessary to give the world quite a jump these days before it will stop, look, and listen."
"Some advertising concern will make you an offer that will pull you into camp your second day out, if you're not careful. You've certainly got a good idea of the business."
"I am sincere. I am not trifling. I have pondered on this for a long time. I shall be misjudged--but I shall not be afraid!"


III
KNIGHT-ERRANTRY TESTED
The two marched on, side by side, and Walker Farr, piecing in his mind, from the scraps he had heard, the entire history of the Chick family, indulged the whim of Jared and forgot for a moment the grotesque figure presented by his companion.
"No, I am not afraid!" repeated the new apostle of world harmony.
But it became promptly apparent that Mr. Chick could not communicate his intrepidity to other creatures.
Around the bend of the road came a sleepy horse, stubbing his hoofs into the dust, dragging a wagon in which rode a farmer and his wife.
The horse became wide awake at sight of Mr. Chick.
With head up, eyes goggling, nostrils dilating, and mane erect, the animal stopped short on straddled legs. Then he snorted, whirled, took the wagon around in a circle on two wheels in spite of the farmer's endeavors, and made off in the opposite direction, the driver pulling hard on the reins, hands above his head, elbows akimbo.
"It occurs to me, Friend Chick," said his companion, after the outfit had disappeared, "that in planning this pilgrimage of yours you have failed to take everything into account. If that farmer-man and his wife pile into the ditch and break their necks, then all your general mediating in other quarters will hardly make up for the damage you have caused right here."
"The world is full of problems," sighed the man in armor. "There seems to be a hitch to about everything!"
After a few moments the farmer came pelting into sight on foot.
"What in the name of bald-headed Nicodemus do you call yourself, and what are you trying to do?" he shouted. "It's only by luck and chance and because the webbin's held that me and my wife ain't laying stiff and stark in the ditch."
"I am sorry," said friend Chick with dignity.
"Get a hoss used to bicycles, flying-machines, red whizzers and blue devils, and then along comes something else that ain't laid down in the back of the Old Farmer's Almanick! You there, the one that ain't crazy, what's this thing you're teaming round?" the farmer demanded, addressing Farr.
"In this case I am not my brother's keeper," stated the young man.
"Well, where is his keeper, then? He needs one." He walked around Chick and rudely rapped his whip-butt on the breastplate. "If I wasn't afraid of spraining a toe I'd boot you from here to hackenny, you old two-legged cook-stove!"
"If there has been damage done, I'll pay for it."
"There isn't any damage and I'm not looking for anybody's money. But there _will_ be damage unless you get out of this highway. If you're in sight when I drive my hoss past here again I'll lick you, even if I have to use blasting-powder and a can-opener to get you out of that suit."
Jared Chick went apart into the bushes and Farr accompanied him.
"This is a rather vulgar and discouraging adventure for high ideals to run into so soon," averred the younger man.
"I am not discouraged."
"I'm afraid you'll be even more greatly misunderstood."
"I don't expect silly old horses to understand me. My appeal is to men."
Farr sniffed scornfully. "You'd better let men alone," he advised.
"The world needs pure unselfishness," insisted Chick.
"The purer it is the more it is misunderstood. I have tested the matter. I know."
"Then you yourself would not go forth into the world and do good to men, without calculation and without price?"
"I don't think I would," declared Farr, dryly. "And I am so little interested in the matter that I think you'll have to excuse me from further talk about it. You have just had one illustration in a crude way of how the world misunderstands anything that's out of the ordinary."
"Have you any advice to give me?"
"Not a word. I'm not even able to give myself sensible counsel. Good day to you!"
"Then you do not care for my company longer on the way?"
"I do not. Excuse my bluntness, but these are parlous times for wayfarers and I cannot afford to have a tin can tied to me as I go about."
"And you are absolutely selfish?" called Chick.
"I think so," replied Farr from the highway, getting into his stride. "When I see you again I expect you'll be wondering why you ever were altruistic. That will be the case, providing you wear that armor any longer."
Jared Chick from behind his bush called, appealingly, "But I fear I shall never see thee again and I have some questions to ask of thee!"
"Oh, I promise to look you up somewhere in the world. If you keep on wearing that suit it will be easy to find you."
The man in armor leaned against a tree and pondered.
"A strange young man, and callous and selfish. But there is truly something under his shell. I would relish putting some questions to him."
Then Jared Chick plunked an ash staff from a pile of hoop-poles left by a chopper and went on his way along shaded woodland paths, avoiding the main highroad. He decided that it would be better to go by the roundabout way and show himself on the streets of town instead of on a rural turnpike where countrified horses did not take kindly to a real knight-errant.
"It was a good place back there for sleeping," reflected Walker Farr, remembering the brook, singing over the stones, the whispering alders, the old-fashioned house, and the somnolent landscape. "That man who has been living there until the day of his emigration has certainly been asleep for a long time and is sleeping soundly now; he is having a wonderful dream. The nightmare will begin shortly and he will wake up."
After a time Farr came into a village, a hamlet of small houses which toed the crack of a single street. It was near the hour of noon and from the open windows of kitchens drifted scents of the dinners which the women were preparing. All the men of the place seemed to be afield; only women were in sight here and there at back doors, pinning freshly washed garments on lines, beating dust from rugs, or, seen through the windows, were bustling about the forenoon tasks set for patient household slaves in gingham.
At one back door, his back comfortably set against a folded clothes-reel, was a greasily fat tramp, gobbling a hand-out lunch which a housewife had given to him.
Under a little hill where the road dipped at the edge of the hamlet here sounded clink of steel on rock, suggesting that men labored there with trowel and drill. There was complaining creaking of cordage--the arm of a derrick sliced a slow arc across the blue sky of June.
The fat tramp held up his empty plate and whined a request and the hand of a woman emerged from a close-by window and placed something in the dish.
Farr slowed his steps and looked at the tramp, and a woman in a yard near by stared over the top of a sheet which she was pinning on the line and scowled at the new arrival.
"I wonder if I'm considered as the Damon of that Pythias?" Farr asked himself, smiling into her frown. "But Damon is nomad spelled backward! I wish I dared to ask her for a piece of that pie cooling on the sill."
Just then, over the clink of metal under the hill, above wail of straining pulley, rose the screech of a man in agony, the raucous male squall whose timbre is more hideous than the death-cry of swine.
Then came a man running from the valley under the hill.
"It's your husband, Mrs. Jose," he panted, turning in at the house where the fat tramp ate with his back against the clothes-reel. "You better go! I'll telephone for a doctor."
She ran, white-faced, gasping cries. Other women ran. The spirit of helpfulness and curiosity to know what had happened set wings on the heels of the little community. The messenger telephoned and followed them.
The fat tramp set down his plate and glanced to right and left and all about. Then he shuffled into the deserted house and after a brief stay hastened out with his pockets crammed and bearing garments in his arms; he scuttled away with sagging trot across the fields.
Farr saw him go and did not pursue.
"Yonder goes the spirit of the age," he told himself, with sardonic twisting of his lips. "When Opportunity knocks, knock Opportunity down. Embrace Opportunity, but be sure it's with the strangle hold. The directors of a robbed railroad make a more dignified getaway than that porcine pedestrian is making--but it's the same as far as the stockholders are concerned."
He went on slowly toward the hollow under the hill.
The procession met him--a limp man, moaning, borne in the arms of his sweating mates, women trotting alongside and crossing the road, to and fro, like frightened hens--clucking sympathy.
Farr found a half-finished stone bridge under the hill. A paunchy boss with underset jaw and overhanging upper lip was profanely urging his helpers back to their jobs.
"Fifteen minutes before knock-off time--fifteen minutes! You can't help that man