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

of a freight-car's truss, our portion of
cast-off clothes,
And the big wide world is ours--a title made good by right--
By mankind's deed to the nomad breed with the taint of the
Ishmaelite.
Some from the wastes of the sage-brush, some from the orange land,
Some from God's own country, dusty and tattered and tanned.
Why are we? It's idle to tell you--you'd never understand.
To and fro
We come and go.
Old Father Ishmael's band."
He leaned back and laughed in the tramp's puzzled face.
"Well, what's the answer?" scoffed Boston Fat.
The other man talked on, humor in his eyes, plainly enjoying this verbal skylarking.
"I'm afraid I cannot waste time and breath on you in an attempt to answer the riddle of the ages, to explain the wanderlust that sent forth the tribes from the Aryan bowl of the birth of the races, my corpulent bean-pot. Your blank eyes and your flattened skull suggest a discouraging incapacity for information."
"I don't know what you're gabbing abut. But there's one thing I do know. I'll tip 'em off at the next insane-asylum I come to that I met you headed north." The tramp gathered the articles of clothing from the bushes and got down on his knees and began to fold them.
The man of the brown eyes stepped forward, laid down his little book, picked up the frock-coat and pulled it on, the fat man squealing expostulation. With serene disregard of this protest Farr buttoned the coat, smoothed it down, and then straightened his shoulders.
"You may see that it was built for a gentleman and that it fits a gentleman, friend pork-barrel."
"You shuck it off and pass it over, that's what you do," yelped the tramp. "It's my coat."
"It was perfectly apparent that it was not your coat when you tried it on."
"I tell you I found it hanging on a fence-post just above here."
"That was merely by accident, and you should have passed on and left the garments for one whose frame was fitted to wear them. You illustrate the curse of modern society. Men are so filled with the greed of getting that they grab misfits simply out of passion for possessing."
"I've stood your slurs ever since I got here, but I'll be jobeefed if I'll stand for your swiping my property."
The man of the brown eyes smiled. His whole demeanor showed that he was more than ever hugely enjoying his own verbosity--the florid language which was both maddening and mystifying the tramp.
"Further evidence of your mean nature: a gentleman resents an insult that steals away his character much more quickly than he resents an act that steals mere property. In that little book which I have just laid down Shakespeare speaks trenchantly on that matter: 'Who steals my purse steals trash . . . but he that filches from me my good name robs me . . . and makes me poor indeed.'"
The tramp gave over his work of folding, and awkwardly and cumbersomely got upon his feet.
"You take off that coat and hand it over. It's mine--I found it. I can stand a crazy man's gab, but when any one tries to do me out of what's my own I'll fight."
"May I ask what you're going to do with these garments of a gentleman which have fallen into your hands by accident?"
"I'm going to cash 'em in at the nearest second-hand shop, that's just what I'm going to do."
"Just as you sold the Sunday suit you stole from a poor man! My friend, I was insulted that day on account of you. You owe me something!"
Just then the alarm-clock purred a brief signal.
Up to that time the air of the man with the brown eyes had been that of banter, of impish desire to harry and confuse by stilted language the ignorant stranger who had come blundering upon him.
He stared at the clock, looked down upon the frock-coat, and then surveyed the other articles of clothing. He scowled as if he had suddenly begun to reflect. Seriousness smoldered in the brown eyes. That tinkling touch of metal against metal seemed to change his mood in astonishing fashion.
"Ah, it may be morning again, O my soul!" he cried with such tense feeling in his voice that the tramp surveyed him with gaping mouth and bulging eyes, as one stares at a person suddenly become mad.
"I will talk to you though you will not understand! Once upon a time the world was ruled by men who were ruled by omens. Man was then not so wise in his own conceit. His own soul was nearer the soul of things. He was not a mere gob of bumptiousness covered with the shell of cocksureness. He was willing to be informed. He sought the omens of true nature--he allowed Fate to guide him. He was not a pig running against the goad of circumstances, unheeding the upflung arms of Fortune, waving him toward the right path. He was simpler--he was truer. He felt that he was a part of nature instead of being boss of nature. Well, I have got nearer to true nature since I have been in the open. I am in contact with the soul of things. I am no longer insulated. I am not reformed, I am simply ready once again to grab Opportunity. So you think I am crazy, do you?"
"They had a gink in a padded cell in the jail where I was last winter and he didn't take on much worse'n you," stated the tramp.
"As a brainless observer you may be quite right. I may be a lunatic. I feel much like one just now. It is lunacy to go climbing back to a level in society from which I have been kicked. But as I knelt there by that little fire, before you came, yearning sprang up in me--and I had thought all that sort of yearning was dead in me. A moment later came habiliments of a gentleman, borne in the arms of a wretch who could not wear them. There came Opportunity. Then the jangle of that clock signaled Opportunity--and there was a throb in me as though my sleeping soul had rolled and blinked at the sunlight of hope and had murmured, 'It's morning again.' Such are omens, when one is ready to heed."
He set his teeth, clenched his fists, and by expression and attitude showed that he had arrived at a decision of moment. He walked close to the tramp. "I will admit, Friend Belly-brains, that you came upon Opportunity before I did this day. But tell me again, are you to make no further use of said Opportunity than to run to an old-clothes shop and exchange for a few pennies that which will help to make a man?"
"They are mine and I'm going to sell 'em," retorted the sullen vagrant.
"I am sorry because you have no wit--no power to understand. Otherwise you would gladly lay these garments in my hands and bid me Godspeed. You don't understand at all, do you?"
"Look here, are you trying to frisk me for these duds?"
"It's all a waste of breath to explain to you that Providence meant these things for me. You are not acute enough to understand close reasoning. I could not show you that, for the sake of a few coins, which would do you only that harm which would come from their value in cheap whisky or beer, you might be wrecking the future of a soul that is awake. I simply tell you that I shall keep the clothing for myself. Perhaps you can understand that plain statement!" The brown eyes became resolute and piercing. "Even if I had money I would not pay you for these garments. Money does such as you no good; it may bring you trouble. My dear Boston Fat, I cannot afford to let you prejudice my future, which, so instinct tells me, is wrapped up in those poor things of wool and warp." He snapped a finger into his palm and extended his hand. "Give me that hat and then pass on about your business."
The tramp backed away. His little blinking eyes expressed both fear and rebelliousness. More than ever did he resemble a pig at bay. The black hat, set on top of his greasy cap and topping with its respectability his disreputable general outfit, added a bizarre touch to the scene between the two men.
"You think now that you are the injured party," calmly pursued the man of the brown eyes. "You haven't intelligence enough to take my own case into account. You are injured because you are losing a few coins--but I may be injured in all that gives life its flavor if I do not grasp this opportunity." Both raillery and earnestness dropped out of his tones. He became merely matter-of-fact. "I'll make it plain. Trot along about your business, fat one, or I shall proceed to pound the face off you and then kick you a few rods on your happy way. You deserve it as a thief--I worked two weeks as a stone-mason on your account. Do you get me?"
For answer the infuriated vagrant rushed at him and kicked.
With one hand the stranger plucked the hat from the tramp's head and sailed it to a place of safety. With the other hand he grabbed the attacker's ankle before the foot hit him and with a jerk he laid the tramp on his back.
The victim fell so helplessly that the concussion knocked the breath and a groan out of him.
The man of the brown eyes had moved languidly and had talked languidly till then. When he grabbed the foot he moved with a sort of steel-trap efficiency and quickness. He promptly straddled his victim, seated himself on the protruding abdomen, and began to beat the man's face. He battered the flabby cheeks and punched his fists into the pulpy neck. He ground his knees against the fat flanks and redoubled his blows when the tramp struggled. After the squalling falsetto had implored for a long time, the assailant at last gave over the exercise.
"Are you licked?" he asked.
"Yes," whined the tramp.
"You have stolen--in most dirty style. I whipped you for that job. Now will you stay licked for some time?"
"Yes."
"You'll go on about your own business, will you, without any more foolish talk about those garments?"
"Yes."
"Are you sorry you stole from that good woman who fed you?"
"Yes."
The man of the brown eyes swung himself off his prostrate victim, as a rider dismounts from a horse, and the tramp sat up, moaning and patting his purple face.
"I never had no luck, never," he blubbered. "I was kicked out of jail before the weather got warmed up, I was thrown in last fall just when the Indian summer was beginning. When other fellows get hand-outs of pie I get cold potatoes and bannock bread. I have to walk when other fellows ride. I'm too fat for the trucks and they can always see me on the blind baggage. I'll keep on walking. I never had no luck in all my life."
He rolled upon his hands and knees and then stood up. He started away, wholly cowed, whining like a quill-pig, bewailing his luck.
"Luck!" the man of the brown eyes shouted after him in a tone which expressed anger and regret.