The Landloper by Holman Day (ereader ebook .txt) 📖

by standing around and doing his grunting for him. Get busy!"
The men lifted their tools slowly and sullenly.
"It's hell what can happen when you're fifteen days behind on a contract, with county commissioners waiting and anxious to grab off a penalty," declared the boss, to nobody in particular. "One man bunged, and four to lug him home, and the rest of the crew taking a sympathetic vacation!"
Farr, sauntering, swung off the highway down the lane leading to the temporary bridge.
"Here, you long-horned steer, want a job?" called the contractor from his rostrum on the granite block.
"No, my Sussex shote, I do not!"
"Damnation! You dare to call me names, you hobo?"
"Yes," returned Farr, quite simply.
"Well, quit it. I need men here. You're husky. Two dollars a day, even if you're not a regular mason."
"No."
He drawled both the affirmative and the negative and there was something subtly insolent in his tone--something that aroused more ire than a cruder retort would have accomplished. He turned his back on the cursing man and went on down to the bridge. He waited there for a time and watched the drift of foam on the fretted waters. The steady burbling of the stream made him oblivious to other sounds and he did not hear the two men approach. They leaped on him and seized him. One of his captors was the paunchy man, and his hands were heavy and his fingers gripped viciously.
"No wonder you wouldn't work! You're making your living in an easier way."
"What is the occasion of this effusive welcome to your city?" asked Farr.
The man who held one of the captive's arms was panting. He had run at top speed from the house to which he and his mates had borne the injured man.
"You thief! You sneak! Eat a man's grub, his hard-earned grub, and steal when his wife's back is turned!"
"Of all dirty work this job is the worst," declared the big man.
"She gave you all you could stuff into yourself, you loafer. You ransacked when her back was turned. You even stole her husband's Sunday suit. Where is it?"
"I saw a fat tramp running away into the woods," returned Farr, quietly. "He was carrying articles in his arms."
"You're the only tramp in sight around here," insisted the contractor. "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