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Page 64
The boy looked up and laughed.
"It wasn't," he said with utter truth. "You told me I could do it and
I--I just did."
"I knew you could do it!" said Brian with the vigor of confidence that
had made the boy his slave. "Still, when you unleashed that first roar
and the crowd began to collect, I confess I thought you'd busted
something vital and were yelling for help."
Don glanced at this clothes. The summer show had freed him from the
mended rags he hated. Shirt and trousers, hat and shoes were as near
like Brian's as they could be. So was the coat upon his arm and the
knapsack on his back.
"Whenever you tell me I can do a thing," he said, "and hang around to
see me do it, I can always somehow seem to make myself do it. Look!"
he broke off with a boyish grin, pointing at a farmhouse on a distant
hill. "There's the farm where you threw the can of whitewash at the
farmer when he swore at his wife for dropping the eggs and threatened
to lick her. Wasn't he a sight!"
"He was!" admitted Brian. "And wasn't he mad? If he hadn't been a
coward he would have licked me instead. As it was, I never fully
understood why his wife shied an egg at me. However, that's all rather
a shady part of my past. I'm not reminding you of the self-winding
blunderbuss you got in part payment for chopping wood, am I? Or that
it went off by itself and shot a cabbage?"
Laughing they struck off into a twilight stretch of woods, found a
familiar clearing near a spring and made a fire.
"Well," said Brian when the fire was down to embers, "what's the
schedule? You're road manager this week. What do we eat?"
"Sausages," said Donald, unloading his pockets. "A can of macaroni and
an apple pie."
"You disgraceful kid!" exclaimed Brian. "Whenever you get into a
country store without a guard you kick over the traces and appear with
something in your pocket that busts a road rule and obligates me to a
sermon when I hate 'em. Pie, my son, is effete and civilized. It's
like feeding cream puffs to a wandering Arab. You're apt to make him
stop his Arabing and hang around the spot where the cream puff grows.
However, now that you've brought the thing into camp, it would be
improvident not to eat it. What am I, Don, wood-scout or cook?"
"Cook," said Donald. "All day," he added, "you've been limping."
Brian made a fence of forked twigs, hung the sausages up to toast,
opened the can of macaroni and set it in the embers. That Don had
noticed the limp gratified him immensely, even though it had been a
mere and prosaic matter of a blistered heel.
Whistling softly, he watched the boy gather wood. Well, thank God! he
was as unlike that white-faced moody lad who had stumbled into his
Tavern of Stars as a boy could be. He whistled a good deal. He was as
slim as a sapling, the slimness of muscle and health. His eyes were
clear and boyish. And there was color in his face. Best of all, to
Brian's mind, after the first sullen period of readjustment he had
worked his own salvation and reverted by wholesome instinct to boyhood
with its inexhaustible animal vigor, its gaucheries and its boisterous
minutes of frolic heretofore denied. Now save for the hours by the
camp fire when he passionately blurted out again and again the tale of
his rebellion until Brian knew his life as he knew the weather-lore of
the open road, he seemed ever on the verge of laughter.
Brian smiled. Attuned to the mood he summed up the achievement of his
own summer. The brawn of splendid health and a clear head! For the
one he could thank his gypsying; for the other, in a measure, he could
thank the boy.
In the lonely hours before he came with his problems there had been
solitude less soothing than Brian had expected. There has been an
inclination to smoke and brood and nurse certain sentimental misgivings
about Kenny when the fire was low and the owls hooting in the forest.
After, mercifully--for they might have driven him back to
sunsets--there had been no time. The life of another had made its
demand and sympathy with Brian was never passive. Impossible somehow
not to romp with the young savage yonder rejoicing in his freedom, with
even work a lark! Impossible not to laugh with him, fight out his
battles with him and surrender with a sigh of content to the weariness
and hunger of a caveman!
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