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Page 38
"You be off," she commanded harshly. "None of your snooping around
here."
Josiah felt the numbness of paralysis creeping over him. He moistened
his lips and tried to say something, but found himself bereft of speech.
"You be off, I say," she rasped in her high-keyed voice, "or I'll put
the constable after you."
Josiah turned obediently. He heard the door slam as he went down the
walk. As in a nightmare he opened the gate he had opened ten thousand
times and stepped out on the sidewalk. He felt dazed. Surely it was a
dream. Very soon he would wake up with a sigh of relief. He rubbed his
forehead and paused indecisively. The monotonous complaint of the
bucksaw came to his ears. If that boy had any of the old Childs spirit
in him, sooner or later he'd run away. Agatha was beyond the endurance
of human flesh. She had not changed, unless for the worse, if such a
thing were possible. That boy would surely run for it, maybe soon. Maybe
now.
Josiah Childs straightened up and threw his shoulders back. The
great-spirited West, with its daring and its carelessness of
consequences when mere obstacles stand in the way of its desire, flamed
up in him. He looked at his watch, remembered the time table, and spoke
to himself, solemnly, aloud. It was an affirmation of faith:
"I don't care a hang about the law. That boy can't be crucified. I'll
give her a double allowance, four times, anything, but he goes with me.
She can follow on to California if she wants, but I'll draw up an
agreement, in which what's what, and she'll sign it, and live up to it,
by George, if she wants to stay. And she will," he added grimly. "She's
got to have somebody to nag."
He opened the gate and strode back to the woodshed door. Johnnie looked
up, but kept on sawing.
"What'd you like to do most of anything in the world?" Josiah demanded
in a tense, low voice.
Johnnie hesitated, and almost stopped sawing. Josiah made signs for him
to keep it up.
"Go to sea," Johnnie answered. "Along with my father."
Josiah felt himself trembling.
"Would you?" he asked eagerly.
"Would I!"
The look of joy on Johnnie's face decided everything.
"Come here, then. Listen. I'm your father. I'm Josiah Childs. Did you
ever want to run away?"
Johnnie nodded emphatically.
"That's what I did," Josiah went on. "I ran away." He fumbled for his
watch hurriedly. "We've just time to catch the train for California. I
live there now. Maybe Agatha, your mother, will come along afterward.
I'll tell you all about it on the train. Come on."
He gathered the half-frightened, half-trusting boy into his arms for a
moment, then, hand in hand, they fled across the yard, out of the gate,
and down the street. They heard the kitchen door open, and the last they
heard was:
"Johnnie!--you! Why ain't you sawing? I'll attend to your case
directly!"
THE FIRST POET
SCENE: _A summer plain, the eastern side of which is bounded by grassy
hills of limestone, the other sides by a forest. The hill nearest to the
plain terminates in a cliff, in the face of which, nearly at the level
of the ground, are four caves, with low, narrow entrances. Before the
caves, and distant from them less than one hundred feet, is a broad,
flat rock, on which are laid several sharp slivers of flint, which, like
the rock, are blood-stained. Between the rock and the cave-entrances, on
a low pile of stones, is squatted a man, stout and hairy. Across his
knees is a thick club, and behind him crouches a woman. At his right and
left are two men somewhat resembling him, and like him, bearing wooden
clubs. These four face the west, and between them and the bloody rock
squat some threescore of cave-folk, talking loudly among themselves. It
is late afternoon. The name of him on the pile of stones is Uk, the
name of his mate, Ala; and of those at his right and left, Ok and Un._
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