A Search for America / by Frederick Philip Grove, e-Ed.2000 -- BOOK III, CHAPTER III.
BOOK THREE -- THE DEPTHS

CHAPTER III.

I COME INTO CONTACT WITH HUMANITY AGAIN.

HE VALLEY of the river widened out; the islands which divided it were larger now; sometimes one of the two arms was closed by a weir, the other, by a lock.
I was more and more getting used to going hungry. Sometimes I felt a weird intoxication with hunger; at other times my mind seemed to see things with extraordinary clearness and logic.
One day, about noon, I came to a place where a large island, in outline like a pear, densely wooded, was connected at its upper end by a narrow strip of sandbank with the shore along which I travelled.
An impulse of exploration made me cross over to the island. Below the sandbank which I followed, there was a dead arm of the river. No doubt the sandbank was flooded after heavy rains, and the water in this dead arm was swept out. But the river was low at the time, and with the big trees -- sycamores mostly -- overhanging the stagnant water in the autumn sun, there was something infinitely quiet, soothing, sadly reminiscent about the place. I felt a desire to linger. The island proved a veritable trap for driftwood which I had to climb over in order to penetrate into the sanctuary of its recesses.
Suddenly I heard a noise, the cracking of a dry limb, or the snapping of a dead sapling. I stopped and listened. Not a breath seemed to stir. It was a perfect day for the season -- clear, cool, crisp, yet gratefully warm. I felt as if I were confronted with a great, decisive leave-taking. Soon, soon I had to go back to the world of man. I wanted to drink to the dregs the last cup of freedom vouchsafed.

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The noise was repeated; and when I carefully scanned the trees, I became aware of a man who was gathering wood, breaking dry limbs and picking up drift. I did not care to be interfered with in my present mood; so I started on a silent, infinitely cautious retreat.
I returned to the northern river-bank and continued my way downstream. By the time I reached the lower end of the island it was late in the afternoon; and I was watching the way the current on the far side broke into an eddy where it touched the stagnant water of the dead arm when a strange sight caught my eye.
From under the overhanging trees of the island a boat detached itself. It was loaded with brushwood. The sticks had been laid crosswise over the boat -- making a load twelve to sixteen feet wide; they were piled across its whole length, to a height of three feet or more above the gunnel. The load was so heavy that, where the gunnel of the boat ran lowest, in the centre, there was not more than one or two inches of freeboard above the water, the ends of the lower sticks on both sides dipping into it. On top of this load stood, gingerly poised in midair, a tall, gaunt man who held a long, straight pole with a boathook fastened to its end. With this pole which he moved slowly and carefully -- balancing the while -- he guided the craft. It looked as if he were performing a feat on the tight-rope. Fascinated, I watched.
He pushed out into the dead arm of the river, guiding his boat by the lightest and deftest touches of the pole on limbs and trunks of trees. I marvelled at this exhibition of skill and strength required for handling the enormously long pole without disturbing the equilibrium of the overloaded boat.
All went well till he reached the end of the island. But there he miscalculated a motion. The sticks of wood, where they reached out on the far side, just dipped into the furious current that shot out from beyond the point of the island; the next second his craft gave a lurch, settled down, was caught in the eddy. In order to recover

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his balance, the man made a step to the side; the whole load tilted over, and with a curious, grotesque twist of his body, he slipped down into the water which splashed up high. It looked so funny that I burst out laughing.

But my laugh changed into a gasp: the man had gone down like a stone. Then his head bobbed up again -- he was in the quiet water of the dead arm; his boat had gone off, careering, with the current. When he appeared at the surface, I saw that he was fighting wildly. He went down again, a burst of bubbles showed the exact spot where he was: he could not swim!
The weird feature of this life-and-death struggle was the absolute silence in which it proceeded. There had been no shout, no sound beyond that of the splashing water.
Now I am -- or was -- by nature nearly amphibious, swimming and diving being my favourite pastimes. So, the moment I realized his danger, I dropped what I was carrying stripped off my coat, and plunged in.
When I got him, he seemed to have given up; but as soon as I jerked him to the surface, he started to fight, grabbing wildly, impeding my arms. I shouted at him, but he did not cease. So I whirled him around, getting one hand under his chin and forcing his head back; and simultaneously I lifted the other hand and brought it down, edgewise, on the root of his nose. He hung limp for a minute, long enough for me to reach shallow water. I hauled him ashore. He sat up, in a dazed, half unconscious way. I left him.
This was an adventure for me, and I was pleasurably excited. I did not mean to leave my work half done. I ran downstream, caught up with the boat which had capsized, swam out, found its rope, took it ashore, and tied it.
Then I returned to the man. He got to his feet and shook himself in a strange way, just as a dog would shake himself after a wetting, or a horse when you pull his harness off after a hard day's work. I had never seen a

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man shake the water out of his artificial pelt in just that way. It had something contagious; I found myself rehearsing the thing in anticipatory impulses; I came near trying to imitate him.

There were other queer things about him. His hair was long, like that of a woman, grey; it was braided into a stout, long braid which was twice laid around his head, like a turban. His face, as I see it very clearly in my memory, closely resembled the face of Mark Twain in Carroll Beckwith's portrait, only that moustache and eyes and shaggy brows were grey, and there was absolutely no expression in his features. He was fully as tall as I was -- and I am over six feet.
Again and again he shook himself, but when he stood still, there was something of the stiff and silent dignity of the turkey-buzzard about him. His expressionless face had an albino-like look.
You would expect a man to say a word or so when you have just saved his life -- "Much obliged, old chap" -- or, "Thanks for going to all the trouble" -- but this man didn't. He merely looked me over and allowed his dead eagle-eye to rest for a moment on my things, the kettle, the tin-cans, my bundle, all which I had been carrying slung to a stick which rested on my shoulder.
His glance made me look down at myself. His eye had been halting for the fraction of a second on my knees. They were shaking violently. I became aware that I was sick with hunger and weak with fatigue from my exertion. Also, of course, I was wet through; and the evening was turning chilly.
The man walked off, up the bank, stepping with a strange leg-action and an uncanny, nearly supernatural dignity. Never a word he said. I looked after him, dumbfounded. But neither did I say a word.
Then, just as he was about to disappear in the willowbrush of the upper bank, he looked back for a moment before he went on. There was no expression in his vacant, bold eye even then. I could take that look or leave it,

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just as I pleased. I might interpret it as a look of fear or as a summons.

I chose to take it for a summons. I quickly picked up the shoulder-stick with my things attached, threw my coat over its end and followed him.
There was a wide band of shore-brush; through it led a narrow path which I followed in the wake of the man. The brush changed in character: from the willows of the bank to the thickets of the hillside -- honey-locust predominating.
At last, half way up the hill, we came to a shoulder in the rising ground which was cleared. The path now led through a tiny corn-patch to a hut beyond. I could look out here to right and left, for the corn had been cut and shocked. There was no other human habitation within miles on either side. The sun was touching the horizon exactly in the river-gap.
We entered the house. It was built of lumber, unpainted, with that silky-grey appearance which testified to the weather and the rains of many years. A large slab of stone served for a doorstep.
The arrangement of the room into which we came was as follows. The wall opposite the entrance held a small window, one and a half feet square. To the right there was a fireplace, built of the rough stones of the hillside embedded in mortar. Beyond it, a home-made door of thin boards led into an adjoining room. Along the wall to the left stood a home-made table; for a seat, in front of it, an upended box. In the corner, behind the door through which we entered, a rough bed was strewn on the floor: straw, covered with a rag-blanket: at its foot two or three more blankets lay in a crumpled pile. At a glance you knew it for a bachelor's establishment.
My host crouched down, squatting stiffly on his heels and built a pyre of woodsticks in the grateless fireplace. Then he stood again, whittled a small piece of soft, white wood into a fan-shaped flowerhead of shavings, disappeared through the door into the adjoining room, and reappeared

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in a minute or so with his stick ablaze. He applied it to the wood in the fireplace; the flame licked upward.

He took his smock off and hung it on a nail. His shoes and coarse cotton socks he removed, too, and laid them on the floor, close to the fireplace, along the wall. He did not pay the slightest attention to me. He moved about in a sober, grave way, slow and deliberate, with no unnecessary flourishes or bendings.
Thus he squatted down again, in front of the fire, but this time with his back to it, warming himself. His shirt began to steam over his shoulders; then he turned and sat a while longer. At last he got up and went out.
I began to feel "creepy".
But, while he was outside, I stripped my wet clothes off and slipped into my raincoat which was dry. I looked out of the window. The tiny yard of this hermitage contained a well and a large pile of just such wood as the man had lost. It was closed on the far side by a low building which seemed to serve for a pig-pen; I saw the man throwing feed into its rail-enclosure and heard the grunting of swine.
The man returned into the house and room before I had had time to pick up my wet clothes. He bent down and carefully hung them on nails in the fireplace wall. That was the first indication of the fact that he was aware of my presence.
Next he busied himself at the table, pushing things about and rearranging them. He reached up somewhere into the now dark corner over the bed and brought down a mug, knife, and fork. It seemed so much like a conjurer's trick that I nearly jumped. But when I looked closely, I saw that a box was nailed to the wall there, serving for a cupboard. Then he took a tin kettle from the table, shook it -- I heard the swish of water -- took it to the window, peered into it, and, finding the contents satisfactory, placed it on top of the blazing wood in the fireplace, pressing it down to keep it from tilting.
Then he went out again.

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I felt strange. Had I saved a lunatic from drowning? His actions were sane enough. As for his head-gear, that hair when unrolled must have reached down to his knees! It looked as if he took care of it; but that might be because it was wet. There was a reddish glint in his eye which was not really grey but whitish. It reminded me somehow, when at rest, of the eye of white rabbits; when it moved, of that of an eagle; it was so imperious.
When he came in again, this time, he dropped something large and light which rustled in the adjoining room and kicked the door open. He carried a sooty lantern and an empty box. The lantern he suspended from a hook in the ceiling; the box he dropped close to the door. Then he pulled the table out from the wall, put his box on one side of it, pushed the other with his foot to the opposite side, and lifted the tin kettle which was spouting steam, with the help of a stick passed through its handle. At last he sat down on his box.
Again he looked at me with a brief glance: take it or leave it; again I took it and sat down. He poured some of the contents of the little kettle into a mug and pushed it as well as a pan of unraised corn-bread and a tin of molasses across the table to my place. The beverage was tea, bitter with many stewings. He started to eat; and I, too, ate a little, very carefully, for I was no longer used to such sumptuous fare, and more from courtesy than from appetite, though I was hungry.
I concluded that the man was deaf and dumb.
When he had satisfied his hunger with great bites of corn-bread soaked in molasses -- he had a splendid set of teeth -- he got up; and, passing into the darkness of the adjoining room, gathered what he had dropped there before. It proved to be an armful of straw, good, clean oat-straw too.
This he threw into the corner opposite his own bed, spreading it out with a kick or so of his foot. On it he dropped one of the blankets which he picked up from the crumpled heap on his own side; and he stood and looked thoughtfully at me.
Suddenly he reached up and took the lantern from its hook. When he entered the adjoining room, leaving the door open, I saw for the first time that from its ceiling there were hanging down great bunches of half dried and entirely wilted "hands" of tobacco. So I was in the tobacco-belt! It also proved to be tobacco that he went after; for when he came back, he held a large "braid" of it in his hand; from which, after disposing of the lantern, he cut a generous chew.
Again we sat for a while in utter silence. I had found some cigarette paper in a pocket of my raincoat, had rubbed some of his "long-green" into granules and was smoking. I pondered a problem. I wished to speak, to say something. But, after having been silent so long, it seemed inconsiderate to start speaking now; there was something indelicate about words; I gave it up.
His large, heavy hands were resting on his knees; his shoulders were bent forward; he was staring into the fire which he fed from time to time. Suddenly I became aware that he was going to sleep. His eyelids fell; he began to nod; his head shot forward; and he pulled himself back, aroused.
As I got up, a sudden temptation was too strong for me.
"Suppose I'll turn in" I said.
I repented at once; the colour mantled my face; but not a flicker in his features betrayed that he had heard.
Yet, seeing my motion, he, too, got up, slowly, stiffly, reached for the lantern, and waited for my next move. When he saw that I turned to the litter of straw, he gave the lantern an expert jerk which extinguished its flame. Thus he deposited it on the floor and rolled in. There was enough light from the fire for me to lie down by.
You can imagine that I lay awake a long while. The mere fact that I was under a roof was exciting. Here I lay in the same room with this man of sixty or more who looked like an oaktree, lived like a hermit, and was either

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a lunatic or a deaf-and-dumb cripple. Even now he was weirdly silent. He lay like a log, without stirring. I had expected to hear him snoring; I did not even hear him breathe. Instead I heard mice and rats go through a veritable carnIval of running and jumping, capering and dancing. At first I had pulled the patch-blanket merely over my knees; but it turned pretty cold; and when I did get drowsy, I forgot all squeamishness and rolled up.

I awoke with a start, becoming conscious of the fact that somebody was moving about in the room.
The man had relighted the fire and was leaving through the door when I opened my eyes. I jumped up and felt my clothes which I found dry. While dressing, I looked around and wondered no longer that I had been cold overnight. There were large cracks in the single boarding of the walls; lack of fresh air was no vice of this habitation. The wood used in building was sycamore lumber; it warps and twists when exposed to the weather.
The man gave no sign of recognition when he entered. He had two eggs in one hand, which he put on the table. In the other he held the little kettle, apparently freshly filled, for it dripped with water; it he placed on the fire.
He went out again, and this time I noticed a peculiarity of his footfall. I found that, whenever he put his foot down, his heel touched the floor first; and, after lifting it again, he brought his whole sole down with a thump, walking in a knock-kneed way; he was a high-stepper.
After breakfast he seemed in doubt what to do. He moved aimlessly about. At last he went to the front-door, opened it as if to go out, hesitated for a second, and waited for something to be said or done.
I was going to hang on to him. He was not going to get off as lightly as all that! I had saved him from drowning, he was going to keep me for a day or two!
So I made as if to follow him; and he held the door till I took hold of it.
In the open, a subtle change in the landscape struck me very forcibly. There had been hoar-frost on the ground

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before; but to-day the crust of the ground itself was frozen. In the corn-patch the stalks and weeds north and west of the shocks were still furred with white. The leaves of the honey-locust and the great sycamores in the distant river valley were tinged with yellow. Overnight the season had changed from late fall to early winter. The next storm would bring snow!

My host wended his way down to the river and, beyond the willows, along the pebbly shelf of the beach.
We went down to his boat. He first pulled it up quite a piece on the sandy shore. It was a strong, heavy boat. Then, with a powerful heave, he turned it on its keel. He, I say; for though I made a pretence at helping him, I was so weakened by my late mode of life that my efforts, had they been needed, would not have counted for much. Then he launched the boat back into the water, took the rope in, and laid it down in the bow. For a moment he stood helpless, looking around. Apparently he was baffled because the pole was lost, which he had not realized so far. He went up to the edge of the beach, where the ribbon of the high-water drift was deposited, and selected a pole there. When he came back, he climbed into the boat.
Again, as at the door, he hesitated awkwardly. I climbed in after him; and at once he began poling upstream.
When we came to the quiet water in the dead arm, he landed; but since he did not fasten the boat beyond running it on to the sand, I did not follow him. He disappeared into the willow-brush; and after a short interval he returned, carrying another long pole and a tin dipper. He tilted the boat, climbed in and bailed the water out.
Then we went for a load of wood. He piled it just as high as the day before, possibly feeling safe in my presence; but he pushed across the dead arm before we reached the point of the island. This dead arm was strangely deep.
I stayed all day, and the next day, too. We kept at work; he carried the wood up with the help of a rope, slinging it on his back in huge bundles.

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The third morning, while we had our breakfast, I thought I saw a change, an ever so slight change in his manner. I cannot define it in detail. One trifle lingers in my memory.
When I had helped myself to molasses, he took the tin and, before helping himself, he looked into it, hesitating.
Maybe he considered that by two days and three nights of hospitality he had paid for the slight service I had been able to do him. It is true, I helped him with his work; but when a person can do a piece of work by himself, he cannot afford to hire help at the expense of a diminishing supply of molasses in the tin. I agreed with this unspoken argument and made, up my mind to leave.
When, after breakfast, he went to feed his pig, I rolled my bundle and tied my things to the stick.
He returned after a while but did not pay any attention to my preparations beyond a casual glance at the bundle on the floor. I sat for a while longer. Apparently he was getting ready to bring in another boat-load of firewood against the winter. At last he opened the door and stepped out, holding it for a moment, as was his custom, till I made a move. I picked the shoulder-stick up and followed. And down we wended our way to the river.
I felt soft in my heart. We had not made friends, but I had enjoyed his quiet, matter-of-fact hospitality. I should have liked to shake hands, to say a word of thanks to this man with the braided hair whose life I had saved.
When we reached the boat, we stood for a moment, awkwardly, he holding the pole in one hand, the rope of his craft in the other, and looking out to the water, as if waiting. I did not know what to do; with a shrug of my shoulders I turned.
Then I stopped and said, "I suppose, it's about time for me to be moving."
And something startling happened. The man spoke. He spoke with an effort, twisting his whole body in the act, the words sounding like those of an overgrown boy

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when he is changing his voice, hoarse, unexpectedly loud and husky. It looked and sounded as if he were heaving the words up from, let me say, his abdomen and ejecting them forcibly.

What he said, was, "I reckon."
Then he climbed into his boat and pushed off without as much as once looking back.
That was my first encounter with a human being in more than three months.
It affected me profoundly, probably because it came at a critical moment. As for the peculiarities of this representative of the genus homo, I did not feel called upon to judge him. I did no longer forget that possibly my own mentality would seem abnormal to most people with whom I might come into contact. Certain conceptions which were dimly forming in my mental recesses made me question the value of much that was highly prized by other men. I had found, for instance, that talking largely keeps you from thinking. Without reading as yet, certain passages in the story of Jesus had taken on a profound and new significance for me. A deep-rooted suspicion of all that is called learning, progress, culture pervaded all my thinking. I was no longer so sure of my superiority over those who had not received my "education". I had come to regard education as pretty much the opposite of what, in a sane world, it should be. It seemed to me to be a process of filling old wine into new skins. I began to suspect that there might be more wisdom in this "hermit's" mode of life than in that of the most refined and cultured scholar. Yes, I sometimes doubted whether he might not have deeper, truer thoughts than any one I had ever met before. Certain sayings of Christ's -- in the sermon of the Mount, during the last supper -- sayings which in the common interpretation were just words without meaning -- gradually grew upon me. More and more my thoughts began to circle around Jesus.
But I had gone out on a search when I started these tramps; I began to see that the search had been beside the

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point. So long as my search remained geographical, it must of necessity be a failure; at the same time this geographical search, though it might not bring me nearer to the thing sought for, was slowly fitting me to undertake the real search. Also, it taught me toleration.

Still, the give-and-take of the world was not to be forgotten. I should have to give as well as to take. These three days at the hermit's house were earned. What I had done for him was in my own estimation worth what he had done for me -- though, what I had done for him seemed trifling indeed because it had been so easy for me. But I came to the conclusion that in the long run only one kind of work would do for me -- and that was precisely work which did come easy: work which I should choose as play, as a pastime if I were not driven to it by necessity. If I could have earned a permanent living by pulling out of the river a dozen drowning people a day, I should have been glad to go to work right then. Unfortunately people were not reckless enough to risk their lives in order to provide a living for somebody else. So I could not rely on finding off-handedly what I was looking for.
On the other hand, once the problem was clearly grasped, makeshifts lost some of their repulsiveness. If it was understood that, no matter what I might undertake to do, provided it was useful, provided it was in some way productive, even though it went against my nature and could not in the long-run result in that profound satisfaction which we all crave -- in the "abundance of life", in Jesu words -- if it was understood that I could drop it whenever it became irksome, then, I believed, there were a great many things which I could do. Why not, for instance, help a farmer with his work? Why not go into some office and add up figures? One thing only was debarred from all my thoughts: selling in any form whatever. All selling at a profit was, for me, tinged with that taint attaching to Mr. Wilbur's game.
I began to feel more cheerful about my outlook. I

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began to see things not without a sense of humour. I even reasoned this way. Suppose I undertook to do what I did not know the first thing about: was I not eminently adaptable? Might I not quickly pick up the tricks of almost any trade and give an employer complete satisfaction even though, without knowing it, he had to teach me first how to do it? I did not care to get something for nothing; but if a man insisted on experience, well, might I not humour him for a while and later tell him that, when I started, I had had no experience whatever? I began to rehearse imaginary interviews which sometimes made me laugh.

The river banks and the hills beyond had donned their most gorgeous garb. Yellow and orange tints prevailed; but here and there the scarlet of an oak or a hard maple was embedded in it like a softly glowing flame.
Night-frosts were the rule now rather than the exception. The river itself, though during the noon-hours the waters still seemed warm, especially in shallow bights, took on a look of chill, particularly in the early morning when white, thready mists sometimes filled the whole valley and sometimes merely covered the surface of the water with curling veils.
A railroad ran close to the river for a while; it seemed sent by Providence for my especial benefit; for I found it easy to discover some culvert or short viaduct bridging a creek or a gully and yielding shelter for the night. A little fire goes far to heat even the out-of-doors if it is built so as to have its heat reflected from a wall behind or a roof overhead. I was careful to extinguish even the last spark of the glow in the morning, carrying a kettle of water from the river and pouring it over the ashes if they were still warm when I left.
It was under such a culvert that I had my next encounter with humanity.
One afternoon it began to rain; soon snow was mixed with the falling drops; and since a raw wind was blowing, this mixture became increasingly disagreeable. The

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drops struck through my thin clothing; they were cold, chilling me to the bone. I began to look for shelter, going up to the track and following it. I was out of luck, for I had to go a long while before I found what I wanted. It was dusk when I saw a cross-valley ahead. When I neared it, I went out on the cinder-slope; and I was just jumping down into the bushy hollow below when I caught the gleam of a light.

At once I stood rigid; I still had the instinct to withdraw when I expected to meet man or woman. For half a minute silence prevailed.
Then a pleasant though rough voice called out, "Come in!" and laughed at its own joke.
I jumped across the little brook bridged by the culvert and stepped out into the light of the fire.
"Hello, pal," the same voice said; "come on; supper's ready."
I saw a little man, round-faced, round-bellied, with a week's stubble on cheeks and chin and the pleasantest laugh on his features which I had seen for a long while. He was squatting behind the fire over which a kettle hung suspended; the appetizing odour of broth struck my nostrils; I threw my bundles down.
"Coming far?" he asked.
"Not very."
"Kind of cold out-doors to-night," he went on, laughing. "Want a roof overhead."
He looked me over with open scrutiny. I was not sure whether to stay or to proceed; but I wanted to get warm first.
So, while he rambled on, I squatted down.
"Got a cup?" he asked.
"No," I said; "I have some tins."
"Just as good," he nodded, "just as good. Help yourself. Squirrel-stew. Mighty nice."
I complied; and meanwhile my eyes began to roam. It was clear at a glance that this was a more or less permanent camp. There was straw tucked away in the angle between

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creek-bank and culvert; there was quite an outfit of dishes; overhead a large sheet of tar-paper was carefully stretched across the joists.

"Been here long?" I asked.
"Quite a while," he said, "quite a while. Nice place, too; but you've got to watch out for the section-gang. They steal like rats. I always break camp in daytime."
The stew was very good indeed; but I did not dare to do much beyond tasting it; I knew the danger that lurked in too-nourishing food.
The little man kept up a rambling, inconsequential talk.
"Well," I said at last, "I suppose I'll be moving along."
"Moving?" he asked, offended. "I guessed you were booked for the night."
"I was," I said truthfully; "but . . ."
"Don't let me push you out," he said; "I don't pay rent here. Say," he added animatedly, "yez aren't afraid of me company, eh?" He chuckled. "Afeard of me! Say, pal, I'm the harmlessest feller on earth, even though I'm wanted."
"Wanted?" I asked blankly.
"Yes," he said.
"Where?"
"Cincinnata."
He pulled a crumpled sheet of paper out of his pocket, carefully spread it on his knee, and smoothed it with a rough hand.
It was one of those sheets sent out by the police of the larger centres to rural authorities, containing pictures and descriptions of people who are "wanted".
He pointed to one of the portraits and said, not without a touch of pride, "That's me."
"But what do they want you for?"
"Bravery.
"Bravery?" I repeated, puzzled.
"Yea," he said. "I skipped. Knocked a guard on the bean and walked out."

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"Oh," I said, "I see. You have broken jail?"
"That's it," he nodded. "Didn't really mean to. Only I didn't want to let them turn me out in winter. Shouldn't have minded if it had been summer. Too much trouble to get back again. Don't mind it yet. Still nice outside. But in winter you want a roof over your head."
"Well," I said at last, "running away from the roof does not exactly seem the way to get under it."
"It doesn't?" he countered. "Shows what you know about it. I'm going to get caught after a while," he elucidated. "Pal of mine -- lives up there," and he pointed up the bank, "he's going to catch me and make two hundred bucks out of it, too." He chuckled again.
"How about myself? Aren't you afraid I might betray you?"
"You?" he laughed contemptuously. "I'll trust ye."
I wondered why. He looked at me, appraisingly.
"Hiding?"
"What do you mean? I? No, I'm looking for work."
"Work?" he exclaimed and laughed again. "I wouldn't pick it up if I found it. What kind of work?"
"Any kind," I said. "Want a roof overhead in winter." I grinned at him.
"Wall-l," he said, "mebbe I c'n help ye."
And he told me of a large farm, a little to the north and the west along the main road to Cincinnati, a company-farm, as he called it, where help was always wanted, so he said.
After a while he spread his straw, and we rolled in.
I had been lying for some time, trying to go to sleep when a thought struck me.
"Sleeping?" I asked.
"No," he replied.
"I was wondering what you had gone to jail in the first place for?"
"Punched an officer on the jaw."
"What did you do that for?"
"Cause I wanted to go to jail."

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I pondered that. I began to see light. But I wanted to make quite sure.

"Why?" I asked at last.
"Cause I like it there. That's why."
At that we left it.
Next morning I thanked him for his hospitality and struck out for the road to the company-farm.

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