The Argosy, June 1904 — page 46: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

dd2 pensation in the spirit of exploration and adventure which his project awa- kened. Tickling his vanity with pictures of the sensation that his departure would create, he turned Eastward, and at two o'clock in the morning boarded a freight train that was pulling out from San Martinez. But Fate seemed wholly against him. The train ran barely a mile to a sid- ing and came to a stop with a clattering jar. . Romeo had squatted in a corner, his hands clasped around his knees and his head drawn into the collar of his coat. The shock when the train came to a standstill pitched him forward upon his nose, and as he was recovering himself the door slid noisily open, while the light of a railroad lantern illumined the shadowy interior. | Behind the lantern a hard, unshaven face glowered wpon him like an em- bodiment of his destiny. “Come out!” commanded a voice. Romeo shuffled forward slowly, mean- while groping in his fob-pocket with his thumb and forefinger. “T got money,” he said in a concilia- tory tone. In the old days such a statement had never failed to disarm the wrath of the most obdurate brakeman. “Come out!” repeated the voice. Romeo’s world was tumbling about his ears. “Say, PU make it a half-a-dollar for the next division,” pleaded the tourist. “Not for ten, nor for twenty!” re- turned the man with the lantern. “There was thirty men fired off this road last month for takin’ fares from bums, an’ if [ was back in the yard (d have you pinched. Now git!” Romeo was too slow to dodge the kick which accelerated his departure and sent him sprawling down the embank- ment. Picking himself up, he staggered away in the darkness, and presently the long freight train thundered past. He ‘shook his fist at it and followed. Just where he was going he did not know; his expulsion from the car had upset his plans to such an extent that he was for the present incapable of rear- ranging them. He had only one imme- PRODUCED BY UNZ.ORG comiclbooks.c© THE ARGOSY. diate desire, and that was for company —an attentive, if not a sympathetic ear into which he might pour the story of wrongs culminating in this final indig- nity. Romeo knew that the tract of country lying between the tracks and an aban- doned marble quarry a mile away was a favorite rendezvous for tramps. On winter nights when the annual move- ment was in progress it twinkled with their camp-fires lke the bivouac of a brigade. But the season was late, and not a solitary fire was visible. Still, he be- thought him of a certain shanty form- erly inhabited by the zanjiro, or ditch- tender, of a now dried irrigation canal, where he had once slept with two of his own craft. There he would perhaps find society —in any event, a shelter against the chill which precedes the dawn. The shanty was nearly hidden on three sides by a tangle of dried brush and vines that had grown rank with the waters of the canal and withered with their recession. It was half a mile from the tracks, in a cut between two hills. Romeo approached it by walking up the dry ditch, but when he was within fifty feet he saw the flare of a match through the unglazed window. It was not the discovery that the premises were already occupied that brought him to a halt—he had hoped for company. But not company of the type that had forestalled him. His experience had made him famil- iar with every variety of the outcast, and he had more than once consorted with ex-convicts and trusted them in full fellowship. But the man in the shanty, who was no other than Punk, had been marked “Dangerous ” by nature. The shifty, evasive eye, the twisted mouth, the misfit features, the stealth and inhar- mony of movement which mark the con- genital crook, were all present. Punk struck another match when the first went out, and, appearing at the doorway—the door itself had long since gone to furnish fuel for transient ten- ants—bent over a form which rested with its back against the front of the shanty. | ELECTRONIC REPRODUCTION PROHIBITED