During this period he brooded over his experiences and on his release
sought out the man who had arrested and robbed him and administered a
beating. He was once more arrested and clubbed and sentenced as a
habitual offender. When his term expired, the chief of police ordered
him to stay away from the business section of town under penalty of
immediate arrest, and all officers, train crews and detectives were
warned against him. Twice he walked miles along the western track and
caught a freight, only to be beaten and thrown off. He was too feeble
from abuse and confinement to cross the mountain wastes on foot, and at
last resigned himself to slow starvation in the rotting freight car. For
five weeks he had averaged but one meal a day, earned by doing odd jobs
around the outskirts of town, and his wonderful endurance had almost
reached its limit when we took him in.
Daily he has come to the camp for breakfast and supper, and has revealed
his gratitude for our attentions by many little helpful acts and a dumb
show of affection like a faithful dog.
Yesterday afternoon dense black clouds blew up while I was doing some
marketing, and before I could reach camp the most severe hailstorm of my
experience struck the town. I took shelter in the doorway of a cottage
to escape the fearful pelting, but a woman appeared and sharply bade me
be gone. I then stopped under a cow shed, but a man came from a near-by
house and threatened me with arrest. Buffeted by the slashing
hailstones, I struggled on to camp, only to find our little tent blown
flat and covered with limbs torn from the trees by the storm.
The clouds passed as quickly as they had come. The sun shone with
dazzling brilliance but little warmth; the sky resumed its wonderful
transparent blue; and in the rarefied atmosphere the distant mountain
peaks loomed clear and sharp with a deceptive aspect of proximity.
Despite the flood of golden sunshine the ground was still concealed by a
liberal coating of hailstones as night fell.
I had done all I could to make things endurable when Dan came in from
work, but he thought it best to sleep in some barn on account of the
intense cold. After seeking permission at four or five houses and
meeting with curt refusals and even threats, we returned to camp and
found Larabo feeding a rousing fire and busily scraping a spot clear of
ice. Here we set up the tent and spread our thin blankets on the ground,
while a cutting wind swept across the valley and threatened to tear our
shelter from its fastenings.
Dan’s work was finished, so as soon as we had thawed out and eaten
breakfast this morning he went to town to get a time table and see if
something could be done for poor Larabo. We have decided to take a
passenger train to the first small station west of here, so I packed our
baggage for the journey while Larabo looked on disconsolately.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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