American fiction -- 20th century; American fiction -- California; Western stories
But it remained for Dickensen, Little Dickensen, to be the hero of the
occasion. Little Dickensen had come into the land with great dreams and
a pocketful of cash; but with the cash the dreams vanished, and to earn
his passage back to the States he had accepted a clerical position with
the brokerage firm of Holbrook and Mason. Across the street from the
office of Holbrook and Mason was the heap of cabin-logs upon which Imber
sat. Dickensen looked out of the window at him before he went to lunch;
and when he came back from lunch he looked out of the window, and the
old Siwash was still there.
Dickensen continued to look out of the window, and he, too, forever
afterward prided himself upon his swiftness of discernment. He was a
romantic little chap, and he likened the immobile old heathen the genius
of the Siwash race, gazing calm-eyed upon the hosts of the invading
Saxon. The hours swept along, but Imber did not vary his posture, did
not by a hair's-breadth move a muscle; and Dickensen remembered the man
who once sat upright on a sled in the main street where men passed to
and fro. They thought the man was resting, but later, when they touched
him, they found him stiff and cold, frozen to death in the midst of the
busy street. To undouble him, that he might fit into a coffin, they had
been forced to lug him to a fire and thaw him out a bit. Dickensen
shivered at the recollection.
Later on, Dickensen went out on the sidewalk to smoke a cigar and cool
off; and a little later Emily Travis happened along. Emily Travis was
dainty and delicate and rare, and whether in London or Klondike, she
gowned herself as befitted the daughter of a millionaire mining
engineer. Little Dickensen deposited his cigar on an outside window
ledge where he could find it again, and lifted his hat.
They chatted for ten minutes or so, when Emily Travis, glancing past
Dickensen's shoulder, gave a startled little scream. Dickensen turned
about to see, and was startled, too. Imber had crossed the street and
was standing there, a gaunt and hungry-looking shadow, his gaze riveted
upon the girl.
"What do you want?" Little Dickensen demanded, tremulously plucky.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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