This man attracted him strangely. The odd contrast of iron-gray hair and coal-black brows made the man’s face compelling. The slate-blue eyes, too, added to the contrast, and the myriad crow’s-feet that made a fine network about them gave the face a kindly personality. He wore a gray flannel shirt, and his colorless trousers were held up by a belt. The heels of his boots were high and slender. The trousers legs covered the tops of them, but they were rolled up smoothly at the bottoms, displaying four inches of bootlegs.
At the end of the fifteen minutes a great triangle was hammered upon in the vicinity of where the cooks labored. Instantly every man dropped whatever he had in hand and hurried in the direction of the odorous ham and coffee.
No tables had been set up, and the tramp laborers formed a line, took their food in their hands from the cook’s helpers in the form of sandwiches, and sat on the ground under lofty cottonwoods. With a cup of smoking coffee in one hand, two hot fried-ham sandwiches in the other, and an enormous boiled potato in his pocket, Joshua Cole found a place. And as he seated himself he saw, likewise laden and coming toward him, the squat man who had awakened his interest. To his surprise the man came directly to his tree, squatted on his heels with a little grunt, and deposited his grub before him in a nest of clean, slick leaves.
“Hot as hell, ain’t it?” he vouchsafed. “Thought I’d like to make yer acquaintance, pardner. You ain’t a tramp, I take it?”
The last sentence was a question, and Joshua made reply: “Yes, I’ve been a tramp for over a year.”
“Uh-huh—I savvy.” The man imbedded a set of perfect white teeth in a ham sandwich to the ruination of nearly half of it. Then, with his mouth full, he talked on, thus:
“Uh-huh—I get ye, pardner. Guess I been a tramp myself. One right now, f’r that matter. But I mean a reg’lar tramp—like these here jaspers here.” He waved the doomed remainder of the sandwich in a semi-circle to indicate the squatting diners.
“Well, perhaps not,” Joshua agreed with him. “Anyway, I’m on the bum and needed a job.”
“Here, too. I drifted in here from up about Wild Woman Springs. Been drivin’ stage since the Lord knows when between Wild Woman an’ the mines up at G-string Mountain. Six-up over seventeen miles o’ the worst grade in the San Antones. Then what d’ye think they done? Built a new road and put on automobiles. Result—California Bill Fox loses his job. Broke, as always, o’ course. So I drifts down here to Spur yistiddy, and to-day when this outfit rambles in I hits the boss for a freightin’ job. Guess I got it, ’cause I know this country. An’ he took a likin’ to me, seems, for he made me a straw boss over the unloadin’ until the outfit’s ready to move. That’s me, pardner—an’ I ain’t a tramp, rightly speakin’. I know you ain’t either. But what I’m tryin’ to get at is, what are you? Course I ain’t aimin’ to be too bold.”
“Well,” Joshua replied, “I guess I’m not much of anything. I’m from the East—away back, almost on the Atlantic. I was broke, and I rambled West. I worked here and there all over the country at one thing and another, and I’ve been on the railroad grade several times. I worked for three months on a little job on the M. K. and T., and in Texas a while on the Southern Pacific. I learned how to drive a team and I worked in heavy rock a little in Colorado. I can use a striking hammer and handle powder fairly well. That’s what I like best.”