It was mid-morning now, and the sunshine had warmed the early March day to a temperature more kindly than any they had experienced for a week. Wayne led the way to a sheltered nook in the lee of an empty shed near the railroad and seated himself on a discarded wheelbarrow. June followed suit and Sam began an excited search for rats. The town was wide-awake and very busy now. Smoke poured from neighbouring stacks and chimneys and the roar of machinery came to them from the big factory close by. Trains passed and locomotives shrieked and clanged their brazen bells. Drays and trucks moved noisily along the cobbled street in the direction of the freight yard, piled high with goods in bales and boxes.
“Reckon,” said June, “this is a right smart town, Mas’ Wayne.”
Wayne nodded. He was still regretting the loss of his money and now he reverted to the question of how and where he had parted from it. They discussed it at some length and eventually decided that it had somehow got out of his pocket last night in the freight car. To be quite, quite certain that it was really gone, Wayne once more emptied his pockets and turned them all inside out. But the money was not there and June shook his kinky head in silent sympathy. Sam gave up his rat hunt and threw himself, panting, in the sunlight at the boys’ feet.
“Well, it’s gone,” said Wayne finally. “And there’s no use crying about it. But what I want to know is how we’re to get to New York on thirty cents. That man said it was about a hundred and fifty miles and I reckon it’ll take us ’most a week, don’t you?”
“Depends,” said June. “If we’s lucky and gets plenty of free rides——”
“They’re too particular around here,” interrupted Wayne sadly. “I reckon it’ll be mighty hard to get into freight cars after this, June. We’ll just have to foot it, and thirty cents won’t last long on the road. Folks ain’t awfully hospitable up North, I’ve heard, and we can’t depend on getting meals free. Anyway, I don’t want to. It’s too much like begging. That man as much as called us tramps, and that woman said we were tramps. Well, we aren’t. We’ve paid for everything anyone would let us pay for, so far, excepting the rides we stole, and those don’t count, I reckon. Seems to me like the only thing to do now, June, is to stay right here and earn some money before we go any further. There’s no use trying to walk to New York with only thirty cents.”
June agreed cheerfully enough to that proposition. After all, it made little difference to him. New York City or Medfield, it was all one. To be sure, they had started out for New York, but it was Wayne who had settled on that place as their destination, and June would have been just as well satisfied if Wayne had decided for Reykjavik, Iceland. Besides, it was now almost three weeks since they had stolen away from Sleepersville, Georgia, and June’s first enthusiasm for wandering had faded sadly. In short, the idea of remaining stationary in one place for a while struck him as being very attractive. And perhaps the same thought came to Wayne, for, having reached the decision, he sighed as if with relief. It may have been, probably was, merely a coincidence, but Sam, stretched flat on the ground at Wayne’s feet, echoed the sigh.
Perhaps no better opportunity will present itself for a study of our hero and his companions and so we will make the most of it. Wayne Sloan was seventeen years old; to be exact, seventeen years and nineteen days. It had been the arrival of his seventeenth birthday that had decided him to cast off the yoke of thraldom and become his own master. He was a capable-looking youth, fairly large for his age. He had wide shoulders and carried himself straightly, a fact largely due, I fancy, to many hours spent in the saddle in his younger days. After the death of his mother, which had occurred four years ago, there had been neither saddle nor horse for him, nor, had there been a horse, would there have been opportunity for riding. His stepfather had his own notions regarding the proper occupations for a boy, notions that were at wide variance with Wayne’s. Handsome the boy was not, but you would have called him nice-looking. You’d have liked his eyes, which were so deeply brown that they seemed black, and the oval smoothness of his face which lacked the colourlessness of so many Southern faces. His hair was fully as dark as his eyes and as straight as an Indian’s, and just now, by reason of not having been cut for a month or so, was rather untidy about ears and neck. His nose was—well, it was just a plain, everyday affair, meriting no especial mention. And his mouth was no more remarkable. In fact, there was nothing to emphasise, from head to toes. He was just a nice-appearing, well-built Southern boy. At present his appearance was rather handicapped by his attire, for even the best of clothes will look shabby after nearly three weeks of dusty roads and dirty box cars, and Wayne’s apparel had not been anything to brag about in the beginning. A pair of gray trousers that only the most charitable would have called woolen, a vest of the same, a coat of blue serge, and a gray sweater comprised the more important part of his outfit. A black felt hat of the Fedora variety, ridiculously old-looking for the boyish face beneath, dark-blue cotton socks showing above a pair of rusty, dusty, scuffed-toed shoes, and a wispy blue string tie peering from under the wrinkled collar of a blue-and-white cotton shirt completed as much of his wardrobe as met the world’s gaze.
But in the matter of wardrobe Wayne at least had the better of his companion. Junius Brutus Bartow Tasker was never a dandy. Just something to cover him up more or less was all June asked. His shoes, which had been new just before the beginning of the present pilgrimage, were the most presentable item of his attire. They only needed blacking. The other things he wore needed about everything, including patches, buttons, and cleaning! His cheap cotton trousers would have proved an embarrassment to anyone of a less philosophical nature, his shirt was sadly torn and his coat—well, that coat had been a wreck a year ago and had not improved any since! Between the tops of his shoes and the frayed bottoms of his trousers appeared a crinkled expanse of gray yarn socks, to the public all that socks should be, but to June only two hollow mockeries. Below his ankle bones lay ruin and desolation. On his kinky head was a brown felt, or what had once been a brown felt. It no longer deserved serious consideration as a head covering. But all this didn’t bother June much. As I have already hinted, he was a philosopher, and a cheerful one. You had only to look at him to realise that. He had a perfectly round face, as round as a cannon ball—and lots blacker—a pair of merry brown eyes which rolled ludicrously under the stress of emotion, a wide, vividly red mouth filled with startlingly white teeth, a nose no flatter than was appropriate to one of his race, and ears that stood out inquiringly at right angles. He looked and was intelligent, and, barring the colour of his skin, was not greatly different in essentials from the white boy beside him. June was sixteen, as near as he could tell; his mother’s memory for ages was uncertain, and June couldn’t consult his father on the question for the simple reason that his father had disappeared very soon after June’s arrival in the world. Besides, there were five other youthful Taskers, some older and some younger, and June’s mother might well be excused for uncertainty as to the exact age of any one of them.