A woman-hater, he; odd in a man who should be mellowing. But upon looking him up I found that this was his only apparent defection. A strange, restless man, however, with few friends; antecedents unknown; personal history taboo with him; and wanderlust possessing him today as yesterday and the day before.
“Again?” his banker blurted. “Bound across again? He only just got back from San Francisco, by automobile, via Salt Lake, Cheyenne and Denver. Drove alone. So he’s going through with you? That’ll be his fifth or sixth trip this year. He’s a regular Wandering Jew.”
“And his business?” I invited.
“Business? None.”
“On the trips, I mean.”
“My dear man, nobody knows. He goes and comes, goes and comes. You’d think he was hunting a lost mine; or a lost child, only he says he isn’t married. I believe he has covered the West from end to end and border to border. Did he show you his pocketpiece?”
“A half coin? Yes. And asked me if I’d ever seen the other half.”
“That’s it. He asks everybody the same, especially if they’re Western people. What he wants of the other half, no one knows. A fad, maybe; an excuse to keep moving. He’ll not find it in the air, that’s certain.”
“Not in the air,” I agreed. “He must have other reasons for going by that route. To avoid women, he intimated.”
“And to get there quickly. He never comes home satisfied. No sooner gets here than something seems to call him; you’d think he had an S. O. S. wireless by the way he hustles out again, maybe over the very same trail. Always searching, always searching; that’s the life of old John. And never finding.”