Over a tiny smokeless fire Griffith conjured biscuits, coffee, and beans, and the two men ate. Thady Shea probed his companion’s mind for future plans, and found only a vague emptiness; the ancient liked to spend each night in a different spot, that was all. Thady Shea proposed, with pursuit in mind, that it might be better to camp during the day and to tramp at night.
At this suggestion the ancient winked his one intensely blue eye. He winked with the uncanny gusto of an old man, with the horrible craftiness of an old man. His one eye winked, and the ancient was transformed. He became an emblem of doddering truancy, a living symbol of the soul which desires ever to flee responsibilities and to shirk the onus of labour inherited from Father Adam.
“Suits me, pardner. I used to do that over in Missouri, one time, ’count of a hawg bein’ missed from a pen. Anyhow, these nights is too cold to sleep ’thout blankets, which mine ain’t extra good.
“Still, a spry young feller like you, Thady, ought to have more get up an’ get to him than to be gettin’ in a mess o’ trouble. Take a goshly-gorful old ranger like me, and it’s all right; I’m a sinful man, an’ proud of it. But you, now—you’d ought to be aimin’ for something. I know, I do! That’s the trouble with folks; ain’t got no aim ahead. But no use talkin’. You got your reasons, I reckon.”
Thady Shea sat and stared into the fire. He did not take the hint to retail his story. He was suddenly thinking.
Memory worked within him. “It ain’t lack of ambition that makes folks mis’able and unsatisfied; it’s lack o’ purpose!” Mrs. Crump had said those words, and they had been burned into Shea’s brain. Purpose, indeed! What purpose now lay ahead, except the vague desire to rehabilitate himself? To become a vagrant with this tramp printer—why, this would be to shake off all the shackles of purpose! Yet, what else was there to do? What could be done, except to evade the law which by this time must be seeking him?
His head drooped. Was some higher Power extending its hand against him, closing every avenue of escape from his old drifting existence, forcing him back into vagrancy? His eyes widened under the thought. The thought staggered him. Then, slowly, his mouth tightened, his wide lips drew firmly clenched. A flush of fever darkened his high cheekbones.
Very well; he would go on fighting! For once the superstitious nature of the man was borne down by his inward anger, was borne down by the impotent feeling that he was a pawn in Destiny’s game; he rebelled against it. He rebelled against everything.
“By heaven, I’ll make a purpose!” he mentally vowed. “I’ll look for one—find one—fight for one!”
Even as the words rose in him, he choked down a vague feeling that they were false and erroneous, a feeling that this purpose could not be sought, but must seek him out, must come to him of itself. Yet he choked down the feeling, repulsed it. He reiterated his mental vow, fiercely insistent upon it.