It may happen, however, that this idyllic dénouement is not realized; you make no house in twenty miles. You are fain at last to get into a stone breaker’s hut, or a wet cave or a deserted cabin. You come to a house with only three rafters left of its ruined roof, and you snuggle somehow into its one dry corner, possibly making a fire in a convenient place of bits of flooring, and old newspapers. By this you dry off a little, boil your pot, and make the best of a wet world. After all, one’s not likely to take cold or feel any ill effects. The open air gives strength and health to resist cold and damp. The body goes hot as you lie in the draught of the ruin; it finds its own heat and will dry your shirt for you as you lie there in the cold and the dark.
You find, however, that it is more cold in a ruined or empty house than in the open. The less ruined the house, the more cold. In some places you come upon many empty houses. The owners are far away; the houses are locked, the windows shut. There is nothing inside; every room gapes at you from its dreary window. It is always easy to get inside. Owners leave some door or window free. You get in on to the kitchen sink, into the dreary kitchen, open its further door and come to the silent parlor, climb the stairs, half fearing to meet a ghost, and come upon those weird bedchambers where no one sleeps. It takes some nerve to settle down there for the night. The wind whistles in the keyholes, creeps with a knife-edge under the door, searching your cold toes. You lie and quake, fearing you do not know what—the house imps, the sprites of dead children, the opening of the dread door in front of you and the coming in of some ghostly aged grandma, holding a candle in one hand.
Not a danger, but one feels one would scream, one would rend the roof of the house with a great yell of horror. I have slept in such places, but do not recall them with gladness. The best place is to open the front or the back door and lie down to sleep on the threshold, looking out upon the free spacious rain-drenched open-air world.
Or the tramp may seem to have better luck. He comes in the water-washed twilight into view of some lamp-lighted window and makes for it, as a ship for a harbor—any port in a storm. It is common to buoy oneself up with unusual hopes about that window and the home behind it. The tired man thinks of a happy cosy home, joy in welcome, warmth in hospitality. But too often the light proves to be a will-o’-the-wisp. The house may be a home, but you are not wanted there. The man of the house will tell you of a place five miles on where you can stay; he will tell you of a hearsay inn, and you must trudge on till you see another light. On such occasions the weary wanderer may feel bitter. He feels hurt. He feels he had a right to be taken indoors. But he does not think of his wild looks, his forbidding aspect, his drenched and perhaps holey breeches. It is getting late. The man in the desolate house is simply afraid to take him in, fears he may be robbed in the night, or worse.
In these inhospitable days it is better to use a little stealth—put one’s foot in the door, so to speak, get a hot supper first, win a few kind looks from the lady, talk of bed later. It takes half an hour or so to introduce oneself for a bed. It is only the rare chance where all seems to have been prepared as for an expected guest, a spare corner even laid at the table where the family is supping, an occasion to rejoice over and remember for a long time. I well remember one such time when I had been a long while in the snow, and landed up at a desolate ranch. It was as if a long-lost son had arrived. I was at once in the bosom of the family with a pack of new sisters and young brothers, to say nothing of a cowboy father and a farm-wife mother. Very pleasant! Rare!
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
THE OPEN
He is blooded to the open and the sky;
He is taken in a snare which shall not fail.