“I come to hustle, sonny, and I guess this is as good a place to hustle in as any. I’m in —— hard luck to-night, for I ain’t made a cent, and I met that cop on —— Street. He’s spotted me. I had to go down into my stocking and give him my last dollar to fix him, or else he’d have run me in, and I’ve been up three times this week. The judge told me he’d send me to the Bridewell next time.” She is a girl of eighteen, or, perhaps, of twenty years.
In another moment I see her lift her young, unfaltering eyes to a passing stranger, and in them, unashamed, is the nameless questioning which takes surest hold on hell.
And now she has turned again, and one soiled, gloveless hand is outstretched to us.
“I’m going, boys,” she says. “Good-night. You are in harder luck than me, for I ain’t hungry and I’ve got a place to sleep, so you take this. It ain’t much, but it’s all I’ve got. Good luck to you. Good-night.”
Men who have felt it never speak lightly of fear, nor are they ashamed to own to it—the fear that is fear, when unprepared you face a sudden danger whose measure you cannot know; when the scalp tightens with a creeping movement and the hair lifts itself on end, and each muscle stiffens in the cold of swift paralysis, while your brain throbs with the sudden rush of hot blood. But there is a feeling beyond that—“when the nerves prick and tingle and the heart is sick,” and the soul in ineffable agony of doubt and fear cries through a black and Godless void for some answer to the mystery of life.
A silver coin is glistening in Clark’s open palm.
“There’s two beers in this, partner, and a free lunch for both of us,” he is saying. “Let’s go to a saloon.”
Five minutes later he leaves me in high indignation, with a “Stay, then, and be damned!” and I feel some uncertainty about his coming back.
Soon I fall into the dreamless torpor which comes to relieve the too-heavy hearted. But from out its stupor I waken sharply to quickest sensibility. Quivering darts of pain are shooting swiftly through my body from a burning centre in my thigh. A night watchman stands over me, holding a dark lantern to my face. He has roused me with a brutal kick. In my heart black murder reigns alone for a moment, and then I remember what I am, and I limp into the street speechless under the watchman’s curses.
I had misjudged Clark. I have not waited long when I see him walking toward me. He is warmed and fed, and has soon forgot his earlier wrath in eagerness to “do” the night watchman. From this, however, it is not difficult to dissuade him on the ground of the weakness of our legal status as compared with his.