“That is one way to look at it,” Walton said, quietly, “and I thought as you do once, but I don't now.” After this they trudged along for several minutes in silence. The boy did not raise his eyes from the dusty ground, but he put his hand on Walton's arm, and there was a catch in his young throat as he said:
“Fred, somehow you make me think of my mother, When she was alive she was always wanting me to be good. She used to talk to me when I was a little tiny fellow. It was always that one thing over and over: 'My little boy is not going to be a bad man when he grows up, is he?' That's what she said time after time, and in a thousand ways she tried to impress it on me. She worried a lot about me just before she died. You see, my father—well, he didn't care what became of me, or her, either. He drank like a fish, and went with idle men about the loafing-places—in fact, he was shot and killed in a bar-room. I've tried pretty hard to have faith in what my mother used to say about God's mercy and all that stuff, but, Fred, God never answered her prayers to look after me. If I haven't had to go it blind, I don't want a cent. Selling papers on the street at night till nearly morning, sometimes sleeping in a stairway, outhouse, or stable. Then I was a messenger boy, for a little better wages, in a dead boy's uniform, and finally became a tramp telegraph operator. But, Fred, you are true blue. I don't want a better pal. The way you yanked out that watch and offered it to keep me out of jail when it was the last thing you had in your pocket—well, you can count on me, that's all. I won't try to stuff another man's grub down your throat, either.”
A man was coming toward them on horseback, and as he drew near he reined in and leaned forward on the neck of his horse. “Gentleman,” he began, as he pulled at his scraggy beard and kicked his feet more firmly into his wooden stirrups, “I don't know whether you fellows are interested in the like or not, but I'm riding round here and yon trying to drum up hands to gather and crate and ship my crop of early peaches. There is such a demand for labor of that sort all through the peach section that we are powerful short on help.”
The two pedestrians exchanged eager glances.
“Where is your place?” Fred asked.
“Why, it's a few miles to the right, over them hills,” the rider said. “It's the Womack farm. That's my name. I've got a hundred acres of dandy Elbertas, and they are ripening as fast as chickens in a hatching-machine. They are a thing that has to be picked an' got off in cold-storage cars at exactly the right minute or they ain't worth the nails in the crates when they get to market. They say if all us early fellows can manage to hit New York just right this year, we'll get three dollars a crate, an' that will pay big, as times are now.”
“How far is it to your place?” Walton asked.
“Why, it's a little better than seven mile—on a beeline; but I reckon by the nighest road it's a matter of ten or thereabouts. You fellers look a little mite tired, but by stiff walking you could get there by sundown. You can make good wages in a pinch like this if you will buck down to it—I calculate three plunks a day for each of you.”
“And how long would the work last?” inquired Fred, as he and Warren looked at each other, their pulses quickening, their eyes beginning to glow.
“Well, I could hold you down for two weeks at least, for mine don't all ripen at once; but after you was through on my land you could go farther north and get more to do.”