The Landloper | Page 7

you have failed to take everything into account. If that farmer-man and his wife pile into the ditch and break their necks, then all your general mediating in other quarters will hardly make up for the damage you have caused right here."
"The world is full of problems," sighed the man in armor. "There seems to be a hitch to about everything!"
After a few moments the farmer came pelting into sight on foot.
"What in the name of bald-headed Nicodemus do you call yourself, and what are you trying to do?" he shouted. "It's only by luck and chance and because the webbin's held that me and my wife ain't laying stiff and stark in the ditch."
"I am sorry," said friend Chick with dignity.
"Get a hoss used to bicycles, flying-machines, red whizzers and blue devils, and then along comes something else that ain't laid down in the back of the Old Farmer's Almanick! You there, the one that ain't crazy, what's this thing you're teaming round?" the farmer demanded, addressing Farr.
"In this case I am not my brother's keeper," stated the young man.
"Well, where is his keeper, then? He needs one." He walked around Chick and rudely rapped his whip-butt on the breastplate. "If I wasn't afraid of spraining a toe I'd boot you from here to hackenny, you old two-legged cook-stove!"
"If there has been damage done, I'll pay for it."
"There isn't any damage and I'm not looking for anybody's money. But there /will/ be damage unless you get out of this highway. If you're in sight when I drive my hoss past here again I'll lick you, even if I have to use blasting-powder and a can-opener to get you out of that suit."
Jared Chick went apart into the bushes and Farr accompanied him.
"This is a rather vulgar and discouraging adventure for high ideals to run into so soon," averred the younger man.
"I am not discouraged."
"I'm afraid you'll be even more greatly misunderstood."
"I don't expect silly old horses to understand me. My appeal is to men."
Farr sniffed scornfully. "You'd better let men alone," he advised.
"The world needs pure unselfishness," insisted Chick.
"The purer it is the more it is misunderstood. I have tested the matter. I know."
"Then you yourself would not go forth into the world and do good to men, without calculation and without price?"
"I don't think I would," declared Farr, dryly. "And I am so little interested in the matter that I think you'll have to excuse me from further talk about it. You have just had one illustration in a crude way of how the world misunderstands anything that's out of the ordinary."
"Have you any advice to give me?"
"Not a word. I'm not even able to give myself sensible counsel. Good day to you!"
"Then you do not care for my company longer on the way?"
"I do not. Excuse my bluntness, but these are parlous times for wayfarers and I cannot afford to have a tin can tied to me as I go about."
"And you are absolutely selfish?" called Chick.
"I think so," replied Farr from the highway, getting into his stride. "When I see you again I expect you'll be wondering why you ever were altruistic. That will be the case, providing you wear that armor any longer."
Jared Chick from behind his bush called, appealingly, "But I fear I shall never see thee again and I have some questions to ask of thee!"
"Oh, I promise to look you up somewhere in the world. If you keep on wearing that suit it will be easy to find you."
The man in armor leaned against a tree and pondered.
"A strange young man, and callous and selfish. But there is truly something under his shell. I would relish putting some questions to him."
Then Jared Chick plunked an ash staff from a pile of hoop-poles left by a chopper and went on his way along shaded woodland paths, avoiding the main highroad. He decided that it would be better to go by the roundabout way and show himself on the streets of town instead of on a rural turnpike where countrified horses did not take kindly to a real knight-errant.
"It was a good place back there for sleeping," reflected Walker Farr, remembering the brook, singing over the stones, the whispering alders, the old-fashioned house, and the somnolent landscape. "That man who has been living there until the day of his emigration has certainly been asleep for a long time and is sleeping soundly now; he is having a wonderful dream. The nightmare will begin shortly and he will wake up."
After a time Farr came into a village, a hamlet of small houses which toed the crack of a single street. It was near the hour of noon and from the open windows of kitchens drifted scents of the dinners which the women were preparing. All