The Oakdale Affair | Page 5

Oakdale; but to-night there was at least one and this
one was deeply grateful for the gloomy walks along which he hurried toward the limits of
the city.
At last he found himself upon a country road with the odors of Spring in his nostrils and
the world before him. The night noises of the open country fell strangely upon his ears
accentuating rather than relieving the my- riad noted silence of Nature. Familiar sounds
became unreal and weird, the deep bass of innumerable bull frogs took on an uncanny
humanness which sent a half shudder through the slender frame. The burglar felt a sad
loneliness creeping over him. He tried whistling in an effort to shake off the depressing
effects of this seem- ing solitude through which he moved; but there re- mained with him
still the hallucination that he moved alone through a strange, new world peopled by
invisible and unfamiliar forms--menacing shapes which lurked in waiting behind each
tree and shrub.
He ceased his whistling and went warily upon the balls of his feet, lest he unnecessarily
call attention to his presence. If the truth were to be told it would chron- icle the fact that
a very nervous and frightened burglar sneaked along the quiet and peaceful country road
out- side of Oakdale. A lonesome burglar, this, who so craved the companionship of man
that he would almost have welcomed joyously the detaining hand of the law had it fallen
upon him in the guise of a flesh and blood po- lice officer from Oakdale.
In leaving the city the youth had given little thought to the practicalities of the open road.
He had thought, rather vaguely, of sleeping in a bed of new clover in some hospitable
fence corner; but the fence corners looked very dark and the wide expanse of fields be-
yond suggested a mysterious country which might be peopled by almost anything but
human beings.
At a farm house the youth hesitated and was almost upon the verge of entering and asking
for a night's lodg- ing when a savage voiced dog shattered the peace of the universe and

sent the burglar along the road at a rapid run.
A half mile further on a straw stack loomed large within a fenced enclosure. The youth
wormed his way between the barbed wires determined at last to let nothing prevent him
from making a cozy bed in the deep straw beside the stack. With courage radiating from
every pore he strode toward the stack. His walk was almost a swagger, for thus does
youth dissemble the bravery it yearns for but does not possess. He al- most whistled again;
but not quite, since it seemed an unnecessary provocation to disaster to call particular
attention to himself at this time. An instant later he was extremely glad that he had
refrained, for as he ap- proached the stack a huge bulk slowly loomed from be- hind it;
and silhouetted against the moonlit sky he saw the vast proportions of a great, shaggy bull.
The burglar tore the inside of one trousers' leg and the back of his coat in his haste to pass
through the barbed wire fence onto the open road. There he paused to mop the per-
spiration from his forehead, though the night was now far from warm.
For another mile the now tired and discouraged house-breaker plodded, heavy footed, the
unending road. Did vain compunction stir his youthful breast? Did he regret the safe
respectability of the plumber's appren- tice? Or, if he had not been a plumber's apprentice
did he yearn to once again assume the unharried peace of whatever legitimate calling had
been his before he bent his steps upon the broad boulevard of sin? We think he did.
And then he saw through the chinks and apertures in the half ruined wall of what had
once been a hay barn the rosy flare of a genial light which appeared to announce in all but
human terms that man, red blooded and hospitable, forgathered within. No growling dogs,
no bulking bulls contested the short stretch of weed grown ground between the road and
the disintegrat- ing structure; and presently two wide, brown eyes were peering through a
crack in the wall of the abandoned building. What they saw was a small fire built upon
the earth floor in the center of the building and around the warming blaze the figures of
six men. Some reclined at length upon old straw; others squatted, Turk fash- ion. All
were smoking either disreputable pipes or rolled cigarets. Blear-eyed and foxy-eyed,
bearded and stub- bled cheeked, young and old, were the men the youth looked upon. All
were more or less dishevelled and filthy; but they were human. They were not dogs, or