Then Ill Come Back to You | Page 5

it est nachelly hed to be! Haow--haow many houses
would you reckon they might be daown--daown in thet there holler?"
The owner of the white-columned house gave the question its meed of
reflection.
"Well, I--I'd say quite a few hundred, at least."
The odd little figure bobbed his head.
"Thet's what Old Tom always sed," he muttered, more to himself than
to his hearer. "An'--an' I guess I ain't never rightly believed him till
naow." And then: "Is--is New Yor-rk any bigger?" he asked.
The man at the picket fence smiled again, but the smile was without
offense.
"Well, yes," he answered. "Yes, considerably bigger, I should judge.
Twice as large, at least, and maybe more than that."
The boy did not answer. He just faced about to stare once more. And
then the miracle came to pass. Around a far bend in Dexter Allison's
single spur track there came careening an ashmatic switch engine with
a half-dozen empty flats in tow. With a brave puffing and blowing of
leaky cylinder heads, it rattled across an open space between piles of
timber in the mill-yard and disappeared with a shrill toot of warning for
unseen workmen upon the tracks ahead. The boy froze to granite-like
immobility as it flashed into view. Long after it had passed from sight
he stood like a bit of a fantastic figure cut from stone. Then a tremor

shook him from head to foot, and when it came slowly about Caleb saw
that his small face was even whiter than it had been before beneath its
coat of tan and powdery dust.
He swallowed hard, and tried to speak--and had to swallow again
before the words would come.
"Gawd--I--may--die!" ho broke out falteringly then. "There goes a
injine! A steam injine--wan't it?"
Long afterward, when he had realized that the boy's life was to bring
again and again a repetition of that sublime moment of realization--a
moment of fulfillment unspoiled by surfeit or sophistication or a
blunted capacity to marvel, which Caleb had seen grow old and stale
even in the children he knew, he wondered and wished that he might
have known it himself, once at least. Years of waiting, starved years of
anticipation, he felt after all must have been a very little price to pay for
that great, blinding, gasping moment. But at the time, amazed at the
boy's white face, amazed at the hushed fervor in the words he
forgot,--he spoke before he thought.
"But haven't you ever seen an engine before?" he exclaimed.
As soon as the question had left his lips he would have given much to
have had it back again; but at that it failed to have the effect which he
feared too late to check. Instead of coloring with hurt and shame,
instead of subterfuge or evasion, the boy simply lifted his eyes levelly
to Caleb's face.
"I ain't never seed nuthin'," he stated patiently. "I ain't never seed
more'n three houses together in a clearin' before. I--I ain't never been
outen the timber--till today. But I aim to see more, naow--before I git
done!"
The man experienced a peculiar sensation. The boy's low, passionlessly
vehement statement somehow made him feel that it wasn't a boy to
whom he was talking, but a little and grave old man. And suddenly the
desire seized him to hear more of that low, direct voice; the impulse

came to him and Caleb, whose whole life had been as free from erratic
snap-judgments as his broad face was of craft, found joy in acting upon
it forthwith, before it had time to cool.
"The view is excellent from my veranda," he waved a hand behind him.
"And--you look a little warm and tired. If your business is not of too
pressing a nature--have you----" he broke off, amazed at his helpless
formality in the matter--"have you come far?"
And he wondered immediately how the boy would receive that
suggestion that he hesitate, there with the "city" in front of him, a
fairy-tale to be explored. And again he was allowed to catch a glimpse
of age-old spirit--a glimpse of a man-sized self-discipline--beneath the
childish exterior.
The boy hesitated a moment, but it was his uncertainty as to just what
Caleb's invitation had offered, and not the lure of the town which made
him pause. He took one step forward.
"I been comin' since last Friday," he explained. "I been comin' daown
river for three days naow--and I been comin' fast!"
Again that measuring, level glance.
"An' I ain't got no business--yit," he went on. "Thet's what I aim to
locate, after I've hed a chance to look around a trifle. But I am tired a
little, an' so if you mean thet you're askin' me to stop for a minit--if you
mean