“Nor a job,” Tom says. “And what about me?”
“You’d be a bird, too.” Karen giggles, suddenly turning giddy and flapping her arms wildly, hopping down the road and frightening everything around her. The birds stop their feasting and fly off a good distance to watch, screaming a warning to others.
Tom follows her, grinning. “No one will hire you if they see you doing that,” he chides.
“No one did see,” Karen says with a giggle.
“The birds did. Look at them.”
“And they have gone,” Karen says, ashamed of herself.
But the birds come back as the children follow the road more sedately. Ahead of them a tangle of yellow blooms stands beside the road. Tom picks a small bouquet for Karen, making a mocking bow. They do not fight much, this brother and sister. Not the way they used to. They remember, too often, that there is no one to scold them for it.
CHAPTER 4
Karen sighs and walks backward up the hill, looking off at the sea and nearly falling, then skips down the other side. Two plow horses in a pasture snort and watch her with ears thrust forward.
Someone else, quite close, is watching too.
Along the wide beach there are piles of driftwood, and beside one of these are the remains of a fire. Near this lies a blackened coffee can, and a long smooth trough dug in the sand, where someone has recently slept.
Now, fed and washed in the sea, the tramp has come out onto the road behind the children. He is much more heavily bearded than the men from the Black Turtle, white-bearded, and he carries a khaki pack like those of the children.
He sees Karen and Tom on the road ahead of him and he steps back into the trees and continues on his way at their speed, seeing, but unseen.
As the children top another hill they are close to the sea once more, and away in the rolling valley ahead of them a wisp of smoke rises from a farmhouse. “We will try there,” Tom says. They start down, but before they are halfway to the valley the brightness of the morning has gone and a wind is knifing across the hills, bringing rain clouds with it.
The brilliant green of the fields has turned to dark jade, and the sea is steel-colored. “We’d better find shelter,” Tom says, leading Karen away from the road and down a steep little valley where a stream sparkles. “There is a shed of some kind back in there; maybe it is deserted. It’s going to rain hard when it starts.”
The tramp, too, had thought of the shelter, earlier, when the clouds first started to form. It is deserted, sure, he knows that, but as the children head that way he draws back and starts for a cave higher up the hill that flanks the valley. He can keep dry there and watch the shelter below. He has not been to the cave before, nor to the shed either, but he knows of them, as do all hobos who come this way, from those who have passed before.
As the children follow an overgrown path along the edge of the stream a roar of thunder makes them hurry, and soon they are pulling open the sagging door of the shack. There is a scurry inside and a mouse runs out, leaving its nest behind.
The roof looks as if it might keep off rain, and the three walls seem good. The rear wall is missing altogether, and in its place a thick cluster of straight young trees stands guard. Beyond these the hill rises up.
There is a broken chair in the shack, a pile of rubbish, and an old broom from which the mouse has taken straws, as have generations of mice before him.
The children put down their packs and, as it is not raining yet, go outside to explore.
The stream bubbles invitingly, and they drink and wash. Below them is a boggy place, and in it, thick as grass, is a great stand of cattails. Karen grins broadly, as does Tom, and the children scramble down and begin to cut off the few green heads which shine among the brown ones, and to fill their shirts with them.
When they have all they can reach they start toward the shack once more, but suddenly they turn and are off up the stream in the other direction, for they have seen a patch of bright orange shining there.
The tramp, from his cave, watches the children with interest.
When they have gathered a quantity of day-lily buds they begin to dig for the roots, and when their shirts are full and the first drops of rain are beginning to fall they hurry back to the shed.
Tom stretches a tarp between some trees, clears the ground, and begins to build a fire. Karen takes a quart can from her pack, removes her extra clothes from it, and fills it in the stream. The rain is coming harder now, but the fire is going and sheltered by the tarp, and soon the water is boiling. First the washed lily bulbs are put in, then the cattails, and last of all, the lily buds.
When their meal is cooked the children put out the fire and take their dinner to the shed, closing the door behind them. Reaching in with sticks to spear the food, they are soon fed and warmed as the rain pelts hard outside.
I wonder how they knew to do all that, thinks the tramp.
“It was not as good without butter and salt, the way Mamma used to fix it,” Karen says.
“It was plenty good,” Tom answers. “Could’ve used some wild onion, though.”
“And meat,” Karen says.
“Wonder if there are fish in the stream.”
“Hmm, I wonder.”
They have finished their meal with peaches, put up Tom’s wet tarp at the back of the shack to fend off rain, and are stretched out on Karen’s tarp, heads on their packs, listening to the rain drum on the wooden roof.
“I wonder where that poor mouse went,” Karen says.
“Under the floor, probably. He’ll not get wet.”
“I hope not.”
“When the rain is over I’m going down to see if that ranch will hire me.”
“I’m to stay here?” Karen raises her head and stares at him.
“Would you mind? I think I’d have a better chance alone. They wouldn’t be so suspicious. I could tell them about you after I got the job. If I get one. That way, I could see what they are like first. Would you mind staying alone?”
“I guess not. Let’s see when it stops raining.”
But it does not stop. It rains the rest of the afternoon, and all night, and though they have had a good meal, the children are quite hungry by morning. When Karen wakes, the sky has cleared but the trees drip steadily. Tom is down the stream, fishing with the line and hook from his pack. Karen sees where he has dug worms, and sees that he has caught nothing yet.
She goes upstream to wash, but soon comes running back, making signs to Tom with her hands, and darts into the shack to get a tarp.
The tramp watches them. He has breakfasted on beans and bread.
As Tom goes upstream with the tarp Karen fills the water can and begins to clear the fire spot of its wet refuse. She covers the ground with stones, brings the dry trash from the shed, and soon has a fire going. When Tom comes back the tarp is looped around something heavy. Karen goes off downstream. This is Tom’s job; though he hates to do it, she hates it worse, and he is left to cook the four crayfish, plunging them alive into the boiling water. Karen returns when the cooking is done and the children have their breakfast. “You can sure eat ‘em, for not cooking them,” Tom kids her.
“I found them,” retorts Karen.
The tramp still watches.
The sun is well up when they finish. Tom puts on his clean shirt and looks across the valley to the ranch, then looks at Karen.
“I’ll wash your shirt,” she says, “and mine. If you don’t come back by noon, though, I’m coming after you.
“All right,” he says, turning to leave. It is then that he sees the tramp sitting behind a rock at the mouth of the cave. He is almost hidden, but the sunlight catches his hand. Tom looks away, then goes back into the shed and tells Karen to put on her pack.
Soon both children are following the stream to the valley, the shadows of clouds dappling the fields below them.
“It gives me chills to think of that man,” Karen says as they stand on the last hill, looking down at the ranch. “What do you suppose he was doing there? Why was he watching us?”