Argosy All-Story Weekly, December 4, 1926 — page 17: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

SILENT “My name’s Starley,” he announced. conversationally. “ Jerome Starley. And yours?” “Joe Budhouser.” The words came thoughtlessly. Immediately, the boy’s teeth caught his lip; it was plain that he wished the words recalled. | “Well, Joe, I’m not a deputy sheriff, like you thought last night when you tried to strangle me.” “T told you I was off’n my nut last night,” the boy muttered. “Sure, sure, I know,” Starley agreed heartily. “ Joe, I’ve been tracking the des- ert for eight years.” He paused thought- fully. ‘‘ How old do you think I am, Joe?” The ineffectual blue eyes surveyed the desert man again. ‘“‘I can’t tell,” Bud- houser muttered lamely. ‘‘ Your eyes look as if you had lived forever, an’ yet you’re young an’ strong. Gosh, terrible strong! I never saw such large hands, an’ such ridges on any one’s arms.” “ How old?” insisted Starley. “Well, mebbe thirty or thirty-five.” The desert man grinned. “ As bad as that, eh?” he muttered quietly. - “Joe, I’m twenty-four. Oh, I’ve lived longer than that,’ he hastened to add. “A year on the desert is like five years most places, and I’ve been on the desert eight years.” He was silent for a moment, perhaps re- viewing those years in his mind. Then: “Ever been in an orphanage, Joe?” he de- manded. The boy shook his head. “ Well, I have, Joe, and maybe that helps to make me look older, too. I ran away, Joe, like you’re running away. I was sick. Criminy, it seems a long time ago. “ Vet I can see it all again, like it was yesterday, a little room under the slate roof, four other boys trying to sleep while I coughed, the doctor. “* Tuberculosis.’ That’s what the doc- tor said, and then something about get- ting me away from the other boys. Well, I got away, all right. I was sixteen, and I knew what tuberculosis was. My father and mother had both died of it. “Yes, I got away, with the clothes on my back, a half loaf of bread, and a tall, thin body that almost split open with did for me. JERRY. 327 coughing. And I knew where I was going, too, Joe, the desert. I got here, too. ‘““ Kight years ago next month I dropped out of a freight car at Barstow, and crawled out on the desert. I think there’s a brown spot in the sand over there yet where I had my worst coughing and bleeding spell. But J laid in the sun, Joe, and rome the sun warmed me. “ It’s a terrible sun out ac but I never curse it, not any more, not after what it Well, two days later, I crawled to a water tank, and then I crawled back out on the desert again. “ Finally a man took me in, a Mexican section boss, Mateo Chico, a good man. When I got strong enough I worked for him —stayed there eight months. “He had a daughter, too, Angelica, a slender, brown, starry-eyed, beautiful girl. Loving, lovable, and I—but no matter. I knew she wasn’t for me. So I got a burro, and a pack, and—well, here I am, a desert rat, a wanderer. ‘“‘ Sometimes I work in a mine, sometimes I prospect, sometimes ride cattle, or herd sheep. But mostly we’re just wandering, Tin Can, there, and I.” He pointed his pipe stem at the burro, who was slouching forward toward the food pack, keeping a weather eye on his master. “ That’s my story, Joe,” the desert man concluded. “ You see, I’m not trying to capture you. You can trust me. Now what about you, Joe? You ran away, too?” The boy looked into the steadfast eyes of Starley. There was something compel- ling in those black orbs, something time- less, all-understanding, as changeless as the desert. Joe Budhouser choked, and caught his breath. Then he plunged. “Yep,” he said, “ I ran away, too.- Only I’ve always been runnin’ away, ever since I was nine years old. My mother—well, mebbe she wasn’t too good.” He averted his eyes at the confession. “My father, he was scum. So I ran away, gay cat first, then a real hobo. I’ve seen this rat cage, I’ll tell you. Frisco to York and back four times; Mexican border to Montreal. “ Hash houses, handouts, free flops, easy marks—I know ’em all. An’ more’n one GEomicbooks (E(0) in)