Broken to the Plow Part 26

"Yes ... you're quite right."

The boat was swinging into the slip. Already a crowd was moving down upon them.

"That's why I spoke to you. A man who's been through h.e.l.l is like a field freshly broken to the plow. He's ready for seed."

Fred cast an ironical glance at the man before him. "And you, I suppose, are the sower," he said, mockingly. "A parson?"

The other laughed, disclosing greenish teeth. "Of a sort... Perhaps high priest would be nearer the truth. There's a certain purposeful cruelty about that term which appeals to me. I'm a bit of a fanatic, you know... But I like to get my recruits when they're bleeding raw. I like them when the salt of truth can sting deep... Wounds heal so quickly ... so disgustingly quickly."

He spat contemptuously and began to cram a blackened pipe to overflowing. The boat had landed and already the crowd was moving up the ap.r.o.n. Fred and his companion felt themselves urged forward by the pressure of this human tide.

"Come and have some coffee with me," Fred heard the man at his side say in a half-commanding tone. "My name is Storch. What shall I call you?"

"Anything you like!" Fred snapped, viciously.

The other laughed. "You're in capital form! Upon my word we'll get on famously together." And he spat again, this time with satisfaction and rare good humor.

Fred Starratt looked up. They had emerged suddenly from the uncertain twilight of a stone-flanked corridor into a harsh blue-white flood of electricity. A confused babble of noises fell upon his ears. He put out his hand instinctively and clutched the arm of the man at his side.

"Yes ... yes..." the voice of his companion broke in, rea.s.suringly.

"You're all right. In a moment ... after you've had coffee things will..."

He clutched again and presently, like a drowning man borne upon the waves by a superior force, he felt himself guided through a maze of confusing details, into swift and certain safety.

The coffee house into which Fred Starratt had been led by Storch was choked with men and the thick odor of coffee and fried ham. To a man who had eaten sparingly for days the smell of food was nauseating.

Storch ordered coffee for himself and a bowl of soup for Fred. This last was a good choice in spite of the fact that for a moment Fred felt instinctive rebellion. These pale, watery messes were too suggestive of Fairview. But in the end the warm fluid dissipated his weakness and he began to experience a normal hunger.

Storch finished his cup of coffee and wiped a dark-brown ooze from his upper lip with a paper napkin.

"Better take a slice of bread or two," he advised Fred, "and then call it quits. You'll feel better in the long run. A starved stomach shouldn't be surprised with too much food."

Fred obeyed. He could see that this man understood many things.

Gradually the crowd thinned. Soon only Fred and Storch were left at the particular table that they had chosen. Stragglers came and went, but still Storch made no move to go, and Fred was equally inactive. He felt warm and comfortably drowsy and, on the whole, quite content. The waiter cleared away the empty dishes and then discreetly ignored them.

Fred fell to studying his reflection in the polished mirror running the length of the room. He had to acknowledge that he looked savage, with his hair long and untidy and a bristling, sunburnt beard smothering his features. And suddenly, in the intensity of his concentration, he felt a swooning sense of nonexistence, as if his inner consciousness had detached itself someway from the egotism of the flesh and stood apart, watching... He was recalled by Storch's voice. He shuddered slightly and turned his face toward his questioner.

"I didn't hear what you said," escaped him.

Storch leaned forward. "I was asking what you were doing ... up north in the mountains during December. Only a desperate man or a fool would take a chance like that... And I can see you're not a fool... There aren't any prisons up that way that I know of."

"_Prisons_! What do you mean?"

"You've escaped from somewhere."

"How do you know?"

"You're still furtive in spite of your pretended calm. I know the look. I know the feeling. I've seen scores of men who have been through the mill. I've been through the mill myself. Not once, but several times. I've been in nearly every jail in the country worth putting up at... Even the Federal prisons haven't been proof against me. I've beat them all. It's a game I like to play. Just as one man plunges into stocks, or another breaks strikes, or another leads a howling mob to victory... Every man has his game. What's yours?"

Fred shrugged. "Why are you telling me all this?" he countered. "You don't know me."

Storch laughed, showing his greenish teeth again. "What difference does that make?... I'm a pretty good judge of character, and I think I've got you right. You might play a rough game, but it would be square--according to your standards... I question most standards, but that is neither here nor there. They shackle some people extraordinarily. Just now you're drifting about without any. But you'll tie to some sort of anchor pretty soon... That's why you interest me. I want to get you while you're still drifting."

Fred felt a sudden chill. He was suspicious of this ironically genial man opposite him who bought him food and then prodded for his secret.

There was something diabolical about the way he calmly admitted an impersonal but curiously definite interest.

"What is your business, anyway?" Fred shot out, suddenly.

"I'm a fisher for men," he replied, cryptically. "Some people build up ... others destroy. There must be always those who clear the ground--the wreckers, in other words... There's too much attention paid to building. Folks are in such a hurry they go about rearing all kinds of crazy structures on rotten foundations... I'm looking for some human dynamite to make a good job."

Fred drew back. "You've got me wrong," he said. "I'm not a radical."

"Not yet, of course. Your kind take a lot of punishment before they see the light. But you're a good prospect--a d.a.m.ned good prospect.

You're a good deal like a young fellow I met last fall when I was working over in the s.h.i.+pyards in Oakland. He--"

"s.h.i.+pyards?" interrupted Fred. "Not Hilmer's s.h.i.+pyards, by any chance?"

Storch leaned forward, drawing his s.h.a.ggy eyebrows together. "Why?"

"I know Hilmer, that's all."

Storch continued his searching scrutiny. Fred felt uneasy--it seemed as if this man opposite him was drawing the innermost secret of his soul to the surface. Finally Storch rubbed his hands together with an air of satisfaction as he said:

"So you know Hilmer!... That makes you all the more interesting...

Well, well, let's be moving. I'll put you up for the night. I've got a shelter, such as it is."

Fred rose. He had an impulse to refuse. There was something uncanny about the power of Storch. He was at once fascinating and repulsive.

But, on second thought, any shelter was better than a night spent on the streets. He had had two months of buffeting and he was ready for even an indifferent comfort.

He ended by going with his new-found friend. They trotted south along the Embarcadero, hugging the shadows close. This street, once noisy with a coa.r.s.e, guzzling gayety, was silent. A few disconsolate men hung about the emasculated bars trying to rouse their sluggish spirits on colicky draughts of near beer and grape juice, but the effect was dismal and forbidding. Fred felt a great depression overwhelm him.

He had grown accustomed to the silence of the open s.p.a.ces, but this silence of the city had a portentous quality which frightened him. It reminded him of that ominous quiet that had settled down on Fairview after that heartbreaking celebration on Christmas Eve. What were men doing with their idle moments? How were they escaping from the drab to-day? Did the crowded lobbies of the sailors' lodging houses spell the final word in the bleak entertainment that intolerance had left them? Upon one of the street corners a Salvation Army la.s.sie harangued an indifferent handful. But there seemed nothing now from which to save these men except monotony, and religion of the fife-and-drum order was offering only a very dreary escape. Did the moral values of negative virtue make men any more admirable? he found himself wondering.

Storch led the way in silence. Finally they turned up toward the slopes of Rincon Hill. A cl.u.s.ter of shacks, clinging crazily to the tawny banks, loomed ahead in the darkness. Storch clambered along a beaten trail and presently he leaped toward the broader confines of a street which opened its arms abruptly to receive them. Fred followed.

The thoroughfare upon which he found himself standing was little more than a lane, hedged on either side by crazy structures that nearly all had sprung to rambling life from one-roomed refugee shacks which had dotted the city after the fire and earthquake. Most of them were vine clad and brightened with beds of scarlet geraniums, but the house before which Storch halted rose uncompromisingly from the sun-baked ground without the charity of a covering. Storch turned the key and threw the door open, motioning Fred to enter. Fred did as he was bidden and found himself in a cluttered room, showing harshly in the light streaming in from a near-by street lamp. The air was foul with stale tobacco, refuse, and imprisoned odors of innumerable greasy meals and the sweaty apparel of men who work with their hands.

Storch lighted a lamp. A tumble-down couch stood against the wall, and in an opposite corner a heap of tattered quilts had been flung disdainfully. Tables and chairs and even the floor were piled with papers and cheaply covered books and tattered magazines.

Storch pointed to the couch. "You sleep there to-night. I'll roll up on the floor."

It never occurred to Fred to protest. The two began to shed their outer garments. Fred crawled in between the musty quilts. Storch blew out the lamp, and Fred saw him move toward the quilts in the corner.

Without bothering to straighten them out he flung himself down and pulled a covering over him. The light from the street lamp continued to flood the room. Presently Fred heard Storch chuckling.

"So you know Hilmer!" he was repeating again, making a sound of satisfaction, as one does over a succulent morsel. "Well ... well ...

fancy how things turn out!"

Fred made no reply, and after a time a gentle snoring told that Storch had fallen asleep.