Not
a dog barked, not a light flared. Yet the air seemed quivering with an
alarm about to burst forth. The night had taken on a strained feeling of
intensity, as though it held in store all kinds of terrible things. The
boys felt this keenly as they huddled against each other in the cockpit
and waited.
"You were going to tell me about your running away," Joe ventured finally,
"and why you came back again."
'Frisco Kid took up the tale at once, speaking in a muffled undertone
close to the other's ear.
"You see, when I made up my mind to quit the life, there was n't a soul
to lend me a hand; but I knew that the only thing for me to do was to
get ashore and find some kind of work, so I could study. Then I figured
there 'd be more chance in the country than in the city; so I gave Red
Nelson the slip--I was on the _Reindeer_ then. One night on the Alameda
oyster-beds, I got ashore and headed back from the bay as fast as I
could sprint. Nelson did n't catch me. But they were all Portuguese
farmers thereabouts, and none of them had work for me. Besides, it was
in the wrong time of the year--winter. That shows how much I knew about
the land.
"I 'd saved up a couple of dollars, and I kept traveling back, deeper
and deeper into the country, looking for work, and buying bread and
cheese and such things from the storekeepers.
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