He came to a big farm.  He knew it must be big, because of the bigness of the house and the size and number of the barns and outbuildings.  On the porch, in shirt sleeves, smoking a cigar, keen-eyed and middle-aged, was the farmer.

“What’s the chance for a job!” Ross Shanklin asked.

The keen eyes scarcely glanced at him.

“A dollar a day and grub,” was the answer.

Ross Shanklin swallowed and braced himself.

“I’ll pick grapes all right, or anything.  But what’s the chance for a steady job?  You’ve got a big ranch here.  I know hosses.  I was born on one.  I can drive team, ride, plough, break, do anything that anybody ever done with hosses.”

The other looked him over with an appraising, incredulous eye.

“You don’t look it,” was the judgment.

“I know I don’t.  Give me a chance.  That’s all.  I’ll prove it.”

The farmer considered, casting an anxious glance at the cloud bank into which the sun had sunk.

“I’m short a teamster, and I’ll give you the chance to make good.  Go and get supper with the hands.”

Ross Shanklin’s voice was very husky, and he spoke with an effort.

“All right.  I’ll make good.  Where can I get a drink of water and wash up?”

[Illustration]

“JUST MEAT”

He strolled to the corner and glanced up and down the intersecting street, but saw nothing save the oases of light shed by the street lamps at the successive crossings.  Then he strolled back the way he had come.  He was a shadow of a man sliding noiselessly and without undue movement through the semi darkness.  Also he was very alert, like a wild animal in the jungle, keenly perceptive and receptive.  The movement of another in the darkness about him would need to have been more shadowy than he to have escaped him.

In addition to the running advertisement of the state of affairs carried to him by his senses, he had a subtler perception, a feel, of the atmosphere around him.  He knew that the house in front of which he paused for a moment, contained children.  Yet by no willed effort of perception did he have this knowledge.  For that matter, he was not even aware that he knew, so occult was the impression.  Yet, did a moment arise in which action, in relation to that house, were imperative, he would have acted on the assumption that it contained children.  He was not aware of all that he knew about the neighborhood.

In the same way, he knew not how, he knew that no danger threatened in the footfalls that came up the cross street.  Before he saw the walker, he knew him for a belated pedestrian hurrying home.  The walker came into view at the crossing and disappeared on up the street.  The man that watched, noted a light that flared up in the window of a house on the corner, and as it died down he knew it for an expiring match.  This was conscious identification of familiar phenomena, and through his mind flitted the thought, “Wanted to know what time.”  In another house one room was lighted.  The light burned dimly and steadily, and he had the feel that it was a sick room.