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To look at him was just as if one of the ancient patriarchs had been left on the earth, to let succeeding survivors witness a picture of hoary and venerable eld. My own father, auld Mansie Wauch, was, at the age of thirteen, bound a 'prentice to the weaver trade, which he prosecuted till a mortal fever cut through the thread of his existence.
As the idea stuck more deeply into his imagination he smashed his fist down on the table so that the crockery on it danced. "A damned good reason, say I!" "Who's your father?" asked Dick Wilbur, who eyed Pierre more critically but with less enmity than the rest. "Martin Ryder." "A ringer!" cried Bud Mansie, and he leaned forward alertly. "You remember what I said, Jim?" "Shut up.
The quick-stepping horse of Bud Mansie came near, and the rider wiped his blue, stiff lips, and spoke from the side of his mouth, a prison habit of the line that moves in the lock-step: "Take it from me, Jim, there ain't any place in our crew for a man you've picked up without knowing him beforehand. Let him lay, I say."
"What's become of Branch? Hasn't he returned?" "No. And Dick Wilbur?" "Boys, he's done with this life and I'm glad of it. He's starting on a new track." "After a woman?" sneered Bud Mansie. "Shut up, Bud," broke in Boone, and then slowly to Pierre: "Patterson is gone for two days now. You ought to know what that means. Branch ought to have returned from looking for him, and Branch is still out.
It carried less weight than any other mount of the six, and its strength was cunningly nursed by the rider so that it kept its place, and at the finish it would be as strong as any and swifter, perhaps, for a sudden, short effort, just as Bud Mansie might be numbed through all his nervous, slender body, but never too numb for swift and deadly action.
Yet the pilot crew were undaunted by any risks. Four of the men were at the oars; Mansie was at the bow with his flaming torch, and my father at the tiller. They got within hail of the ship, and after an infinite amount of trouble succeeded in saving four precious lives.
They scattered, but I kept right on and didn't never really stop till I reached the mountain-desert and you, Jim." "Which is a good yarn," said Bud Mansie, "but I can tell you one that'll cap it. It was " He stopped short, staring up at the door. Outside, the wind had kept up a perpetual roaring, and no one noticed the noise of the opening door.
Bud Mansie behind, for instance, kept his head slightly to one side and cursed beneath his breath at the storm and set his teeth at the wind. His horse, delicately formed, with long, slender legs, could not have endured that charge against the storm save that it constantly edged behind the leaders and let them break the wind.
And Gandil, from the South Seas, growled with averted eyes: "This is the most fool stunt the chief has ever pulled." "Right, pal," answered Mansie. "You take a snake in out of the cold, and it bites you when it comes to in the warmth; but the chief has started, and there ain't nothing that'll make him stop, except maybe God or McGurk."
Mansie Wauch's glimpse of destitution was bad enough; but a million times worse is a glimpse of hardened and unabashed sin and shame. And it would be no comfort it would be an aggravation in that view to think that by the time you have reached that miserable point, you will have grown pretty well reconciled to it. That is the worst of all.
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