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When with their pack and their outlooking smiles the Applebys prepared to start, next day, and turned to say good-by to Crook, he started, cried, "I will!" and added, "I'm coming with you, for a while!" For two days Crook McKusick tramped with them, suiting his lean activity, his sardonic impatience, to their leisurely slowness.
As Mother's bland determined oration ended, Crook McKusick, the hook-nosed leader, glanced at her with a resigned shrug and growled: "All right, ma'am. Anything for a change, as the fellow said to the ragged shirt. We'll start a Y.
McKusick," she said, severely, "you want to reform for the sake of reforming, not just to please some girl not but what a nice sweet woman would be good " "Nothing will ever be good for me, aunty. I'm gone. This sweet civilization of ours has got me. The first reform school I went to reformed me, all right formed me into a crook.
Crook McKusick glared, but Reddy joined the rebellion with: "I'm through. I ain't no Chink laundryman." The bunch turned their heads away from Mother, and pretended to ignore her and to ignore Crook's swaying shoulders and clenching fists. In low but most impolite-sounding voices they began to curse the surprised and unhappy Mother. Father ranged up beside her, protectingly.
"Oh, look out, Mother!" wailed Father, rushing after her, his own hands going down to his sides in his agitation. "Look out, aunty!" echoed Crook McKusick. "That's a bad actor, that guy." But Mother continued straight at the gun, snapping: "Don't point that dratted thing at me. You bother me." The sheriff wavered. The gun dropped. "Who are you?" he demanded. "Never you mind who I am, young man.
Crook McKusick vaulted up with startling quickness, seized the K.
Usually Crook McKusick was gravely cynical when he listened to Father's cataract of excited plans, but he seemed wistful to-night, and he nodded his head as though, for once, he really did believe that Father and Mother would find some friendly village that would take them in.
He was sure there was going to be a fight, and he determined to do for some one, anyway. He was trapped, desperate. Crook McKusick stood with them, too, but his glance wavered from them to the group at the fire and back again, and he was clearing his throat to speak when "Hands up!" came a voice from the shadows beyond the fire.
Father and Mother had started out from New York on a desperate flight, with no aspirations beyond the hope that they might be able to make a living. It was the hobo, Crook McKusick, who taught Father that there was no reason why, with his outdoor life and his broadened experience, he should not be a leader among men wherever he went; be an Edward Pilkings and a Miss Mitchin, yea, even a Mrs.
But his cheeks were one red glow, his eyes were bright, and in his laugh, when he finished, was infinite hope. If it had been Mother who had first taken charge of the camp and converted it to respectability and digestible food, it was Father who really ran it, for he was the only person who could understand her and Crook McKusick and the sloppy Kid all at once.
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