Drift from Two Shores

CONTENTS. L THE MAN ON THE BEACH ... .1 Two SAINTS OF THE FOOT-HILLS ... 57 JINNY.......... 77 ROGER CATRONS FRIEND ..... 91 1WHO WAS MY QUIET FRIEND 114 VA GHOST OP THE SIERRAS..... 128 ITHE HOODLUM BAND a Condensed Novel . . 141 II. 1 THE MAN WHOSE YOKE WAS NOT EASY . . .169 IMY FRIEND, THE TRAMP ..... 180 THE MAN FROM SOLANO...... 198 THE OFFICE SEEKER ...... 210 A SLEEPING-CAR EXPERIENCE . . . 232 I FIVE OCLOCK IN THE MORNING . . . 243 WITH THE ENTREES . . 254 DEIFT FROM. TWO SHOEES. I. THE MAN ON THE BEACH. E lived beside a river that emptied into a great ocean. The narrow strip of land that lay between him and the estuary was covered at high tide by a shining film of water, at low tide with the cast-up offerings of sea and shore. Logs yet green, and saplings washed away from inland banks, batteredfragments of wrecks and orange crates of bamboo, broken into tiny rafts yet odorous with their lost freight, lay in long successive curves, the fringes and overlappings of the sea. At high noon the shadow of a sea-gulls wing, or a sudden flurry and gray squall of sand-pipers, themselves but shadows, was all that broke the monotonous glare of the level sands. He had lived there alone for a twelvemonth. Although but a few miles from a thriving settle ment, during that time his retirement had never beeu intruded upon, his seclusion remained un- 6 Drift from Two Shores. broken. In any other community he might have been the subject of rumor or criticism, but the miners at Camp Rogue and the traders at Trinidad Head, themselves individual and eccentric, were profoundly indifferent to all other forms of eccen tricity or heterodoxy that did not come in contact with their own. And certainly therewas no form of eccentricity less aggressive than that of a her mit, had they chosen to give him that appellation. But they did not even do that, probably from lack of interest or perception. To the various traders who supplied his small wants he was known as Kernel, Judge, and Boss. To the general public The Man on the Beach was considered a sufficiently distinguishing title. His name, his oc cupation, rank, or antecedents, nobody cared to inquire. Whether this arose from a fear of recip rocal inquiry and interest, or from the profound in difference before referred to, I cannot say. He did not look like a hermit. A man yet young, erect, well-dressed, clean-shaven, with a low voice and a smile half melancholy, half cynical, was scarcely the conventional idea of a solitary. His dwelling, a rude improvement on a fishermans cabin, had all the severe exterior simplicity of fron- ier architecture, but within it was comfortable and wholesome. Three rooms a kitchen, a livingtom, and a bedroom were all it contained The Man on the Beach. 1 He had lived there long enough to see the dut monotony of one season lapse into the dull monot ony of the other. The bleak northwest tradewinds had brought him mornings of staring sun light and nights of fog and silence. The warmer southwest trades had brought him clouds, rain, and the transient glories of quick grasses and odorous beach blossoms. But summer or winter, wet or dry season, on one side rose always the sharply de fined hills with their changeless background of evergreens on the other side stretched always the illimitable ocean as sharply defined against the hori zon, and as unchanging in its hue...