A sense of age made him choke again with
wrath. That other vehicle, that was youth, with youth's pace; it was
swift-flying with the hope of dreams. He began to comprehend those two
children ahead of him, and he knew a sudden and strange awe, because he
understood the power of their young blood, the power to fly strongly
into the future and feel and hope again, even at that time when his
bones must be laid in the earth. The dust rose easily from the hot road
and stifled the nostrils of Stimson.
The highway vanished far away in a point with a suggestion of
intolerable length. The other vehicle was becoming so small that Stimson
could no longer see the derisive eye.
At last the hackman drew rein to his horse and turned to look at
Stimson.
"No use, I guess," he said.
Stimson made a gesture of acquiescence, rage, despair. As the hackman
turned his dripping horse about, Stimson sank back with the astonishment
and grief of a man who has been defied by the universe. He had been in a
great perspiration, and now his bald head felt cool and uncomfortable.
He put up his hand with a sudden recollection that he had forgotten his
hat.
At last he made a gesture. It meant that at any rate he was not
responsible.
A TENT IN AGONY
A SULLIVAN COUNTY TALE
Four men once came to a wet place in the roadless forest to fish. They
pitched their tent fair upon the brow of a pine-clothed ridge of riven
rocks whence a bowlder could be made to crash through the brush and
whirl past the trees to the lake below.
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