The youth begged that he might accompany Bridge
upon the road, pleading that his mother was dead and
that he could not return home after his escapade. And
Bridge could not find it in his heart to refuse him, for
the man realized that the boyish waif possessed a sub-
tile attraction, as forceful as it was inexplicable. Not
since he had followed the open road in company with
Billy Byrne had Bridge met one with whom he might
care to 'Pal' before The Kid crossed his path on the
dark and storm swept pike south of Oakdale.
In Byrne, mucker, pugilist, and MAN, Bridge had
found a physical and moral counterpart of himself, for
the slender Bridge was muscled as a Greek god, while
the stocky Byrne, metamorphosed by the fire of a wom-
an's love, possessed all the chivalry of the care free
tramp whose vagabondage had never succeeded in sub-
merging the evidences of his cultural birthright.
In the youth Bridge found an intellectual equal with
the added charm of a physical dependent. The man did
not attempt to fathom the evident appeal of the other's
tacitly acknowledged cowardice; he merely knew that
he would not have had the youth otherwise if he could
not have changed him. Ordinarily he accepted male
cowardice with the resignation of surfeited disgust; but
in the case of The Oskaloosa Kid he realized a certain
artless charm which but tended to strengthen his lik-
ing for the youth, so brazen and unaffected was the
boy's admission of his terror of both the real and the
unreal menaces of this night of horror.
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