Clayton finished the cabin before the end of the week, and none too soon, for he had glimpsed a cougar in the distance. The next night they heard the beast prowling around their tree, and although Clayton tried to calm her, Alice's courage broke when the forest animal climbed the trunk and clawed at the door. That night she bore her child, a boy, while the cougar snarled and snuffled outside. Alice never recovered completely from the shock of bearing a child in these rude surroundings; she grew steadily weaker and her lucid moments farther apart. At last, three weeks after the birth of the child, she died.
Clayton buried her under a willow beside the stream. Her locket, which contained miniature portraits of her and himself, he kept to remember her by, and he tried to calm the child by swinging the pretty thing back and forth over his crib.
Miles away, in a hobo jungle along the tracks where the freights slowed to climb a steep grade, another boy-child had been born. The mother was Fat Karla, and the father was Big Jim Korchak, who called himself King of the Hoboes. There were others who claimed the title, but wherever Korchak was, he was king. Six feet four and broad in proportion, hairy, dirty, and foul-tempered, Korchak enforced his rule by the weight of his hamlike fists.
He and a half-dozen of his followers had encamped in this desolate place when Karla's time came upon her; now the victuals were running short, and so was Korchak's temper. From the hills they had seen a thread of smoke rising far out on the plain, day after day. "Where there's smoke there's folks," said Korchak. "And where there's folks there's grub." So the little band set out, with Korchak at the head as usual, and Karla in the rear carrying her little bundle. The child was fretful, and Karla lagged behind to nurse him. At last Korchak lost his patience; whirling on her, and scattering the other 'boes with his fists, he snarled, "Rotten little brat, what's the use of him anyway?" He plucked the child from its mother's arms and flung it down on the tracks. With a moan, Karla snatched the pitiful bundle up again, but it was too late: the child was dead. All the rest of that day Karla stumbled along like one demented, clutching the poor little body to her breast. She never spoke, but if any of the other 'boes came near her she backed away snarling, and even Korchak did not approach her again to try to take the child away. Toward evening they came to the forest by the little stream where John Clayton had built his hut. Softly the men crept up the tree. They listened but heard nothing. Korchak swung himself up through the branches, followed by the others.
John Clayton raised his head from his arms just in time to see the giant hobo fling the door open and rush in. He rose to defend himself, but one terrific blow felled him. He lay on the floor, his neck broken. The other 'boes were hurrying about the room, ransacking it of its pitiful possessions, but Karla leaped to the crib where the infant, awakened by the struggle, was beginning to wail. She snatched it up, dropping her own dead infant as she did so, and rushed out of the house. The others caught up with her a little way down the track, but Karla would not suffer any of them to come near her. She had another child now, and she would keep it.
In hobo jungles from Natchez to Point Barrow, the boy grew up sturdy and strong. His mother called him George, but because the bottoms of his ragged britches were always black from sitting on the railroad ties, the hoboes called him "Tarcan," and the name stuck. He learned to use a knife and a slingshot with such deadly accuracy that even the biggest 'boes dared not challenge him; he learned to board a freight at a grade crossing and how to leap from a moving train without injury; he learned which bulls to avoid, and which jails were the warmest in winter. The locket that had been his mother's he wore always under his dirty shirt; he did not know who the pictured people were, but he thought the man looked kind, and the woman beautiful.
When Tarcan was sixteen, Karla died, a used-up old woman; Korchak had wandered away long since. Tarcan went on alone.
Every year or two his wanderings brought him back to the place where he had been born. On one of these occasions, roaming the forest beside the track, he stumbled over the abandoned tree house and went in. Marauding animals had scattered the bones of two skeletons, one of a full-grown man and the other of an infant. Mice and squirrels had done their work with blankets, papers, and the few scraps of worn-out clothing the boes had left, but in a closed cabinet Tarcan found a diary, which he could not read, and a children's book, grimed with the prints of tiny fingers. With the packrat instinct of the hobo, he put both books away in his bindle; he ransacked the little cabin for anything else of value, but found nothing except a tiny leather-bound folder.
Later, crouched by his fire in the jungle, he pored over the children's book with its faded pictures. Tarcan could read, after a fashion: he knew "RR Xing," and "Cafe," "City Limits," and a few more words, but this was the first book he had ever tried to read. Although he was untaught, his keen intelligence enabled him to make rapid progress. Soon he was able to read such sentences as "The boy runs after the spotted dog." Next he turned his attention to the leather folder, and after a few attempts discovered the secret of its metal clasp and opened it. Inside were two photographs, one of a man, the other of a woman: and he knew their faces. With leaping heart, Tarcan withdrew the locket which he wore around his neck and compared the pictured faces: they were the same.
Karla had told him nothing about his birth except that his father had been a gent, and that the locket had belonged to him. Was the man who had died in the lonely tree house, then, Tarcan's father? How had he died, and why had his bones been left for marauding bobcats and coyotes?
Perhaps the other book would give some clue. He opened it eagerly, but it was written in an angular script which at first defeated him. Gradually he began to realize that the letters, unfamiliar as they were, were distorted forms of the printed alphabet. Slowly, sentence by sentence, he puzzled out the diary and read its pathetic story.
When he had done so, he was more bewildered than before. He, Tarcan, could not be the infant the diary spoke of, for its bones were scattered on the floor of the cabin along with its father's. There was no mention of another child, or of Karla.
Many times after that he came back to the deserted cabin and sat there to brood, reading the diary over and over again and hoping that somehow it would disclose its secret. One day, as he sat thus pensive, he heard the hoot of an approaching express, then a terrific crash. Running outside, he beheld an appalling sight: the train had been derailed and its cars lay buckled and overturned up and down the right of way.
"On a fine summer evening, Charles Clayton, nephew of Cyrus T. Clayton and heir to the Clayton banking millions, sat comfortably in his private train en route from San Francisco to Boston. With him as his guests were Professor Archimedes Q. Potter and his daughter Jane, and a young French naval officer, Paul D'Arnot. D'Arnot, on Clayton's advice, had converted his personal fortune into gold, obtained at the San Francisco mint; the bullion, in a sealed chest, was locked in the baggage compartment. After a supper of roast pheasant under glass prepared by Clayton's personal chef, the party was preparing to retire to their luxurious compartments for the night when there was a tremendous crash; the car toppled over on its side as if struck by a giant hammer, and the stunned occupants lay dazed on the floor.
Clayton was the first to regain his senses. Struggling to his feet, he ascertained that D'Arnot and the Potters were uninjured; then the two young men succeeded in opening a window and helping the others out. By climbing down the undercarriage of the toppled car, they were able to reach the track. The sight that met their eyes was daunting. The engine and the coal car were still on the tracks, but the sleeping and dining cars, the saloon and the baggage car lay overturned like a child's toys. All around them lay a vast wasteland, the heart of America.