Tramping on Life Part 37

"You sure can, bo!... es I was sayin', I'm a b.u.m myself, an' proud of it ... and I think these here d.a.m.n bulls (policemen ... who were sitting nearby, waiting for us to finish) have mighty little to 'tend to, roundin' up you boys, now the orange-pickin' season's over with, an'

puttin' you away like this ... why, if any one of them was half as decent as one o' you b.u.ms--"

"s.h.!.+ fer Christ's sake!" I admonished, "they're hearing you."

"That's jest what I want 'em to do ... I don't owe nothin' to no man, an' it's time someone told 'em somethin'."

Breakfast over, we were marched off to the courthouse. We were turned loose together in a large room. We felt so good with the sausage, cakes and coffee in our bellies, that we pushed each other about, sang, jigged, whistled.

As we had walked in, I had asked, of the cop who walked by my side--who seemed affable....

"Say, mister, after all what's the idea?"

"We had to make an example," he returned, frankly.

"I don't quite get you!"

"Last week a bunch of b.u.ms dropped off here at our town, and they almost ran the diggings for about twenty-four hours ... insulted women on the streets ... robbed ice-boxes ... even stole the clothes off the lines."

"In other words, you mean that a bunch of drunken yeggs dropped in on the town, gutted it, and then jumped out ... and we poor harmless b.u.ms are the ones that have to pay."

"--guess that's about how it is."

I pa.s.sed the word along the line. My companion tramps cursed the yegg and his ways....

"They're always raisin' h.e.l.l ... an' we git the blame ... when all we want is not loot, but hand-outs and a cup o' coffee ... and a piece of change now and then."

The yegg, the tiger among tramps--the criminal tramp--despises the ordinary b.u.m and the "gaycat." And they in turn fear him for his ruthlessness and recklessness.

He joins with them at their camp-fires ... rides with them on the road ... robs his store or house, or cracks his safe, then flies on, taking the blinds or decking on top of a "flyer." The law, missing the right quarry, descends on the slower-moving, harmless b.u.m. And often some poor "fall-guy" gets a good "frame-up" for a job he never thought of ... and the majesty of the law stands vindicated.

The charge against us was vagrancy. We were tried by twos.

"Come on, buddy!... you an' your pal."

My companion and I were led in before, I think, a justice of the peace.

The latter was kindly-disposed toward me because I was young and looked delicate.

When I began my plea for clemency I appropriated the name, career, and antecedents of Simmons, the young soldier whose body-servant I had been, back in San Francisco. The man on the bench was impressed by my story of coming of a wealthy family ... my father was a banker, no less.

The justice waved me aside. He asked my buddy to show his hands. As the callouses on the palms gave evidence of recent hard work, he was set free along with me. We were the only two who were let off. The rest were sent up for three months each, I am told....

And, after all that, what did my buddy do but up and steal my blanket roll, with all in it--including my Caesar and Shakespeare--and my extra soldier uniform--the first chance he got!...

An American who had married a Mexican girl gave me work sawing and chopping wood. I stayed with him long enough to earn a second-hand suit of clothes he owned, which was too small for him, but almost fitted me ... civilian clothes ... my soldier clothes were worn to tatters.

I picked up another pal. A chunky, beefy nondescript. I was meditating a jump across "the desert." The older hoboes had warned me against it, saying it was a cruel trip ... the train crews knew no compunction against ditching a fellow anywhere out in the desert, where there would be nothing but a tank of brackish water....

My new chum, on the other hand, swore, that, to one who knew the ropes, it was not so hard to make the jump on the Southern Pacific ... through Arizona and New Mexico, to El Paso. He said he would show me how to wiggle into the refrigerator box of an orange car ... on either end of the orange car is a refrigerator box, if I remember correctly ... access to which is gained through the criss-cross bars that hold up a sort of trap-door at the top. It was in the cold season, so there was now no ice inside. These trap-doors are always officially sealed, when the car is loaded. To break a seal is a penitentiary offense.

I stood off and inspected the place I was supposed to go in at. The triangular opening seemed too small for a baby to slide through. I looked my chunky pal up and down and laughed.

"--think I can't make it, eh?... well, you watch ... there's an art in this kind of thing just like there is in anything."

Inch by inch he squeezed himself in. Then he stood up inside and called to me to try ... and he would pull me the rest of the way, if I stuck.

He was plump and I was skinny. It ought to be easy for me. Nevertheless, it was the hardest task I ever set myself ... I stuck half-way. My pal pulled my s.h.i.+rt into rags, helping me through,--I had handed my coat in, previously, or he would have ripped that to pieces, too. It seemed that all the skin went off my hips, as I shot inside with a bang. And none too soon. A "shack" (brakeman) pa.s.sed over the tops of the cars at almost that very moment. We lay still. He would have handed me a merciless drubbing if he had caught me, with my nether end hanging helplessly on the outside.

We squatted on the floor of the refrigerator box. When we reached Yuma my pal rose to his feet.

"Ain't yer goin' ta throw yer feet fer a hand-out?" he asked me.

"No, I'm going to stick in here till I reach El Paso, if I can."

"What's the fun bein' a b.u.m, if you're goin' ter punish yerself like that!"

"I want to find a country where there's growing green things, as soon as I can."

"So long, then."

"So long.. don't you think you'd better stick till we reach Tuscon? Some of the boys told me the 'bulls' (officers) here have been 'horstile'

(had it in for the tramp fraternity) ... ever since a yegg b.u.mped off a deputy, a while back."

"Naw, I'll take my chances."

As I rode on, alone, I stood up and took in the scenery like a tourist ... there danced away, and gathered in, the s.h.i.+mmering, sun-flooded desert ... an endless flat expanse of silver sage and sentinel cactus. I saw bleached bones and a side-cast skull with whitened horns, poking up into the sky ... I saw a sick steer straggling alone, exactly like some melodramatic painting of Western life ... the kind we see hanging for sale in second-rate art stores.

I stuck till Tuscon was reached. There I was all in for lack of food and water....

A woman gave me a good "set-down" at her kitchen table. I was as hungry for something to read as I was for something to eat. When she walked out of the kitchen, leaving me alone for a moment, I caught sight of a compact little Bible that lay on the leaf of her sewing machine. Two steps, and I had it stowed in my hip pocket, and was back innocently eating ... the taking of the Bible was providential. I believe that it served as the main instrument, later on, in saving me from ten years in the penitentiary.

I was glad enough to hop to the cinders at El Paso. But El Paso at that time was "unhealthy" for hoboes. They were holding twenty or thirty of us in the city jail, and mysterious word had gone down the line in all directions, that quick telegraph by word-of-mouth that tramps use among themselves, to avoid the town--that it was "horstile."...

Again rolling miles of arid country. But this time, like a soldier on a long march, I was prepared: I had begged, from door to door, enough "hand-outs" to last a week ... throwing away most of the bread ...

keeping the cold meats and the pie and cake. I sat in my open box-car, on a box that I had flung in with me, reading my Bible and eating my "hand-outs" and a millionaire had nothing on me for enjoyment.