Tramping on Life Part 39

This both puzzled and at the same time rea.s.sured my captor ... and made him swear all the louder,--this time, with a note of brave certainty in his tone.

His gun poked me in the back to expedite my exit. I stepped out at the open door into streaming daylight that at first dazzled my eyes. I saw waiting on the track outside a posse of about fifteen citizens.

"Good work, McAndrews," commended one of them, deep-voiced. The others murmured gruff approval.

McAndrews, from conversation that I gathered, was night-watchman in the yards. He had one red-rimmed eye. The other was sightless but had a half-closed leer that seemed to express discreet visual powers.

"Now go on in an' fetch out the other b.u.m," commanded the deep-voiced member of the posse, speaking with authority.

"There wasn't but only this 'un," McAndrews replied, with renewed timidity in his voice, scarcely concealed, and jerking his thumb toward me.

"But the little n.i.g.g.e.r said they was--ain't that so, n.i.g.g.e.r?"

"Ya.s.sir, boss--I done seen two o' dem go in dar!" replied a wisp of a negro boy, rolling wide eye-whites in fright, and wedged in among the hulking posse.

"Well, this 'un's all I seen!" protested the night watchman, "an' you betcher I looked about mighty keerful ... wot time did you see 'um break in?" turning to the negro child.

"Jes' at daylight, boss!"

"An' wot was you-all a-doin' down hee-ar?"

"He was a-stealin' coal f'um the coalkiars," put in one of the posse, "in cohse!"

All laughed.

"Anyhow, I done seed two o' dem," protested the boy, comically, "wot evah else I done!"

Everybody was now hilarious.

"Whar's yoah buddy?" I was asked.

"Did unt you-all hev no buddy wit' you?"

"Yes, I did have a buddy with me, but--" trying to give Bud a chance of escape,--"but he caught a freight West, just a little bit ago."

"You're a liar," said the one in authority, who I afterward heard was the head-clerk of the company that ran the warehouse. The negro boy had run to his house and roused him. He had drawn the posse together....

"You're a liar! Your buddy's still in there!"

"No, I'll sweah they haint n.o.buddy else," protested McAndrews.

But prodded by their urging, he climbed in again over the sacks of guano, and soon brought out Bud, who had waked, heard the rumpus, and had been hiding, burrowed down under the hay as deep as he could go.

There was a burst of laughter as he stood framed in the doorway, in which I couldn't help but join. He had such a silly, absurd, surprised look in his face ... a look of stupefied incredulity, when he saw all the men drawn up to receive him. From a straggled lock of hair that fell over one eye hung several long hay-wisps. His face looked stupid and moon-fat. He rolled his big, brown eyes in a despairful manner that was unconsciously comic. For he was, instinctively, as I was not, instantly and fully aware of the seriousness of what might come upon us for our innocent few hours' sleep.

"Come on, boys. Up with your hands till we go through your pockets."

On Bud's hip they found a whiskey flask, quarter-full. In my inside pocket, a sheaf of poor verse--I had barely as yet come to grips with my art--and, in an outside pocket, the Bible I had filched from the woman's sewing machine in Tuscon.

The finding of the Bible on my person created a speechless pause.

Then--

"Good Gawd! A b.u.m with a Bible!"

Awe and respect held the crowd for a moment.

The march began.

"Where are you taking us to?"

"To the calaboose."

Down a long stretch of peaceful, Sunday street we went--small boys following in a curious horde, and Sunday wors.h.i.+ppers with their women's gloved hands tucked in timidly under their arms as we pa.s.sed by. They gave us prim, askance glances, as if we belonged to a different species of the animal kingdom.

Buck negroes with their women stepped out into the street, while, as is customary there,--the white men pa.s.sed, taking us two tramps to jail. We came to a high, newly white-washed board fence. Within it stood a two-story building of red brick. On the fence was painted, in big black letters the facetious warning, "Keep out if you can." A pa.s.sage in through the gate, and McAndrews first knocked at, then kicked against the door.

The sleepy-faced, small-eyed jailer finally opened to us. The wrinkled skin of the old man hung loosely from his neck. It wabbled as he talked.

"What the h.e.l.l's the mattah with you folks?" protested McAndrews, the night watchman, "slep' late," yawned the jailer, "it bein' Sunday mawhnin'."

By this time the sheriff, summoned from his house, had joined us. A big swashbuckler of a man with a hard face, hard blue eyes with quizzical wrinkles around them. They seemed wrinkles of good humour till you looked closer.

"--s a d.a.m.n lie ... you 'en Jimmy hev bin a-gamblin' all night,"

interjected the sheriff, in angry disgust.

They marched us upstairs. The whole top floor, was given over to a huge iron cage which had been built in before the putting on of the roof. A narrow free s.p.a.ce--a sort of corridor, ran all around it, on the outside.

Eager and interested, the prisoners already in the cage pushed their faces against the bars to look at us. But at the sheriff's word of command they went into their cells, the latter built in a row within the cage itself, and obediently slammed their doors shut while a long iron bar was shot across the whole length, from without ... then the big door of the cage was opened, and we were thrust in. The bar was drawn back, liberating the others, then, from their cells.

The posse left. Our fellow prisoners crowded about us, asking us questions ... what had we done?... and how had we been caught?... and what part of the country were we from?... etc. etc....

From the North ... yes, Yankee ... well, when a fellow was both a Yank and a tramp he was given a short shrift in the South.

They talked much about themselves ... one thing, however, we all held in common ... our innocence ... we were all innocent ... every one of us was innocent of the crime charged against us ... we were just being persecuted.

That afternoon a negro preacher, short and squat, who, innocent, was yet being held for Grand Jury, delivered us a fearful half-chanted sermon on the Judgment Day. I never heard so moving, compelling a sermon. I saw the sky glowing like a furnace, the star-touching conflagration of the End of Things rippling up the east in increasing waves of fire, in place of the usual dawn ... I heard the crying of mankind ... of sinners ...

for mountains to topple over on them and cover them from the wrath of the Lord....

"In co'hse I nevah done it," explained the preacher, "I had some hawgs of mah own. Mah hawgs had an under-bit an' an ovah-bit in dere eahs, an'

de ones I's 'cused o' stealin', dey had only an ovah-bit. But heah dey's got me, holdin' me foh de pen."