* * * * *
In the chill grey dip of an early spring dawn I dropped off a freight in
the yards of the town of Granton.
I drew my threadbare coat closer as I made my way up the track, on the
look-out for some place to go into and warm myself. Usually, in chilly
weather, each railroad station throughout the country has a stove a-glow
in the waiting room ... I found the railroad station, and the stove,
red-hot, was there ... it was good to be near a fire. In the South it
can be at times heavily cold. There is a moisture and a rawness in the
weather, there, that hurts.
I was not alone. Two negro tramps followed me; like myself, seeking
warmth and shelter. Then came a white tramp.
We stood around the stove, which shone red in the early half-light of
dawn. We shivered and rubbed our hands. Then we fell into tramps' gossip
about the country we were in.
The two negroes soon left to catch a freight for Austin. My fellow tramp
and I stretched ourselves along the benches. He yawned with a loud noise
like an animal. "I'm worn-out," he said, "I've been riding the bumpers
all night." I noticed immediately that he did not speak tramp argot.
"And _I_ tried to sleep on the bare boards of a box car."
We had disposed ourselves comfortably to sleep for the few hours till
wide day, in the station, when the station master came. He poked the
fire brighter, shook it down, then turned to us. "Boys," not unkindly,
"sorry, but you can't sleep here ... it's the rules."
We shuffled to our feet.
"Do you mind if we stand about the stove till the sun's high enough to
take the chill off things?"
"No."
But, standing, we fell to talking ... comparing notes....
"I've been through here once before," remarked my companion, whom I
never knew otherwise than as "Bud."
"There's a cotton seed mill up the tracks a way toward town, and we can
sleep there, if you want ... to-day's Sunday, and no one will be around,
working, to disturb us. In the South it's all right for a tramp to sleep
among cotton seed, provided he doesn't smoke there."
"Come on, then, let's find a place. I can hardly hold my head up."
We slumped along the track. A cinder cut into my foot through the broken
sole of one shoe. It made me wince and limp.
Soon we came to the cotton seed house and looked it over from the
outside. It was a four-square building, each side having a door. All the
doors but one were locked. That one, when pushed against, tottered over.
We climbed in over the heavy sacks, seemingly full of cement, with which
the unlocked door had been propped to. It also was unhinged.
It was dark inside. There were no windows.
We struck matches and explored. We found articles of heavier hardware
scattered and piled about, some sacks of guano, and about a dozen wired
bales of hay.
"I thought this was a cotton seed mill," commented Bud, "because I saw
so many niggers working around it, when I passed by, the other time."
"Well, and what is it, then?"
"Evidently a warehouse--where they store heavier articles of hardware."
"What are you going to do?"
"Twist the wires off a couple of these bales of hay, use it for bedding,
and have a good sleep anyhow."
"But--suppose we're caught in here?"
"No chance. It's Sunday morning, no one will be here to work to-day, and
we'll be let alone."
With a little effort we twisted the bales apart and made comfortable
beds from the hay.
It seemed I had slept but a moment when I was seized by a nightmare. I
dreamed some monstrous form was bending over me, cursing, breathing
flames out of its mouth, and boring a hot, sharpened implement into the
centre of my forehead. I woke, to find, that, in part, my dream was
true.
There straddled over me an excited man, swearing profusely to keep his
courage up. He was pressing the cold muzzle-end of a "forty-four-seventy"
into my forehead.
"Come on! Get up, you ---- ---- ----! Come on out of here, or I'll blow
your ---- ---- ---- brains out, do you hear?"
Then I caught myself saying, as if from far away, perfectly calm and
composed, and in English that was almost academic--"my dear man, put up
your gun and I will go with you quietly. I am only a tramp and not a
desperado."
This both puzzled and at the same time reassured 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 bum," 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 nigger said they was--ain't that so, nigger?"
"Yassir, 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 nobuddy 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.