"Busting a Broncho."
For three long days after they had parted company with the others,
Kansas Shorty kept Jim aimlessly wandering with him about the country,
carefully avoiding the railroads, as he did not wish to meet other
tramps while Jim was yet "green" to the dark ways of the road, as they
by wily tricks and methods often entice new road kids from their
partners, who in the language of the road are known as "jockers".
From the moment that Kansas Shorty had Jim out of the view of Slippery
and Joe, he commenced training the lad into the infamous ways of the
road, so as to properly prepare him for his future work. The first and
most important lesson he gave the unsuspecting youngster consisted in
poisoning his faith in humanity by teaching him that henceforth he must
consider and treat every human being, except his pal, as his bitter
enemy. To prove that to be a fact he would call the lad's attention to
the suspicious looks everybody whom they passed upon the public highway
would cast at them. The second lesson was to impress upon Jim the
importance of never revealing his correct name and address to any
inquisitive questioner, but to always take refuge behind some common
name such as Jones, Brown or Smith, and to give some faraway city as his
place of residence. He taught the boy many other vicious tricks, and to
prevent suspicions arising in the lad's mind that everything was not on
the square, Kansas Shorty would let him wait for him in the public
highway, after he had told him that he would call at a nearby farm house
and try to find jobs for both. He would then knock on the farm house
door, and if someone answered his knocks would ask for a match, a pin or
some other trifle and then return to the waiting lad and bitterly
complain about his inability to find employment.
Towards the evening of the first day, Jim becoming somewhat anxious to
meet his brother, and observing that Kansas Shorty made not the
slightest move to reach the "big oak", which he had told Slippery should
be their meeting place, he casually remarked: "Say, friend, is it not
close to the time that we should find our way to the "big oak" where we
are to meet Slippery and my brother Joe?" "It's plenty time until then,"
was Kansas Shorty's reply, and then to show Jim that he was from now on
his master, he angrily added: "You do not need to remind me again, as I
shall take care of you."
Just as dusk blended into the night, after they had supped upon a
handout that he had begged at a farm house, Kansas Shorty pointed his
hand in the direction of some oaks which were growing some distance from
the highway and told Jim that beneath the tallest of them was the place
where they were to meet Slippery and Joe.
They climbed over fences and crossed fields, and the closer they
approached the tree the more Jim's heart palpitated, so anxious was he
to rejoin his twin brother, whose inseparable companion he had been
since their birth until this day, and strange forebodings seemed to have
told him that all was not well, as Kansas Shorty during their
conversation had contradicted himself in many statements, and too, they
had passed farm house after farm house and many people in the public
highway during the last two hours without his trying to apply to them
for a job.
When they reached the oak and Jim found that neither Slippery nor Joe
had put in an appearance, he began to lament, and when Kansas Shorty
assured him that he could only account for their absence by believing
they had been jailed on a "suspicious character" charge, the frightened
lad commenced to sob.
Kansas Shorty feeling in need of a night's rest, climbed across fences
into a nearby field and gathered some new-mown hay from which he
fashioned beneath the protecting branches of the oak a comfortable
resting place for himself and Jim. But before he went to sleep, to
prevent Jim from taking French leave, he induced the boy to take off his
shoes and his coat out of which he made for himself a pillow, and after
he had assured the lad that Slippery and Joe would certainly find them
should they arrive during the night, he turned over on to his side and
was soon soundly sleeping.
On the morning of the fourth day they struck a railroad for the first
time since they left it. It proved to be the St. Paul-Omaha main line
of the Chicago and Northwestern System, and as luck would have it, while
they were walking up a steep grade a stock train loaded with sheep
passed them so slowly that they found it an easy matter to swing
themselves onto it and they climbed through an open end-door into one of
the stock cars, in which, hidden amongst the sheep, they managed to hobo
unmolested through many division points where they bought provisions
while the sheep were being fed and watered. On the morning of the third
day they landed, not at Chicago, as Kansas Shorty had until now made Jim
believe, but at Denver, the beautiful capital city of Colorado.
While they walked about the streets of the city, Kansas Shorty met a
friend whom he addressed as "Nevada Bill," and who as soon as the former
told him that Jim was "his road kid", placed his hand under the boy's
chin and after sizing the lad up just as a butcher would a beef, he
whispered: "Well, well, Kansas Shorty, I see you have brought a fine
'broncho' to town with you. I hope that you will be able to make a
first-class road kid of him." To which coarse remarks Kansas Shorty
laughingly replied: "Never fret, Nevada Bill, I have trained many a road
kid into good plingers." Nevada Bill then told him where a gang of
plingers had their headquarters, and as Kansas Shorty seemed to be
acquainted with most of them whose monickers Nevada Bill repeated to
him, he decided to pay this gang a visit.
They wended their way through Denver's lowest slums and finally arrived
at the headquarters of this gang of professional tramp beggars, who
always prefer cities in which to ply their trade, and only strike out to
visit smaller places and the country at large--and then only in separate
pairs--when too many of them drifted into the same city, so as to make
combing the public for money an unprofitable business, or when the
police made a general raid upon vagrants of their class.
This last reason was hardly to be feared, for as in this gang's case,
they invariably have their headquarters in the building above a slum
saloon, whose proprietor would and could not be in business very long
unless he knew how to protect his lodgers against police interference,
as a gang's quarters needed to be raided only one time, and ever after
all plingers in the land would give this unsafe "dump," as tramps call
this class of hangout, a wide berth, as this raid sufficiently proved to
them that this slum saloon was not properly "protected."
Up the well-worn stairway they climbed and when they reached the second
floor of the building Kansas Shorty knocked on a door, which was only
opened to them after he had given an account of his identity, and when
they entered the room, that by another open door was connected with an
adjoining second one, Jim, to his complete surprise found himself in the
company of eight grown, burly hoboes of the roughest imaginable type and
almost a school class of road kids.
Kansas Shorty was most cordially welcomed by the men occupying the
rooms, who insisted that he and his road kid should make their home with
them during their stay in Denver, which offer he gladly accepted. Then
he introduced Jim as "Dakota Jim" to the others and made the lad shake
hands with each and everyone of the ragged, filthy and foul-visaged
fellows, who, as Kansas Shorty had told Jim upon the street before he
had found their hiding place, were "proper" tramps and explained to him
that this meant that all of them were recognized amongst their own kind
as worthy members of the fraternity.
After he had shaken hands with the ugly, rum-bloated specimens of
humanity, Jim had a chance to take a look at the two rooms which were to
be his future home, and his thoughts went back to his mother's cleanly
kept section house, for the total of the furniture in these rooms
consisted of some empty soap boxes which served for chairs, a
slime-covered table, a couple of rough wooden benches, a piece of mirror
glass that was upheld by nails driven into the bare walls, a range,
upon which at this moment a dinner was cooking, and two dilapidated
beds, the pillows, blankets and mattresses of which--there was no trace
of linen--were in an even far more filthy condition than the bunks of
the "Golden Rule Hotel" at Minneapolis.
Jim was aroused from his survey of the rooms by Kansas Shorty, who now
introduced him to each one of the road kids, whose jockers called aloud
the name-de-road of each.
Some of these jockers had as many as four of these lads, whose ages
ranged from ten to twenty years, and whose sizes were from that of mere
children to fellows who shaved themselves daily so as to pass muster as
"road kids". To have seen these road kids one would have never imagined
that within the course of a few short years every one of these boys
would be transformed into the same class of sodden wretches their
jockers now were, who had trained them into the ways of the road, and
that they in turn during their life time would spoil the futures of
scores of sons of respectable parents, which proves that degeneration
breeds degeneration.
One of the road kids in the den of the plingers, who was known by the
name of "Danny" because of his neat appearance and superior
intelligence, attracted Jim's attention and gave a fair average example
of the parentage of the rest. When after their short acquaintance in a
burst of confidence Jim acquainted Danny with the fact that his late
father had been the foreman and commander of a section crew of a North
Dakota railroad, Danny puckered up his lips in utter contempt when he
informed and proved to the surprised Jim that he was the son of a
wealthy banker of Fort Worth, Texas, and--another proof of boyish
thoughtlessness--had skipped school to hop freight trains in the
railroad yards of his home city. One day he had watched some wandering
hoboes cooking a mulligan by a campfire, and had helped to eat the stew,
and through this had made the first acquaintance of his present jocker,
who had enticed the little lad to run away from his home and follow him
out on the road; had trained him into making a living for both; had
taught him first to drink, then to like and last to crave strong liquor,
and although he treated the lad as a master would his slave, he gave him
daily a regular allowance of diluted alcohol, which caused his young
victim to quickly forget all desire to return to his home and his
parents as there he could not secure the dram he yearned.
Their conversation was interrupted by one of the grown hoboes, who,
acting as cook, called all hands to "dinner". This dinner, which was
another mulligan, was placed in the center of the table in the same pot
in which it had been cooked, and each member of the gang, just as if
they were still camping about a hobo fire in the woods, by means of a
small wooden paddle pulled as much of the mulligan as he desired, onto a
tin plate, that had never been touched by dishwater, but had only been
scraped since the day it arrived at the rooms.
During their meal, also before they commenced to dine and after they had
finished, in fact all the time except when they were sleeping, a "human
chain" was kept busy fetching from the slum saloon on the ground floor
of the building a steady stream of "growlers" filled with beer and
diluted, sweetened alcohol, which passed as "whiskey", and returning the
empty tin cans for further supplies, as not the small rent of the rooms
but the large and steady thirst of their inmates made it very profitable
for the dive keepers to lodge this class of human perverts.
After they had finished their dinner the two filth-laden beds, the
benches, the table and even the slime covered floor became sleeping
places for the satiated tramps and their road kids, and gradually as
their cigarettes burned low and their coarse conversation lagged, all of
them, greatly assisted by the strong drink they had swallowed, dozed
away.
All of them--with the exception of James McDonald, who had not yet
sunken to the sodden level of these brutes in human forms who lay
scattered about the two rooms, dead to the world in maudlin sleep,
proving themselves to be living models of every stage of the decaying
influences of hobo life, from men whose countenances had been turned
into bloated visages down to the pale faces of the younger boys who had
just commenced to feel the curse of the lives which they had been forced
by these jockers to lead.
While Jim sat amongst them upon an empty upturned soap box, his eyes
wandered from one to the other of these wretched beings, who from this
time on would be his pals and companions and whose lives gave him a
vivid picture of what his own future would be. Suddenly the blood welled
up in him, and although he knew that hundreds of miles of unknown
country separated him from his home and mother, one desire outbalanced
everything, that was the wish to escape the fate of these hoboes and the
longer he looked at the alcohol disfigured masks of these human vultures
who, too, had once been clean and manly lads, the more fierce became his
resolve to now or never escape the clutches of Kansas Shorty, who was
sleeping as heavily as the others.
He scanned again the face of each one of the hoboes, and especially that
of Kansas Shorty, and after he had assured himself that all were soundly
sleeping he carefully stepped over the bodies of those who lay between
him and his liberty--the door that led into the hallway--but as he
turned its knob, which being rusty from age and filth, creaked
considerably, its grating noise awakened one of the road kids, who
fathoming the reason of Jim's opening the door and darting into the
hallway, let out a piercing shout, "that Kansas Shorty's kid was making
his get-away". This warning shriek not only awakened every one of the
sleepers but sobered Kansas Shorty so suddenly that he made a headlong
dive through the open door, beyond which Jim was running down the
hallway trying to make his escape. He caught the lad before he even
reached the stairway and dragged the shuddering boy back into the
filthy room, carefully locking the door behind them.
He pulled the boy across the table, and after one of the inhuman
monsters had stuffed a filthy rag into the poor lad's mouth to smother
his screams, Kansas Shorty, as the jocker of the lad, gleefully assisted
by the others in his savage task, pounded poor Jim until he became
unconscious.
[Illustration: Kansas Shorty pulled the lad across the table, and after
one of the inhuman monsters had stuffed a filthy rag into the poor boy's
mouth to smother his pitiful screams, they pounded him until he became
unconscious.]
When Jim came to, Kansas Shorty, of whom he expected this last of all,
was sitting upon the edge of the bed upon which he had been placed, and
while he fanned the poor boy's bruised and battered face with a folded
newspaper, he was talking to him in a softly purring voice, telling him
how sorry he felt to have been forced to punish him for having attempted
to run away from his "protector", who intended to make out of "Dakota
Jim" a "man" who in the future would be proud to tell other plingers
that Kansas Shorty had been his jocker.
Kansas Shorty continued to speak in this petting and almost flattering
vein, while at the same time he fed the feverish and maltreated lad with
pieces of choice candy and other tidbits for which he had sent while Jim
was yet unconscious, and stroked the boy's hair and dressed his wounds
with vaseline-soaked rags and showed in every possible manner how true a
friend he was to Jim, to whom he repeated over and over the fact that he
had clothed and fed him in Minneapolis when he and his brother Joe were
on the verge of death by starvation. He never stopped his flow of
pleasing language, ever harping upon the good he had done and would do
for Jim, if the latter would only trust him, until forced by sheer
friendless loneliness the boy folded his bruised arms around Kansas
Shorty's neck and amid heart-broken sobs begged his pardon for having
tried to leave him, and while the other hoboes in the room, old as well
as young, who had all passed through the same sort of treatment, had a
hard time to suppress their smiles, he solemnly promised to never again
attempt to escape.
Then the poor boy sank back upon the bed and gradually, urged on by
Kansas Shorty's assurance that sleep would heal all the quicker the
bruises and marks the terrible beating had left on him, a reminder of
his promise, and a warning of far worse punishment should he dare to
break it, he fell asleep.
Then the other plingers sent down to the slum saloon for a new supply of
beer and "whiskey", and while they took care not to make noise enough to
awaken the new recruit to the army of professional beggars, they drank
to Kansas Shorty's health and congratulated him upon the successful
culmination of the first step necessary to make a good-for-nothing
parasite of society out of a respectable boy. This inhuman brutality is
administered to every boy who falls into the clutches of a plinger, as
it not only deadens the spirit of pride and honor, but makes the boy
obedient to the least command of his jocker.
This cruel maltreatment is called amongst those hoboes who have boys
tramping with them: "Busting a Broncho".
[Illustration: Four tramps]