but get together we couldn't. I kept ahead of him clear across
Manitoba, but he led the way across Alberta, and early one bitter gray
morning, at the end of a division just east of Kicking Horse Pass, I
learned that he had been seen the night before between Kicking Horse
Pass and Rogers' Pass. It was rather curious the way the information
came to me. I had been riding all night in a "side-door Pullman"
(box-car), and nearly dead with cold had crawled out at the division
to beg for food. A freezing fog was drifting past, and I "hit" some
firemen I found in the round-house. They fixed me up with the leavings
from their lunch-pails, and in addition I got out of them nearly a
quart of heavenly "Java" (coffee). I heated the latter, and, as I sat
down to eat, a freight pulled in from the west. I saw a side-door open
and a road-kid climb out. Through the drifting fog he limped over to
me. He was stiff with cold, his lips blue. I shared my Java and grub
with him, learned about Skysail Jack, and then learned about him.
Behold, he was from my own town, Oakland, California, and he was a
member of the celebrated Boo Gang--a gang with which I had affiliated
at rare intervals. We talked fast and bolted the grub in the half-hour
that followed. Then my freight pulled out, and I was on it, bound west
on the trail of Skysail Jack.
I was delayed between the passes, went two days without food, and
walked eleven miles on the third day before I got any, and yet I
succeeded in passing Skysail Jack along the Fraser River in British
Columbia. I was riding "passengers" then and making time; but he must
have been riding passengers, too, and with more luck or skill than I,
for he got into Mission ahead of me.
Now Mission was a junction, forty miles east of Vancouver. From the
junction one could proceed south through Washington and Oregon over
the Northern Pacific. I wondered which way Skysail Jack would go, for
I thought I was ahead of him. As for myself I was still bound west to
Vancouver. I proceeded to the water-tank to leave that information,
and there, freshly carved, with that day's date upon it, was Skysail
Jack's monica. I hurried on into Vancouver. But he was gone. He had
taken ship immediately and was still flying west on his
world-adventure. Truly, Skysail Jack, you were a tramp-royal, and your
mate was the "wind that tramps the world." I take off my hat to you.
You were "blowed-in-the-glass" all right. A week later I, too, got my
ship, and on board the steamship Umatilla, in the forecastle, was
working my way down the coast to San Francisco. Skysail Jack and
Sailor Jack--gee! if we'd ever got together.
Water-tanks are tramp directories. Not all in idle wantonness do
tramps carve their monicas, dates, and courses. Often and often have I
met hoboes earnestly inquiring if I had seen anywhere such and such a
"stiff" or his monica. And more than once I have been able to give the
monica of recent date, the water-tank, and the direction in which he
was then bound. And promptly the hobo to whom I gave the information
lit out after his pal. I have met hoboes who, in trying to catch a
pal, had pursued clear across the continent and back again, and were
still going.
"Monicas" are the nom-de-rails that hoboes assume or accept when
thrust upon them by their fellows. Leary Joe, for instance, was timid,
and was so named by his fellows. No self-respecting hobo would select
Stew Bum for himself. Very few tramps care to remember their pasts
during which they ignobly worked, so monicas based upon trades are
very rare, though I remember having met the following: Moulder
Blackey, Painter Red, Chi Plumber, Boiler-Maker, Sailor Boy, and
Printer Bo. "Chi" (pronounced shy), by the way, is the argot for
"Chicago."
A favorite device of hoboes is to base their monicas on the localities
from which they hail, as: New York Tommy, Pacific Slim, Buffalo
Smithy, Canton Tim, Pittsburg Jack, Syracuse Shine, Troy Mickey, K.L.
Bill, and Connecticut Jimmy. Then there was "Slim Jim from Vinegar
Hill, who never worked and never will." A "shine" is always a negro,
so called, possibly, from the high lights on his countenance. Texas
Shine or Toledo Shine convey both race and nativity.
Among those that incorporated their race, I recollect the following:
Frisco Sheeny, New York Irish, Michigan French, English Jack, Cockney
Kid, and Milwaukee Dutch. Others seem to take their monicas in part
from the color-schemes stamped upon them at birth, such as: Chi
Whitey, New Jersey Red, Boston Blackey, Seattle Browney, and Yellow
Dick and Yellow Belly--the last a Creole from Mississippi, who, I
suspect, had his monica thrust upon him.
Texas Royal, Happy Joe, Bust Connors, Burley Bo, Tornado Blackey, and
Touch McCall used more imagination in rechristening themselves.
Others, with less fancy, carry the names of their physical
peculiarities, such as: Vancouver Slim, Detroit Shorty, Ohio Fatty,
Long Jack, Big Jim, Little Joe, New York Blink, Chi Nosey, and
Broken-backed Ben.
By themselves come the road-kids, sporting an infinite variety of
monicas. For example, the following, whom here and there I have
encountered: Buck Kid, Blind Kid, Midget Kid, Holy Kid, Bat Kid, Swift
Kid, Cookey Kid, Monkey Kid, Iowa Kid, Corduroy Kid, Orator Kid (who
could tell how it happened), and Lippy Kid (who was insolent, depend
upon it).
On the water-tank at San Marcial, New Mexico, a dozen years ago, was
the following hobo bill of fare:--
(1) Main-drag fair.
(2) Bulls not hostile.
(3) Round-house good for kipping.
(4) North-bound trains no good.
(5) Privates no good.
(6) Restaurants good for cooks only.
(7) Railroad House good for night-work only.
Number one conveys the information that begging for money on the main
street is fair; number two, that the police will not bother hoboes;
number three, that one can sleep in the round-house. Number four,
however, is ambiguous. The north-bound trains may be no good to beat,
and they may be no good to beg. Number five means that the residences
are not good to beggars, and number six means that only hoboes that
have been cooks can get grub from the restaurants. Number seven
bothers me. I cannot make out whether the Railroad House is a good
place for any hobo to beg at night, or whether it is good only for
hobo-cooks to beg at night, or whether any hobo, cook or non-cook, can
lend a hand at night, helping the cooks of the Railroad House with
their dirty work and getting something to eat in payment.
But to return to the hoboes that pass in the night. I remember one I
met in California. He was a Swede, but he had lived so long in the
United States that one couldn't guess his nationality. He had to tell
it on himself. In fact, he had come to the United States when no more
than a baby. I ran into him first at the mountain town of Truckee.
"Which way, Bo?" was our greeting, and "Bound east" was the answer
each of us gave. Quite a bunch of "stiffs" tried to ride out the
overland that night, and I lost the Swede in the shuffle. Also, I lost
the overland.
I arrived in Reno, Nevada, in a box-car that was promptly
side-tracked. It was a Sunday morning, and after I threw my feet for
breakfast, I wandered over to the Piute camp to watch the Indians
gambling. And there stood the Swede, hugely interested. Of course we
got together. He was the only acquaintance I had in that region, and I
was his only acquaintance. We rushed together like a couple of
dissatisfied hermits, and together we spent the day, threw our feet
for dinner, and late in the afternoon tried to "nail" the same
freight. But he was ditched, and I rode her out alone, to be ditched
myself in the desert twenty miles beyond.
Of all desolate places, the one at which I was ditched was the limit.
It was called a flag-station, and it consisted of a shanty dumped
inconsequentially into the sand and sagebrush. A chill wind was
blowing, night was coming on, and the solitary telegraph operator who
lived in the shanty was afraid of me. I knew that neither grub nor bed
could I get out of him. It was because of his manifest fear of me that
I did not believe him when he told me that east-bound trains never
stopped there. Besides, hadn't I been thrown off of an east-bound
train right at that very spot not five minutes before? He assured me
that it had stopped under orders, and that a year might go by before
another was stopped under orders. He advised me that it was only a
dozen or fifteen miles on to Wadsworth and that I'd better hike. I
elected to wait, however, and I had the pleasure of seeing two
west-bound freights go by without stopping, and one east-bound
freight. I wondered if the Swede was on the latter. It was up to me to
hit the ties to Wadsworth, and hit them I did, much to the telegraph
operator's relief, for I neglected to burn his shanty and murder him.
Telegraph operators have much to be thankful for. At the end of half a
dozen miles, I had to get off the ties and let the east-bound overland
go by. She was going fast, but I caught sight of a dim form on the
first "blind" that looked like the Swede.
That was the last I saw of him for weary days. I hit the high places
across those hundreds of miles of Nevada desert, riding the overlands
at night, for speed, and in the day-time riding in box-cars and
getting my sleep. It was early in the year, and it was cold in those
upland pastures. Snow lay here and there on the level, all the
mountains were shrouded in white, and at night the most miserable wind
imaginable blew off from them. It was not a land in which to linger.
And remember, gentle reader, the hobo goes through such a land,
without shelter, without money, begging his way and sleeping at night
without blankets. This last is something that can be realized only by
experience.
In the early evening I came down to the depot at Ogden. The overland
of the Union Pacific was pulling east, and I was bent on making
connections. Out in the tangle of tracks ahead of the engine I
encountered a figure slouching through the gloom. It was the Swede. We
shook hands like long-lost brothers, and discovered that our hands
were gloved. "Where'd ye glahm 'em?" I asked. "Out of an engine-cab,"
he answered; "and where did you?" "They belonged to a fireman," said
I; "he was careless."
We caught the blind as the overland pulled out, and mighty cold we
found it. The way led up a narrow gorge between snow-covered
mountains, and we shivered and shook and exchanged confidences about
how we had covered the ground between Reno and Ogden. I had closed my
eyes for only an hour or so the previous night, and the blind was not
comfortable enough to suit me for a snooze. At a stop, I went forward
to the engine. We had on a "double-header" (two engines) to take us
over the grade.
The pilot of the head engine, because it "punched the wind," I knew
would be too cold; so I selected the pilot of the second engine, which
was sheltered by the first engine. I stepped on the cowcatcher and
found the pilot occupied. In the darkness I felt out the form of a
young boy. He was sound asleep. By squeezing, there was room for two
on the pilot, and I made the boy budge over and crawled up beside him.
It was a "good" night; the "shacks" (brakemen) didn't bother us, and
in no time we were asleep. Once in a while hot cinders or heavy jolts
aroused me, when I snuggled closer to the boy and dozed off to the
coughing of the engines and the screeching of the wheels.
The overland made Evanston, Wyoming, and went no farther. A wreck
ahead blocked the line. The dead engineer had been brought in, and his
body attested the peril of the way. A tramp, also, had been killed,
but his body had not been brought in. I talked with the boy. He was
thirteen years old. He had run away from his folks in some place in
Oregon, and was heading east to his grandmother. He had a tale of
cruel treatment in the home he had left that rang true; besides, there
was no need for him to lie to me, a nameless hobo on the track.
And that boy was going some, too. He couldn't cover the ground fast
enough. When the division superintendents decided to send the overland
back over the way it had come, then up on a cross "jerk" to the Oregon
Short Line, and back along that road to tap the Union Pacific the
other side of the wreck, that boy climbed upon the pilot and said he
was going to stay with it. This was too much for the Swede and me. It
meant travelling the rest of that frigid night in order to gain no
more than a dozen miles or so. We said we'd wait till the wreck was
cleared away, and in the meantime get a good sleep.
Now it is no snap to strike a strange town, broke, at midnight, in
cold weather, and find a place to sleep. The Swede hadn't a penny. My
total assets consisted of two dimes and a nickel. From some of the
town boys we learned that beer was five cents, and that the saloons
kept open all night. There was our meat. Two glasses of beer would
cost ten cents, there would be a stove and chairs, and we could sleep
it out till morning. We headed for the lights of a saloon, walking
briskly, the snow crunching under our feet, a chill little wind
blowing through us.
Alas, I had misunderstood the town boys. Beer was five cents in one
saloon only in the whole burg, and we didn't strike that saloon. But
the one we entered was all right. A blessed stove was roaring
white-hot; there were cosey, cane-bottomed arm-chairs, and a
none-too-pleasant-looking barkeeper who glared suspiciously at us as
we came in. A man cannot spend continuous days and nights in his
clothes, beating trains, fighting soot and cinders, and sleeping
anywhere, and maintain a good "front." Our fronts were decidedly
against us; but what did we care? I had the price in my jeans.
"Two beers," said I nonchalantly to the barkeeper, and while he drew
them, the Swede and I leaned against the bar and yearned secretly for
the arm-chairs by the stove.
The barkeeper set the two foaming glasses before us, and with pride I
deposited the ten cents. Now I was dead game. As soon as I learned my
error in the price I'd have dug up another ten cents. Never mind if it
did leave me only a nickel to my name, a stranger in a strange land.
I'd have paid it all right. But that barkeeper never gave me a chance.
As soon as his eyes spotted the dime I had laid down, he seized the
two glasses, one in each hand, and dumped the beer into the sink
behind the bar. At the same time, glaring at us malevolently, he
said:--
"You've got scabs on your nose. You've got scabs on your nose. You've
got scabs on your nose. See!"
I hadn't either, and neither had the Swede. Our noses were all right.
The direct bearing of his words was beyond our comprehension, but the
indirect bearing was clear as print: he didn't like our looks, and
beer was evidently ten cents a glass.
I dug down and laid another dime on the bar, remarking carelessly,
"Oh, I thought this was a five-cent joint."
"Your money's no good here," he answered, shoving the two dimes across
the bar to me.
Sadly I dropped them back into my pocket, sadly we yearned toward the
blessed stove and the arm-chairs, and sadly we went out the door into
the frosty night.
But as we went out the door, the barkeeper, still glaring, called
after us, "You've got scabs on your nose, see!"
I have seen much of the world since then, journeyed among strange
lands and peoples, opened many books, sat in many lecture-halls; but
to this day, though I have pondered long and deep, I have been unable
to divine the meaning in the cryptic utterance of that barkeeper in
Evanston, Wyoming. Our noses _were_ all right.
We slept that night over the boilers in an electric-lighting plant.
How we discovered that "kipping" place I can't remember. We must have
just headed for it, instinctively, as horses head for water or
carrier-pigeons head for the home-cote. But it was a night not
pleasant to remember. A dozen hoboes were ahead of us on top the
boilers, and it was too hot for all of us. To complete our misery, the
engineer would not let us stand around down below. He gave us our
choice of the boilers or the outside snow.
"You said you wanted to sleep, and so, damn you, sleep," said he to
me, when, frantic and beaten out by the heat, I came down into the
fire-room.
"Water," I gasped, wiping the sweat from my eyes, "water."
He pointed out of doors and assured me that down there somewhere in
the blackness I'd find the river. I started for the river, got lost in
the dark, fell into two or three drifts, gave it up, and returned
half-frozen to the top of the boilers. When I had thawed out, I was
thirstier than ever. Around me the hoboes were moaning, groaning,
sobbing, sighing, gasping, panting, rolling and tossing and
floundering heavily in their torment. We were so many lost souls
toasting on a griddle in hell, and the engineer, Satan Incarnate, gave
us the sole alternative of freezing in the outer cold. The Swede sat
up and anathematized passionately the wanderlust in man that sent him
tramping and suffering hardships such as that.
"When I get back to Chicago," he perorated, "I'm going to get a job
and stick to it till hell freezes over. Then I'll go tramping again."
And, such is the irony of fate, next day, when the wreck ahead was
cleared, the Swede and I pulled out of Evanston in the ice-boxes of an
"orange special," a fast freight laden with fruit from sunny
California. Of course, the ice-boxes were empty on account of the cold
weather, but that didn't make them any warmer for us. We entered them
through hatchways in the top of the car; the boxes were constructed of
galvanized iron, and in that biting weather were not pleasant to the
touch. We lay there, shivered and shook, and with chattering teeth
held a council wherein we decided that we'd stay by the ice-boxes day
and night till we got out of the inhospitable plateau region and down
into the Mississippi Valley.
But we must eat, and we decided that at the next division we would
throw our feet for grub and make a rush back to our ice-boxes. We
arrived in the town of Green River late in the afternoon, but too
early for supper. Before meal-time is the worst time for "battering"
back-doors; but we put on our nerve, swung off the side-ladders as the
freight pulled into the yards, and made a run for the houses. We were
quickly separated; but we had agreed to meet in the ice-boxes. I had
bad luck at first; but in the end, with a couple of "hand-outs" poked
into my shirt, I chased for the train. It was pulling out and going
fast. The particular refrigerator-car in which we were to meet had
already gone by, and half a dozen cars down the train from it I swung
on to the side-ladders, went up on top hurriedly, and dropped down
into an ice-box.
But a shack had seen me from the caboose, and at the next stop a few
miles farther on, Rock Springs, the shack stuck his head into my box
and said: "Hit the grit, you son of a toad! Hit the grit!" Also he
grabbed me by the heels and dragged me out. I hit the grit all right,
and the orange special and the Swede rolled on without me.
Snow was beginning to fall. A cold night was coming on. After dark I
hunted around in the railroad yards until I found an empty
refrigerator car. In I climbed--not into the ice-boxes, but into the
car itself. I swung the heavy doors shut, and their edges, covered
with strips of rubber, sealed the car air-tight. The walls were thick.
There was no way for the outside cold to get in. But the inside was
just as cold as the outside. How to raise the temperature was the
problem. But trust a "profesh" for that. Out of my pockets I dug up
three or four newspapers. These I burned, one at a time, on the floor
of the car. The smoke rose to the top. Not a bit of the heat could
escape, and, comfortable and warm, I passed a beautiful night. I
didn't wake up once.
In the morning it was still snowing. While throwing my feet for
breakfast, I missed an east-bound freight. Later in the day I nailed
two other freights and was ditched from both of them. All afternoon no
east-bound trains went by. The snow was falling thicker than ever, but
at twilight I rode out on the first blind of the overland. As I swung
aboard the blind from one side, somebody swung aboard from the other.
It was the boy who had run away from Oregon.
Now the first blind of a fast train in a driving snow-storm is no
summer picnic. The wind goes right through one, strikes the front of
the car, and comes back again. At the first stop, darkness having come
on, I went forward and interviewed the fireman. I offered to "shove"
coal to the end of his run, which was Rawlins, and my offer was
accepted. My work was out on the tender, in the snow, breaking the
lumps of coal with a sledge and shovelling it forward to him in the
cab. But as I did not have to work all the time, I could come into the
cab and warm up now and again.
"Say," I said to the fireman, at my first breathing spell, "there's a
little kid back there on the first blind. He's pretty cold."
The cabs on the Union Pacific engines are quite spacious, and we
fitted the kid into a warm nook in front of the high seat of the
fireman, where the kid promptly fell asleep. We arrived at Rawlins at
midnight. The snow was thicker than ever. Here the engine was to go
into the round-house, being replaced by a fresh engine. As the train
came to a stop, I dropped off the engine steps plump into the arms of
a large man in a large overcoat. He began asking me questions, and I
promptly demanded who he was. Just as promptly he informed me that he
was the sheriff. I drew in my horns and listened and answered.
He began describing the kid who was still asleep in the cab. I did
some quick thinking. Evidently the family was on the trail of the kid,
and the sheriff had received telegraphed instructions from Oregon.
Yes, I had seen the kid. I had met him first in Ogden. The date
tallied with the sheriff's information. But the kid was still behind
somewhere, I explained, for he had been ditched from that very
overland that night when it pulled out of Rock Springs. And all the
time I was praying that the kid wouldn't wake up, come down out of the
cab, and put the "kibosh" on me.
The sheriff left me in order to interview the shacks, but before he
left he said:--
"Bo, this town is no place for you. Understand? You ride this train
out, and make no mistake about it. If I catch you after it's gone ..."
I assured him that it was not through desire that I was in his town;
that the only reason I was there was that the train had stopped there;
and that he wouldn't see me for smoke the way I'd get out of his darn
town.
While he went to interview the shacks, I jumped back into the cab. The
kid was awake and rubbing his eyes. I told him the news and advised
him to ride the engine into the round-house. To cut the story short,
the kid made the same overland out, riding the pilot, with
instructions to make an appeal to the fireman at the first stop for
permission to ride in the engine. As for myself, I got ditched. The
new fireman was young and not yet lax enough to break the rules of the
Company against having tramps in the engine; so he turned down my
offer to shove coal. I hope the kid succeeded with him, for all night
on the pilot in that blizzard would have meant death.
Strange to say, I do not at this late day remember a detail of how I
was ditched at Rawlins. I remember watching the train as it was
immediately swallowed up in the snow-storm, and of heading for a
saloon to warm up. Here was light and warmth. Everything was in full
blast and wide open. Faro, roulette, craps, and poker tables were
running, and some mad cow-punchers were making the night merry. I had
just succeeded in fraternizing with them and was downing my first
drink at their expense, when a heavy hand descended on my shoulder. I
looked around and sighed. It was the sheriff.
Without a word he led me out into the snow.
"There's an orange special down there in the yards," said he.
"It's a damn cold night," said I.
"It pulls out in ten minutes," said he.
That was all. There was no discussion. And when that orange special
pulled out, I was in the ice-boxes. I thought my feet would freeze
before morning, and the last twenty miles into Laramie I stood upright
in the hatchway and danced up and down. The snow was too thick for the
shacks to see me, and I didn't care if they did.
My quarter of a dollar bought me a hot breakfast at Laramie, and
immediately afterward I was on board the blind baggage of an overland
that was climbing to the pass through the backbone of the Rockies. One
does not ride blind baggages in the daytime; but in this blizzard at
the top of the Rocky Mountains I doubted if the shacks would have the
heart to put me off. And they didn't. They made a practice of coming
forward at every stop to see if I was frozen yet.
At Ames' Monument, at the summit of the Rockies,--I forget the
altitude,--the shack came forward for the last time.
"Say, Bo," he said, "you see that freight side-tracked over there to
let us go by?"
I saw. It was on the next track, six feet away. A few feet more in
that storm and I could not have seen it.
"Well, the 'after-push' of Kelly's Army is in one of them cars.
They've got two feet of straw under them, and there's so many of them
that they keep the car warm."