"con game" the shack had given me, to take the blind as the overland
pulled out. But it was straight goods. I found the car--a big
refrigerator car with the leeward door wide open for ventilation. Up I
climbed and in. I stepped on a man's leg, next on some other man's
arm. The light was dim, and all I could make out was arms and legs and
bodies inextricably confused. Never was there such a tangle of
humanity. They were all lying in the straw, and over, and under, and
around one another. Eighty-four husky hoboes take up a lot of room
when they are stretched out. The men I stepped on were resentful.
Their bodies heaved under me like the waves of the sea, and imparted
an involuntary forward movement to me. I could not find any straw to
step upon, so I stepped upon more men. The resentment increased, so
did my forward movement. I lost my footing and sat down with sharp
abruptness. Unfortunately, it was on a man's head. The next moment he
had risen on his hands and knees in wrath, and I was flying through
the air. What goes up must come down, and I came down on another man's
head.
What happened after that is very vague in my memory. It was like going
through a threshing-machine. I was bandied about from one end of the
car to the other. Those eighty-four hoboes winnowed me out till what
little was left of me, by some miracle, found a bit of straw to rest
upon. I was initiated, and into a jolly crowd. All the rest of that
day we rode through the blizzard, and to while the time away it was
decided that each man was to tell a story. It was stipulated that
each story must be a good one, and, furthermore, that it must be a
story no one had ever heard before. The penalty for failure was the
threshing-machine. Nobody failed. And I want to say right here that
never in my life have I sat at so marvellous a story-telling debauch.
Here were eighty-four men from all the world--I made eighty-five; and
each man told a masterpiece. It had to be, for it was either
masterpiece or threshing-machine.
Late in the afternoon we arrived in Cheyenne. The blizzard was at its
height, and though the last meal of all of us had been breakfast, no
man cared to throw his feet for supper. All night we rolled on through
the storm, and next day found us down on the sweet plains of Nebraska
and still rolling. We were out of the storm and the mountains. The
blessed sun was shining over a smiling land, and we had eaten nothing
for twenty-four hours. We found out that the freight would arrive
about noon at a town, if I remember right, that was called Grand
Island.
We took up a collection and sent a telegram to the authorities of that
town. The text of the message was that eighty-five healthy, hungry
hoboes would arrive about noon and that it would be a good idea to
have dinner ready for them. The authorities of Grand Island had two
courses open to them. They could feed us, or they could throw us in
jail. In the latter event they'd have to feed us anyway, and they
decided wisely that one meal would be the cheaper way.
When the freight rolled into Grand Island at noon, we were sitting on
the tops of the cars and dangling our legs in the sunshine. All the
police in the burg were on the reception committee. They marched us in
squads to the various hotels and restaurants, where dinners were
spread for us. We had been thirty-six hours without food, and we
didn't have to be taught what to do. After that we were marched back
to the railroad station. The police had thoughtfully compelled the
freight to wait for us. She pulled out slowly, and the eighty-five of
us, strung out along the track, swarmed up the side-ladders. We
"captured" the train.
We had no supper that evening--at least the "push" didn't, but I did.
Just at supper time, as the freight was pulling out of a small town,
a man climbed into the car where I was playing pedro with three other
stiffs. The man's shirt was bulging suspiciously. In his hand he
carried a battered quart-measure from which arose steam. I smelled
"Java." I turned my cards over to one of the stiffs who was looking
on, and excused myself. Then, in the other end of the car, pursued by
envious glances, I sat down with the man who had climbed aboard and
shared his "Java" and the hand-outs that had bulged his shirt. It was
the Swede.
At about ten o'clock in the evening, we arrived at Omaha.
"Let's shake the push," said the Swede to me.
"Sure," said I.
As the freight pulled into Omaha, we made ready to do so. But the
people of Omaha were also ready. The Swede and I hung upon the
side-ladders, ready to drop off. But the freight did not stop.
Furthermore, long rows of policemen, their brass buttons and stars
glittering in the electric lights, were lined up on each side of the
track. The Swede and I knew what would happen to us if we ever dropped
off into their arms. We stuck by the side-ladders, and the train
rolled on across the Missouri River to Council Bluffs.
"General" Kelly, with an army of two thousand hoboes, lay in camp at
Chautauqua Park, several miles away. The after-push we were with was
General Kelly's rear-guard, and, detraining at Council Bluffs, it
started to march to camp. The night had turned cold, and heavy
wind-squalls, accompanied by rain, were chilling and wetting us. Many
police were guarding us and herding us to the camp. The Swede and I
watched our chance and made a successful get-away.
The rain began coming down in torrents, and in the darkness, unable to
see our hands in front of our faces, like a pair of blind men we
fumbled about for shelter. Our instinct served us, for in no time we
stumbled upon a saloon--not a saloon that was open and doing business,
not merely a saloon that was closed for the night, and not even a
saloon with a permanent address, but a saloon propped up on big
timbers, with rollers underneath, that was being moved from somewhere
to somewhere. The doors were locked. A squall of wind and rain drove
down upon us. We did not hesitate. Smash went the door, and in we
went.
I have made some tough camps in my time, "carried the banner" in
infernal metropolises, bedded in pools of water, slept in the snow
under two blankets when the spirit thermometer registered seventy-four
degrees below zero (which is a mere trifle of one hundred and six
degrees of frost); but I want to say right here that never did I make
a tougher camp, pass a more miserable night, than that night I passed
with the Swede in the itinerant saloon at Council Bluffs. In the first
place, the building, perched up as it was in the air, had exposed a
multitude of openings in the floor through which the wind whistled. In
the second place, the bar was empty; there was no bottled fire-water
with which we could warm ourselves and forget our misery. We had no
blankets, and in our wet clothes, wet to the skin, we tried to sleep.
I rolled under the bar, and the Swede rolled under the table. The
holes and crevices in the floor made it impossible, and at the end of
half an hour I crawled up on top the bar. A little later the Swede
crawled up on top his table.
And there we shivered and prayed for daylight. I know, for one, that I
shivered until I could shiver no more, till the shivering muscles
exhausted themselves and merely ached horribly. The Swede moaned and
groaned, and every little while, through chattering teeth, he
muttered, "Never again; never again." He muttered this phrase
repeatedly, ceaselessly, a thousand times; and when he dozed, he went
on muttering it in his sleep.
At the first gray of dawn we left our house of pain, and outside,
found ourselves in a mist, dense and chill. We stumbled on till we
came to the railroad track. I was going back to Omaha to throw my feet
for breakfast; my companion was going on to Chicago. The moment for
parting had come. Our palsied hands went out to each other. We were
both shivering. When we tried to speak, our teeth chattered us back
into silence. We stood alone, shut off from the world; all that we
could see was a short length of railroad track, both ends of which
were lost in the driving mist. We stared dumbly at each other, our
clasped hands shaking sympathetically. The Swede's face was blue with
the cold, and I know mine must have been.
"Never again what?" I managed to articulate.
Speech strove for utterance in the Swede's throat; then faint and
distant, in a thin whisper from the very bottom of his frozen soul,
came the words:--
"Never again a hobo."
He paused, and, as he went on again, his voice gathered strength and
huskiness as it affirmed his will.
"Never again a hobo. I'm going to get a job. You'd better do the same.
Nights like this make rheumatism."
He wrung my hand.
"Good-by, Bo," said he.
"Good-by, Bo," said I.
The next we were swallowed up from each other by the mist. It was our
final passing. But here's to you, Mr. Swede, wherever you are. I hope
you got that job.
ROAD-KIDS AND GAY-CATS
Every once in a while, in newspapers, magazines, and biographical
dictionaries, I run upon sketches of my life, wherein, delicately
phrased, I learn that it was in order to study sociology that I became
a tramp. This is very nice and thoughtful of the biographers, but it
is inaccurate. I became a tramp--well, because of the life that was in
me, of the wanderlust in my blood that would not let me rest.
Sociology was merely incidental; it came afterward, in the same manner
that a wet skin follows a ducking. I went on "The Road" because I
couldn't keep away from it; because I hadn't the price of the railroad
fare in my jeans; because I was so made that I couldn't work all my
life on "one same shift"; because--well, just because it was easier to
than not to.
It happened in my own town, in Oakland, when I was sixteen. At that
time I had attained a dizzy reputation in my chosen circle of
adventurers, by whom I was known as the Prince of the Oyster Pirates.
It is true, those immediately outside my circle, such as honest
bay-sailors, longshoremen, yachtsmen, and the legal owners of the
oysters, called me "tough," "hoodlum," "smoudge," "thief," "robber,"
and various other not nice things--all of which was complimentary and
but served to increase the dizziness of the high place in which I sat.
At that time I had not read "Paradise Lost," and later, when I read
Milton's "Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven," I was fully
convinced that great minds run in the same channels.
It was at this time that the fortuitous concatenation of events sent
me upon my first adventure on The Road. It happened that there was
nothing doing in oysters just then; that at Benicia, forty miles away,
I had some blankets I wanted to get; and that at Port Costa, several
miles from Benicia, a stolen boat lay at anchor in charge of the
constable. Now this boat was owned by a friend of mine, by name Dinny
McCrea. It had been stolen and left at Port Costa by Whiskey Bob,
another friend of mine. (Poor Whiskey Bob! Only last winter his body
was picked up on the beach shot full of holes by nobody knows whom.)
I had come down from "up river" some time before, and reported to
Dinny McCrea the whereabouts of his boat; and Dinny McCrea had
promptly offered ten dollars to me if I should bring it down to
Oakland to him.
Time was heavy on my hands. I sat on the dock and talked it over with
Nickey the Greek, another idle oyster pirate. "Let's go," said I, and
Nickey was willing. He was "broke." I possessed fifty cents and a
small skiff. The former I invested and loaded into the latter in the
form of crackers, canned corned beef, and a ten-cent bottle of French
mustard. (We were keen on French mustard in those days.) Then, late in
the afternoon, we hoisted our small spritsail and started. We sailed
all night, and next morning, on the first of a glorious flood-tide, a
fair wind behind us, we came booming up the Carquinez Straits to Port
Costa. There lay the stolen boat, not twenty-five feet from the wharf.
We ran alongside and doused our little spritsail. I sent Nickey
forward to lift the anchor, while I began casting off the gaskets.
A man ran out on the wharf and hailed us. It was the constable. It
suddenly came to me that I had neglected to get a written
authorization from Dinny McCrea to take possession of his boat. Also,
I knew that constable wanted to charge at least twenty-five dollars in
fees for capturing the boat from Whiskey Bob and subsequently taking
care of it. And my last fifty cents had been blown in for corned beef
and French mustard, and the reward was only ten dollars anyway. I shot
a glance forward to Nickey. He had the anchor up-and-down and was
straining at it. "Break her out," I whispered to him, and turned and
shouted back to the constable. The result was that he and I were
talking at the same time, our spoken thoughts colliding in mid-air and
making gibberish.
The constable grew more imperative, and perforce I had to listen.
Nickey was heaving on the anchor till I thought he'd burst a
blood-vessel. When the constable got done with his threats and
warnings, I asked him who he was. The time he lost in telling me
enabled Nickey to break out the anchor. I was doing some quick
calculating. At the feet of the constable a ladder ran down the dock
to the water, and to the ladder was moored a skiff. The oars were in
it. But it was padlocked. I gambled everything on that padlock. I
felt the breeze on my cheek, saw the surge of the tide, looked at the
remaining gaskets that confined the sail, ran my eyes up the halyards
to the blocks and knew that all was clear, and then threw off all
dissimulation.
"In with her!" I shouted to Nickey, and sprang to the gaskets, casting
them loose and thanking my stars that Whiskey Bob had tied them in
square-knots instead of "grannies."
The constable had slid down the ladder and was fumbling with a key at
the padlock. The anchor came aboard and the last gasket was loosed at
the same instant that the constable freed the skiff and jumped to the
oars.
"Peak-halyards!" I commanded my crew, at the same time swinging on to
the throat-halyards. Up came the sail on the run. I belayed and ran
aft to the tiller.
"Stretch her!" I shouted to Nickey at the peak. The constable was just
reaching for our stern. A puff of wind caught us, and we shot away. It
was great. If I'd had a black flag, I know I'd have run it up in
triumph. The constable stood up in the skiff, and paled the glory of
the day with the vividness of his language. Also, he wailed for a gun.
You see, that was another gamble we had taken.
Anyway, we weren't stealing the boat. It wasn't the constable's. We
were merely stealing his fees, which was his particular form of graft.
And we weren't stealing the fees for ourselves, either; we were
stealing them for my friend, Dinny McCrea.
Benicia was made in a few minutes, and a few minutes later my blankets
were aboard. I shifted the boat down to the far end of Steamboat
Wharf, from which point of vantage we could see anybody coming after
us. There was no telling. Maybe the Port Costa constable would
telephone to the Benicia constable. Nickey and I held a council of
war. We lay on deck in the warm sun, the fresh breeze on our cheeks,
the flood-tide rippling and swirling past. It was impossible to start
back to Oakland till afternoon, when the ebb would begin to run. But
we figured that the constable would have an eye out on the Carquinez
Straits when the ebb started, and that nothing remained for us but to
wait for the following ebb, at two o'clock next morning, when we
could slip by Cerberus in the darkness.
So we lay on deck, smoked cigarettes, and were glad that we were
alive. I spat over the side and gauged the speed of the current.
"With this wind, we could run this flood clear to Rio Vista," I said.
"And it's fruit-time on the river," said Nickey.
"And low water on the river," said I. "It's the best time of the year
to make Sacramento."
We sat up and looked at each other. The glorious west wind was pouring
over us like wine. We both spat over the side and gauged the current.
Now I contend that it was all the fault of that flood-tide and fair
wind. They appealed to our sailor instinct. If it had not been for
them, the whole chain of events that was to put me upon The Road would
have broken down.
We said no word, but cast off our moorings and hoisted sail. Our
adventures up the Sacramento River are no part of this narrative. We
subsequently made the city of Sacramento and tied up at a wharf. The
water was fine, and we spent most of our time in swimming. On the
sand-bar above the railroad bridge we fell in with a bunch of boys
likewise in swimming. Between swims we lay on the bank and talked.
They talked differently from the fellows I had been used to herding
with. It was a new vernacular. They were road-kids, and with every
word they uttered the lure of The Road laid hold of me more
imperiously.
"When I was down in Alabama," one kid would begin; or, another,
"Coming up on the C. & A. from K.C."; whereat, a third kid, "On the C.
& A. there ain't no steps to the 'blinds.'" And I would lie silently
in the sand and listen. "It was at a little town in Ohio on the Lake
Shore and Michigan Southern," a kid would start; and another, "Ever
ride the Cannonball on the Wabash?"; and yet another, "Nope, but I've
been on the White Mail out of Chicago." "Talk about railroadin'--wait
till you hit the Pennsylvania, four tracks, no water tanks, take water
on the fly, that's goin' some." "The Northern Pacific's a bad road
now." "Salinas is on the 'hog,' the 'bulls' is 'horstile.'" "I got
'pinched' at El Paso, along with Moke Kid." "Talkin' of 'poke-outs,'
wait till you hit the French country out of Montreal--not a word of
English--you say, 'Mongee, Madame, mongee, no spika da French,' an'
rub your stomach an' look hungry, an' she gives you a slice of
sow-belly an' a chunk of dry 'punk.'"
And I continued to lie in the sand and listen. These wanderers made my
oyster-piracy look like thirty cents. A new world was calling to me in
every word that was spoken--a world of rods and gunnels, blind
baggages and "side-door Pullmans," "bulls" and "shacks," "floppings"
and "chewin's," "pinches" and "get-aways," "strong arms" and
"bindle-stiffs," "punks" and "profesh." And it all spelled Adventure.
Very well; I would tackle this new world. I "lined" myself up
alongside those road-kids. I was just as strong as any of them, just
as quick, just as nervy, and my brain was just as good.
After the swim, as evening came on, they dressed and went up town. I
went along. The kids began "battering" the "main-stem" for "light
pieces," or, in other words, begging for money on the main street. I
had never begged in my life, and this was the hardest thing for me to
stomach when I first went on The Road. I had absurd notions about
begging. My philosophy, up to that time, was that it was finer to
steal than to beg; and that robbery was finer still because the risk
and the penalty were proportionately greater. As an oyster pirate I
had already earned convictions at the hands of justice, which, if I
had tried to serve them, would have required a thousand years in
state's prison. To rob was manly; to beg was sordid and despicable.
But I developed in the days to come all right, all right, till I came
to look upon begging as a joyous prank, a game of wits, a
nerve-exerciser.
That first night, however, I couldn't rise to it; and the result was
that when the kids were ready to go to a restaurant and eat, I wasn't.
I was broke. Meeny Kid, I think it was, gave me the price, and we all
ate together. But while I ate, I meditated. The receiver, it was said,
was as bad as the thief; Meeny Kid had done the begging, and I was
profiting by it. I decided that the receiver was a whole lot worse
than the thief, and that it shouldn't happen again. And it didn't. I
turned out next day and threw my feet as well as the next one.
Nickey the Greek's ambition didn't run to The Road. He was not a
success at throwing his feet, and he stowed away one night on a barge
and went down river to San Francisco. I met him, only a week ago, at a
pugilistic carnival. He has progressed. He sat in a place of honor at
the ring-side. He is now a manager of prize-fighters and proud of it.
In fact, in a small way, in local sportdom, he is quite a shining
light.
"No kid is a road-kid until he has gone over 'the hill'"--such was the
law of The Road I heard expounded in Sacramento. All right, I'd go
over the hill and matriculate. "The hill," by the way, was the Sierra
Nevadas. The whole gang was going over the hill on a jaunt, and of
course I'd go along. It was French Kid's first adventure on The Road.
He had just run away from his people in San Francisco. It was up to
him and me to deliver the goods. In passing, I may remark that my old
title of "Prince" had vanished. I had received my "monica." I was now
"Sailor Kid," later to be known as "'Frisco Kid," when I had put the
Rockies between me and my native state.
At 10.20 P.M. the Central Pacific overland pulled out of the depot at
Sacramento for the East--that particular item of time-table is
indelibly engraved on my memory. There were about a dozen in our gang,
and we strung out in the darkness ahead of the train ready to take her
out. All the local road-kids that we knew came down to see us
off--also, to "ditch" us if they could. That was their idea of a joke,
and there were only about forty of them to carry it out. Their
ring-leader was a crackerjack road-kid named Bob. Sacramento was his
home town, but he'd hit The Road pretty well everywhere over the whole
country. He took French Kid and me aside and gave us advice something
like this: "We're goin' to try an' ditch your bunch, see? Youse two
are weak. The rest of the push can take care of itself. So, as soon as
youse two nail a blind, deck her. An' stay on the decks till youse
pass Roseville Junction, at which burg the constables are horstile,
sloughin' in everybody on sight."
The engine whistled and the overland pulled out. There were three
blinds on her--room for all of us. The dozen of us who were trying to
make her out would have preferred to slip aboard quietly; but our
forty friends crowded on with the most amazing and shameless
publicity and advertisement. Following Bob's advice, I immediately
"decked her," that is, climbed up on top of the roof of one of the
mail-cars. There I lay down, my heart jumping a few extra beats, and
listened to the fun. The whole train crew was forward, and the
ditching went on fast and furious. After the train had run half a
mile, it stopped, and the crew came forward again and ditched the
survivors. I, alone, had made the train out.
Back at the depot, about him two or three of the push that had
witnessed the accident, lay French Kid with both legs off. French Kid
had slipped or stumbled--that was all, and the wheels had done the
rest. Such was my initiation to The Road. It was two years afterward
when I next saw French Kid and examined his "stumps." This was an act
of courtesy. "Cripples" always like to have their stumps examined. One
of the entertaining sights on The Road is to witness the meeting of
two cripples. Their common disability is a fruitful source of
conversation; and they tell how it happened, describe what they know
of the amputation, pass critical judgment on their own and each
other's surgeons, and wind up by withdrawing to one side, taking off
bandages and wrappings, and comparing stumps.
But it was not until several days later, over in Nevada, when the push
caught up with me, that I learned of French Kid's accident. The push
itself arrived in bad condition. It had gone through a train-wreck in
the snow-sheds; Happy Joe was on crutches with two mashed legs, and
the rest were nursing skins and bruises.
In the meantime, I lay on the roof of the mail-car, trying to remember
whether Roseville Junction, against which burg Bob had warned me, was
the first stop or the second stop. To make sure, I delayed descending
to the platform of the blind until after the second stop. And then I
didn't descend. I was new to the game, and I felt safer where I was.
But I never told the push that I held down the decks the whole night,
clear across the Sierras, through snow-sheds and tunnels, and down to
Truckee on the other side, where I arrived at seven in the morning.
Such a thing was disgraceful, and I'd have been a common
laughing-stock. This is the first time I have confessed the truth
about that first ride over the hill. As for the push, it decided that
I was all right, and when I came back over the hill to Sacramento, I
was a full-fledged road-kid.