remember one evening (it was fair-time in Sacramento, and we were
knocking about and having a good time) when I lost my hat in a fight.
There was I bare-headed in the street, and it was Bob to the rescue.
He took me to one side from the push and told me what to do. I was a
bit timid of his advice. I had just come out of jail, where I had been
three days, and I knew that if the police "pinched" me again, I'd get
good and "soaked." On the other hand, I couldn't show the white
feather. I'd been over the hill, I was running full-fledged with the
push, and it was up to me to deliver the goods. So I accepted Bob's
advice, and he came along with me to see that I did it up brown.
We took our position on K Street, on the corner, I think, of Fifth. It
was early in the evening and the street was crowded. Bob studied the
head-gear of every Chinaman that passed. I used to wonder how the
road-kids all managed to wear "five-dollar Stetson stiff-rims," and
now I knew. They got them, the way I was going to get mine, from the
Chinese. I was nervous--there were so many people about; but Bob was
cool as an iceberg. Several times, when I started forward toward a
Chinaman, all nerved and keyed up, Bob dragged me back. He wanted me
to get a good hat, and one that fitted. Now a hat came by that was the
right size but not new; and, after a dozen impossible hats, along
would come one that was new but not the right size. And when one did
come by that was new and the right size, the rim was too large or not
large enough. My, Bob was finicky. I was so wrought up that I'd have
snatched any kind of a head-covering.
At last came the hat, the one hat in Sacramento for me. I knew it was
a winner as soon as I looked at it. I glanced at Bob. He sent a
sweeping look-about for police, then nodded his head. I lifted the hat
from the Chinaman's head and pulled it down on my own. It was a
perfect fit. Then I started. I heard Bob crying out, and I caught a
glimpse of him blocking the irate Mongolian and tripping him up. I ran
on. I turned up the next corner, and around the next. This street was
not so crowded as K, and I walked along in quietude, catching my
breath and congratulating myself upon my hat and my get-away.
And then, suddenly, around the corner at my back, came the bare-headed
Chinaman. With him were a couple more Chinamen, and at their heels
were half a dozen men and boys. I sprinted to the next corner, crossed
the street, and rounded the following corner. I decided that I had
surely played him out, and I dropped into a walk again. But around the
corner at my heels came that persistent Mongolian. It was the old
story of the hare and the tortoise. He could not run so fast as I, but
he stayed with it, plodding along at a shambling and deceptive trot,
and wasting much good breath in noisy imprecations. He called all
Sacramento to witness the dishonor that had been done him, and a
goodly portion of Sacramento heard and flocked at his heels. And I ran
on like the hare, and ever that persistent Mongolian, with the
increasing rabble, overhauled me. But finally, when a policeman had
joined his following, I let out all my links. I twisted and turned,
and I swear I ran at least twenty blocks on the straight away. And I
never saw that Chinaman again. The hat was a dandy, a brand-new
Stetson, just out of the shop, and it was the envy of the whole push.
Furthermore, it was the symbol that I had delivered the goods. I wore
it for over a year.
Road-kids are nice little chaps--when you get them alone and they are
telling you "how it happened"; but take my word for it, watch out for
them when they run in pack. Then they are wolves, and like wolves they
are capable of dragging down the strongest man. At such times they are
not cowardly. They will fling themselves upon a man and hold on with
every ounce of strength in their wiry bodies, till he is thrown and
helpless. More than once have I seen them do it, and I know whereof I
speak. Their motive is usually robbery. And watch out for the "strong
arm." Every kid in the push I travelled with was expert at it. Even
French Kid mastered it before he lost his legs.
I have strong upon me now a vision of what I once saw in "The
Willows." The Willows was a clump of trees in a waste piece of land
near the railway depot and not more than five minutes walk from the
heart of Sacramento. It is night-time and the scene is illumined by
the thin light of stars. I see a husky laborer in the midst of a pack
of road-kids. He is infuriated and cursing them, not a bit afraid,
confident of his own strength. He weighs about one hundred and eighty
pounds, and his muscles are hard; but he doesn't know what he is up
against. The kids are snarling. It is not pretty. They make a rush
from all sides, and he lashes out and whirls. Barber Kid is standing
beside me. As the man whirls, Barber Kid leaps forward and does the
trick. Into the man's back goes his knee; around the man's neck, from
behind, passes his right hand, the bone of the wrist pressing against
the jugular vein. Barber Kid throws his whole weight backward. It is a
powerful leverage. Besides, the man's wind has been shut off. It is
the strong arm.
The man resists, but he is already practically helpless. The road-kids
are upon him from every side, clinging to arms and legs and body, and
like a wolf at the throat of a moose Barber Kid hangs on and drags
backward. Over the man goes, and down under the heap. Barber Kid
changes the position of his own body, but never lets go. While some of
the kids are "going through" the victim, others are holding his legs
so that he cannot kick and thresh about. They improve the opportunity
by taking off the man's shoes. As for him, he has given in. He is
beaten. Also, what of the strong arm at his throat, he is short of
wind. He is making ugly choking noises, and the kids hurry. They
really don't want to kill him. All is done. At a word all holds are
released at once, and the kids scatter, one of them lugging the
shoes--he knows where he can get half a dollar for them. The man sits
up and looks about him, dazed and helpless. Even if he wanted to,
barefooted pursuit in the darkness would be hopeless. I linger a
moment and watch him. He is feeling at his throat, making dry, hawking
noises, and jerking his head in a quaint way as though to assure
himself that the neck is not dislocated. Then I slip away to join the
push, and see that man no more--though I shall always see him, sitting
there in the starlight, somewhat dazed, a bit frightened, greatly
dishevelled, and making quaint jerking movements of head and neck.
Drunken men are the especial prey of the road-kids. Robbing a drunken
man they call "rolling a stiff"; and wherever they are, they are on
the constant lookout for drunks. The drunk is their particular meat,
as the fly is the particular meat of the spider. The rolling of a
stiff is ofttimes an amusing sight, especially when the stiff is
helpless and when interference is unlikely. At the first swoop the
stiff's money and jewellery go. Then the kids sit around their victim
in a sort of pow-wow. A kid generates a fancy for the stiff's necktie.
Off it comes. Another kid is after underclothes. Off they come, and a
knife quickly abbreviates arms and legs. Friendly hoboes may be called
in to take the coat and trousers, which are too large for the kids.
And in the end they depart, leaving beside the stiff the heap of their
discarded rags.
Another vision comes to me. It is a dark night. My push is coming
along the sidewalk in the suburbs. Ahead of us, under an electric
light, a man crosses the street diagonally. There is something
tentative and desultory in his walk. The kids scent the game on the
instant. The man is drunk. He blunders across the opposite sidewalk
and is lost in the darkness as he takes a short-cut through a vacant
lot. No hunting cry is raised, but the pack flings itself forward in
quick pursuit. In the middle of the vacant lot it comes upon him. But
what is this?--snarling and strange forms, small and dim and menacing,
are between the pack and its prey. It is another pack of road-kids,
and in the hostile pause we learn that it is their meat, that they
have been trailing it a dozen blocks and more and that we are butting
in. But it is the world primeval. These wolves are baby wolves. (As a
matter of fact, I don't think one of them was over twelve or thirteen
years of age. I met some of them afterward, and learned that they had
just arrived that day over the hill, and that they hailed from Denver
and Salt Lake City.) Our pack flings forward. The baby wolves squeal
and screech and fight like little demons. All about the drunken man
rages the struggle for the possession of him. Down he goes in the
thick of it, and the combat rages over his body after the fashion of
the Greeks and Trojans over the body and armor of a fallen hero. Amid
cries and tears and wailings the baby wolves are dispossessed, and my
pack rolls the stiff. But always I remember the poor stiff and his
befuddled amazement at the abrupt eruption of battle in the vacant
lot. I see him now, dim in the darkness, titubating in stupid wonder,
good-naturedly essaying the role of peacemaker in that multitudinous
scrap the significance of which he did not understand, and the really
hurt expression on his face when he, unoffending he, was clutched at
by many hands and dragged down in the thick of the press.
"Bindle-stiffs" are favorite prey of the road-kids. A bindle-stiff is
a working tramp. He takes his name from the roll of blankets he
carries, which is known as a "bindle." Because he does work, a
bindle-stiff is expected usually to have some small change about him,
and it is after that small change that the road-kids go. The best
hunting-ground for bindle-stiffs is in the sheds, barns, lumber-yards,
railroad-yards, etc., on the edges of a city, and the time for hunting
is the night, when the bindle-stiff seeks these places to roll up in
his blankets and sleep.
"Gay-cats" also come to grief at the hands of the road-kid. In more
familiar parlance, gay-cats are short-horns, _chechaquos_, new chums,
or tenderfeet. A gay-cat is a newcomer on The Road who is man-grown,
or, at least, youth-grown. A boy on The Road, on the other hand, no
matter how green he is, is never a gay-cat; he is a road-kid or a
"punk," and if he travels with a "profesh," he is known possessively
as a "prushun." I was never a prushun, for I did not take kindly to
possession. I was first a road-kid and then a profesh. Because I
started in young, I practically skipped my gay-cat apprenticeship. For
a short period, during the time I was exchanging my 'Frisco Kid monica
for that of Sailor Jack, I labored under the suspicion of being a
gay-cat. But closer acquaintance on the part of those that suspected
me quickly disabused their minds, and in a short time I acquired the
unmistakable airs and ear-marks of the blowed-in-the-glass profesh.
And be it known, here and now, that the profesh are the aristocracy of
The Road. They are the lords and masters, the aggressive men, the
primordial noblemen, the _blond beasts_ so beloved of Nietzsche.
When I came back over the hill from Nevada, I found that some river
pirate had stolen Dinny McCrea's boat. (A funny thing at this day is
that I cannot remember what became of the skiff in which Nickey the
Greek and I sailed from Oakland to Port Costa. I know that the
constable didn't get it, and I know that it didn't go with us up the
Sacramento River, and that is all I do know.) With the loss of Dinny
McCrea's boat, I was pledged to The Road; and when I grew tired of
Sacramento, I said good-by to the push (which, in its friendly way,
tried to ditch me from a freight as I left town) and started on a
_passear_ down the valley of the San Joaquin. The Road had gripped me
and would not let me go; and later, when I had voyaged to sea and done
one thing and another, I returned to The Road to make longer flights,
to be a "comet" and a profesh, and to plump into the bath of sociology
that wet me to the skin.
TWO THOUSAND STIFFS
A "stiff" is a tramp. It was once my fortune to travel a few weeks
with a "push" that numbered two thousand. This was known as "Kelly's
Army." Across the wild and woolly West, clear from California, General
Kelly and his heroes had captured trains; but they fell down when they
crossed the Missouri and went up against the effete East. The East
hadn't the slightest intention of giving free transportation to two
thousand hoboes. Kelly's Army lay helplessly for some time at Council
Bluffs. The day I joined it, made desperate by delay, it marched out
to capture a train.
It was quite an imposing sight. General Kelly sat a magnificent black
charger, and with waving banners, to the martial music of fife and
drum corps, company by company, in two divisions, his two thousand
stiffs countermarched before him and hit the wagon-road to the little
burg of Weston, seven miles away. Being the latest recruit, I was in
the last company, of the last regiment, of the Second Division, and,
furthermore, in the last rank of the rear-guard. The army went into
camp at Weston beside the railroad track--beside the tracks, rather,
for two roads went through: the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul, and
the Rock Island.
Our intention was to take the first train out, but the railroad
officials "coppered" our play--and won. There was no first train. They
tied up the two lines and stopped running trains. In the meantime,
while we lay by the dead tracks, the good people of Omaha and Council
Bluffs were bestirring themselves. Preparations were making to form a
mob, capture a train in Council Bluffs, run it down to us, and make us
a present of it. The railroad officials coppered that play, too. They
didn't wait for the mob. Early in the morning of the second day, an
engine, with a single private car attached, arrived at the station and
side-tracked. At this sign that life had renewed in the dead roads,
the whole army lined up beside the track.
But never did life renew so monstrously on a dead railroad as it did
on those two roads. From the west came the whistle of a locomotive.
It was coming in our direction, bound east. We were bound east. A stir
of preparation ran down our ranks. The whistle tooted fast and
furiously, and the train thundered at top speed. The hobo didn't live
that could have boarded it. Another locomotive whistled, and another
train came through at top speed, and another, and another, train after
train, train after train, till toward the last the trains were
composed of passenger coaches, box-cars, flat-cars, dead engines,
cabooses, mail-cars, wrecking appliances, and all the riff-raff of
worn-out and abandoned rolling-stock that collects in the yards of
great railways. When the yards at Council Bluffs had been completely
cleaned, the private car and engine went east, and the tracks died for
keeps.
That day went by, and the next, and nothing moved, and in the
meantime, pelted by sleet, and rain, and hail, the two thousand hoboes
lay beside the track. But that night the good people of Council Bluffs
went the railroad officials one better. A mob formed in Council
Bluffs, crossed the river to Omaha, and there joined with another mob
in a raid on the Union Pacific yards. First they captured an engine,
next they knocked a train together, and then the united mobs piled
aboard, crossed the Missouri, and ran down the Rock Island right of
way to turn the train over to us. The railway officials tried to
copper this play, but fell down, to the mortal terror of the section
boss and one member of the section gang at Weston. This pair, under
secret telegraphic orders, tried to wreck our train-load of
sympathizers by tearing up the track. It happened that we were
suspicious and had our patrols out. Caught red-handed at
train-wrecking, and surrounded by twenty hundred infuriated hoboes,
that section-gang boss and assistant prepared to meet death. I don't
remember what saved them, unless it was the arrival of the train.
It was our turn to fall down, and we did, hard. In their haste, the
two mobs had neglected to make up a sufficiently long train. There
wasn't room for two thousand hoboes to ride. So the mobs and the
hoboes had a talkfest, fraternized, sang songs, and parted, the mobs
going back on their captured train to Omaha, the hoboes pulling out
next morning on a hundred-and-forty-mile march to Des Moines. It was
not until Kelly's Army crossed the Missouri that it began to walk,
and after that it never rode again. It cost the railroads slathers of
money, but they were acting on principle, and they won.
Underwood, Leola, Menden, Avoca, Walnut, Marno, Atlantic, Wyoto,
Anita, Adair, Adam, Casey, Stuart, Dexter, Carlham, De Soto, Van
Meter, Booneville, Commerce, Valley Junction--how the names of the
towns come back to me as I con the map and trace our route through the
fat Iowa country! And the hospitable Iowa farmer-folk! They turned out
with their wagons and carried our baggage; gave us hot lunches at noon
by the wayside; mayors of comfortable little towns made speeches of
welcome and hastened us on our way; deputations of little girls and
maidens came out to meet us, and the good citizens turned out by
hundreds, locked arms, and marched with us down their main streets. It
was circus day when we came to town, and every day was circus day, for
there were many towns.
In the evenings our camps were invaded by whole populations. Every
company had its campfire, and around each fire something was doing.
The cooks in my company, Company L, were song-and-dance artists and
contributed most of our entertainment. In another part of the
encampment the glee club would be singing--one of its star voices was
the "Dentist," drawn from Company L, and we were mighty proud of him.
Also, he pulled teeth for the whole army, and, since the extractions
usually occurred at meal-time, our digestions were stimulated by
variety of incident. The Dentist had no anaesthetics, but two or three
of us were always on tap to volunteer to hold down the patient. In
addition to the stunts of the companies and the glee club, church
services were usually held, local preachers officiating, and always
there was a great making of political speeches. All these things ran
neck and neck; it was a full-blown Midway. A lot of talent can be dug
out of two thousand hoboes. I remember we had a picked baseball nine,
and on Sundays we made a practice of putting it all over the local
nines. Sometimes we did it twice on Sundays.
Last year, while on a lecturing trip, I rode into Des Moines in a
Pullman--I don't mean a "side-door Pullman," but the real thing. On
the outskirts of the city I saw the old stove-works, and my heart
leaped. It was there, at the stove-works, a dozen years before, that
the Army lay down and swore a mighty oath that its feet were sore and
that it would walk no more. We took possession of the stove-works and
told Des Moines that we had come to stay--that we'd walked in, but
we'd be blessed if we'd walk out. Des Moines was hospitable, but this
was too much of a good thing. Do a little mental arithmetic, gentle
reader. Two thousand hoboes, eating three square meals, make six
thousand meals per day, forty-two thousand meals per week, or one
hundred and sixty-eight thousand meals per shortest month in the
calendar. That's going some. We had no money. It was up to Des Moines.
Des Moines was desperate. We lay in camp, made political speeches,
held sacred concerts, pulled teeth, played baseball and seven-up, and
ate our six thousand meals per day, and Des Moines paid for it. Des
Moines pleaded with the railroads, but they were obdurate; they had
said we shouldn't ride, and that settled it. To permit us to ride
would be to establish a precedent, and there weren't going to be any
precedents. And still we went on eating. That was the terrifying
factor in the situation. We were bound for Washington, and Des Moines
would have had to float municipal bonds to pay all our railroad fares,
even at special rates, and if we remained much longer, she'd have to
float bonds anyway to feed us.
Then some local genius solved the problem. We wouldn't walk. Very
good. We should ride. From Des Moines to Keokuk on the Mississippi
flowed the Des Moines River. This particular stretch of river was
three hundred miles long. We could ride on it, said the local genius;
and, once equipped with floating stock, we could ride on down the
Mississippi to the Ohio, and thence up the Ohio, winding up with a
short portage over the mountains to Washington.
Des Moines took up a subscription. Public-spirited citizens
contributed several thousand dollars. Lumber, rope, nails, and cotton
for calking were bought in large quantities, and on the banks of the
Des Moines was inaugurated a tremendous era of shipbuilding. Now the
Des Moines is a picayune stream, unduly dignified by the appellation
of "river." In our spacious western land it would be called a "creek."
The oldest inhabitants shook their heads and said we couldn't make it,
that there wasn't enough water to float us. Des Moines didn't care,
so long as it got rid of us, and we were such well-fed optimists that
we didn't care either.
On Wednesday, May 9, 1894, we got under way and started on our
colossal picnic. Des Moines had got off pretty easily, and she
certainly owes a statue in bronze to the local genius who got her out
of her difficulty. True, Des Moines had to pay for our boats; we had
eaten sixty-six thousand meals at the stove-works; and we took twelve
thousand additional meals along with us in our commissary--as a
precaution against famine in the wilds; but then, think what it would
have meant if we had remained at Des Moines eleven months instead of
eleven days. Also, when we departed, we promised Des Moines we'd come
back if the river failed to float us.
It was all very well having twelve thousand meals in the commissary,
and no doubt the commissary "ducks" enjoyed them; for the commissary
promptly got lost, and my boat, for one, never saw it again. The
company formation was hopelessly broken up during the river-trip. In
any camp of men there will always be found a certain percentage of
shirks, of helpless, of just ordinary, and of hustlers. There were ten
men in my boat, and they were the cream of Company L. Every man was a
hustler. For two reasons I was included in the ten. First, I was as
good a hustler as ever "threw his feet," and next, I was "Sailor
Jack." I understood boats and boating. The ten of us forgot the
remaining forty men of Company L, and by the time we had missed one
meal we promptly forgot the commissary. We were independent. We went
down the river "on our own," hustling our "chewin's," beating every
boat in the fleet, and, alas that I must say it, sometimes taking
possession of the stores the farmer-folk had collected for the Army.
For a good part of the three hundred miles we were from half a day to
a day or so in advance of the Army. We had managed to get hold of
several American flags. When we approached a small town, or when we
saw a group of farmers gathered on the bank, we ran up our flags,
called ourselves the "advance boat," and demanded to know what
provisions had been collected for the Army. We represented the Army,
of course, and the provisions were turned over to us. But there
wasn't anything small about us. We never took more than we could get
away with. But we did take the cream of everything. For instance, if
some philanthropic farmer had donated several dollars' worth of
tobacco, we took it. So, also, we took butter and sugar, coffee and
canned goods; but when the stores consisted of sacks of beans and
flour, or two or three slaughtered steers, we resolutely refrained and
went our way, leaving orders to turn such provisions over to the
commissary boats whose business was to follow behind us.
My, but the ten of us did live on the fat of the land! For a long time
General Kelly vainly tried to head us off. He sent two rowers, in a
light, round-bottomed boat, to overtake us and put a stop to our
piratical careers. They overtook us all right, but they were two and
we were ten. They were empowered by General Kelly to make us
prisoners, and they told us so. When we expressed disinclination to
become prisoners, they hurried ahead to the next town to invoke the
aid of the authorities. We went ashore immediately and cooked an early
supper; and under the cloak of darkness we ran by the town and its
authorities.