one persistently recurring phrase, namely, "Living fine." We did live
fine. We even disdained to use coffee boiled in water. We made our
coffee out of milk, calling the wonderful beverage, if I remember
rightly, "pale Vienna."
While we were ahead, skimming the cream, and while the commissary was
lost far behind, the main Army, coming along in the middle, starved.
This was hard on the Army, I'll allow; but then, the ten of us were
individualists. We had initiative and enterprise. We ardently believed
that the grub was to the man who got there first, the pale Vienna to
the strong. On one stretch the Army went forty-eight hours without
grub; and then it arrived at a small village of some three hundred
inhabitants, the name of which I do not remember, though I think it
was Red Rock. This town, following the practice of all towns through
which the Army passed, had appointed a committee of safety. Counting
five to a family, Red Rock consisted of sixty households. Her
committee of safety was scared stiff by the eruption of two thousand
hungry hoboes who lined their boats two and three deep along the
river bank. General Kelly was a fair man. He had no intention of
working a hardship on the village. He did not expect sixty households
to furnish two thousand meals. Besides, the Army had its
treasure-chest.
But the committee of safety lost its head. "No encouragement to the
invader" was its programme, and when General Kelly wanted to buy food,
the committee turned him down. It had nothing to sell; General Kelly's
money was "no good" in their burg. And then General Kelly went into
action. The bugles blew. The Army left the boats and on top of the
bank formed in battle array. The committee was there to see. General
Kelly's speech was brief.
"Boys," he said, "when did you eat last?"
"Day before yesterday," they shouted.
"Are you hungry?"
A mighty affirmation from two thousand throats shook the atmosphere.
Then General Kelly turned to the committee of safety:--
"You see, gentlemen, the situation. My men have eaten nothing in
forty-eight hours. If I turn them loose upon your town, I'll not be
responsible for what happens. They are desperate. I offered to buy
food for them, but you refused to sell. I now withdraw my offer.
Instead, I shall demand. I give you five minutes to decide. Either
kill me six steers and give me four thousand rations, or I turn the
men loose. Five minutes, gentlemen."
The terrified committee of safety looked at the two thousand hungry
hoboes and collapsed. It didn't wait the five minutes. It wasn't going
to take any chances. The killing of the steers and the collecting of
the requisition began forthwith, and the Army dined.
And still the ten graceless individualists soared along ahead and
gathered in everything in sight. But General Kelly fixed us. He sent
horsemen down each bank, warning farmers and townspeople against us.
They did their work thoroughly, all right. The erstwhile hospitable
farmers met us with the icy mit. Also, they summoned the constables
when we tied up to the bank, and loosed the dogs. I know. Two of the
latter caught me with a barbed-wire fence between me and the river. I
was carrying two buckets of milk for the pale Vienna. I didn't damage
the fence any; but we drank plebian coffee boiled with vulgar water,
and it was up to me to throw my feet for another pair of trousers. I
wonder, gentle reader, if you ever essayed hastily to climb a
barbed-wire fence with a bucket of milk in each hand. Ever since that
day I have had a prejudice against barbed wire, and I have gathered
statistics on the subject.
Unable to make an honest living so long as General Kelly kept his two
horsemen ahead of us, we returned to the Army and raised a revolution.
It was a small affair, but it devastated Company L of the Second
Division. The captain of Company L refused to recognize us; said we
were deserters, and traitors, and scalawags; and when he drew rations
for Company L from the commissary, he wouldn't give us any. That
captain didn't appreciate us, or he wouldn't have refused us grub.
Promptly we intrigued with the first lieutenant. He joined us with the
ten men in his boat, and in return we elected him captain of Company
M. The captain of Company L raised a roar. Down upon us came General
Kelly, Colonel Speed, and Colonel Baker. The twenty of us stood firm,
and our revolution was ratified.
But we never bothered with the commissary. Our hustlers drew better
rations from the farmers. Our new captain, however, doubted us. He
never knew when he'd see the ten of us again, once we got under way in
the morning, so he called in a blacksmith to clinch his captaincy. In
the stern of our boat, one on each side, were driven two heavy
eye-bolts of iron. Correspondingly, on the bow of his boat, were
fastened two huge iron hooks. The boats were brought together, end on,
the hooks dropped into the eye-bolts, and there we were, hard and
fast. We couldn't lose that captain. But we were irrepressible. Out of
our very manacles we wrought an invincible device that enabled us to
put it all over every other boat in the fleet.
Like all great inventions, this one of ours was accidental. We
discovered it the first time we ran on a snag in a bit of a rapid. The
head-boat hung up and anchored, and the tail-boat swung around in the
current, pivoting the head-boat on the snag. I was at the stern of the
tail-boat, steering. In vain we tried to shove off. Then I ordered the
men from the head-boat into the tail-boat. Immediately the head-boat
floated clear, and its men returned into it. After that, snags, reefs,
shoals, and bars had no terrors for us. The instant the head-boat
struck, the men in it leaped into the tail-boat. Of course, the
head-boat floated over the obstruction and the tail-boat then struck.
Like automatons, the twenty men now in the tail-boat leaped into the
head-boat, and the tail-boat floated past.
The boats used by the Army were all alike, made by the mile and sawed
off. They were flat-boats, and their lines were rectangles. Each boat
was six feet wide, ten feet long, and a foot and a half deep. Thus,
when our two boats were hooked together, I sat at the stern steering a
craft twenty feet long, containing twenty husky hoboes who "spelled"
each other at the oars and paddles, and loaded with blankets, cooking
outfit, and our own private commissary.
Still we caused General Kelly trouble. He had called in his horsemen,
and substituted three police-boats that travelled in the van and
allowed no boats to pass them. The craft containing Company M crowded
the police-boats hard. We could have passed them easily, but it was
against the rules. So we kept a respectful distance astern and waited.
Ahead we knew was virgin farming country, unbegged and generous; but
we waited. White water was all we needed, and when we rounded a bend
and a rapid showed up we knew what would happen. Smash! Police-boat
number one goes on a boulder and hangs up. Bang! Police-boat number
two follows suit. Whop! Police-boat number three encounters the common
fate of all. Of course our boat does the same things; but one, two,
the men are out of the head-boat and into the tail-boat; one, two,
they are out of the tail-boat and into the head-boat; and one, two,
the men who belong in the tail-boat are back in it and we are dashing
on. "Stop! you blankety-blank-blanks!" shriek the police-boats. "How
can we?--blank the blankety-blank river, anyway!" we wail plaintively
as we surge past, caught in that remorseless current that sweeps us on
out of sight and into the hospitable farmer-country that replenishes
our private commissary with the cream of its contributions. Again we
drink pale Vienna and realize that the grub is to the man who gets
there.
Poor General Kelly! He devised another scheme. The whole fleet
started ahead of us. Company M of the Second Division started in its
proper place in the line, which was last. And it took us only one day
to put the "kibosh" on that particular scheme. Twenty-five miles of
bad water lay before us--all rapids, shoals, bars, and boulders. It
was over that stretch of water that the oldest inhabitants of Des
Moines had shaken their heads. Nearly two hundred boats entered the
bad water ahead of us, and they piled up in the most astounding
manner. We went through that stranded fleet like hemlock through the
fire. There was no avoiding the boulders, bars, and snags except by
getting out on the bank. We didn't avoid them. We went right over
them, one, two, one, two, head-boat, tail-boat, head-boat, tail-boat,
all hands back and forth and back again. We camped that night alone,
and loafed in camp all of next day while the Army patched and repaired
its wrecked boats and straggled up to us.
There was no stopping our cussedness. We rigged up a mast, piled on
the canvas (blankets), and travelled short hours while the Army worked
over-time to keep us in sight. Then General Kelly had recourse to
diplomacy. No boat could touch us in the straight-away. Without
discussion, we were the hottest bunch that ever came down the Des
Moines. The ban of the police-boats was lifted. Colonel Speed was put
aboard, and with this distinguished officer we had the honor of
arriving first at Keokuk on the Mississippi. And right here I want to
say to General Kelly and Colonel Speed that here's my hand. You were
heroes, both of you, and you were men. And I'm sorry for at least ten
per cent of the trouble that was given you by the head-boat of Company
M.
At Keokuk the whole fleet was lashed together in a huge raft, and,
after being wind-bound a day, a steamboat took us in tow down the
Mississippi to Quincy, Illinois, where we camped across the river on
Goose Island. Here the raft idea was abandoned, the boats being joined
together in groups of four and decked over. Somebody told me that
Quincy was the richest town of its size in the United States. When I
heard this, I was immediately overcome by an irresistible impulse to
throw my feet. No "blowed-in-the-glass profesh" could possibly pass up
such a promising burg. I crossed the river to Quincy in a small
dug-out; but I came back in a large riverboat, down to the gunwales
with the results of my thrown feet. Of course I kept all the money I
had collected, though I paid the boat-hire; also I took my pick of the
underwear, socks, cast-off clothes, shirts, "kicks," and "sky-pieces";
and when Company M had taken all it wanted there was still a
respectable heap that was turned over to Company L. Alas, I was young
and prodigal in those days! I told a thousand "stories" to the good
people of Quincy, and every story was "good"; but since I have come to
write for the magazines I have often regretted the wealth of story,
the fecundity of fiction, I lavished that day in Quincy, Illinois.
It was at Hannibal, Missouri, that the ten invincibles went to pieces.
It was not planned. We just naturally flew apart. The Boiler-Maker and
I deserted secretly. On the same day Scotty and Davy made a swift
sneak for the Illinois shore; also McAvoy and Fish achieved their
get-away. This accounts for six of the ten; what became of the
remaining four I do not know. As a sample of life on The Road, I make
the following quotation from my diary of the several days following my
desertion.
"Friday, May 25th. Boiler-Maker and I left the camp on the island. We
went ashore on the Illinois side in a skiff and walked six miles on
the C.B. & Q. to Fell Creek. We had gone six miles out of our way, but
we got on a hand-car and rode six miles to Hull's, on the Wabash.
While there, we met McAvoy, Fish, Scotty, and Davy, who had also
pulled out from the Army.
"Saturday, May 26th. At 2.11 A.M. we caught the Cannonball as she
slowed up at the crossing. Scotty and Davy were ditched. The four of
us were ditched at the Bluffs, forty miles farther on. In the
afternoon Fish and McAvoy caught a freight while Boiler-Maker and I
were away getting something to eat.
"Sunday, May 27th. At 3.21 A.M. we caught the Cannonball and found
Scotty and Davy on the blind. We were all ditched at daylight at
Jacksonville. The C. & A. runs through here, and we're going to take
that. Boiler-Maker went off, but didn't return. Guess he caught a
freight.
"Monday, May 28th. Boiler-Maker didn't show up. Scotty and Davy went
off to sleep somewhere, and didn't get back in time to catch the K.C.
passenger at 3.30 A.M. I caught her and rode her till after sunrise to
Masson City, 25,000 inhabitants. Caught a cattle train and rode all
night.
"Tuesday, May 29th. Arrived in Chicago at 7 A.M...."
* * * * *
And years afterward, in China, I had the grief of learning that the
device we employed to navigate the rapids of the Des Moines--the
one-two-one-two, head-boat-tail-boat proposition--was not originated
by us. I learned that the Chinese river-boatmen had for thousands of
years used a similar device to negotiate "bad water." It is a good
stunt all right, even if we don't get the credit. It answers Dr.
Jordan's test of truth: "Will it work? Will you trust your life to
it?"
BULLS
If the tramp were suddenly to pass away from the United States,
widespread misery for many families would follow. The tramp enables
thousands of men to earn honest livings, educate their children, and
bring them up God-fearing and industrious. I know. At one time my
father was a constable and hunted tramps for a living. The community
paid him so much per head for all the tramps he could catch, and also,
I believe, he got mileage fees. Ways and means was always a pressing
problem in our household, and the amount of meat on the table, the new
pair of shoes, the day's outing, or the text-book for school, were
dependent upon my father's luck in the chase. Well I remember the
suppressed eagerness and the suspense with which I waited to learn
each morning what the results of his past night's toil had been--how
many tramps he had gathered in and what the chances were for
convicting them. And so it was, when later, as a tramp, I succeeded in
eluding some predatory constable, I could not but feel sorry for the
little boys and girls at home in that constable's house; it seemed to
me in a way that I was defrauding those little boys and girls of some
of the good things of life.
But it's all in the game. The hobo defies society, and society's
watch-dogs make a living out of him. Some hoboes like to be caught by
the watch-dogs--especially in winter-time. Of course, such hoboes
select communities where the jails are "good," wherein no work is
performed and the food is substantial. Also, there have been, and most
probably still are, constables who divide their fees with the hoboes
they arrest. Such a constable does not have to hunt. He whistles, and
the game comes right up to his hand. It is surprising, the money that
is made out of stone-broke tramps. All through the South--at least
when I was hoboing--are convict camps and plantations, where the time
of convicted hoboes is bought by the farmers, and where the hoboes
simply have to work. Then there are places like the quarries at
Rutland, Vermont, where the hobo is exploited, the unearned energy in
his body, which he has accumulated by "battering on the drag" or
"slamming gates," being extracted for the benefit of that particular
community.
Now I don't know anything about the quarries at Rutland, Vermont. I'm
very glad that I don't, when I remember how near I was to getting into
them. Tramps pass the word along, and I first heard of those quarries
when I was in Indiana. But when I got into New England, I heard of
them continually, and always with danger-signals flying. "They want
men in the quarries," the passing hoboes said; "and they never give a
'stiff' less than ninety days." By the time I got into New Hampshire I
was pretty well keyed up over those quarries, and I fought shy of
railroad cops, "bulls," and constables as I never had before.
One evening I went down to the railroad yards at Concord and found a
freight train made up and ready to start. I located an empty box-car,
slid open the side-door, and climbed in. It was my hope to win across
to White River by morning; that would bring me into Vermont and not
more than a thousand miles from Rutland. But after that, as I worked
north, the distance between me and the point of danger would begin to
increase. In the car I found a "gay-cat," who displayed unusual
trepidation at my entrance. He took me for a "shack" (brakeman), and
when he learned I was only a stiff, he began talking about the
quarries at Rutland as the cause of the fright I had given him. He was
a young country fellow, and had beaten his way only over local
stretches of road.
The freight got under way, and we lay down in one end of the box-car
and went to sleep. Two or three hours afterward, at a stop, I was
awakened by the noise of the right-hand door being softly slid open.
The gay-cat slept on. I made no movement, though I veiled my eyes with
my lashes to a little slit through which I could see out. A lantern
was thrust in through the doorway, followed by the head of a shack. He
discovered us, and looked at us for a moment. I was prepared for a
violent expression on his part, or the customary "Hit the grit, you
son of a toad!" Instead of this he cautiously withdrew the lantern and
very, very softly slid the door to. This struck me as eminently
unusual and suspicious. I listened, and softly I heard the hasp drop
into place. The door was latched on the outside. We could not open it
from the inside. One way of sudden exit from that car was blocked. It
would never do. I waited a few seconds, then crept to the left-hand
door and tried it. It was not yet latched. I opened it, dropped to the
ground, and closed it behind me. Then I passed across the bumpers to
the other side of the train. I opened the door the shack had latched,
climbed in, and closed it behind me. Both exits were available again.
The gay-cat was still asleep.
The train got under way. It came to the next stop. I heard footsteps
in the gravel. Then the left-hand door was thrown open noisily. The
gay-cat awoke, I made believe to awake; and we sat up and stared at
the shack and his lantern. He didn't waste any time getting down to
business.
"I want three dollars," he said.
We got on our feet and came nearer to him to confer. We expressed an
absolute and devoted willingness to give him three dollars, but
explained our wretched luck that compelled our desire to remain
unsatisfied. The shack was incredulous. He dickered with us. He would
compromise for two dollars. We regretted our condition of poverty. He
said uncomplimentary things, called us sons of toads, and damned us
from hell to breakfast. Then he threatened. He explained that if we
didn't dig up, he'd lock us in and carry us on to White River and turn
us over to the authorities. He also explained all about the quarries
at Rutland.
Now that shack thought he had us dead to rights. Was not he guarding
the one door, and had he not himself latched the opposite door but a
few minutes before? When he began talking about quarries, the
frightened gay-cat started to sidle across to the other door. The
shack laughed loud and long. "Don't be in a hurry," he said; "I locked
that door on the outside at the last stop." So implicitly did he
believe the door to be locked that his words carried conviction. The
gay-cat believed and was in despair.
The shack delivered his ultimatum. Either we should dig up two
dollars, or he would lock us in and turn us over to the constable at
White River--and that meant ninety days and the quarries. Now, gentle
reader, just suppose that the other door had been locked. Behold the
precariousness of human life. For lack of a dollar, I'd have gone to
the quarries and served three months as a convict slave. So would the
gay-cat. Count me out, for I was hopeless; but consider the gay-cat.
He might have come out, after those ninety days, pledged to a life of
crime. And later he might have broken your skull, even your skull,
with a blackjack in an endeavor to take possession of the money on
your person--and if not your skull, then some other poor and
unoffending creature's skull.
But the door was unlocked, and I alone knew it. The gay-cat and I
begged for mercy. I joined in the pleading and wailing out of sheer
cussedness, I suppose. But I did my best. I told a "story" that would
have melted the heart of any mug; but it didn't melt the heart of that
sordid money-grasper of a shack. When he became convinced that we
didn't have any money, he slid the door shut and latched it, then
lingered a moment on the chance that we had fooled him and that we
would now offer him the two dollars.
Then it was that I let out a few links. I called him a son of a toad.
I called him all the other things he had called me. And then I called
him a few additional things. I came from the West, where men knew how
to swear, and I wasn't going to let any mangy shack on a measly New
England "jerk" put it over me in vividness and vigor of language. At
first the shack tried to laugh it down. Then he made the mistake of
attempting to reply. I let out a few more links, and I cut him to the
raw and therein rubbed winged and flaming epithets. Nor was my fine
frenzy all whim and literary; I was indignant at this vile creature,
who, in default of a dollar, would consign me to three months of
slavery. Furthermore, I had a sneaking idea that he got a "drag" out
of the constable fees.
But I fixed him. I lacerated his feelings and pride several dollars'
worth. He tried to scare me by threatening to come in after me and
kick the stuffing out of me. In return, I promised to kick him in the
face while he was climbing in. The advantage of position was with me,
and he saw it. So he kept the door shut and called for help from the
rest of the train-crew. I could hear them answering and crunching
through the gravel to him. And all the time the other door was
unlatched, and they didn't know it; and in the meantime the gay-cat
was ready to die with fear.
Oh, I was a hero--with my line of retreat straight behind me. I
slanged the shack and his mates till they threw the door open and I
could see their infuriated faces in the shine of the lanterns. It was
all very simple to them. They had us cornered in the car, and they
were going to come in and man-handle us. They started. I didn't kick
anybody in the face. I jerked the opposite door open, and the gay-cat
and I went out. The train-crew took after us.
We went over--if I remember correctly--a stone fence. But I have no
doubts of recollection about where we found ourselves. In the darkness
I promptly fell over a grave-stone. The gay-cat sprawled over another.
And then we got the chase of our lives through that graveyard. The
ghosts must have thought we were going some. So did the train-crew,
for when we emerged from the graveyard and plunged across a road into
a dark wood, the shacks gave up the pursuit and went back to their
train. A little later that night the gay-cat and I found ourselves at
the well of a farmhouse. We were after a drink of water, but we
noticed a small rope that ran down one side of the well. We hauled it
up and found on the end of it a gallon-can of cream. And that is as
near as I got to the quarries of Rutland, Vermont.
When hoboes pass the word along, concerning a town, that "the bulls is
horstile," avoid that town, or, if you must, go through softly. There
are some towns that one must always go through softly. Such a town was
Cheyenne, on the Union Pacific. It had a national reputation for being
"horstile,"--and it was all due to the efforts of one Jeff Carr (if I
remember his name aright). Jeff Carr could size up the "front" of a
hobo on the instant. He never entered into discussion. In the one
moment he sized up the hobo, and in the next he struck out with both
fists, a club, or anything else he had handy. After he had man-handled
the hobo, he started him out of town with a promise of worse if he
ever saw him again. Jeff Carr knew the game. North, south, east, and
west to the uttermost confines of the United States (Canada and Mexico
included), the man-handled hoboes carried the word that Cheyenne was
"horstile." Fortunately, I never encountered Jeff Carr. I passed
through Cheyenne in a blizzard. There were eighty-four hoboes with me
at the time. The strength of numbers made us pretty nonchalant on
most things, but not on Jeff Carr. The connotation of "Jeff Carr"
stunned our imagination, numbed our virility, and the whole gang was
mortally scared of meeting him.