they look "horstile." A swift get-away is the thing to do. It took me
some time to learn this; but the finishing touch was put upon me by a
bull in New York City. Ever since that time it has been an automatic
process with me to make a run for it when I see a bull reaching for
me. This automatic process has become a mainspring of conduct in me,
wound up and ready for instant release. I shall never get over it.
Should I be eighty years old, hobbling along the street on crutches,
and should a policeman suddenly reach out for me, I know I'd drop the
crutches and run like a deer.
The finishing touch to my education in bulls was received on a hot
summer afternoon in New York City. It was during a week of scorching
weather. I had got into the habit of throwing my feet in the morning,
and of spending the afternoon in the little park that is hard by
Newspaper Row and the City Hall. It was near there that I could buy
from pushcart men current books (that had been injured in the making
or binding) for a few cents each. Then, right in the park itself, were
little booths where one could buy glorious, ice-cold, sterilized milk
and buttermilk at a penny a glass. Every afternoon I sat on a bench
and read, and went on a milk debauch. I got away with from five to ten
glasses each afternoon. It was dreadfully hot weather.
So here I was, a meek and studious milk-drinking hobo, and behold what
I got for it. One afternoon I arrived at the park, a fresh
book-purchase under my arm and a tremendous buttermilk thirst under my
shirt. In the middle of the street, in front of the City Hall, I
noticed, as I came along heading for the buttermilk booth, that a
crowd had formed. It was right where I was crossing the street, so I
stopped to see the cause of the collection of curious men. At first I
could see nothing. Then, from the sounds I heard and from a glimpse I
caught, I knew that it was a bunch of gamins playing pee-wee. Now
pee-wee is not permitted in the streets of New York. I didn't know
that, but I learned pretty lively. I had paused possibly thirty
seconds, in which time I had learned the cause of the crowd, when I
heard a gamin yell "Bull!" The gamins knew their business. They ran. I
didn't.
The crowd broke up immediately and started for the sidewalk on both
sides of the street. I started for the sidewalk on the park-side.
There must have been fifty men, who had been in the original crowd,
who were heading in the same direction. We were loosely strung out. I
noticed the bull, a strapping policeman in a gray suit. He was coming
along the middle of the street, without haste, merely sauntering. I
noticed casually that he changed his course, and was heading obliquely
for the same sidewalk that I was heading for directly. He sauntered
along, threading the strung-out crowd, and I noticed that his course
and mine would cross each other. I was so innocent of wrong-doing
that, in spite of my education in bulls and their ways, I apprehended
nothing. I never dreamed that bull was after me. Out of my respect for
the law I was actually all ready to pause the next moment and let him
cross in front of me. The pause came all right, but it was not of my
volition; also it was a backward pause. Without warning, that bull had
suddenly launched out at me on the chest with both hands. At the same
moment, verbally, he cast the bar sinister on my genealogy.
All my free American blood boiled. All my liberty-loving ancestors
clamored in me. "What do you mean?" I demanded. You see, I wanted an
explanation. And I got it. Bang! His club came down on top of my head,
and I was reeling backward like a drunken man, the curious faces of
the onlookers billowing up and down like the waves of the sea, my
precious book falling from under my arm into the dirt, the bull
advancing with the club ready for another blow. And in that dizzy
moment I had a vision. I saw that club descending many times upon my
head; I saw myself, bloody and battered and hard-looking, in a
police-court; I heard a charge of disorderly conduct, profane
language, resisting an officer, and a few other things, read by a
clerk; and I saw myself across in Blackwell's Island. Oh, I knew the
game. I lost all interest in explanations. I didn't stop to pick up my
precious, unread book. I turned and ran. I was pretty sick, but I
ran. And run I shall, to my dying day, whenever a bull begins to
explain with a club.
Why, years after my tramping days, when I was a student in the
University of California, one night I went to the circus. After the
show and the concert I lingered on to watch the working of the
transportation machinery of a great circus. The circus was leaving
that night. By a bonfire I came upon a bunch of small boys. There were
about twenty of them, and as they talked with one another I learned
that they were going to run away with the circus. Now the circus-men
didn't want to be bothered with this mess of urchins, and a telephone
to police headquarters had "coppered" the play. A squad of ten
policemen had been despatched to the scene to arrest the small boys
for violating the nine o'clock curfew ordinance. The policemen
surrounded the bonfire, and crept up close to it in the darkness. At
the signal, they made a rush, each policeman grabbing at the
youngsters as he would grab into a basket of squirming eels.
Now I didn't know anything about the coming of the police; and when I
saw the sudden eruption of brass-buttoned, helmeted bulls, each of
them reaching with both hands, all the forces and stability of my
being were overthrown. Remained only the automatic process to run. And
I ran. I didn't know I was running. I didn't know anything. It was, as
I have said, automatic. There was no reason for me to run. I was not a
hobo. I was a citizen of that community. It was my home town. I was
guilty of no wrong-doing. I was a college man. I had even got my name
in the papers, and I wore good clothes that had never been slept in.
And yet I ran--blindly, madly, like a startled deer, for over a block.
And when I came to myself, I noted that I was still running. It
required a positive effort of will to stop those legs of mine.
No, I'll never get over it. I can't help it. When a bull reaches, I
run. Besides, I have an unhappy faculty for getting into jail. I have
been in jail more times since I was a hobo than when I was one. I
start out on a Sunday morning with a young lady on a bicycle ride.
Before we can get outside the city limits we are arrested for passing
a pedestrian on the sidewalk. I resolve to be more careful. The next
time I am on a bicycle it is night-time and my acetylene-gas-lamp is
misbehaving. I cherish the sickly flame carefully, because of the
ordinance. I am in a hurry, but I ride at a snail's pace so as not to
jar out the flickering flame. I reach the city limits; I am beyond the
jurisdiction of the ordinance; and I proceed to scorch to make up for
lost time. And half a mile farther on I am "pinched" by a bull, and
the next morning I forfeit my bail in the police court. The city had
treacherously extended its limits into a mile of the country, and I
didn't know, that was all. I remember my inalienable right of free
speech and peaceable assemblage, and I get up on a soap-box to trot
out the particular economic bees that buzz in my bonnet, and a bull
takes me off that box and leads me to the city prison, and after that
I get out on bail. It's no use. In Korea I used to be arrested about
every other day. It was the same thing in Manchuria. The last time I
was in Japan I broke into jail under the pretext of being a Russian
spy. It wasn't my pretext, but it got me into jail just the same.
There is no hope for me. I am fated to do the Prisoner-of-Chillon
stunt yet. This is prophecy.
I once hypnotized a bull on Boston Common. It was past midnight and he
had me dead to rights; but before I got done with him he had ponied up
a silver quarter and given me the address of an all-night restaurant.
Then there was a bull in Bristol, New Jersey, who caught me and let me
go, and heaven knows he had provocation enough to put me in jail. I
hit him the hardest I'll wager he was ever hit in his life. It
happened this way. About midnight I nailed a freight out of
Philadelphia. The shacks ditched me. She was pulling out slowly
through the maze of tracks and switches of the freight-yards. I nailed
her again, and again I was ditched. You see, I had to nail her
"outside," for she was a through freight with every door locked and
sealed.
The second time I was ditched the shack gave me a lecture. He told me
I was risking my life, that it was a fast freight and that she went
some. I told him I was used to going some myself, but it was no go. He
said he wouldn't permit me to commit suicide, and I hit the grit. But
I nailed her a third time, getting in between on the bumpers. They
were the most meagre bumpers I had ever seen--I do not refer to the
real bumpers, the iron bumpers that are connected by the
coupling-link and that pound and grind on each other; what I refer to
are the beams, like huge cleats, that cross the ends of freight cars
just above the bumpers. When one rides the bumpers, he stands on these
cleats, one foot on each, the bumpers between his feet and just
beneath.
But the beams or cleats I found myself on were not the broad, generous
ones that at that time were usually on box-cars. On the contrary, they
were very narrow--not more than an inch and a half in breadth. I
couldn't get half of the width of my sole on them. Then there was
nothing to which to hold with my hands. True, there were the ends of
the two box-cars; but those ends were flat, perpendicular surfaces.
There were no grips. I could only press the flats of my palms against
the car-ends for support. But that would have been all right if the
cleats for my feet had been decently wide.
As the freight got out of Philadelphia she began to hit up speed. Then
I understood what the shack had meant by suicide. The freight went
faster and faster. She was a through freight, and there was nothing to
stop her. On that section of the Pennsylvania four tracks run side by
side, and my east-bound freight didn't need to worry about passing
west-bound freights, nor about being overtaken by east-bound
expresses. She had the track to herself, and she used it. I was in a
precarious situation. I stood with the mere edges of my feet on the
narrow projections, the palms of my hands pressing desperately against
the flat, perpendicular ends of each car. And those cars moved, and
moved individually, up and down and back and forth. Did you ever see a
circus rider, standing on two running horses, with one foot on the
back of each horse? Well, that was what I was doing, with several
differences. The circus rider had the reins to hold on to, while I had
nothing; he stood on the broad soles of his feet, while I stood on the
edges of mine; he bent his legs and body, gaining the strength of the
arch in his posture and achieving the stability of a low centre of
gravity, while I was compelled to stand upright and keep my legs
straight; he rode face forward, while I was riding sidewise; and also,
if he fell off, he'd get only a roll in the sawdust, while I'd have
been ground to pieces beneath the wheels.
And that freight was certainly going some, roaring and shrieking,
swinging madly around curves, thundering over trestles, one car-end
bumping up when the other was jarring down, or jerking to the right at
the same moment the other was lurching to the left, and with me all
the while praying and hoping for the train to stop. But she didn't
stop. She didn't have to. For the first, last, and only time on The
Road, I got all I wanted. I abandoned the bumpers and managed to get
out on a side-ladder; it was ticklish work, for I had never
encountered car-ends that were so parsimonious of hand-holds and
foot-holds as those car-ends were.
I heard the engine whistling, and I felt the speed easing down. I knew
the train wasn't going to stop, but my mind was made up to chance it
if she slowed down sufficiently. The right of way at this point took a
curve, crossed a bridge over a canal, and cut through the town of
Bristol. This combination compelled slow speed. I clung on to the
side-ladder and waited. I didn't know it was the town of Bristol we
were approaching. I did not know what necessitated slackening in
speed. All I knew was that I wanted to get off. I strained my eyes in
the darkness for a street-crossing on which to land. I was pretty well
down the train, and before my car was in the town the engine was past
the station and I could feel her making speed again.
Then came the street. It was too dark to see how wide it was or what
was on the other side. I knew I needed all of that street if I was to
remain on my feet after I struck. I dropped off on the near side. It
sounds easy. By "dropped off" I mean just this: I first of all, on the
side-ladder, thrust my body forward as far as I could in the direction
the train was going--this to give as much space as possible in which
to gain backward momentum when I swung off. Then I swung, swung out
and backward, backward with all my might, and let go--at the same time
throwing myself backward as if I intended to strike the ground on the
back of my head. The whole effort was to overcome as much as possible
the primary forward momentum the train had imparted to my body. When
my feet hit the grit, my body was lying backward on the air at an
angle of forty-five degrees. I had reduced the forward momentum some,
for when my feet struck, I did not immediately pitch forward on my
face. Instead, my body rose to the perpendicular and began to incline
forward. In point of fact, my body proper still retained much
momentum, while my feet, through contact with the earth, had lost all
their momentum. This momentum the feet had lost I had to supply anew
by lifting them as rapidly as I could and running them forward in
order to keep them under my forward-moving body. The result was that
my feet beat a rapid and explosive tattoo clear across the street. I
didn't dare stop them. If I had, I'd have pitched forward. It was up
to me to keep on going.
I was an involuntary projectile, worrying about what was on the other
side of the street and hoping that it wouldn't be a stone wall or a
telegraph pole. And just then I hit something. Horrors! I saw it just
the instant before the disaster--of all things, a bull, standing there
in the darkness. We went down together, rolling over and over; and the
automatic process was such in that miserable creature that in the
moment of impact he reached out and clutched me and never let go. We
were both knocked out, and he held on to a very lamb-like hobo while
he recovered.
If that bull had any imagination, he must have thought me a traveller
from other worlds, the man from Mars just arriving; for in the
darkness he hadn't seen me swing from the train. In fact, his first
words were: "Where did you come from?" His next words, and before I
had time to answer, were: "I've a good mind to run you in." This
latter, I am convinced, was likewise automatic. He was a really good
bull at heart, for after I had told him a "story" and helped brush off
his clothes, he gave me until the next freight to get out of town. I
stipulated two things: first, that the freight be east-bound, and
second, that it should not be a through freight with all doors sealed
and locked. To this he agreed, and thus, by the terms of the Treaty of
Bristol, I escaped being pinched.
I remember another night, in that part of the country, when I just
missed another bull. If I had hit him, I'd have telescoped him, for I
was coming down from above, all holds free, with several other bulls
one jump behind and reaching for me. This is how it happened. I had
been lodging in a livery stable in Washington. I had a box-stall and
unnumbered horse-blankets all to myself. In return for such sumptuous
accommodation I took care of a string of horses each morning. I might
have been there yet, if it hadn't been for the bulls.
One evening, about nine o'clock, I returned to the stable to go to
bed, and found a crap game in full blast. It had been a market day,
and all the negroes had money. It would be well to explain the lay of
the land. The livery stable faced on two streets. I entered the front,
passed through the office, and came to the alley between two rows of
stalls that ran the length of the building and opened out on the other
street. Midway along this alley, beneath a gas-jet and between the
rows of horses, were about forty negroes. I joined them as an
onlooker. I was broke and couldn't play. A coon was making passes and
not dragging down. He was riding his luck, and with each pass the
total stake doubled. All kinds of money lay on the floor. It was
fascinating. With each pass, the chances increased tremendously
against the coon making another pass. The excitement was intense. And
just then there came a thundering smash on the big doors that opened
on the back street.
A few of the negroes bolted in the opposite direction. I paused from
my flight a moment to grab at the all kinds of money on the floor.
This wasn't theft: it was merely custom. Every man who hadn't run was
grabbing. The doors crashed open and swung in, and through them surged
a squad of bulls. We surged the other way. It was dark in the office,
and the narrow door would not permit all of us to pass out to the
street at the same time. Things became congested. A coon took a dive
through the window, taking the sash along with him and followed by
other coons. At our rear, the bulls were nailing prisoners. A big coon
and myself made a dash at the door at the same time. He was bigger
than I, and he pivoted me and got through first. The next instant a
club swatted him on the head and he went down like a steer. Another
squad of bulls was waiting outside for us. They knew they couldn't
stop the rush with their hands, and so they were swinging their clubs.
I stumbled over the fallen coon who had pivoted me, ducked a swat from
a club, dived between a bull's legs, and was free. And then how I ran!
There was a lean mulatto just in front of me, and I took his pace. He
knew the town better than I did, and I knew that in the way he ran lay
safety. But he, on the other hand, took me for a pursuing bull. He
never looked around. He just ran. My wind was good, and I hung on to
his pace and nearly killed him. In the end he stumbled weakly, went
down on his knees, and surrendered to me. And when he discovered I
wasn't a bull, all that saved me was that he didn't have any wind left
in him.
That was why I left Washington--not on account of the mulatto, but on
account of the bulls. I went down to the depot and caught the first
blind out on a Pennsylvania Railroad express. After the train got good
and under way and I noted the speed she was making, a misgiving smote
me. This was a four-track railroad, and the engines took water on the
fly. Hoboes had long since warned me never to ride the first blind on
trains where the engines took water on the fly. And now let me
explain. Between the tracks are shallow metal troughs. As the engine,
at full speed, passes above, a sort of chute drops down into the
trough. The result is that all the water in the trough rushes up the
chute and fills the tender.
Somewhere along between Washington and Baltimore, as I sat on the
platform of the blind, a fine spray began to fill the air. It did no
harm. Ah, ha, thought I; it's all a bluff, this taking water on the
fly being bad for the bo on the first blind. What does this little
spray amount to? Then I began to marvel at the device. This was
railroading! Talk about your primitive Western railroading--and just
then the tender filled up, and it hadn't reached the end of the
trough. A tidal wave of water poured over the back of the tender and
down upon me. I was soaked to the skin, as wet as if I had fallen
overboard.
The train pulled into Baltimore. As is the custom in the great Eastern
cities, the railroad ran beneath the level of the streets on the
bottom of a big "cut." As the train pulled into the lighted depot, I
made myself as small as possible on the blind. But a railroad bull saw
me, and gave chase. Two more joined him. I was past the depot, and I
ran straight on down the track. I was in a sort of trap. On each side
of me rose the steep walls of the cut, and if I ever essayed them and
failed, I knew that I'd slide back into the clutches of the bulls. I
ran on and on, studying the walls of the cut for a favorable place to
climb up. At last I saw such a place. It came just after I had passed
under a bridge that carried a level street across the cut. Up the
steep slope I went, clawing hand and foot. The three railroad bulls
were clawing up right after me.
At the top, I found myself in a vacant lot. On one side was a low wall
that separated it from the street. There was no time for minute
investigation. They were at my heels. I headed for the wall and
vaulted it. And right there was where I got the surprise of my life.
One is used to thinking that one side of a wall is just as high as the
other side. But that wall was different. You see, the vacant lot was
much higher than the level of the street. On my side the wall was low,
but on the other side--well, as I came soaring over the top, all holds
free, it seemed to me that I was falling feet-first, plump into an
abyss. There beneath me, on the sidewalk, under the light of a
street-lamp was a bull. I guess it was nine or ten feet down to the
sidewalk; but in the shock of surprise in mid-air it seemed twice that
distance.
I straightened out in the air and came down. At first I thought I was
going to land on the bull. My clothes did brush him as my feet struck
the sidewalk with explosive impact. It was a wonder he didn't drop
dead, for he hadn't heard me coming. It was the man-from-Mars stunt
over again. The bull did jump. He shied away from me like a horse from
an auto; and then he reached for me. I didn't stop to explain. I left
that to my pursuers, who were dropping over the wall rather gingerly.
But I got a chase all right. I ran up one street and down another,
dodged around corners, and at last got away.
After spending some of the coin I'd got from the crap game and killing
off an hour of time, I came back to the railroad cut, just outside the
lights of the depot, and waited for a train. My blood had cooled down,
and I shivered miserably, what of my wet clothes. At last a train
pulled into the station. I lay low in the darkness, and successfully
boarded her when she pulled out, taking good care this time to make
the second blind. No more water on the fly in mine. The train ran
forty miles to the first stop. I got off in a lighted depot that was
strangely familiar. I was back in Washington. In some way, during the
excitement of the get-away in Baltimore, running through strange
streets, dodging and turning and retracing, I had got turned around. I
had taken the train out the wrong way. I had lost a night's sleep, I
had been soaked to the skin, I had been chased for my life; and for
all my pains I was back where I had started. Oh, no, life on The Road
is not all beer and skittles. But I didn't go back to the livery
stable. I had done some pretty successful grabbing, and I didn't want
to reckon up with the coons. So I caught the next train out, and ate
my breakfast in Baltimore.