Beggars of Life (15 page)

T
HROUGH
the country, and over the railroad which we now hoboed, there were no fast trains worthy of the name. In such a country, particularly if it is “hostile,” one incident often crowds upon another.

I waited for a freight train with Oklahoma Red and Peg-leg near a clump of shrubbery along the track. The train would be forced to climb a small hill at this point, which would retard its speed, a fact of which we were well aware.

After waiting some hours, we finally succeeded in riding a train to Little Rock.

As Oklahoma Red was not strictly a tramp, but a yegg, he had money. A yegg is a robber, a blower of safes, the aristocrat of the road, and the most dangerous man who travels it.

We had a meal at Red's expense in a railroad restaurant where Peg-leg met a hobo acquaintance who told him that Hot Springs was “good hittin'” generous at the time with beggars.

He at once decided to go to the health resort town, about fifty miles away. With a quick farewell, his wooden leg pounding on the rough floor, he passed out of our sight forever.

We lingered for a time in the restaurant, and then left for the railroad yards. The negro's coat fitted Red very tightly in the shoulders, but it was far too long for him.

The afternoon wore away, but still no freight train came.

Red became restless and went in search of liquor.

He soon returned with a full quart.

The colours faded from the west. The night became crystal clear. The moon rose, an immense mass of red and yellow, as large as the morning sun.

Red smoked innumerable cigarettes, and now and then took a great gulp of whiskey. I could hear it rattling down his throat like water over stones.

Oklahoma Red was the type of drinker who never staggered. His crude, strong mind controlled the brutal and life-scarred body until sheer exhaustion set in. He would then drop in his tracks.

Like most men of leisure, the hobo is fond of good liquor.

When prohibition came to our beloved land, he suffered greatly, but, being a keen observer, he found a way out. He became a member of what is now known as the “Sterno Club.” In other words, a member of the “canned heat brigade.” Sterno is a commercial product which is sold in cans and used for artificial heat. It is made of wood alcohol and parafine. These cans vary in sizes and can be bought at prices ranging from ten to fifty cents. Now, when the hobo wants a thrill, he buys a can of Sterno and mixes it in a concoction that would knock a mule out. As a rule, he buys the cheaper cans in the ten-cent stores. He empties the contents, oftimes in a dirty kerchief, and squeezes it until the wood alcohol has been extracted from the parafine. He then mixes the alcohol with soda pop, or some other such ingredient, and drinks it. One good drink is enough to send even a Baptist minister to oblivion for a day. Hoboes buy cans of Sterno in large numbers and take them to the “jungles.” It is no uncommon sight to see them stretched upon the ground, the débris of intoxication all around them.

The silence was upon me, and I refused to talk. Red grew weary of his own thoughts. “Where you from, Kid?” he asked.

I shot back an answer which I hoped would keep him quiet. “I'm from everywhere but here, and I'll be from here soon.”

He ignored my attempt at smartness. I'm from Aurland,” he said. “Dublin.”

“Gosh,” I answered, with slightly roused interest, “I thought you was from this country.”

“Nope. But I've been here since I was seventeen.”

Red's eyes were half closed. His hat was on the back of his head, and the red hair straggled over his forehead in a tangled mass of curls.

Starved for affection through all the rough years of my short life—my heart went out to him. He was kind. He gave me all he had and asked nothing in return.

I put my hand on his shoulder, “What'sa matter, Red? You look blue.”

“Naw, I ain't blue. I guess I'm half drunk. That nigger sure had me thinkin' for a minit. That razor looked like a butcher knife. But I got him squintin' at the sun. D' you notice. Whenever you fight a nigger, Kid, keep lookin' right'n his eye. It'll git his goat ev'ry time.”

“You kin fight like a house afire,” I said. “Where'd you learn it?”

“You been on the road's long's I have, Kid, an' you'll have to fight.”

“How long you been hittin' the grit, Red?”

“Since I was about five years old,” he answered, as he removed his hat and ran a big hand through his hair. He clamped his hat down on his head, and again folded his arms and resumed his old position.

“My dad was a beggar. The dirty devil. I ain't sure he was my dad. Anyhow, he had me an' my kid sister before we could remember. He might o' grabbed us up somewhere, some foundlin' home, or somethin'. A lot o' those old stiffs used to do that over there.

“He was the meanest old devil that ever went without a tail. I seen him pull his hair out of his head in bunches.

“He used to play blind, an' he'd take us two kids with him, and he had a sign he tied on our breasts. It said, ‘Motherless.' We'd go along singin' crazy songs about God an' Heaven. The old boy'd sing too. That old devil had more stalls than a livery stable. He could play paralyzed till I've seen old women cry over him.

“We used to hit all the towns over there. The ol' guy a beggin' with us kids, and gettin' stewed on the money.

“My sister was a good kid. I remember when she went away with some fat old Jane who was dressed up like a nigger wench on circus day. After she left, the old bum was drunk for a week. She was fourteen years old, an' I was twelve. He sold that kid to that old cat. I didn't see her for years after I'd been over here an' back ag'in.”

“Where is she now!” I asked.

“Croaked. She died a hophead. Ravin' nuts.” There was a long pause. Red rubbed his forehead and resumed, “She cried an' kissed me an' petted me when she left, but the old man said how nice we'd both have it, an' I could come to see her in her new home. I tried to find them later, but I never could. I'd swing on five gallows to kill that old man. I'd hold him out an' shake him to death like a rat. I'd make him half dead, an' I'd bury him an' let the buzzards peck at his eyes. I'd put lime in the centre of his head, an' let it eat all around it.”

“Did you ever learn to read or write?” I asked.

“A little. A moll buzzer taught me in Boston. She worked wit' a gang o' dips, an' sported a little on the side. She was a good fellow. Smart too. I lost track of her when I got sent up for three years in Charleston. I made enough shoes there to last an army a year. I bumped into an old crook there, an' learned how to crack safes an' fix the ends o' my fingers so's they was sensitive to touch, by makin' 'em raw. I've done two jolts since that. Got ten years out west the last jolt, an' I broke a guard's jaw wit' one rap when he cracked me wit' a club.

“They put me in the Red Shirt Brigade after that. The bad guys had to wear red shirts all the time.” A leer played into a cynical half smile on Red's face, as he stopped to light another cigarette.

“I got away from there, by God, red shirt and all. I walked every night for two weeks. Most guys when they make a gitaway, hang around some town where the bulls kin easy find them. I stayed right out on the road for a year straight. I never hung around no town at all. I let my hair an' beard grow, and turned no trick for a long time.”

Red emptied the bottle with a long gulp, and dashed it against the steel rail.

“Stick with me, Kid. I'll treat you right. I git darn lonesome. I'll show you how to pour the juice and blow a safe so's it won't wake a baby. You won't have to run away from me like I did the old devil when I was a kid. I don't bum no back doors. I get mine. Most bums ain't got nerve enough to rob safes. Everybody's crooked any how. Everybody doublecrosses everybody else. They ain't nobody straight. I know they wantta git me. They got me mugged all over. But the guy that gits me, gits me dead. I'll start shootin'.”

He pulled from his pocket a short blue gun that could be hidden in the palm of his hand. He looked at it a moment, his eyes narrowing.

“I'd like to shoot 'em all, Kid, but you an' me. They're all crooked. They let that old bum drag me around. Who the hell cared? I'm goin' to git even wit' 'em all. When any of the judges jolted me, they diden' say, ‘Well, Kid, you diden' get a fair shake. They made you a crook an' they got mad because you are one. Then they sent cops worse than you are after you.' Judges are dummer than yeggs, believe me.”

A light streamed from the yards. It blinded us for a moment, and then slanted away. With puffing of smoke and loud exhausts, the engine pulled a freight swiftly toward us. We stood erect, and Red tottered a little. We took our positions along the track, tense, like relay runners through a moonlit night.

Red yelled, “Grab her first, Kid.” I ran with the train, and leaped on the iron ladder. I then looked around for Red.

He was dragging from the ladder of the second car behind me, his head bumping on the ties.

Brain benumbed and excited, I leaped from the train, and barely succeeded in keeping my footing. I hurried to Red. His foot had slipped through the rung of the ladder, which hung low on the car. I ran with the train and pulled his body loose.

It rolled away from the track, and I knelt over it. His arm was cut off at the elbow. It dripped, bloody and ghastly under the moon.

The train passed on. “Red!!” I yelled, and grabbed frantically at his breast. His heart stopped in a dying flutter. I sobbed aloud.

Dazed, I sat near him. As I watched, he seemed to smile. Many thoughts rushed across my mind… . Would I tell anyone of his death? They might hold me. How about a burial? What was the difference? Did Red have money? The gun… .

A stone rolled under his leg. It moved. A momentary fear came. I braced myself and looked at the dead face again.

Death had ironed his habitual leer away. The dead grey eyes stared up at the sky. Somehow, all the good in Red's bruised and broken life surged into his face. It was calm. The jolting of his head on the ground had thrown his long hair backward from his forehead. It showed, broad and white. Large bumps were across the eyes. Years later, I learned how wise men said that such bumps denoted great powers of observation. Anyhow, it was the forehead of a man born for greater things than being a member of a Red Shirt Brigade, and dying the death of a yegg along a railroad in Arkansas.

How long I remained with him I do not know. Faint and far away was the noise of the railroad yards. As one hour followed another into eternity, even that noise subsided. A passenger train rushed by. The lights from its coaches flickered over all that was mortal of Oklahoma Red.

The thought of Red's money came to me again. “If I don't get it, the bulls will,” I thought. I searched his pockets. There was but two dollars in them. Feeling that a man of Red's type would have more than that, I did not give up. I pulled off both his shoes. I searched every conceivable place I thought a man would sew his money who travelled among thieves—like detectives and tramps. I took the two dollars and blue gun. I walked away from Red, feeling that he would be found in the morning. And if he were not—what did it matter?

In a few hours, I rode a freight past the place where he was lying dead. I sold the blue gun to a Jew in Dallas, who gave me four dollars for it. The money burned and I spent it quickly.

Oklahoma Red had a name to conjure with in yegg circles. I have met many who knew him, but I told them not of his death. I had the foolish notion that Red would not have cared for them to know.

A
FTER
three days in Dallas, I hunted the railroad yards, penniless, as usual. Being young at the time, I thought often of Red.

It was a cold evening, and the frost was beginning to settle when I met an old vagrant near the railroad.

He told me that a “dead head” passenger coach was to leave for the west that night.

I thrilled at the idea of breaking into an empty coach where I might be able to ride on a plush seat all night, safe from the cold, and the eyes of shacks and bulls.

We talked of the road, and my old informant told me how he always wrapped paper around his legs for two useful purposes. Dogs could not bite through the paper, and it also helped to keep his worn shanks warm.

He was just getting over an injury. The door of a flat car had fallen upon his foot and had broken several bones in it. He had been unable to walk for a month, and was just beginning to venture about without a crutch. Still, he was bound for St. Louis.

Two women of the underworld had kept him in a small room, and had looked after him tenderly.

He spent much of his time near the yards watching the freight trains come and go. He gave each passing hobo the news about bulls, and the movements of trains.

I thought of those two women. “They're good scouts,” I said.

“Sure,” grunted the old hobo, “them kind are always good. They're down and out themselves a lot o' times.” He looked at me thoughtfully, his faded old eyes half shut. “Yu ain't got a dime on yu, have yu, 'Bo!”

“Not a red cent.”

“Yu're a hell of a bum,” he ejaculated with contempt.

“Oh, well, you'll have a lot of jack when you hit St. Louis.”

The old wretch grinned, and the crow's feet moved around his eyes. “Sure thing. I'll be rich when Rockyfeller an' me put our dough together.”

It grew dark while we talked. The old rover again gave me the exact location of the train which contained the empty coaches. “It's straight,” he said. “One of the girls knows a brakie, an' he told her. For two cents I'd go with yu, jist to git the nice ride on the cushions.”

“St. Louis ain't that way,” I answered.

“Well, that wouldn't make much difference,” he sighed.

The night closed in around him as I walked away. The engine stood in the yards that was to haul the train west. I sneaked through the cars on the many tracks and hid behind a shed. A man joined me in the indistinct light.

“Makin' this train out, 'Bo?” he asked.

It flashed through my mind that he might be a detective, so I ignored the question. Vainly I tried to get a good look at his face to read there whether he was bull or bum. It can always be done by the observers of life on the road and in the underworld. The man-hunter has the look of one the wide world over.

No light flared distinctly. The engine stood puffing ahead of us.

Finally it began to travel backward, the brake-man standing on the rear, ready to connect it with the first car.

It made the ground vibrate near the shed as it rolled past it. The headlight flared in our direction. It shone directly in the face of the man with me. He was not a detective. He had the face of a dope-fiend. The light turned straight and we were in darkness again.

I began talking to my new-found companion. “We'd better beat it, 'Bo. The coach is in the middle of the train.”

“I know, I know,” he jerked back nervously, “let's go.” We glided over the ground softly, stooping low, as if to take the weight from our feet. At last we stood panting between two cars opposite the coach. A lantern moved toward us.

We held our breath as it drew nearer. The swinger of it stopped within five feet of us. He held the lantern aloft and looked at the platform of the passenger coach. Had he listened close, he might have heard our hearts beat. They pounded loud in the silence.

Just at the moment, the coach was the most desired thing in my life. Years later, I delayed a journey because I could not get a Pullman berth. But here I was ready to knock a man out that I might ride on faded seats, in a dirty passenger car considered unfit for service on a third-class railroad. Of proverbs, rolling hackneyed down the ages, the truest of all is that “necessity knows no law.”

The carrier of the lantern turned halfway around, and the light threw shadows between the cars. We stood as still as the rails beneath us. We could see the outline of the man's face and the corduroy cap on his head. He seemed nailed to the ground.

At last, whistling softly, he walked on between the cars in the direction of the caboose. After he was several car lengths from us, we darted on the platform of the coach. I looked up and down the other side of the train. A man stood near the caboose with a lantern. I watched him a moment. Presently the lantern “high-balled” a signal to the engine, and the air was applied. Two short whistles from the engine, the train jerked, and was on its way.

My companion tried the door. It held fast. He jerked out a key that grated in the lock. As the train sped by the lighted streets, he succeeded in opening the door. We crept inside.

The street lights flared across the seats. To our surprise, nearly every one of them contained a hobo. Some smoked, others talked, and some held their hands above their eyes and gazed out at the passing landscape.

My companion hurried to the other end of the car, and, saying no word, twisted himself in corkscrew fashion on an empty seat, and was soon grunting and snoring.

A hobo got up and tried the door, which we had left unlocked. He fastened it from the inside. “Them guys musta thought they has their fares paid,” he grunted aloud.

I doubled up on a seat, and fell to wondering about my companion. I had heard of the daring of dope-fiends. He had a railroad key. I soon fell asleep.

A mumble of voices awoke me. It was broad daylight. The train pounded steadily over the rails as I rubbed my eyes and looked at the life-distorted faces of the men in the car.

They belonged to vagrants of all ages. There was one boy not much older than myself. His cheeks were hollow. He looked out of the window, listless, and oblivious of the passing scenery without, or the noise of the men within.

I watched him as he rose and walked to the water tank. There was no water. He swore at his luck.

A hobo sneered, “Yer wants service, huh? You got the wrong train.”

“Shut yure head,” flashed back the boy. “The flies'll crawl in.” He returned to his seat, and fell to coughing.

Attracted by his age, boylike, I walked over to him.

“Where are we?” he asked indifferently.

“I don't know,” I answered, and then shouted his question through the car.

“Runnin' into San Antone. They switched us on a faster rattler down the line. We're luckier'n tramps with hot biscuits an' java.”

“The grades 're gittin' heavier too,” said another tramp.

We stopped at a small station and remained for some time. We pulled the curtains down, and sat speechless and quiet in the dark car.

A man tried the door knob. He stamped upon the coach platform for a short time, and went away. We heard his footsteps on the ground along the car.

When they died away, we breathed easier again. The train started. “Gosh, that was a close call. I'd hate to git ditched here,” said a tramp.

After we reached the open country, the curtains were pulled up. No man had even the cheapest watch. I judged from the position of the sun that it was nearly noon. It seemed I had been a week on the train. It could not have been more than twenty hours.

“I wish I had a drink of water,” murmured the youth.

“We'll be in San Antonio before long. They'll put this car off there, sure,” I said.

My companion of the night before kept aloof from the rest of the bleary gathering, and contented himself by talking aloud to people of his fancy who flew along with the train.

The men moved back and forth in restless manner. Some read old newspapers over and over again. Four men played poker with a dirty deck of cards, with matches and toothpicks for stakes. Another amused himself by cutting his moniker on the window sill. When he had finished, he stood up and admired it like an artist. An arrow was cut through the letters of his name. It pointed west, and denoted the direction in which he was travelling. The month and the year of the trip were cut beneath the name. These monikers are cut, written, or printed on water tanks and other places where hoboes gather. They form a crude directory for other tramps who might be interested in the itinerary of their comrades. Once in a while a tramp sees such a moniker of a friend and starts in the direction of the owner.

Growing tired of the youth, I walked back to my companion of the night before. He looked displeased, like a decrepit fanatic disturbed in prayer. He became more friendly after he had finished talking to an imaginary person who perched above him.

Late in the afternoon we reached San Antonio, and scampered out of the car as it came to the edge of the yards.

I hurried away across the tracks with the man of visions.