Free Beggars of Life by Jim Tully

labor. The farmer did not even grunt us a farewell, and neither did the tired woman appear in the doorway as we walked down the road toward the railroad track.
    Being always too sentimental for a hobo or a business man, I petted the two decrepit horses before I left. Bill followed my example with his team. The poor horses, galled from the rubbing of the wretched, sweat-stained harness, were possibly losing the best friends they ever had. The human animal must bestow its affection on something, and we had whiled away hours with them.
    There followed several days of riotous living in St. Louis. The money for which we had laboured two weeks was soon all gone but a few dollars before we decided to take to the road again. This we did with no remorse.
    We left the railroad yards at St. Louis on a freight train with two other men who had never beaten their way before.
    All four of us were half drunk. The two men had no money, but they did have two quarts of liquor between them, which their last cent had bought.
    We were in an empty coal car. Papers were strewn on the floor of the gondola, across which a heavy wire was stretched in the form of a hammock.
    Becoming maudlin with drink, we sat on the wire and sang all the songs we could remember. A brakeman came across the train and stopped in the car with us. He proved to be, in the parlance of the road, a “boomer,” a sort of hobo, or migratory railroad worker. He joined us in a drink, and went on his way across the train. But the gondola had an attraction for him, and he returned quite often.
    As the train neared B——, a railroad division, the brakeman warned us that the town was “hostile.”
    â€œThis whole country’s hostile now since they found them two guys beat up an’ handcuffed to trees over in C——. Better not ride into the yards, but git off outside and walk on through. The dick don’t come on till ’bout eight o’clock, an’ you kin beat it through and have a feed an’ be at the other end o’ the yards before that.”
    We left the train as the engine whistled for the yards. It was still travelling rapidly, and Bill and I jumped first, and ran with the train, thus keeping upright without falling.
    The two other rovers left the car suddenly and rolled down the steep embankment. We helped them brush the dirt out of their clothing and hair.
    We walked to a railroad restaurant where a boomer waiter took our order.
    â€œShe’s a hostile burg,” said the waiter. “This dick here ‘ud pinch his mother if she walked on railroad property. He’s a Mick, an’ he talks with a brogue as thick as butter. But he don’t come around this early, hardly ever. You got time to scoff and beat it down the track ‘afore he does.”
    The meal took all but a few cents of our money. The four of us walked down the tracks directly through the yards.
    We had not gone many rods, when a man stepped out from between two cars. The moon was just rising above the horizon. Its light was still weak, and the earth was shrouded in almost complete darkness. Some red and green signal lights burned in the yards and made the tops of the steel rails shine a grayish white.
    â€œWhere ye goin?” asked the man as he flashed a light in our faces.
    â€œI’m going to Chicago, Mister, to my father,” I lied quickly. “He’s sick in a hospital there, and I’ve been workin’ in the harvest fields up the line to send him money.”
    The man searched me, a blackjack hanging from his wrist as he did so. Bill stepped up next and told his story. He had been working with me, and he was helping me get home. “Uh huh,” grunted the man.
    Then turning to the other two, “Where ye from?” The men answered him haltingly. They were more honest than we, but still, the detective did not believe their stories as readily.
    â€œWell, come on,” said he. “Ye kin tell your tales