* * * * *

We squatted on the floor of the refrigerator box.  When we reached Yuma my pal rose to his feet.

“Ain’t yer goin’ ta throw yer feet fer a hand-out?” he asked me.

“No, I’m going to stick in here till I reach El Paso, if I can.”

“What’s the fun bein’ a bum, if you’re goin’ ter punish yerself like that!”

“I want to find a country where there’s growing green things, as soon as I can.”

“So long, then.”

“So long.. don’t you think you’d better stick till we reach Tuscon?  Some of the boys told me the ‘bulls’ (officers) here have been ‘horstile’ (had it in for the tramp fraternity) ... ever since a yegg bumped off a deputy, a while back.”

“Naw, I’ll take my chances.”

As I rode on, alone, I stood up and took in the scenery like a tourist ... there danced away, and gathered in, the shimmering, sun-flooded desert ... an endless flat expanse of silver sage and sentinel cactus.  I saw bleached bones and a side-cast skull with whitened horns, poking up into the sky ...  I saw a sick steer straggling alone, exactly like some melodramatic painting of Western life ... the kind we see hanging for sale in second-rate art stores.

* * * * *

I stuck till Tuscon was reached.  There I was all in for lack of food and water....

A woman gave me a good “set-down” at her kitchen table.  I was as hungry for something to read as I was for something to eat.  When she walked out of the kitchen, leaving me alone for a moment, I caught sight of a compact little Bible that lay on the leaf of her sewing machine.  Two steps, and I had it stowed in my hip pocket, and was back innocently eating ... the taking of the Bible was providential.  I believe that it served as the main instrument, later on, in saving me from ten years in the penitentiary.

* * * * *

I was glad enough to hop to the cinders at El Paso.  But El Paso at that time was “unhealthy” for hoboes.  They were holding twenty or thirty of us in the city jail, and mysterious word had gone down the line in all directions, that quick telegraph by word-of-mouth that tramps use among themselves, to avoid the town—­that it was “horstile."...

* * * * *

Again rolling miles of arid country.  But this time, like a soldier on a long march, I was prepared:  I had begged, from door to door, enough “hand-outs” to last a week ... throwing away most of the bread ... keeping the cold meats and the pie and cake.  I sat in my open box-car, on a box that I had flung in with me, reading my Bible and eating my “hand-outs” and a millionaire had nothing on me for enjoyment.

I was half-way to San Antonio when I fell in with as jolly a bunch of bums as I ever hope to see in this world ... just outside a little town, in the “jungles.”