Beggars of Life Read Online Free Page A

Ohleans. A guy kin allus git by there,” spoke up another.
    â€œBelieve me, ’Boes, I’ll pick up a stake in some burg afore I hits it ’way south. Dynamite Eddie’s in Chatnoogie. I’ll turn a trick wit’ ’im, an’ stay down there. This God-forsaken jungle is only good for Eskermos.”
    An engine stopped near the sand-shed. It could be heard puffing in the cold night air. The door was opened, and a man in grease-stained overalls entered with two buckets in which to shovel sand.
    â€œRun outta sand!” asked a hobo.
    â€œYeah,” answered the man in overalls, who looked neither to right nor to left.
    â€œThem engines sure use the sand nights like this,” said another hobo.
    â€œWell, they gotta,” spoke up the man in the yellow collar. “They’d slide all over the tracks if they didn’t.”
    â€œWell, we’ll let ’em,” said another tramp.
    The man departed with the sand and soon the engine was heard puffing and straining down the track. Then quiet settled upon the shed in the railroad yards at Muncie. The crackling sputter of the coal in the red-hot stove, and the dropping of the melted snow on the tar-paper was all that broke the silence. The heat made some of the wanderers drowsy, and they stretched out on the sand and snored.
    The man with the sagging mouth and the scarred chin offered me food and coffee, which I accepted greedily, as I had not eaten since early morning.
    â€œYou ain’t been on the road long, Kid,” said one shrewd-looking vagabond. “It takes a lotta guts for green kids to beat it on a day like this. I’d beat it back home ’f I was you till the bluebirds whistle in the spring.”
    Just then the door opened wide and a policeman stood framed in it. His flash-light shone clearly above the blurred light that glimmered through the smudgy globe of the kerosene lantern.
    The hoboes in the shed were momentarily alarmed, while I was badly scared, as it was my first contact with the law.
    The officer looked about the room, as if in search of a certain individual. “He ain’t here, I guess,” he said, half aloud to himself, as he held the light in the faces of the group.
    â€œThat’s all right, men,” he continued. “Flop here till mornin’—she’s colder’n Billy-be-damned outside.”
    He sniffed the aroma of the coffee—“Java smells good,” he commented, “gimme a cup.” The hoboes, anxious to fraternize with so much power, moved in unison to pour the coffee. One of them handed the hot liquid to the policeman, saying as he did so, “Sugar, Mister?”
    â€œNope,” said his blue-coated majesty, “this’ll do. Thanks.”
    The policeman handed back the empty cup, and said, “Lay low here—it’s all right.”
    â€œThank you, Mister,” replied the grateful tramps in unison.
    When the policeman had gone, a hobo said, “Some o’ them cops are good guys.”
    â€œYou gotta watch ’em all,” returned another.
    The tramps on the sand slept peacefully through it all.
    â€œThem guys could a’ been pinched an’ they’d never knew it,” a vagrant said, as he nodded at the stretched-out forms of the rovers, who breathed heavily. “One time I got stewed in Chi, an’ was thrun outta Hinky Dink’s on my ear, and darned ’f I diden sleep right on Clark Street till mornin’.”
    â€œThat dynamite Hinky Dink sells ’ud make a hummin’ bird fly slow,” volunteered the man in the yellow collar, and then continued, “I was runnin’ for a freight in Pittsy, an’ I fell over a switch light, an’ got knocked out. She was rainin’ cats wi’ blue feathers an’ green tails, an’ I never woke up till mornin, an’ I was wetter’n the river. Well, sir, I lays right between the tracks, an’ the trains