III
The Hobo
For J. Montague Smith, slipping from shadow to shadow down the scantilylighted cross street and listening momently for the footfalls ofpursuit, a new hour had struck. Psychology to the contrarynotwithstanding, the mental mutations are not always, or of necessity,gradual. In one flaming instant the ex-cashier had been projected acrossthe boundary lying between the commonplace and the extraordinary; butfor the time he was conscious only of a great confusion, shot throughwith a sense of his own present inability to cope with thestrangenesses.
In the projecting instant, time and the graspable realities had bothbeen annihilated. Was it conceivable that this was the evening of thesame day in which he had entertained Boswell Debritt at the CountryClub? Was it remotely thinkable that, only an hour or such a matterearlier, he had been getting ready to call upon Verda Richlander?--that,at this very moment, his dress clothes were lying on the bed in hisrooms, ready to be put on?
It was all prodigiously incredible; in the collapse of the universe onescene alone stood out clearly cut and vivid: the railed space in thebank, with the shaded drop-light and the open desk, and a fleshy manstretched out upon the floor with his arms flung wide and a foolishsmile of mild astonishment fixed, as for all eternity, about theloosened lips and in the staring eyes.
Smith hurried on. The crowding sensations were terrifying, but they werealso precious, in their way. Long-forgotten bits of brutality andtyranny on Watrous Dunham's part came up to be remembered and, in thisretributive aftermath, to be triumphantly crossed off as items in anaccount finally settled. On the Smith side the bank cashier's forebearshad been plodding farmers, but old John Montague had been the villageblacksmith and a soldier--a shrewd smiter in both trades. Blood willtell. Parental implantings may have much to say to the fruit of thewomb, but atavism has more. Smith's jaw came up with a snap and themetamorphosis took another forward step. He was no longer anindistinguishable unit in the ranks of the respectable and thewell-behaved; he was a man fleeing for his life. What was done wasdone, and the next thing to do was to avert the consequences.
At the railroad station a few early comers for the westboundpassenger-train due at ten o'clock were already gathering, and at thebidding of a certain new and militant craftiness Smith avoided thelighted waiting-rooms as if they held the pestilence. Nor was it safe topass beyond the building. The May night was fine, and there werestrollers on the train platform. Smith took no risks. A string of boxcars had been pushed up from the freight unloading platforms, and in theshadow of the cars he worked his way westward to the yard where a nightswitching crew was making up a train.
Thus far he had struck out no plan. But the sudden shift from the normalto the extraordinary had not shorn him of the ability to think quicklyand to the definite end. A placed road-engine, waiting for theconclusion of the car sorting, told him that the next train to leave theyard would be a westbound freight. He would have given much to know itsexact leaving time, but he was far too clear-headed to give the pursuersa clew by asking questions.
Keeping to the shadows, he walked back along the line of cars on themake-up track, alertly seeking his opportunity. If worst came to worst,he could select a car with four truss-rods and crawl in on top of therods after the manner of the professional ride-stealers. But this was alast resort; the risk was large for his inexperience, and he was verywell aware that there must be some sort of an apprenticeship, even tothe "brake-beamer's" trade.
Half-way down the length of the train he found what he was looking for:a box car with its side-door hasped but not locked. With a bit of stickto lengthen his reach, he unfastened the hasp, and at the switchingcrew's addition of another car to the "make-up" he took advantage of thenoise made by the jangling crash and slid the door. Then he ascertainedby groping into the dark interior that the car was empty. With a foot onthe truss-rod he climbed in, and at the next coupling crash closed thedoor.
So far, all was well. Unless the start should be too long delayed, orthe trainmen should discover the unhasped door, he was measurably safe.Still cool and collected, he began to cast about for some means ofreplacing the outside fastening of the door from within. There was loosehay under-foot and it gave him his idea. Groping again, he found a pieceof wire, a broken bale-tie. The box car was old and much of its innersheathing had disappeared. With the help of his pocket-knife he enlargeda crack in the outer sheathing near the door, and a skilful bit ofjuggling with the bent wire sufficed to lift the hasp into place on theoutside and hook it.
Following this clever removal of one of the hazards, he squatted uponthe floor near the door and waited. Though he was familiar with theschedules of the passenger-trains serving the home city, he knew nothingof the movements of the freights. Opening the face of his watch, he feltthe hands. It was half-past nine, and the thrust and whistle of theair-brakes under the cars gave notice that the road engine had beencoupled on. Still the train did not pull out.
After a little he was able to account for the delay. Though hisknowledge of railroad operating was limited, common sense told him thatthe freight would not be likely to leave, now, ahead of the ten o'clockpassenger. That meant another half-hour of suspense to be paid for insuch coin as one might be able to offer. The fugitive paid in keenagonies of apprehension. Surely, long before this the watchman wouldhave returned to the bank, and the hue and cry being raised, the pursuitmust now be afoot. In that case, the dullest policeman on the forcewould know enough to make straight for the railroad yard.
Smith knelt at the crack of the car door and listened, while the minutesdragged slowly in procession. Once, through the crack, he had a glimpseof the smoky flare of a kerosene torch in the hands of a passingcar-inspector; and once again, one of the trainmen walked back over thetops of the cars, making a creaky thundering overhead as he tramped fromend to end of the "empty." But as yet there was no hue and cry, or, ifthere were, it had not reached the railroad yard.
Keenly alive to every passing sound, Smith finally heard thepassenger-train coming in from the east; heard the hoarse stridor of theengine's pop-valve at the station stop, and the distance-diminishedrumblings of the baggage and express trucks over the wooden stationplatform. The stop was a short one, and in a few minutes thepassenger-train came down through the yard, its pace measured by thesharp staccato blasts of the exhaust. It was the signal of release, andas the quickening staccato trailed away into silence, Smith bracedhimself for the slack-taking jerk of the starting freight.
The jerk did not come. Minute by minute the interval lengthened, and atlast the listener in the "empty" heard voices and saw through the crackof the door a faint nimbus of lantern light approaching from the rear ofthe train. The voices came nearer. By the dodging movements of the lightrays, Smith knew instantly what was coming. His pursuers were out, andthey were overhauling the waiting freight-train, searching it for astowaway.
He hardly dared breathe when the lantern-bearers reached his car. Therewere a number of them, just how many he could not determine. ButMcCloskey, the Lawrenceville chief of police, was one of the number.Also, there was an Irish yardman who was carrying one of the lanternsand swinging it under the cars to show that the truss-rods andbrake-beams were empty.
"'Tis not the likes of him that do be brake-beamin' their way out oftown, Chief," the Irishman was saying. "'Tis more likely he's tuk anautymobile and the middle of the big road."
"There's no automobile missing, and his own car is still in the garage,"Smith heard the police chief say. And then: "Hold your lantern up here,Timmy, till we see if this car door is fastened shut."
It was a measure of the distance that the bank clerk and small-citysocial leader had already travelled on the road toward a completemetamorphosis that the only answer to this threat of discovery was atightening of the muscles, a certain steeling of thews and sinews forthe wild-beast spring if the door should be opened. One thoughtdominated all others: if they took him they should not take him alive.
Happily or unhappily, as one may wish to
view it, the danger passed."The door's fastened, all right," said one of the searchers, and themenace went on, leaving Smith breathing hard and chuckling grimly tohimself over the cunning forethought which had prompted him to grope forthe bit of wire bale-tie.
Past this there was another interval of waiting--a brief one, this time.Then the long freight began to move out over the switches. When he couldno longer see the sheen of the city electrics in the strip of skyvisible through his door crack, Smith gathered up the leavings of hay onthe car floor and stretched himself out flat on his back. And it wasanother measure of the complete triumph of the elemental underman overthe bank clerk that he immediately fell asleep and did not awaken untila jangling of draw-bars and a ray of sunlight sifting through the crackof the door told him that the train had arrived at some destination, andthat it was morning.
Sitting up to rub his eyes and look at his watch, the fugitive made ahasty calculation. If the train had been in motion all night, this earlymorning stopping-place should be Indianapolis. Getting upon his feet, heapplied an investigative eye to the crack. The train, or at least hisportion of it, was side-tracked in a big yard with many others. Workingthe pick-lock wire again, he unhasped the door and opened it. There wasno one in sight in this particular alley of the crowded yard, and hedropped to the ground and slid the door back into place.
Making a note of the initials and number, so that he might find the caragain, he crawled under three or four standing trains and made his wayto a track-side lunch-counter. The thick ham sandwich and the cup ofmuddy coffee eaten and drunk with the appetite of a starved vagrant setup another mile-stone in the distances traversed. Was it, indeed, onlyon the morning of yesterday that he had sent his toast back because,forsooth, the maid at Mrs. Gilman's select boarding-house for singlegentlemen had scorched it a trifle? It seemed as incredible as afairytale.
Beyond the quenching of his hunger and the stuffing of his pockets withtwo more of the sad sandwiches, he went back to his box car, knowingthat, in the nature of things, his flight was as yet only fairly begun.His train, or some train in which his car was a unit, was just pullingout, and he was barely in time to slide the door and scramble in. Onceinside, he made haste to close the opening before the train shouldemerge from the shelter of its mate on the next track. But before hecould brace himself for the shove, a hand came down from the car roof, abrakeman's coupling-stick was thrust into the riding-rail of the door,and the closing operation was effectively blocked.
Smith stood back and waited for a head to follow the hand. It camepresently; the bare, tousled head of a young brakeman who had taken offhis cap and was lying on his stomach on the car roof to look under theeaves into the interior. Smith made a quick spring and caught thehanging head in the crook of his elbow. "You're gone," he remarked tothe inverted face crushed in the vise of forearm and biceps. "If youturn loose, you'll break your back as you come over, and if you don'tturn loose, I can pull your head off."
"Leggo of me!" gasped the poor prisoner, drumming with his toes on theroof. "Wha--whadda you want with my head? You can't do nothin' with itwhen you get it!"
"I have got it," said Smith, showing his teeth. "By and by, when we getsafely out of town, I'm going to jump up and bite you."
The brakeman tried to cry out that he was slipping; that the fall wouldkill him. Smith felt him coming and shifted his hold just in time tomake the fall an assisted somersault, landing the man clumsily, butsafely, inside of the car. The trigging stick had been lost in thescuffle, and Smith's first care was to slide the door.
"Say; what kind of a 'bo are you, anyway?" gasped the railroad man,flattening himself against the side of the car and struggling to regainhis suddenly lost prestige; the time-honored authority of the trainmanover the ride-stealer. "Don't you know you might 'a' killed me, pullin'me off'm the roof that way?"
"I can do it yet, if you feel that you've missed anything that wasrightfully coming to you," Smith laughed. Then: "Do you happen to have apipe and a bit of tobacco in your clothes?"
"My gosh!" said the brakeman, "I like your nerve!" Nevertheless, herummaged in his pocket and handed over a corn-cob pipe and a sack oftobacco. "Maybe you'll want a match, too."
"No, thanks; I have one."
Smith filled the pipe, lighted it, and returned the tobacco. The nickelmixture was not quite like the Turkish blend in the humidor jar on theKincaid Terrace mantel, but it sufficed. At the pipe-puffing thebrakeman looked him over curiously.
"Say; you're no Weary Willie," he commented gruffly; "you're wearin' toogood clothes. What's your lay?"
More and more Smith could feel the shacklings of the reputableyesterdays slipping from him. Civilization has taken its time amblingdown the centuries, but the short cuts to the primitive are neither hardto find nor long to traverse.
"My 'lay' just now is to get a free ride on this railroad," he said."How far is this 'empty' going?"
"To St. Louis," was the reply, extorted by the very matter-of-factcalmness of the question. "But you're not goin' to St. Louis in it--notby a jugful. You're goin' to hop off at the first stop we make."
"Am I? Wait until I have finished my smoke. Then we'll open the door andscrap for it; the best man to stay in the car, and the other to take achance turning handsprings along the right of way. Does that appeal toyou?"
"No, by jacks! You bet your life it don't!"
"All right; what's the other answer?"
If the brakeman knew any other answer he did not suggest it. A few milesfarther along, the train slowed for a stop. The brakeman felt histwisted neck tenderly and said: "If you'll tell me that you ain'trunnin' away from some sheriff 'r other...."
"Do I look it?"
"I'm dogged if I know what you do look like--champeen middle-weight,maybe. Lemme open that door."
Smith took a final whiff and returned the pipe. "Suppose I say that I'mbroke and haven't had a chance to pawn my watch," he suggested. "Howdoes that strike you?"
The trainman slid the door open a foot or so as the train ground andjangled to a stand at the grade crossing with another railroad.
"I'll think about it," he growled. "You pulled me off'm the roof; butyou kep' me from breakin' my back, and you've smoked my pipe. My runends at Terre Haute."
"Thanks," said Smith; and at that the tousle-headed young fellow droppedoff and disappeared in the direction of the caboose.
Smith closed the door and hooked it with his wire, and the train joggedon over the crossing. Hour after hour wore away and nothing happened. Bythe measured click of the rail joints under the wheels it was evidentthat the freight was a slow one, and there were many halts andside-trackings. At noon Smith ate one of the pocketed sandwiches. Theham was oversalted, and before long he began to be consumed with thirst.He stood it until it became a keen torture, and then he found the bit ofwire again and tried to pick the hasp-lock, meaning to take advantage ofthe next stop for a thirst-quenching dash.
For some reason the wire refused to work, and he could not make it freethe hasp. After many futile attempts he whittled another peep-hole,angling it so that it pointed toward the puzzling door hook. Then he sawwhat had been done. Some one--the somersaulting brakeman, no doubt--hadbasely inserted a wooden peg in the staple in place of the hook and theempty box car was now a prison-van.
Confronting the water famine, Smith drew again upon the elementalresources and braced himself to endure. When night came the slow trainwas still jogging along westward somewhere in Illinois, and the box-carprisoner was so thirsty that he did not dare to eat the meat in theremaining sandwich; could eat the bread only in tiny morsels, chewedlong and patiently. Still he would not make the outcry that the trickybrakeman had doubtless counted upon; the noise that would bring help atany one of the numerous stops--and purchase relief at the price of anarrest for ride-stealing.
Grimly resolute, Smith made up his mind to hang on until morning. Everyadded mile was a mile gained in the flight from the gallows or thepenitentiary, and the night's run would put him just that much
fartherbeyond the zone of acute danger. Such determination fights and wins itsown battle, and though he dreamed of lakes and rivers and cool-runningbrooks and plashing fountains the greater part of the night, he sleptthrough it and awoke to find his car side-tracked in a St. Louis yard.
One glance through the whittled peep-hole showed him that theimprisoning peg was still in its staple, so now there was no alternativebut the noise. A brawny switchman was passing, and he came and unhaspedthe door in response to Smith's shower of kicks upon it.
"Come down out o' that, ye scut! 'Tis the stone pile f'r the likes ofyez in this State, and it's Michael Toomey that'll be runnin' ye in,"remarked the brawny person, when the door had been opened.
"Wait," said Smith hoarsely. He had caught sight of a bucket of waterwith a dipper in it standing by the door of the switch shanty, and hejumped down and ran for it. With the terrible thirst assuaged, hewheeled and went back to the big switchman. "Now I'm ready to be runin," he said. "But first, you know, you've got to prove that you're thebetter man," and with that he whipped off his coat and squared himselffor the battle.
It was joined at once, the big man being Irish and nothing loath. Also,it was short and sweet. Barring a healthy and as yet unsatisfiedappetite, Smith was in the pink of condition, and the little trainer inthe Lawrenceville Athletic Club had imparted the needful skill. In threeswift rounds the big switchman was thrashed into a proper state ofsubmission and hospitality, and again, being Irish, he bore no grudge.
"You're a pugnayshus young traithor, and I'm fair sick for to be doin'ye a fayvor," spluttered the big man, after the third knock-out. "Whatis ut ye'll be wantin'?"
Smith promptly named three things; breakfast directions, a morningpaper, and a railroad man's advice as to the best means of gettingforward on his journey. His new ally put him in the way of compassingall three, and when the westward faring was resumed--this time in thehollow interior of a huge steel smoke-stack loaded in sections on a pairof flat cars--he went eagerly through the newspaper. The thing he waslooking for was there, under flaring headlines; a day late, to be sure,but that was doubtless owing to Lawrenceville's rather poor wireservice.
ATTEMPTED MURDER OF BANK PRESIDENT
Society-Leader Cashier Embezzles $100,000 and Makes Murderous Assault on President
LAWRENCEVILLE, May 15.--J. Montague Smith, cashier of the Lawrenceville Bank and Trust Company, and a leader in the Lawrenceville younger set, is to-day a fugitive from justice with a price on his head. At a late hour last night the watchman of the bank found President Dunham lying unconscious in front of his desk. Help was summoned, and Mr. Dunham, who was supposed to be suffering from some sudden attack of illness, was taken to his hotel. Later, it transpired that the president had been the victim of a murderous assault. Discovering upon his return to the city yesterday evening that the cashier had been using the bank's funds in an attempt to cover a stock speculation of his own, Dunham sent for Smith and charged him with the crime. Smith made an unprovoked and desperate assault upon his superior officer, beating him into insensibility and leaving him for dead. Since it is known that he did not board any of the night trains east or west, Smith is supposed to be in hiding somewhere in the vicinity of the city. A warrant is out, and a reward of $1,000 for his arrest and detention has been offered by the bank. It is not thought possible that he can escape. It was currently reported not long since that Smith was engaged to a prominent young society woman of Lawrenceville, but this has proved to be untrue.
Smith read the garbled news story with mingled thankfulness and rage;thankfulness because it told him that he was not a murderer, and rage,no less at Dunham's malignant ingenuity than at his own folly in settingthe seal of finality upon the false accusation by running away. But thething was done, and it could not be undone. Having put himself on thewrong side of the law, there was nothing for it now but a completedisappearance; exile, a change of identity, and an absolute severancewith his past.
While he was folding the St. Louis newspaper and putting it into hispocket, he was wondering, half cynically, what Verda Richlander wasthinking of him. Was it she, herself, who had told the newspaper peoplethat there was nothing in the story of the engagement? That she wouldside with his accusers and the apparent, or at least uncontradicted,facts he could hardly doubt. There was no very strong reason why sheshould not, he told himself, rather bitterly. He had not tried to bindher to him in any shackling of sentiment. Quite the contrary, they hadboth agreed to accept the modern view that sentiment should be regardedas a mildly irruptive malady which runs, or should run, its course, likemeasles or chicken-pox, in early adolescence. That being the case, MissVerda's leaf--like all other leaves in the book of his past--might befirmly pasted down and forgotten. As an outlaw with a price on his headhe had other and vastly more important things to think about.
Twenty-four hours beyond this final decision he reached Kansas City,where there was a delay and some little diplomacy to be brought intoplay before he could convince a freight crew on the Union Pacific thathe had to be carried, free of cost, to Denver. In the Colorado capitalthere was another halt and more trouble; but on the second day he foundanother empty box car and was once more moving westward, this timetoward a definite destination.
During the Denver stop-over he had formulated his plan, such as it was.In a newspaper which he had picked up, he had lighted upon anadvertisement calling for laborers to go over into the Timanyoni countryto work on an irrigation project. By applying at the proper place hemight have procured free transportation to the work, but there were tworeasons why he did not apply. One was prudently cautionary and was basedon the fear that he might be recognized. The other was less easilydefined, but no less mandatory in the new scheme of things. Thevagabonding had gotten into his blood, and he was minded to go on as hehad begun, beating his way to the job like other members of the vagrantbrotherhood.
The Real Man Page 3