.. 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.
Pages:
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198