The kid said, “Welcome to our hotel.” There wasn’t much enthusiasm in his tone.
“Howdy, folks,” Johnny said, pleasantly. “My name’s Fletcher and this big fellow is Sam Cragg.”
The boy smiled wanly. “My name’s Tom Quisenberry.”
“Glad to know you.” Johnny looked at the older hobo. The latter caught his eye, shook his head and mumbled something under his breath. Johnny shrugged and, moving to one of the beds, tested the mattress.
“Not bad,” he commented. “Not good, but not bad.”
Sam Cragg dropped his two hundred and twenty pounds onto one of the beds. He grunted. “It’ll do. I think I’ll catch me some rest to get in shape for that roadwork.”
Johnny Fletcher winced. “Yeah, the roadwork.” He looked at the boy. “The conny said they work the vags on the road. How come you two are taking it easy?”
Tom Quisenberry frowned. “He just came in a couple of hours ago and me — I guess, I’m not classified as a tramp. I’m waiting trial.”
“Oh-oh,” said Johnny. “Don’t tell me, now — you held up the Union Pacific, huh?”
Young Quisenberry chewed at his lower lip. “It’s not funny to me. In fact, I feel like hell.”
Chapter Four
Griping about it never made any jail more comfortable. When you’re in, you’re in, and you might as well make the most of it. After a couple of hours of listening to Tom Quisenberry complain, Johnny Fletcher said,
“Why, look, Kid, there are mattresses on these beds. That’s something. Down in the Bloomington Illinois jail one time, I slept on a bare spring and you could play tick-tack-toe on my back for a month afterwards.”
“Yah,” Sam Cragg said “and tell him about the time we was in jail in Pacific, Missouri. You know, that rathole in which they stuck eighteen of us and it was so crowded we had to take turns standing and sitting.”
The Kid sat on one of the beds (with mattress). His chin hung almost to his knees. He said, without looking up:
“You fellows are used to it. But this is the first time I’ve ever been in a jail.”
Sam Cragg sang in a bar room bass:
Johnny Fletcher shot a dirty look at Cragg. “No one ever gets used to a jail.” He appealed to the hobo, who so far had not spoken a word. “Do they, Old-Timer?”
The only difference between Old-Timer and Pete the Tramp, the cartoon character, was that Old-Timer had a beard and looked a lot worse than Pete. Johnny wouldn’t have been surprised to see Old-Timer’s clothes get up and walk off without him.
He made no answer to Johnny Fletcher’s question. He was past the stage where it was worth answering questions put to him by anyone less than a cop.
Johnny knew that Old-Timer’s horrible example, as much as anything else, had thrown Quisenberry into his fit of despondency. But he was determined to do his Boy Scout deed for the day and he kept after the Kid. There wasn’t anything else to do in the jail, anyway.
“It’s all in the way you look at it. Here we are, four of us, in a little jug somewhere up on the Iron Range, in Minnesota… What is the name of this burg, anyway, Sam?”
Sam Cragg shrugged. “Poplar City, maybe. No — that was the other burg.”
Johnny Fletcher winced. “Where we discovered that Mort Murray had sent us the books, express collect, and we didn’t have the dough to get them out of hock. That wasn’t very kind of Mort.”
Sam Cragg scowled. “It wasn’t very kind of us not to pay Mort when we had the dough. You know Mort’s only one jump ahead of the sheriff, usually. We couldn’t even keep that one jump ahead of him.”
“My pal,” muttered Johnny. He turned to young Quisenberry. “What’re you in for?”
The boy flushed. “I was hungry. I didn’t have any place to sleep and there wasn’t anyone around and the store window was open…”
“So you climbed in and tapped the till?”
The Kid nodded, his face turning a deep crimson. “The proprietor was sleeping in the back of the store.”
Johnny said, “Burglary. That’s not so good. They might give you six months—”
“Six months!” cried Sam. “Two to five years more likely. In the state pen too, not any comfy hotel like this. Why—” He looked at Johnny and subsided.
The Kid was about ready to break into tears. Johnny wondered why the hell he had ever left home.
“You… you think they’ll give me that much?”
Johnny looked fiercely at Sam Cragg. “Nah. Sam’s kidding. But look, you got a family somewhere.”
The boy started to shake his head, then bobbed it up and down suddenly. “Yes, my — my father. I think they’ve already notified him. That’s why — what I’m worrying about. I didn’t want him to know. But they found a letter on me. I wouldn’t have minded it half so much if only Dad wouldn’t know. Or…”
“A girl?”
The Kid nodded. “I got kicked out of school and Dad raised a fuss. I told him I’d go it on my own and — well, I couldn’t make it. That’s all there’s to it.”
“Why, hell!” exclaimed Johnny. “You haven’t got anything to worry about. Your old man’ll come here and hire a good lawyer and they’ll probably get you off with a suspended sentence. You’ll be back in that college of yours while Sam and I are still doing our thirty-day road job. Right, Old-Timer?” He appealed again to the professional tramp.
Old-Timer didn’t answer. He sat on his bunk, back against the brick wall, knees drawn up to his chin. His hat was tilted over his face and he seemed asleep.
Sam Cragg took a battered pack of playing cards from his pocket and began shuffling them. Johnny groaned. His friend’s hands were better suited to breaking rocks than manipulating a deck of cards.
“Take a card, Kid,” Sam said, brightly, extending the fanned deck.
The boy shook his head. “I don’t feel like it.”
Undiscouraged, Sam held the deck out to Johnny. The latter took a card and looked at it. “All right, what do I do now?”
Sam held out half of the deck. “Lay it on there.” Johnny obeyed and Sam put the other half of the deck on top and began fumbling with the cards. One fell to the floor.
Johnny said, “Yeah, that’s the card.”
Sam reddened. “That wasn’t the trick. I was going to put the whole pack in a handkerchief and then show you how I could force your card right through the cloth.”
“Better read your book some more,” Johnny said, sarcastically.
Muttering to himself, Sam took from his pocket the book: Twenty Simple Card Tricks.
Johnny yawned. “Me, I’m going to sleep. Tell the porter to wake me when we get to the end of the line.”
He stretched out on his bunk and fell promptly asleep.
He woke hours later. Tom Quisenberry was beside his bunk, whispering. “Mr. Fletcher,” he said, “don’t say anything. Just take this, will you? Give it back to me in the morning…” He thrust a card into Johnny’s hand and padded back to his own bunk.
Johnny waited a minute, then turned over. The Kid had settled back on his own bed. Sam Cragg’s burly form was outlined just beyond. Johnny rolled back to the other side. Yes, Old-Timer was still on his own bed. Then, why the mystery? Why should the Kid wake him up in the middle of the night, slip him a card and give him the hugh-hush act?
He was still thinking about it, when he fell asleep again. He dreamed that he was riding on a Seventh Avenue subway train and that a pickpocket, disguised as a Daily Worker newsboy, was rolling him. He hit the Daily Worker lad so hard that Joe Stalin yowled… and then he woke up and the town constable was banging on the bars of the door with a tin cup and yelling: “Rise and shine, boys! The judge is going fishing and he wants to get you fellows out of the way early. You bums, come on out and take your medicine.”