A HOBO PRECEDENT
The trouble began in this way: Ohio Slim had made up his mind to reform and go home. He was lying in jail in western Pennsylvania at the time, in company with Chicago Bud and several other cronies. Bud was his chum, and Slim told him of his decision. This was his first mistake. When a tramp wants to reform he should say nothing about it to anybody, but scamper from the road as fast as his legs will carry him. Slim knew this perfectly well, but he was so tickled to find that he had nerve enough to make the resolution that he was obliged to tell his pal. Bud did not exactly see the point of it all, but he patted him on the back just the same and wished him good luck. Then Slim made friends with the Galway (the Catholic priest) who visited the jail on Sundays, and asked him to write a letter to his parents, explaining his yearning for home and stating that he needed five dollars to get there respectably. The good man did all this, and in due time the money came. Slim cautiously asked the Galway to keep it for him until he was free.
The day of release arrived at last, and the men marched out of their cells pale but hopeful. Slim, of course, looked up the Galway immediately. He got his money, and then returned to the park where the men were waiting to bid him good-by. Just before separating from them, he called Bud aside and had a few last words with him.
"I'd like to give you more, Bud," he said, as he handed him a fifty-cent piece, "but I've only got enough for my ticket and a dinner on the way—understand, don't cher?"
Bud did not want to take the money, but Slim pressed it upon him, and then they parted, Slim starting for the railway-station, and Bud, with a few pals, for a saloon. They never expected to meet again.
But the best-laid plans of mice and men go wrong just as easily in Hoboland as anywhere else. Poor Slim simply could not get to the station. He stopped at every saloon on the way, and by the time the train was ready to leave, his money was half gone and he was don't-care drunk. I got a glimpse of him in the afternoon as he stood, or rather staggered, in front of a billiard-hall. He was singing some verses of the song "Gwine Home." His voice was all in his nose, and he wheezed out the words like a tired-out barrel-organ. But he was clever enough not to be too uproarious, and later in the afternoon laid himself away in a brick-yard. The next morning he was sober.
Meanwhile Bud and a pal, called "Rochester Curly," had also got drunk. They invested the fifty cents in whisky well called "rot-gut," and it unhinged their brains. At night they were so bad that when a little policeman tried to arrest them they both took it as an insult, and drew their razors. The officer called for assistance, and after a severe tussle, in which Bud had his head badly bruised, they were landed at the police station. The next morning the magistrate gave them ninety days apiece.
How Bud ever learned of Slim's conduct remains a mystery to this day. The Galway did not tell him, I did not, the other men had left town, and neither he nor Curly saw Slim in the streets, but he got wind of it just the same. Possibly a city tramp told him. "If I ever meet that fella again," he said to some friends who visited him in the jail the following day, "I'll break his head into sixty-seven pieces. Wy, I wouldn't have treated a dog that way. I don't care if he did want to reform; he had no right to change his mind without divvyin' that boodle. Fifty cents! H'm! He wanted all the good booze himself, that's what was botherin' him. But he'll suffer fer it, take my tip fer that. He knew well enough that Curly an' me would drink rot-gut if we couldn't get anythin' else, 'n' he was jus' mean enough to let us do it. Oh, I'll teach him such a lesson when I find him that that thing won't happen again in this country. If he'd been square, Curly 'n' me wouldn't be where we is now."
Everybody knew that Bud was a man of his word, but fancied, none the less, that his wrath was more the result of his bruises than of any deep-seated hatred of his old comrade. Slim had in the meantime looked up the Galway again and confessed his behavior. He was so sincerely penitent that the good man bought him a ticket out of his own pocket, and sent him home. He stayed there for just three months. Some days he did very well, hardly swore, and then, without the slightest notice, he would break through all restraints and go on a terrible tear. He had been too long on the road; he could not conquer the wild habits that he had formed; they had become an everlasting part of him; and, one day, when his people thought he was doing better than ever, he stole away and wandered back to his old haunts. They never saw him again.
This, I believe, is a straightforward account of the quarrel, and both Bud's friends and Slim's tell the same story. It is what happened after this that divides them into parties. I did not see the fight myself, but I have heard it described so often that I believe I can do it justice.
It took place one cold autumn night, nearly two years after the quarrel, in a barn not far from Newark, New Jersey. Some twenty hoboes had gathered there for the night, and Bud was among them. His friends say that he was in a most peaceable mood and with no thought of Slim in his mind, but they do admit that he had been looking for him ever since the separation. It was almost time to blow out the candle, and several of the men had already selected their nooks in the hay. Suddenly the door squeaked on its rusty hinges, and three newcomers walked in. The tallest one was Slim. He recognized Bud immediately, walked up to him as to an old pal, and said, "Well, Bud, old socks, how are you? S'pose you didn't expect to see me again? I couldn't make it go, Bud; liquor wouldn't leave me alone. But shake, anyhow," and he held out his hand.
It was certainly a friendly greeting, but Bud returned it with a blow in the face which knocked Slim off his feet. He was so stunned that all he could do was to lie there and exclaim against the surprise Bud had been keeping for him. "W'y, Bud, have you gone bughouse? Don't cher know that I'm Slim? What cher knockin' me about that way for?"
"Get up out o' that, you long-legged devil, you!" cried Bud, in a sudden rage. "Mean to tell me that you's forgotten how you did me 'n' Curly with yer rotten fifty cents? Well, you'll 'member it 'fore you get out o' here. Stand up till I put cher face in fer you!"
Slim was not a coward, and got up and squared for the row. Then Bud decided that he preferred to fight with razors, and drew one from under his shirt-bosom. This was serious, and the crowd gathered around and asked for explanations. Both men gave their separate accounts of the trouble. All agreed that Slim had been greedy, even he himself, and he offered to beg Bud's pardon; but the majority claimed that the offense could not be settled that way, and the fight must consequently go on. Nevertheless, several tried to stop it, and argued earnestly with both men. Slim was willing enough not to quarrel further, but Bud would hear of nothing but satisfaction.
"I said I'd do that fella," he cried to those trying to pacify him, "and I will. Jus' let me alone; if you don't, you'll get the worst of it."
It was no use to argue with him while in such a mood, and he threw off his coat. Slim did likewise, and a friend lent him a razor. A Canadian was chosen for referee.
"Is this thing for a finish?" he asked, as he examined their razors.
"'T is 'f I can make it so," said Bud, doggedly.
"And you, Slim?" queried the Canadian, further.
"Well," Slim replied, in his slow and measured way, "I guess I'll do my share; but before the show begins I jus' want to ask you a question, Bud. Ain't got any objections, have you?"
"No; but be spry about it," snarled Bud.
"Well, now, Bud, d' you 'member the time when I took thirty days fer you down in Alabama so that you could go off 'n' cure yer diseases? 'Member how we worked it, don't cher—how I walked in to see you to let you walk out in my togs? Guess y' ain't forgotten that, have you?"
"What's that got to do with this circus?" Bud sneeringly returned.
Slim looked at him steadily, and his friends say that Bud winced; but that was all it amounted to, for in a minute the referee was calling them to action.
"Get ready," he commanded, handing them their razors.
They pushed the blades back against the handles and held them tightly with their fingers, leaving the edges bare.
"Y' all right?" asked the Canadian.
"I am," Bud answered.
"Here, too," drawled Slim.
"Then drive away," the referee shouted, stepping back at the same time out of harm's reach; and the crowd followed his example.
Both men were trained "cutters," and it is said that there has not been another such exhibition of skill of this sort in Hoboland in the last ten years. There were three rounds. The first was merely preliminary. Each studied the tactics of the other and noted his weak points. It is reported that Slim was not in the best of form, and that even the referee, on seeing him parry, advised him to demand a fight with fists; but it was too late. He had warmed to the work, and, handicapped or not, he intended to see it through. Slash, slash, slash, went the razors, but all that one heard was the tiptoeing backward and forward of the fighters, as they charged or defended. A half-minute rest, and the third round began. Both Bud and Slim were badly cut, and their faces showed it, but Slim's pals claim that Bud was getting the worst of it. They say that he was misjudging his reach more and more, and that a wound over his right eye damaged his sight. This may be true; at any rate, one of Bud's cronies, who was holding the candle, suddenly dropped it. Whether Bud sprang quickly for Slim's neck or was lively enough to make a pass at him while he was unguarded, I cannot say, but when the candle was lighted again Slim lay on the floor, mortally wounded. He died that same night in a Newark hospital.
Bud carries to-day a useless right arm and a blind eye. He is the proprietor of an outcasts' saloon in St. Louis, and sometimes when in his cups he brags of the deed done in the barn. But no one has ever heard him tell that incident of the story which, if not accident as well, made a dark deed forever darker.