“No.”
“Well, you’ll have to see the flagman then.”
“All right, at the first stop.”
“No, you will have to do it now.”
“I am not used to walking mixed freight trains in motion. I can’t do it.”
“Yes, you can too.”
“You go to the devil.”
He passed on. I would not have run that train for ten thousand dollars. When we got full under way, I almost wished I had tried to do so for the ever-increasing wind caught the cement and hurled it into clouds of dust which enveloped me in a dense, fine powder, filling my eyes, nose, mouth and ears. Several times I was positive my respiration had ceased. It was with no small degree of joy, therefore, that I hailed the first stop. Whooping, coughing, sneezing, I got out of there and crept into an empty box car a little farther back. I congratulated myself on this shelter and good luck, when the flagman, who was on the lookout for me, stuck his head in the door saying, “Hello, old timer. Where are you going?” I thought I was a novice, and here I was being hailed as an old timer. My head swelled as big as a Superintendent of the Pullman Company.
“I am going to Memphis if God and this traincrew will let me.”
“Have you any money?”