The trainman turned on us threateningly, but one good look sufficed, so we were left undisturbed beside the track. We had heard more than once of trainmen who not only took money from hoboes, but also relieved them of Ingersoll, knife, or any little trinket they happened to have about them, but this was our first experience with the breed.
With our bundles for pillows we slept through the night, and awakened at dawn when another freight stopped for a last drink before crossing the lake. We piled into a gondola just as the train gathered speed and felt that we would at least cross the lake in safety. We had not gone a mile when a trainman leaped in beside us.
“What are you riding on, friends?” he inquired.
“A union card,” said Dan.
“And what else?”
“Not another blamed thing,” Dan answered determinedly.
“Well, that don’t listen very good to me,” the fellow growled. “Where did you come from and where are you going?”
While we gave him a sketch of our experiences and reasons for riding freights, he drew a stub of a pencil from his pocket and began scrawling on the back of a time table.
“Loan me your knife a minute, old man,” he said to Dan.
Dan passed over the knife, a very fine one that I had given him the first Christmas after our marriage, and the brakeman sharpened his pencil.