But soon I grew tired of the gang and started on alone.
"You'd better beat it on out of the South as quick as you can," an old tramp had warned me, "they're hell on a bum down here, and harder yet on a Yankee ... no, they haven't forgot that yet—not by a damn sight!"
I was soon to wish that I had listened to the old tramp's wisdom.
In the chill grey dip of an early spring dawn I dropped off a freight in the yards of the town of Granton.
I drew my threadbare coat closer as I made my way up the track, on the look-out for some place to go into and warm myself. Usually, in chilly weather, each railroad station throughout the country has a stove a-glow in the waiting room ... I found the railroad station, and the stove, red-hot, was there ... it was good to be near a fire. In the South it can be at times heavily cold. There is a moisture and a rawness in the weather, there, that hurts.
I was not alone. Two negro tramps followed me; like myself, seeking warmth and shelter. Then came a white tramp.
We stood around the stove, which shone red in the early half-light of dawn. We shivered and rubbed our hands. Then we fell into tramps' gossip about the country we were in.
The two negroes soon left to catch a freight for Austin. My fellow tramp and I stretched ourselves along the benches. He yawned with a loud noise like an animal. "I'm worn-out," he said, "I've been riding the bumpers all night." I noticed immediately that he did not speak tramp argot.