"And I tried to sleep on the bare boards of a box car."
We had disposed ourselves comfortably to sleep for the few hours till wide day, in the station, when the station master came. He poked the fire brighter, shook it down, then turned to us. "Boys," not unkindly, "sorry, but you can't sleep here ... it's the rules."
We shuffled to our feet.
"Do you mind if we stand about the stove till the sun's high enough to take the chill off things?"
"No."
But, standing, we fell to talking ... comparing notes....
"I've been through here once before," remarked my companion, whom I never knew otherwise than as "Bud."
"There's a cotton seed mill up the tracks a way toward town, and we can sleep there, if you want ... to-day's Sunday, and no one will be around, working, to disturb us. In the South it's all right for a tramp to sleep among cotton seed, provided he doesn't smoke there."
"Come on, then, let's find a place. I can hardly hold my head up."
We slumped along the track. A cinder cut into my foot through the broken sole of one shoe. It made me wince and limp.