“To hell with him an’ you,” and he spoke no more. Finishing his smoke, he adjusted his pillow and went to sleep. I rolled my coat up, made a pillow, and dozed. I was afraid he would steal my shoes, so I left them on.
Something woke me in the evening. I think it was the lumber shifting. The train was on a down grade, the car creaking and rocking. We were in the front end. Suddenly my companion jumped to his feet. He looked scared, started to crawl up on top of the lumber. He was too late. There was a grinding noise, and a crash. About four feet of the top of the lumber slid forward against the front end of the car and he was crushed, flattened between. I was a prisoner below, unhurt. This shifting of the lumber cut off the light from the open side door, but its weight against the end of the car opened up some cracks and I was soon able to see about me dimly. The boy had died instantly. His body, from the waist up, was flattened between the lumber and front end of the car. His legs dangled below, down where I was imprisoned, with each movement of the car, like the legs of a scarecrow in the wind.
I can’t remember that I was shocked or frightened, but I do know that as soon as I found I was imprisoned in that car I got hungry. I hadn’t eaten since morning and was hungry before the thing happened. But then I knew I could get out and eat at any stop. Now I couldn’t, and my hunger became unbearable.
The place I was in was large as ever, except in height. The shifting of the lumber had reduced that to about three feet. I couldn’t stand up. I was in no danger. The lumber could not shift at the bottom, the weight of that above was too heavy. I had a strong pocketknife, and went to work on the side of the car near the end. The boarding was thin, weather-rotten, and old. In a couple of hours I had cut almost through one end of three boards. My hands were blistered. I sat down and waited till I heard the whistle blow for a town.
As the train went into the yards I kicked the boards loose at the top where they were cut, and pulled them away from below where they were nailed. This gave me a hole large enough to crawl out of, which I did, feet first, pulling my coat after, when she stopped. Up on the main street I learned I was in Dodge City, Kansas, a town at that time largely given over to gambling, fighting, and whisky drinking. I wasn’t interested in any of those amusements then. I got something to eat and went to a cheap room for the night. Tired out, I slept till noon the next day. Then I went down to the yards to look for another train out. Near the depot I met a character who looked like a bum. He gave me a sharp look.
“Goin’ down in the yards, young feller?”
“Yes, why?”
“Better wait till night if you want to make a train. The railroad bull is hostile. They found a bum dead in a car of lumber this morning, and they had to tear the end of the car off to get his body out. He must have been an awful gay cat to get into the end of a carload of planed lumber. It’s suicide.”
I went back uptown and into a lunch counter. The waiter was idle and talkative.
“Traveling?” he asked.