Something told me he was a detective.
I told him yes, I was a stranger and trying to reach Dallas, and a good many other things I told him I don't remember.
He finally admitted he had just searched the train I had left, but as he hadn't caught me in the act, he would let me go, comforting me with the assurance that I would get caught anyway at Mineola.
"Why, they are so bad after hobos in Mineola they break open the car door seals, searching for them," he said.
Two hours later I was standing on the "blind baggage" platform, behind the coal tender of a passenger train bound for Dallas.
It was raining pretty hard when we got to Mineola, and no one came to bother me.
Shortly after daylight we steamed into Dallas.
I jumped from the train as it began to slow up at the State Fair Grounds in the edge of the city.
I had at last gotten to Dallas, but I was certainly in a bad fix—penniless, wet to the skin, cold, sick, and deathly sleepy.