Generally he had no difficulties. Crossing from Arkansas into Missouri nearly caused trouble, when he blundered into a border patrol searching for someone else. He never found out who it was they really wanted; two of the guards stopped him, stared at his face in the light of a flickering match, and, after a tense moment or two, incredibly sent him along his way.
In central Missouri he wandered into a hobo camp. Four bedraggled-looking men were squatting around an iron pot in which bubbled some sort of stew. Kesley had not eaten all day; he rode up to them and dismounted, keeping a hand hovering near his weapons in case they should recognize him.
They didn't.
"Come join us, brother," one of them invited. He was a heavy man with a bulbous red nose.
"Thanks. Don't mind if I do." Kesley lowered himself into the circle round the fire.
"You from hereabouts?" a lean man of perhaps sixty asked grudgingly. "Don't spot your face."
"I'm an Illinoiser," Kesley said. "Spent some time down in Texas. Now I'm heading home again."
He helped himself to a potful of stew. The stuff was hot and bubbling—too hot, really, to taste, which perhaps was a sort of blessing, Kesley thought.
"Have any trouble with the border guards?" someone asked.
"Little squabble down near Arkansas, that's all. They were hunting someone or other, and took me for him."