The first place I came across was a switch tower, and I hadn't chinned the operators three minutes before I gets on to the fact that an east bound freight usually passed there about six in the mornin', and generally stopped to drill on the siding just below. That was enough to send me down the track; but there wa'n't any traces of the kid.
"New Haven for me, then," says I, and by good luck I catches a local. Maybe that was a comfortable ride, watchin' out of the rear window for somethin' I was hopin' I wouldn't see! And when it was over I hunts up the yard master and finds the freight I was lookin' for was just about due.
"Expectin' a consignment?" says he.
"Yes," says I. "I'm a committee of one to receive a stray kid."
"Oh, that's it, eh?" says he. "We get 'em 'most every week. I'll see that you have a pass to overhaul the empties."
After I'd peeked into about a dozen box cars, and dug up nothin' more encouraging than a couple of boozy 'boes, I begun to think my calculations was all wrong. I was just slidin' another door shut when I notices a bundle of somethin' over in the far corner. I had half a mind not to climb in; for it didn't look like anything alive, but I takes a chance at it for luck, and the first thing I hears is a growl. The next minute I has Togo by the collar and the kid up on my arm. It was Gerald, all right, though he was that dirty and rumpled I hardly knew him.
He just groans and grabs hold of me like he was afraid I was goin' to get away. Why, the poor little cuss was so beat out and scared I couldn't get a word from him for half an hour. But after awhile I coaxed him to sit up on a stool and have a bite to eat, and when I've washed off some of the grime, and pulled out a few splinters from his hands, we gets a train back. First off I thought I'd 'phone Mr. and Mrs. Greene, but then I changes my mind. "Maybe it'll do 'em good to wait," thinks I.
We was half way back when Gerald looks up and says, "You won't take me home, will you?"
"What's the matter with home, kid?" says I.
"Well," says he, and I could see by the struggle he was havin' with his upper lip that it was comin' out hard, "mother says father isn't a nice man, and father says I mustn't believe what she says at all, and—and—I don't think I like either of them well enough to be their little boy any more. I don't like being stolen so often, either."