"Why?" he demanded, intrigued by my preoccupation.
"Nothing. It just reminded me of something."
Then he lifted a hand and smote himself on the thigh. "Me, too! By jinks! Say, I'd almost forgot that."
He hitched his chair upon me; held me down with a forefinger.
"Listen. That was funny. It was one night—last fall. It was just after Number Seventeen had pulled out, westbound, about one-forty in the morning. There wasn't anything else till six-one. Them are always the hardest hours. A fellow's got to stay awake, see, and nothin' to keep him—unless maybe a coyote howlin' a mile off, or maybe a bum knockin' around among the box cars on the sidin', or, if it's cold, the stove to tend. That's all. Unless you put a record on the old phonograph and hit 'er up a few minutes now and then. Dead? Say, boy!"
"Well, this night it was a bum. I'm sittin' there in the coop, countin' my fingers and listenin' to Limon calling off car numbers to Denver—just like that I'm sittin'—when I hear somethin' out in the waitin' room. Not very loud.—Well, I go out there, and there's the bum. Come right into the waitin' room.
"Bum! If he wasn't the father and mother and brother and sister of the original bum, I'll eat my hat. Almost a Jew-lookin' guy, and he'd saw hard service. But he's got a kind o' crazy glitter in his eye.
"'Well,' says I, just like that, 'Well, what do you want?'
"He don't whine; he don't handle the pan. He's got that look in his eye.
"'My woman is out in them box cars,' says he. 'I'm goin' to bring her in here where it's warm.' That's what he says. Not 'can I bring her in?' but 'goin' to bring her in!' From a hobo!