People looked curiously at the youth with the black eye, ripped trousers, which showed a bruised knee, as he walked down the street. His right hand was sore from the blow he had struck the clerk, and he grinned foolishly at his own reflection in a plate-glass show window.
He had unconsciously started toward home, but now he realized that he had no home. In fact, he had walked out early that morning, without taking anything except the clothes he had on his back. He stopped on a corner near a big bank and watched the people going in and out of the institution.
Reaching inside his coat pocket he drew out the green check for seventy-five dollars. Without the proper identification it was worthless, but without hesitating he went into the bank and wrote his mother’s signature across the back of the check.
The teller glanced at it closely, shot a quick glance at the bruised face of the young man, and shoved the check back to him.
‘You better write your own name on it, too,’ he said.
Fifteen minutes later Rex leaned against the ticket window at the Union Station.
‘A ticket to Mesa City, Arizona,’ he said.
After a few moments of investigation, the clerk replied.
‘I can sell you one to Cañonville. Mesa City is on a stage line from there. When do you want to leave?’
‘Right now.’