Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 54, No. 3, March 2009

The Graycats by Douglas Grant Johnson

“Best not to think about home too much, Arthur,” Orvil said.

Orvil was trying, like I was, to act little older than we were. But I thought he missed his home more than he’d admit. I turned to Arthur. He claimed to be sixteen, like me and Orvil, but I wasn’t so sure about that. He was a little young to be out on the road, but so were me and Orvil, when you come down to it. Still, there we were, all three of us, in the middle of the night, clinging to the top of a boxcar on a fast-moving freight train.

“Nah... it’s okay to think about home,” I said, loud enough to be heard over the noise of the cars. “I think about it all the time.”

“You miss your mom?” Arthur said.

“Sure do. Books too. Back when my pa had a job and we had money, he’d buy books for me and my sister. I wanted to bring one of them... one by Kipling, but my pa said it was best to travel light.”

The train swung away from the flat farmlands we had been passing through and headed into some rougher hill country.

“Think we’ll ever get there?” Arthur said after a moment.

“Sure,” I said.

“California seems like such a long ways.”

“Guess it is,” Orvil said, “but see... we just gotta keep our minds set on gettin’ there.”

“An’ keep puttin’ a few miles behind us ever’ day.”

“How many days, you think it’ll take, Orv—”

The boxcar hit a bad soft spot on the roadbed and bucked so hard it almost threw us off. We grabbed the timbers of the roof walk and held on as tight as we could.

“Ridin’ up here on the roof wasn’t the best idea you ever had, Stanley,” Orvil said to me over the extra clanking of wheels and couplers.

“We’re still here, aren’t we? That railroad bull didn’t see us up here when he kicked everyone else off.”

“Shucks... you’d think the railroad’d keep their tracks in better shape,” Orvil said.

The boxcar settled down to its regular swaying and bumping. About the same time, we heard voices from the platform of the caboose, the next car behind us.

“Thought I heard somethin.’”

“Let it go, Stark. Catch ‘em in the yard in the morning.”

“I’ll be havin’ a look.”

A few seconds later a shape appeared above the ladder at the tail end of the car.

“Well... we got a whole passel of graycats up here,” the shape called over his shoulder.

In no time at all, the fellow was on top of the car with us and he was carrying a big club. Right away, we began to retreat, but Arthur wasn’t as fast. He grabbed Arthur by the collar and sent him stumbling backward, toward the rear of the car.

“Get off!” he said before turning to me and Orvil.

But we weren’t waiting to be invited off. We were already scrambling for the front of the car.

Climbing up or down a boxcar’s ladder while a train is moving is scary enough, but when the bull started for us, even trying it in the dark didn’t seem such a bad idea. We were just reaching for the ladder when we heard Arthur’s interrupted scream, and then nothing but the sound of wheels on the joints of the track.

The last glimpse I’d had of Arthur, he was stumbling backward, trying to regain his balance. Maybe he would have, I don’t know, but what I think must have happened is, he ran out of roof and backed up into thin air between the cars.

We stopped with our feet on the bottom rungs of the ladder and considered our choices. One was to hang on like we were until the next station. But the train was moving at a pretty good clip, and as Orvil said, the track wasn’t in top condition. Every time the wheels hit a few weak ties or a bad track joint, the car would lurch again, threatening to pitch us off.

But the bull was not waiting for that. In no time at all, he was leaning over the top and swinging his big club at our knuckles on the rungs.

“That feller’s pure crazy!” Orvil said above the roar of the wheels.

I felt the stir of air on my fingers as his club barely missed. We both grabbed a lower rung, but this made us slouch down and hang out farther from the car. It was awkward, and I didn’t think I could hold on for long. I glanced at Orvil and I could see he was thinking the same thing. Jumping off seemed like a wise choice. Especially when it looked like that crazy bull was getting ready to climb down after us.

Orvil nodded and we made ready to go.

I was lucky, landing in a spot covered with grass and a lot of small weeds. Orvil, jumping a second later than I did, wasn’t so lucky. He landed in a bramble of small bushes, and it took a while before I found him and got him untangled. It was another while before he found he had suffered no broken bones. But he was in a lot of pain just about everywhere, and for a long time he lay on the ground trying not to move. I sat with him for a while, nursing my own bruises and listening to his moans. And feeling bad that there was nothing that I could possibly do to help him.

Graycats, the bull called us. Well, that’s what the other hobos called us, too, although not with anything like the pure malice we’d heard on top of that boxcar. It was what they called anyone as green as we were about the ways of the road, and right then I couldn’t say they were wrong.

We’d sort of looked after Arthur because he seemed kind of innocent, and we figured if we didn’t, he wouldn’t last long on his own. Orvil and I, we left home because there was no place anymore where we could earn money our folks needed, and we each had decided our folks couldn’t afford to keep feeding and clothing us. There had been a few tears, but no argument. Arthur figured about the same thing one day, and he told us he’d just packed up a few things, left his folks a note, and took off.

We didn’t spend all our time traveling. Most of the time we were just looking for any kind of work and scrounging for something to eat and in general trying to learn from the other hobos about surviving on the bum. Fortunately, there seemed to be no end to the number of likely fellows to learn from after what happened one lousy day in the fall of twenty-nine, and the country went from there straight to the dogs.

So far, I had never felt in any danger among my fellow travelers. They were good people, I thought, and a good number of them weren’t a lot older than Orvil and I. Most were just folk who’d had bad things happen to them. What us three graycats were looking for was what everyone was looking for, a better chance in another place. And if we could find work, maybe we could send something back home.

I’d heard there was work on the farms out in California, and we figured we’d head out there together. But California was two thousand miles away, and one fellow told us early on that the railroads were the fastest way to get there. The most luxurious, too, another promptly said. This was met by a lot of loud laughter from anybody close enough to hear it. What we found out was that a hard floor in the corner of an empty boxcar was a lot more plush than walking, and so we spent our days scouting for a handout and any train that looked to be heading west.

“It wasn’t fair,” Orvil said between deep breaths. He kept saying it over and over.

“You sure you don’t have any broken ribs?”

“Don’t think so,” he said while exploring a pain in his side. “You?”

“No.”

Neither of us spoke for a long time. In the far distance a train whistle sounded. It could have been the same train we’d just been evicted from. To me it sounded like it was crowing about its victory over us.

I was hurting, but I wasn’t as banged up as Orvil. We could hear the sound of a stream close by, but I couldn’t even fetch him a cup of water. I’d had a blanket rolled up around a tin cup and plate and some other small things, but I’d quickly lost interest in them when we scrambled for the ladders. Orvil had a small sack of things he’d left up there too. We both figured we’d never see any of our stuff again. For the moment, we just lay there and tried to get whatever rest our aches and pains would permit. But even with all that, Arthur’s tumble off that car was pretty much what was on our minds.

“You hear what I heard... back there?” I said.

“Sure did.”

“I guess he’s dead.”

“Must be.”

I lay a long time looking up at the stars before I could say it.

“It was my fault.”

“You wasn’t the one, pushed him off the car.”

“Being up there wasn’t the best idea I ever had. You said it... you were right.”

“Fiddlesticks! That bull’s the one pushed Arthur off.”

He was, but there was no getting around it, it was my idea to start with.

“You hear me, Stanley?” Orvil said. “Ain’t your fault.”

I didn’t answer. I was thinking, what a fine bunch of help we’d been to Arthur. I didn’t know who to be more angry at — me or that crazy bull.

When it got to be light enough to see, I got up and started to walk back along the tracks. Orvil raised up on one elbow. I could see he was still hurting.

“Stay there,” I said. “I’ll be back in a bit.”

“Where you goin’?”

“I’ll see if I can find Arthur.”

“We figured he’d be dead.”

“I expect so.”

“Likely ain’t going to be pretty.”

I didn’t answer, just kept walking.

“I’m goin’ t’ kill that bugger!” Orvil called after me.

“Yeah,” I said, but probably not loud enough for him to hear. My mind was busy thinking about what I expected to find.

I found him, must have been at least a mile back along the line. He’d landed with his legs across one of the tracks and that had done the kind of damage a person would expect. The rest of him was banged up some, but his face, except for an ugly gash above one ear, looked as peaceful as if he were sleeping. I tried to convince myself he’d gone before the wheels got to him. A minute later, I felt so sick I wanted to run out of there as fast as I could.

In the end, I stayed and moved him — all of him — a few feet away from the tracks and considered what I should do. It didn’t seem proper to me that Arthur should simply be left out there. Burying him was out of the question. I had no digging tools and the ground was too hard to dig in it by hand. It would be better, anyway, if someone came out from some town and collected him and made a proper burial. Maybe they could find out where he was from and notify his folks. But then I thought that was probably not going to happen. Arthur never told us his last name, or where he was from, so how could total strangers do it? I hated it, that he had died out here alone.

I went through his pockets to see if there were any letters or anything that would help. There wasn’t, and there was nothing in a small bag of things he had tied to the belt of his coat.

My eyes held on his coat. It was a green plaid thing, several sizes too big for him, but it was of heavy material. The coat was a little tattered to begin with but it hadn’t suffered much in the fall. I thought of Orvil, who didn’t have a coat, and who was getting along as best he could by always wearing two shirts.

I almost made apologies out loud as I took Arthur’s coat off. He had a blanket, and he usually carried it rolled up and roped across his shoulders. It was still nearby and I gathered it up. I pulled a piece of bark off a dead tree a few feet away and found a rock with a sharp edge and used it to scratch a message on the back side of it. What I wrote was, “His name was Arthur,” and when I finished I put the piece of bark in his shirt pocket, covered him with his blanket, and weighted the edges with rocks. Maybe it wouldn’t keep the animals off him, but I hoped it would at least keep the birds away until the proper people could come for him.

I picked up his coat and his little bag and paused a few steps away.

“I’m sorry, Arthur,” I said, even though I was sure he wasn’t going to hear me. A moment later, I started walking back to where I’d left Orvil. I was beginning to think that even if being up on that roof was my fault, that railroad bull had no call to throw Arthur off a moving train.

There wasn’t a step I made I didn’t mutter, “That crazy bugger shouldn’t have done that!”

I don’t remember exactly when it was that we decided we were going to kill that railroad bull. But it was at least a couple of hours after we started walking along the tracks. It wasn’t any kind of blood oath we made. We simply stopped walking, turned and shook hands, and started off again. It had started out as Orvil’s idea, but after seeing what condition Arthur had been left in, I hadn’t been hard to convince. It didn’t matter that neither of us had any idea how we were going to do it. What we lacked in ideas we surely made up for by our enthusiasm for the prospect.

We hadn’t passed through any towns after climbing aboard the train, so we took our chances by following the direction the train had been going. Fortunately, the next town wasn’t that far, but it took us most of the day, moving at Orvil’s hobbling speed, to get there. We found the local marshal’s office and went in to report a body alongside the tracks about six miles back. The marshal wanted to know what I knew about its being there. I told him how a big railroad bull had simply picked our friend up and practically thrown him off the top of the car.

“Arthur was his name. All I knew him by,” I concluded.

He looked at me for a few seconds and broke out in a chuckle.

“Appears you boys has been introduced to Beater Stark.” He let out a string of laughter. “Pretty famous along this part a’ the line for keepin’ the riffraff off the cars.”

“Well... he killed Arthur,” Orvil said, “an’ he didn’t need to.”

“Or maybe he did,” the marshal said. “Anyway, I’d say another trespassin’ tramp has learnt his lesson good!” He must have thought it was a pretty good joke because he was chuckling a good long time before he pulled a big revolver out from one of his desk drawers. “Back there boys,” he said as he gestured with the muzzle of the revolver toward a doorway at the rear of the room.

“You arrestin’ us? What for?” Orvil said as we backed away. I’d never had a gun barrel pointed at me before, but I’d always been taught to respect what could come out of the end of it.

“Aroun’ here, trespassin’ on railroad property’s an automatic ten days,” he said as he led us to a cell in the back room, “an’ Judge Pringle, he don’t like to waste the court’s time with cases of confession, an’ you boys just confessed. Consider yourselves sentenced. Automatic, ten days hard labor.”

“Don’t we get some kinda’ trial?” Orvil said.

“Cases of confession... Judge Pringle, he’ll stop by and sign the papers sometime in the next few days. Be the same thing.”

“What about Arthur?” I said as the cell door closed in front of us.

“From what you said, I guess he won’t be charged with trespassin’,” the marshal said as he turned the key and left. He thought that was funny, too, and we could hear him chuckling all the way back into the front office.

We were a long time getting to sleep that night, and the last thing I remember was Orvil muttering, “I’m goin’ to kill that bugger,” for about the fortieth time. I knew he wasn’t talking about the marshal, although I was ready to feel unkindly toward anyone who could laugh about what had happened to Arthur.

About six the next morning we were awakened by the marshal and another man who pointed a shotgun at us while the marshal outfitted us with leg irons. When he was finished, we were prodded toward the front.

“Where we going?” I asked as we left the cell.

“You’ll be hayin’ today, boys,” was the only thing the marshal said as both men led us out to a Model T sedan sitting in the street.

“Don’t we get something to eat in your jail?” I asked.

“Give him a good day’s work, he might give you a li’l somethin’,” the marshal said, nodding toward the other man.

“Shucks... we ain’t had nothing to eat for two—” Orvil started to say to the marshal.

“Don’t get too frisky now, boys,” the marshal said as the man cranked the engine at the front of the car. “The key to those irons is back in the office there, and this gen’leman here is authorized to shoot if one a’ y’ should take it in his head to wander off.” Then, he spoke to the man. “I’ll ’spect you back here about sundown.”

A nod and a wave was all the answer he got, but it seemed to be satisfactory. The man put his flivver in gear and we were off.

The man drove to a farm about a mile or so from the town. He turned off the road and drove past a house and barn directly to a large alfalfa field. The crop had been cut several days before, and it had dried enough it could be stacked on a wagon and hauled to his barn, which was what we were going to be doing. Orvil and I looked at each other as we both realized this was the “hard labor.” It wasn’t really hard compared to anything else a person had to do around a farm. I’d gladly done the same thing a year before for a couple of neighbors, and been paid for it with a silver dollar and a couple of sacks of flour. But this time we were doing it with a scatter gun pointed at us and neither of us was stupid enough to believe we were going to see any money come out of it.

In one corner of the field a hay wagon with an extra large flatbed was parked. A couple of horses harnessed to it stood there looking about as enthused about the day’s work as Orvil and I. A couple of boys were already forking hay onto the bed and doing it with as much enthusiasm as the horses. The farmer’s sons, I figured, and I was right.

As banged up as he was, Orvil wasn’t much use, but neither the farmer nor his sons complained much. In the early afternoon the farmer’s wife brought some dinner to the field and we stopped for a few minutes to eat it. His wife made sure we ate as well as the farmer’s sons, and we thanked her for it.

We were finished at the end of the second day. When the last forkful was in the barn, we were loaded directly into the man’s flivver. The first day, we’d been given supper before being taken back to jail. We hoped we were going to be invited a second time, but all that happened was the farmer stopped at the house and handed his scatter gun to his wife and told her to watch us for a minute. As soon as he was out of sight she lowered the muzzle and approached us. She looked over her shoulder and reached into the pocket of her apron. Out came a couple of apples and a big hunk of cheese.

“Better keep these out of sight on the way back to town,” she said.

We had the food tucked away in our pockets just as her husband came out the door, stuffing something into his pockets. He cranked the engine to life and we were on our way back to another night in jail.

When our cell was securely closed, the marshal and the farmer walked back to the front. As they were going through the door, I noticed the farmer take something out of his pocket and put it in the hand of the marshal. From there it went into the marshal’s pocket. It happened quickly, but I could see the glint of a few coins.

When they were gone, Orvil nudged me.

“You see that?”

“Yeah... bugger’s been rentin’ us out.”

“Can he do that?”

“This part of the country, things must be different.”

The farmer’s wife might have had some idea the marshal wouldn’t be providing us any supper because we never saw him again that evening. After we polished off the apples and cheese, we lay for a long time looking at the ceiling.

“This part o’ the country,” Orvil said, “even seems to be okay to kill people by throwin’ ‘em off boxcars. I’m goin’ t’ kill that railroad bull.”

“I’ll flip you, heads or tails, to see who does it.”

“Ain’t neither of us got anythin’ to flip.”

The other eight days went about the same, including a Sunday, and we did everything from painting a house to digging post holes and stringing fence wire. Both of us had some experience doing those kinds of things at home, the only difference being this time the marshal was getting our pay instead of us. But we usually had a couple of meals a day and the jail was some improvement over the hard ground in an alley somewhere. And Orvil’s aches and pains slowly disappeared.

From time to time one or the other of us brought up the idea of escape, and there might have been a time or two we could have tried it. But we wouldn’t have gotten far with those leg irons, and getting rid of them by ourselves would have been impossible without the tools we’d only find in a good blacksmith shop.

We thought some about California, too, but not as much as we used to. I guess our minds had become fixed on that railroad bull.

Listening to the idle talk between the marshal and others, we heard the name of the town Beater Stark lived and worked out of. He seemed to be well known in that section of the country as a vicious bugger for the way he liked to swing a club at the legs of retreating trespassers. We overheard a few tales of his club, which was actually an old baseball bat tipped with a small rusty spur gear fixed to the end with a big lag screw. The stories were told of the damage a couple of blows the end of that instrument could do, and the teller’s point of view was always that the vagrants had it coming.

We never saw that judge the whole time we were there. Or the papers he was supposed to sign. For all I know, maybe there was no judge or no papers. Maybe that’s why there was no ceremony at the end of the ten days. The marshal simply came in at six on the eleventh day, unlocked the cell door, and tossed in a paper sack with about half a loaf of bread. He left without saying a word. He also left the cell door open. We took that to mean we ought to be moving along, and we did. Neither of us said much in complaint about the experience as we walked away. I think pretty much all of Orvil’s thinking apparatus was concentrating on how we were going to kill Beater Stark.

I guess mine was too.

Orvil wanted to head out and start looking for Stark right away, but I thought we ought to go back along the tracks to find the place where Arthur had gone off the train. The marshal had simply ignored us any time we asked about him, and I wanted to see for myself if he had just been left there.

Orvil was walking a lot better after his hard labor convalescence and this time it took only a few hours to find the spot where I’d pulled Arthur from the tracks. There were still a few dark brown streaks of dried blood running down the sides of the rail where it happened. But Arthur was not there, nor was the blanket I’d covered him with. We were left to speculate whether people had been sent to collect him, or whether scavengers from the nearby woods had performed the task. There was nothing I could see that told either way.

I glanced at Orvil. He was staring at the adjoining woods, too, and was probably having the same thoughts I was. We walked around some in the woods but found nothing there either.

“I’m goin’ to kill that crazy bugger,” he said. It was the first he’d opened his mouth since we’d arrived, and he said it hardly above a whisper.

The town where Beater Stark lived and worked out of was about forty miles away and we got there mostly by hitching rides along the highway. For the last dozen miles we hopped a freight and made an uneventful trip along with a half dozen other fellow travelers. We left the train as it was slowing into the yard and followed a couple of more experienced fellows into a hobo camp near the yard. No one took special notice of us because of our ages. There must have been at least seventy or eighty hobos scattered around a fairly large grove of trees and bushes, and more than a dozen of them were about as young as we were. The place looked like it had been used as a gathering place for some time.

Now that we were in the same town where they said Beater Stark lived, our next problem was finding out how our paths might cross. And how we were going to do it. What were we going to do, a couple of kids like us? Break down his door and club him to death with his own baseball bat with the gear on the end? Not likely. Nevertheless, we never thought of giving up.

If we could find some kind of work, we thought we could buy a gun. You could buy a pistol for only a few dollars most everywhere. Back home, a grocery store had a couple of old rifles and revolvers they’d taken in in exchange for food. You could have bought any one for three or four dollars. But it took only a little asking around to conclude that finding any kind of work was nothing more than a pipe dream, at least in this town. We hung around the camp for a couple of days, sharing somebody’s largesse or cadging a handout around town where we could. One lady gave us a good meal in exchange for a couple of hours weeding her small vegetable garden.

We thought it was a good idea not to call attention to ourselves by asking around for his address. We listened a lot but heard nothing that would help us find him.

But right away, our luck changed. We ran into an older fellow who had shared his meal with us in another city. I remembered he called himself Charlie.

“Didn’t I see you fellas a couple a’ weeks ago? Back in Canfield?” Charlie asked.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Don’t have no more food this time.”

“We’re all right.”

“Seems there was three a’ y’ then.”

“There were,” I said.

Charlie waited as if for an explanation. I gave it to him along with a pretty detailed explanation of how Arthur came to fall under a train.

“Beater Stark,” he said right away.

“You know who he is?”

“Most everybody ridin’ th’ rails — this part a’ th’ country, anyway — they’ve either heard a’ him or met him. Those as has, don’t figure on meetin’ him twice.”

“I do,” Orvil said. “I’m goin’ t’ kill the bugger.”

Charlie laughed, “It’s been thought about b’fore. Ain’t been done yet.”

“Will be. We’re going t’ kill the bugger.”

“You? Coupla’ kids... you think you’re gonna...” His smile faded away as he looked at Orvil. There was something in Orvil’s eye that let you know this wasn’t idle chatter. It was a look I hadn’t seen before, either.

“How y’ plan to take care a’ that little chore?”

“First couple dollars I get ahead, I’m goin’ t’ buy me a pistol an’ some shells. Shucks, th’ rest’ll be easy.”

Charlie turned to me.

“You know where to find this bull?”

“Can’t be that hard to find,” I said with a little more confidence than I felt.

“You don’t know?”

“We’ll find him.”

“You think your friend here is serious?” he said to me.

“Always seemed so to me.”

“You know how to use a pistol?” He directed this question at Orvil.

“Sure.”

Charlie looked first at me, than at Orvil, then back at me.

“Huh... well... might be he’d let a couple kids get close t’ him.” This he said almost to himself.

He sat, staring into his fire for a few moments, then rose to his feet.

“I think I know a feller, might be able to help with just what y’ need. Sit here a minute or two, boys. I got to go have a word with him.”

He was gone for a lot more than a minute or two, but when he came back, he had a smile on his face. When he was seated, he pulled a little cloth-wrapped bundle from his coat pocket and handed it to me. I pulled a corner of the cloth back. It was a small thing with a barrel about two inches long, and it looked old, really old. The cylinder was small, too, a five-shot, but it held only four bullets. They looked smaller than what would have come out of the end of that revolver the marshal pulled on us, but I didn’t know enough about guns to say what caliber they were. There was a little spot of rust on the bottom of the grip, and the worn finish made me think it had been well used. I closed the cloth over it again.

“Fellow who owns this, he’s sort o’ laid up,” Charlie said. “An’ he owes Stark for a coupl’a’ broken ribs.”

Orvil reached for the bundle and I handed it to him. He pulled the cloth open just long enough to give the contents a quick once over, then stuffed the whole thing into one of the pockets of what used to be Arthur’s coat.

“Only four bullets,” Orvil said.

Charlie shrugged.

“One oughta’ be enough, I guess,” Orvil said, smiling. But it came out sort of grim.

Charlie noted it and leaned closer.

“The fellow who gave this t’ me says Stark does mosta’ his drinkin in a place called Pappy’s Rest, right across from th’ Railway Express office. Yesterday, I followed him back where he lives. It’s nine blocks down th’ same street... on the corner... little two-room clapboard house... never been painted. Only one like it... can’t hardly miss it.”

We both stared at Charlie for this sudden windfall of information.

“Word around th’ yards is, he ain’t workin’ t’day,” Charlie said.

“You know this for sure?” Orvil said.

“It’s for sure.”

“You and your friend know a lot about this fellow,” I said.

“There’s a few... brakemen... firemen... they’re not unfriendly. Don’t like what they seen him do... they mention him in the saloons now and again.”

“Okay.” I said.

“Remember, boys, tonight’d be the best time.”

“Tell your friend we’ll use this, all right.” Orvil said, patting his pocket.

“Luck, boys,” Charlie said, smiling.

For a few moments I thought about our incredible stroke of good luck in being given all that information about Stark, and with a pistol to boot. It was almost too good to be true. But who was I to question the opportunity? I stopped thinking about it and tucked it away in the back of my mind. We had a task that needed doing, and all at once we were in good shape to do it.

From what Charlie said, we’d have to move fast. It didn’t take much thinking to decide Stark’s favorite saloon would not be the best place for a couple of fellows like us to try to run into him. That left the streets or his house. Orvil thought about waiting for him at his house after dark, catching him when he came home from the saloon. It wasn’t much of a plan, but it was the best we could think of.

What we needed most was to know the lay of the land, and I volunteered to have a look around. I went alone so as not to attract a lot of attention, and walked through Stark’s part of town right before dark. As Charlie said, it was easy to find. Houses in his neighborhood were not really close to each other, and it looked easy. It was a two-room house, all right, and it had one door that fronted on the street. When I turned the corner I could see there was a back door and a path that led to a privy and a shed of some sort.

It still looked easy when we came back after full dark. The nearest streetlight was a bare bulb high on a light pole and it was a block away, but the moon was pretty full so we had enough light to know where to put our feet. We didn’t come across another soul as we approached the house.

There were lights on in both rooms, and we walked around to the back of the house and came up to a window. What was inside looked like the kitchen, and it seemed to be empty. Next to that window was a back door and then another window. We moved to the other window. Through it, we could see it was a bedroom, and it was lit by a floor lamp with a shade that barely cast enough light to see. But we could make out a bed and a figure lying fully clothed on top of the covers.

“Him, you think?” I whispered.

“Seems likely,” Orvil said.

It was too early in the evening to be bedtime for someone like Stark, but I noticed an empty whiskey bottle sitting on a chair near the bed. I figured we were looking at the same thing that would put an uncle of mine into a sleep so deep you couldn’t wake him by driving a herd of cows past his bed.

“Pretty lucky, findin’ him alone, first rattle outta’ th’ box,” Orvil said. With a nod of his head, he motioned back to the kitchen end of the house where the back door was. Orvil tried the knob. It turned easily and quietly.

The moment we were inside, I felt a stuffy black chill settle in, along with a brief urge to turn and run. But I stayed, and as I glanced around I was sure we had found the right house. The baseball bat we had heard so much about was resting across the arms of a chair next to the door. I ran my fingers over the teeth of the gear that was fixed to the end. It was old and brown with rust, and only a little larger in diameter than the end of the bat, but the edges of the teeth were still quite sharp. A leather loop was secured through a hole in the small end of the bat. I quickly withdrew my hand, imagining the damage a heavy blow with this thing would do even if a fellow were only hit with the shank.

The room was dimly lit by a small bulb in a plain socket hanging from the ceiling by a twisted green cord. Nothing fancy, but it gave enough light.

To our left we could see the door to the other room of the house. It was wide open. We stood for a moment, both of us expecting Stark to leap from the doorway or spring from some other dark corner. Orvil had been holding the pistol in his hand and he raised it and pulled the hammer back to cock it. The click seemed as loud as a cannon to my ears.

We began to be aware of a low rasping sound coming from the other room. Orvil gave me a nudge and I cautiously advanced to the doorway and used one eye to peer around the jamb. The light came from an old floor lamp whose faded shade contained pictures of gondolas floating in the drowned streets of a city. The bulb was a small one to start with, and the shade cut down the light even more. But it cast a warm glow over the room and I could see the figure still lying on the bed.

Orvil gave me another little nudge as he moved up beside me. We could hear the rasping sound more clearly. It was snoring.

“It’s him,” Orvil said in a whisper.

I nodded my agreement. I’d had only a quick look at him on top of that boxcar, but the memory was as clear as if I’d been carrying a photograph. I’d be seeing it in my mind for a long time in the future.

“Drunk as a jangled skunk,” Orvil whispered in my ear again. He went around me and tiptoed closer to the figure. A loud creak in the floor didn’t break the rhythm of the snoring but it sure set my nerves on edge a bit. Orvil motioned me to join him.

“It’s him, for sure.”

I nodded again.

Orvil moved closer and when we were standing next to the bed, he raised the pistol and aimed the barrel at Stark’s chest. His hand held steady at first, but right away began to shake slightly. I wondered why Orvil didn’t just go ahead and pull the trigger. I watched as the shaking grew worse and a few seconds later he lowered the pistol to his side. It was my turn to give him a nudge and he raised his hand again and placed his finger on the trigger. He was more steady this time and I pulled in a deep breath and half closed my eyes, getting ready for the sound of the shot. But it didn’t come, and I finally gave him another little nudge. His response was to hand it to me. He nodded that I was to take it. I did, and rather gingerly, too, because the thing was still cocked, ready to fire.

For a brief few seconds my mind was filled with the power this piece of iron gave me. I could indeed kill someone with it, and I was standing next to a man whose vicious deeds deserved it and would likely not be punished any other way.

I raised the pistol and leaned closer until I could level the muzzle about a foot from the side of his head. I couldn’t miss at this distance, and I let my finger lightly touch the trigger. On the count of three, I silently told myself, and commenced counting.

Well, I got to three and I could have stood there all night counting up to a million, but the command to tighten my finger just wouldn’t come.

I lowered my hand when I noticed how bad it was shaking and shoved the pistol at Orvil. He took it, mostly to keep it from falling on the floor, and aimed it at Stark again. I turned and walked back into the kitchen. As I crossed the threshold the rasping snore continued undisturbed. Another creaky floorboard told me Orvil was following me. I could hear the click as he carefully lowered the hammer.

By the time I was through the outside door, he caught up to me and jammed the pistol into his pocket. We walked away in silence, not even glancing at each other.

Back in the camp, we found an isolated spot and sat on the ground. Neither of us said much for a long time. I was still shaking and I thought Orvil was too.

“Whyn’t you shoot him?” Orvil said. “You was close enough, you couldn’ta’ missed.”

I glanced at him, but soon looked away.

“Came down to it, I couldn’t.” I said. “I guess I ain’t made like him.”

Orvil sucked in a big breath and let it out all at once.

“Why didn’t you?” I said. “You were there. You had your hands on the pistol... longer than I did.”

He looked at me and held the gaze and seemed about to say something. He took the pistol out of his pocket and looked at it for a long moment before he put it back.

“Guess I’ll go look for Charlie. He can give it back to his friend.”

“I suppose he’ll be disappointed.”

“Prob’ly will.”

He walked slowly away, leaving me with my own thoughts about why I hadn’t pulled the trigger. One moment I wished I had, the next, I was glad I hadn’t.

I felt more tired than I had been a long time and I leaned back against a tree. In no time at all I was asleep. There’s no telling how much time passed, but when I awoke the aspect of the camp had changed. It was quiet. No murmurs of conversation or laughter at someone’s joke. Orvil was nowhere to be seen, and I wondered where he was. His errand should have taken him no longer than a couple of minutes, but he wasn’t there.

I wasn’t worried, though. At least, at first. I kept telling myself, maybe he was just circulating around, seeing if anyone had any food they wanted to share. But it didn’t work. I began to kick myself for letting him go off by himself to return the gun. It didn’t take much effort to figure he might have gone off to have another try at killing that railroad bull.

At the same time, I was thinking a little more about being handed the means to deal with Stark. There was simply a lot of things I didn’t know, and I began to be worried about Orville and whether he’d stopped to think about them as I was.

I took another quick turn around the hobo camp, just to make sure, walking a little faster this time, but not finding him anywhere. That’s when I had to face up to it. I knew where I’d find him. And if I could, I had to find him before he went through with it.

I slipped out of the grove and went into the streets of the town. Trying to move slowly so as not to attract attention, I walked in the direction of Stark’s house. What I felt like doing was to run and shout Orvil’s name into every dark corner and shadow. But I held it in and tried to appear as if I was just some kid on my way home.

About a block from Stark’s house I could see a dozen or so men crowded around his front door. I paused as several turned away and ran for a car that was parked in the street. I knew in an instant that what I’d come to prevent had already happened.

Without thinking, I turned and ran between a couple of houses. Doing that while a couple of men in the crowd happened to be looking in my direction wasn’t the smartest thing I ever did. They saw the movement and with a shout two of them started off in my direction like a cat would go after a mouse.

I had a head start of at least a block, but I was running blind with no clear idea where I was running to. In one backyard I made a big racket when I tripped over a bucket, and in another I rattled a rickety fence when I climbed over it. If they couldn’t see me, they could at least follow the noises I made.

They probably were because they were getting closer, and they had picked up a couple more men. If I were in the clear, I thought I might have outrun them, but there I was, blundering around in backyards where I could trip over something I couldn’t see. Crossing another yard, I swerved just in time to avoid going flying over the tongue of a big farm wagon parked there. I paused to plan a quiet route out of the yard. I could hear two of my pursuers on the opposite side of the house, and I could hear shouts from the next house, wondering what was going on. It was getting to the point where I was sure they were going to catch up, and soon. And on top of everything else, I was getting winded. Hiding seemed like a good idea, but there wasn’t time to look for a place.

In desperation, I heaved myself up over the side of the wagon box and landed next to a pile of cultivator parts and other barnyard paraphernalia. Fortunately, getting into it didn’t make any noise.

As one of them came running down the side of the house, I grabbed an iron bar — part of some kind of garden cultivator — and sent it sailing over some bushes into another yard. It dislodged something with a loud crash. My closest pursuers trotted by within a few feet of me before they scurried over a fence in pursuit of the noise. There were shouts from somewhere a few houses away.

“Over here! I saw him in back of...”

I couldn’t make out any more because there was more shouting. The other men who were after me ran back to the street. Maybe it was Orvil someone had seen, or maybe those men out there were just chasing shadows. I shuddered and I lay still in that wagon box for a long time, holding my breath until the stars overhead began to swim. But no one backtracked.

About the time I decided I had to try breathing again, a woman came to the back door of the house and spoke to someone inside. I took a quick breath and held it again.

“Whoever it was makin’ all that racket, looks like they’ve gone.”

She went back inside and closed the door. I lay there for another moment taking great gulps of air. When I was ready to move again, I moved very slowly and didn’t make a move that could possibly make a noise or attract attention.

After that, I gave up on the idea of crossing backyards and took to the streets and once more tried to pretend I was just another kid walking home. A little later, a couple of men on a corner a block away turned and glanced in my direction. I saw them only out of the corner of my eye and didn’t look at them directly. I used all the self-control I could muster and walked slowly and quietly along. They turned away and went off in another direction.

I hadn’t had a lot of experience being on the run, but I was sure learning fast.

I avoided the railroad yard completely and carefully circled around to approach the grove from the side opposite the town. It wasn’t much trouble to slip into the camp without attracting anyone’s attention and find the spot where I’d last seen Orvil. He wasn’t there, and I just slumped down and tried to get my breathing and nerves back to normal.

My heart was still going pretty fast when the deputies came.

“Awright, which one a’ y’ shot Tom Stark?” the first one called loud enough to be heard across most of the grove.

There were five of them, and they were carrying lanterns and flashlights. And clubs that looked as big as fenceposts. Two of them had something shiny on their shirts and they may have been deputies all right, but none were in uniform. Somebody said later they had most likely been recruited moments before from the local saloons and sworn in, no matter how tanked they were. Shouting and swinging clubs, they began to move through the camp, poking their lights into the shadows and scattering men and their belongings with their clubs.

I tried to burrow back into a stand of bushes nearby but didn’t make it. One of the men stomped up in front of me and jabbed me in the chest with the end of his club.

“You seen a kid, wears a green plaid coat?” he said, poking me again.

“Haven’t seen him,” I said. A second later, I added, “Not lately, anyway,” but I said that to myself. By then, the fellow had gone to wave his club at someone else. I rubbed the sore spot on my ribs and watched the deputies going about their amusement, shaking out blankets and poking around in the underbrush. They would have been happy to run across the coat, but I was sure they would have preferred to find the fellow who was wearing it. I was glad no one came back to ask me the question again.

Once in a while one of them would shout at some unfortunate who couldn’t get out of the way fast enough. It didn’t take much close watching to notice that it was the fellows my age or a little older they paid particular attention to. The question they flung around most often was “Where is the kid with the green plaid coat?” It seemed a little strange they were looking for a particular type of person, or a particular coat, so soon. Unless Orvil had made a bigger mistake than I had.

But the searchers didn’t find him, and finally they had their fill of breaking up the camp. As they left, they were laughing about their accomplishments. When they were gone, I moved around and pretty much looked in all corners of the grove. I didn’t expect to find Orvil, and I didn’t, but I went anyway. The camp was pretty much destroyed. Not that there was much they could destroy to begin with. They kicked over a few stewpots and put out the fires with the contents, scattered men and what few of the their belongings they could lay their hands on, and tore down a couple of shelters made with old blankets stretched across ropes. One poor fellow was nursing what looked like a broken arm, and a couple of others were trying to make some sort of sling for him out of his shirt.

I had plenty of time to think some more about how convenient it was that the fellow who gave us the gun already seemed to have so much information about Stark, including his address. I hadn’t considered it fully at the time, but now I thought about how and why he was willing to be so helpful.

I also thought about how quickly that mob had shown up at the hobo camp looking for a kid with a coat like Orvil’s.

It all gave me a bad feeling and I wondered exactly what had happened to him. Judging from the mood of the deputies who had just left, they might have strung him up to the nearest tree if they’d found him. I had no trouble imagining the same fate for me if they’d caught me as I fled through those backyards. We’d really been stupid, and well worthy of being called a couple of graycats.

There wasn’t a lot of jubilation over the news about Beater Stark, although there were probably more than a few who were glad they wouldn’t be running into him in the future. In fact, the camp was pretty quiet. Most of the inhabitants of the grove still stood around, not knowing whether to put themselves back together and settle down for the night or expect another attack. Soon rumors began to float through the camp that we could expect another visit from a crew of rowdies someone said was getting themselves together in Pappy’s Rest. Soon after that, another rumor spread that a train was expected to come through sometime about midnight and stop for water. That rumor was considered reliable. The minute I heard it I thought it would be a fine idea to try to get aboard. It would be a fine idea for Orvil, too, if I could find him. Even if he had gone back and shot Stark, I hated to see him hanging from a tree, and I thought that was likely to happen, and quickly, if he stuck around this town. I hated to run off without at least knowing what had happened to him.

After poking around the camp once more, I headed for the town. I don’t know what I expected to see or find, but I thought I’d go just to see what I could see.

I didn’t get far. As I was crossing the last pair of tracks at the edge of the yard, I ran into a young fellow hurrying toward the camp. Even in the darkness, I could see he wasn’t much older than me, certainly not old enough to vote. But it wasn’t Orvil.

“I wouldn’t be thinkin’ about goin’ over into town tonight, friend,” he said to me as he passed.

“What’s going on?”

“Where you been? Whole town’s in an uproar over some railroad man gettin’ shot right in his own house.”

“They caught the one who did it?”

“Guess not. People’re still out patrolling the streets. I just dodged a couple of ‘em.” He didn’t wait for any more conversation and was gone into the shadows.

At least it wasn’t likely they’d found Orvil yet. I paused for a moment to consider my chances of actually finding him if he was hidden somewhere in town. Possibly, he’d even managed to get out of town already. I slowly turned and followed.

About midnight the rumored freight train pulled through the station, its engine stopping at the water tank at the end of the yard. It wasn’t a long train, perhaps a dozen and a half freight cars and a couple of flatcars with some big dump trucks on them. But it was a train, and it was going to be starting out again in only a few minutes. A number of the freight cars stood with their doors wide open, almost as an invitation, but the brakeman walked alongside the train to keep an eye out for anyone trying to get aboard. Along with several others, I watched from the trees as a couple of hobos on the opposite side of the train climbed into an open door of a boxcar as soon as the brakeman had gone past. By the time the brakeman walked forward to talk to the engineer, forty or so men and what was left of their baggage had sifted out of the shadows and climbed aboard. Some had hidden away in empty freight cars, some hung onto the ladders between the cars, others tried to hide in the big dump trucks, and a hardy few had climbed on top of some of the cars and laid down, hoping not to be noticed.

But the brakeman noticed, and he returned from his conversation with the engineer carrying a lantern and a long stick of wood he had obtained from somewhere. He began to inspect the cars and warn off the trespassers in a loud voice punctuated by a lot of noise he made by popping the stick on the sides of the cars. Most of the would-be riders dropped off and retreated into the darkness as he approached each car. His voice promised dire threats against anyone who dared set foot across the railroad property line again that night.

I don’t know why, but perhaps his tone of voice wasn’t as sincere as it should have been, or maybe it was something else. But once he had gone past a couple of cars, a few hardy souls sneaked out of the darkness again and quietly climbed back aboard. By the time he reached the caboose, evicting as he went, the train had begun to fill up again from the front. Kind of like when you’re crossing a creek and the water fills in your footsteps as soon as you move your foot another step forward.

When he reached the caboose, he turned and looked over the train and slowly became aware of what had happened. Many of the hobos had not even tried to stay out of sight. As he stood and watched, a lone figure ran to the train. Hands immediately reached from the open door of a boxcar to pull him in. The brakeman stood for a moment contemplating what amounted to a mass exodus of the grove. And perhaps his chances of doing something about it.

“Aaaah—” he said with an exaggerated shrug of his shoulders. He uttered a string of disgusted sounds I couldn’t hear clearly and slammed his stick onto the ground. He mounted the first step of the caboose and waved his lantern toward the engine. When he heard the answering whistle, he shrugged again, climbed to the platform, stepped inside the caboose, and closed the door.

Right away, the engine began to chuff and move backward, taking up the slack in the couplers. When the train started moving forward again, a fellow leaned out from the big open door of a boxcar in the middle of the train and waved a silent “Come on!” with his arm. Immediately, at least two dozen more hobos ran out of the trees and clambered aboard cars up and down the train.

It was time for me to scram, too, but I hesitated, still thinking about Orvil and what I could do if I stuck around. I’d been watching the other hobos climbing aboard the train, keeping an eye out for the green plaid coat, but hadn’t seen it. Still feeling like I was abandoning him, I finally ran toward the train. The last cars were just passing by. One of them was an empty boxcar and the doors were open. As I stood alongside, hands reached down and pulled me inside.

For a few seconds I hoped one of the hands might have been Orvil’s. But none were his, and he wasn’t in the car. I sat in the doorway looking back into the moonlight, hoping to see him hop aboard. I saw nothing but the edge of the grove as we slowly passed, and I figured I’d never see him again. My feelings about him were strange and unexpected. First off, I felt like I had just run out on a friend. I was also thinking I had made a big mistake by not talking Orvil out of the whole thing to start with.

Somehow, I was feeling a little better about our ten days at hard labor too. We had been eating better than we had the previous weeks, and we hadn’t been working any harder than we would have at home, and nobody had been beating on us. The only really bad part of it was we hadn’t been able to spend the time moving west. I was even prepared to believe someone had gone out there to find Arthur and say a few of the proper words over him. But I felt sad that there was someone back at Arthur’s home who would wonder for a good long time where he was. That wasn’t right, but nothing was going to change it. In the end, I figured the best use of all my energies was to think about tomorrow and the next train and...

I could hear someone running alongside the car we were riding. The train was just leaving the yard limits and was still moving slowly. But even at that speed it was dangerous to try to get aboard. Nevertheless, hands reached out, and the straggler was lifted up.

He wasn’t wearing a coat of any kind. I watched him crawl away into the shadows, just another unfortunate tramp who’d decided things were going to be unhealthy in that town for a while.

There was an empty corner in the car and I moved into it and leaned against the wall. And considered myself lucky. And safe. That thought reminded me I was getting hungry again, and it wasn’t long before I began to think more about finding a meal down the line than about where Orvil was. Whatever he had done, well, he’d made his own bed, and I guessed he’d have to lay in it.

The graycats were down to one, but in some ways I wasn’t exactly feeling like one anymore and I didn’t know how I felt about that, either.

Sometime later, about the time everyone in the car was settling down and trying to get comfortable enough to sleep, I was aware of someone moving to sit beside me.

“That you, Stanley?”

It was the fellow who had just been pulled aboard and it was Orvil’s voice.

“Shhh,” he said, barely loud enough to hear. “Was lookin’ for y’ — thought it was you I saw gettin’ on back there.”

I just looked at him, hardly believing what I was seeing.

“What the Sam Hill have you been up to?” I said.

He looked away into the darkness for a long moment.

“We were supposed to be the goats!” he finally said.

“What?”

“Couldn’t find Charlie, so I decided to have another try at Stark by myself. When I sneaked into his backyard, I could hear a big hullabaloo out in front. Then, when I heard one of ‘em shout somethin’ ‘bout seein’ a feller in a green plaid coat, that’s when it came to me... how easy it all was. I took off a-flyin’ through the backyards and ditched that coat down the hole of the first outhouse I came to.”

I gave him a hard stare even though I wanted to believe him. He glanced around to see if anyone was paying attention and reached under his shirt. A second later he pulled out the pistol and swung out the cylinder as he handed it to me.

“Count ‘em,” he said, barely loud enough for me to hear.

It was too dark to really see, but I let my finger explore the front of the cylinder until I had counted the nose of four bullets.

“Charlie musta’ seen us coming, all right!” I said.

“Buggers almost had me once. Then some feller shouts somethin’ and they all ran off in another direction. I been hidin’ out in the fields till just a little bit ago.”

We were both silent for a few moments.

“I went looking for you,” I said.

“You did? Why?”

“I figured what you were up to. I wanted to head you off, keep you out of trouble.” I told him about my adventures running through the backyards.

“Geez, Stanley, I’m sorry.”

Neither of us said more for at least a couple of miles while I contemplated the narrow escape of both of us. I looked at the pistol still in my hands and fumbled around until I had removed all four bullets. I glanced around to see if anyone was noticing me. They all seemed to be busy sleeping. I got up and moved carefully over to the big open door and tossed the bullets out into the trees that were whizzing by. A few seconds later the pistol followed. With any kind of luck, it would be caked with rust before anyone ran across it.

I came back and sat down. Orvil had been watching me.

“Whole thing was too easy,” he whispered.

“We should’ve seen it.”

Orvil nodded a “yes.”

“Had to be Charlie who did it,” I said.

“Had t’ be,” Orvil said.

“Who else?”

“Fact is, sounded for all the world like Charlie’s voice out front there, crowin’ about seein’ a feller in a green plaid coat.”

I quickly glanced at Orvil. He gave me a nod that was a silent “You bet.”

“It fits, all right.” I said. “Whoever did the deed, he’s there to make sure they’re lookin’ for a green plaid coat.”

“That’s the way I figured it.” Orvil leaned back and tried to get comfortable.

“Going to miss Arthur,” he said after a bit.

“I don’t feel like they ought to be calling us graycats anymore.”

Orvil gave me another of his “you bet” nods.

“You think we still have any business with that marshal?” I said.

“Nope.”

“Didn’t think so. Let’s not get sidetracked again.”

“Yeah, let’s not.”

The train clacked on for a while.

“Shucks... maybe Charlie’ll run into him sometime,” Orvil said.

At least, that’s what I think he said. I was half asleep by then. When I woke up enough to glance over at Orvil, he had leaned back and closed his eyes. A moment later, so did I.

There’s something about the sound of iron wheels clacking over rail joints that can put you to sleep if you listen to it long enough... and get used to it.

Especially if the rails are headed West.

Copyright © 2008 Douglas Grant Johnson

Author’s Note: In researching the hobos, I found that newbies in some regions of the country were called “gaycats.” The old hands called themselves “dingbats.” As time has completely altered the meanings of these two words, I struggled with being authentic versus what might be best and less distracting for readers. I decided to coin a word I thought worked just as well for the newbies. I didn’t have a need for an updated word for the old hands. I was surprised to learn — from good authority — that as many as twenty-five percent of the hobos in that period were as young as the boys in my story.