I stood off and inspected the place I was supposed to go in at. The triangular opening seemed too small for a baby to slide through. I looked my chunky pal up and down and laughed.
"--think I can't make it, eh?... well, you watch ... there's an art in this kind of thing just like there is in anything."
Inch by inch he squeezed himself in. Then he stood up inside and called to me to try ... and he would pull me the rest of the way, if I stuck. He was plump and I was skinny. It ought to be easy for me. Nevertheless, it was the hardest task I ever set myself ... I stuck half-way. My pal pulled my shirt into rags, helping me through,--I had handed my coat in, previously, or he would have ripped that to pieces, too. It seemed that all the skin went off my hips, as I shot inside with a bang. And none too soon. A "shack" (brakeman) passed over the tops of the cars at almost that very moment. We lay still. He would have handed me a merciless drubbing if he had caught me, with my nether end hanging helplessly on the outside.
We squatted on the floor of the refrigerator box. When we reached Yuma my pal rose to his feet.
"Ain't yer goin' ta throw yer feet fer a hand-out?" he asked me.
"No, I'm going to stick in here till I reach El Paso, if I can."
"What's the fun bein' a bum, if you're goin' ter punish yerself like that!"
"I want to find a country where there's growing green things, as soon as I can."
"So long.. don't you think you'd better stick till we reach Tuscon? Some of the boys told me the 'bulls' (officers) here have been 'horstile' (had it in for the tramp fraternity) ... ever since a yegg bumped off a deputy, a while back."
As I rode on, alone, I stood up and took in the scenery like a tourist ... there danced away, and gathered in, the shimmering, sun-flooded desert ... an endless flat expanse of silver sage and sentinel cactus. I saw bleached bones and a side-cast skull with whitened horns, poking up into the sky ... I saw a sick steer straggling alone, exactly like some melodramatic painting of Western life ... the kind we see hanging for sale in second-rate art stores.
I stuck till Tuscon was reached. There I was all in for lack of food and water....
A woman gave me a good "set-down" at her kitchen table. I was as hungry for something to read as I was for something to eat. When she walked out of the kitchen, leaving me alone for a moment, I caught sight of a compact little Bible that lay on the leaf of her sewing machine. Two steps, and I had it stowed in my hip pocket, and was back innocently eating ... the taking of the Bible was providential. I believe that it served as the main instrument, later on, in saving me from ten years in the penitentiary.