Page 9 - Adventure Magazine, 1921, July 18th

Authors of " Toyama," "The Phoney Man," etc.

CHAPTER I · of his immediate cave. To the lonely two
the popular blaze was tabu.
These twain were fake hoboes. Off be-
THE PORTUGEE KID'S PUSH yond their scantier fire bulked a covered

I I T WAS a night of sudden wintry wagon, lettered in black and crimson, "Big-
ley's Circus and Congress of Wild Animals;"
gusts.
Off along the railroad
( embankment an empty kerosene more remotely, among lanky trunks of
can went rattling away with willow, a horse could be heard crunching
tinny clamor. Down in that famous hang- and stamping.
out or jungle, The Willows, pillared high . The two were poster men preceding a
and writhed low among soughing trees, the wagon-show. They worked. That was the
naked gladness of two hobo fires. Around disgrace, the stigma. They lacked alto-
the one fire eleven tattered figures sprawled; gether the efficiency in living without work
about the others two moved restlessly, which marks the blown-in-the-glass stiff,
! gathering wood-chips and broken willow the true hobo article. They were that sort
branches for their more meager blaze. There
scorned by all good rodeos. They were gay-
was a presage of rain in the uneasy dark. cats.
The two fires were widely spaced apart. The eleven about the popular blaze were
It was significant. That wide interval, the most diminutive hoboes in man-sized cast-
isolation of the lazy many from the toiling offs. They were like a pigmy people. There
two, marked a difference. It was a differ- was a curious gnome-like spryness about
ence old as the clan. It began when first such movements as they made.
was fire and · the Neanderthal fire-owner They were road-kids. They were runa-
clubbed out of his private circle of wood- way boys who had wandered into hobo dom
heat and wolf-frightening light those less and found its ways sweet. It chanced that
than he in strength and weapons and not they were all one push or following. Their
* "Children of the Road," Copyright, 1921, by Patrick and Terence Casey
Copyright. 1921, by The Ridgway Company in the United States and Great Britain. All rights reserved