s with the ugly, rum-bloated specimens of
humanity, Jim had a chance to take a look at the two rooms which were to
be his future home, and his thoughts went back to his mother's cleanly
kept section house, for the total of the furniture in these rooms
consisted of some empty soap boxes which served for chairs, a
slime-covered table, a couple of rough wooden benches, a piece of mirror
glass that was upheld by nails driven into the bare walls, a range,
upon which at this moment a dinner was cooking, and two dilapidated
beds, the pillows, blankets and mattresses of which--there was no trace
of linen--were in an even far more filthy condition than the bunks of
the "Golden Rule Hotel" at Minneapolis.

Jim was aroused from his survey of the rooms by Kansas Shorty, who now
introduced him to each one of the road kids, whose jockers called aloud
the name-de-road of each.

Some of these jockers had as many as four of these lads, whose ages
ranged from ten to twenty years, and whose sizes were from that of mere
children to fellows who shaved themselves daily so as to pass muster as
"road kids". To have seen these road kids one would have never imagined
that within the course of a few short years every one of these boys
would be transformed into the same class of sodden wretches their
jockers now were, who had trained them into the ways of the road, and
that they in turn during their life time would spoil the futures of
scores of sons of respectable parents, which proves that degeneration
breeds degeneration.

One of the road kids in the den of the plingers, who was known by the
name of "Danny" because of his neat appearance and superior
intelligence, attracted Jim's attention and gave a fair average example
of the parentage of the rest. When after their short acquaintance in a
burst of confidence Jim acquainted Danny with the fact that his late
father had been the foreman and commander of a section crew of a North
Dakota railroad, Danny puckered up his lips in utter contempt when he
informed and proved to the surprised Jim that he was the son of a
wealthy banker of Fort Worth, Texas, and--another proof of boyish
thoughtlessness--had skipped school to hop freight trains in the
railroad yards of his home city. One day he had watched some wandering
hoboes cooking a mulligan by a campfire, and had helped to eat the stew,
and through this had made the first acquaintance of his present jocker,
who had enticed the little lad to run aw