pecial
purpose of killing human beings, preferring railroad employees and
hoboes, and the rascal who had trained other people's sons to beg a
living for him, exactly as an Italian organ grinder would train a
performing monkey or bear. Many were the railroad lanterns Joe had to
replace for those he broke over the heads of the two latter classes of
tramps, especially the last ones, who clung even more obstinately to
their road kids than a tiger clings to his prey. The youngsters he had
rescued, if he was not able to send them safely home, he would turn over
to proper authorities, for well he knew that each one of these runaway
boys had not only somewhere a broken-hearted mother waiting for his
return, but that, if they were not stopped drifting to the abyss while
still young, with the evil training that depraved tramps gave them, it
would be merely a matter of time before they too would have learned to
destroy and pilfer railroad property; rob box cars and stations, and
thus repay with almost brutal ingratitude those who had permitted them
to travel unmolested upon their trains.

The years rolled quickly by and although Joe had now been in the
company's employ for almost fifteen years, he refused every offer of
promotion, preferring his humble trainman's job, that, although he had
years ago given up all hope of ever seeing his brother James again, gave
him a chance to atone for his own blighted past by his self-appointed
mission, that of trying to combat single-handed and unassisted the most
vitally important and yet most revolting phase of the whole tramp
problem. His endeavor in this line caused much ridicule among his fellow
railroad men and those who had stopped to listen to tramps and
especially to plingers, whom Joe's unselfish work had deprived of
victims and who denounced him as a "Stool Pigeon", as a "Spotter" and
whatever other venomous attribute their black souls could hurl at him,
in an attempt to damage his well earned reputation as a benefactor to
humanity, who in spite of many threats of bodily injury, by pointing to
the seriousness of the road kid evil, proved to the world its intimate
connection with the never lessening, nay, ever increasing, numbers of
thieving and murdering vagrants.

At both ends of his "run", at Chicago, as well as at Omaha, Joe had a
rest of twelve hours before he again had to report for duty. One
evening, just after he arrived at Omaha, his attention was attracted by
a band of the