s) here have been 'horstile'
(had it in for the tramp fraternity) ... ever since a yegg bumped off a
deputy, a while back."

"Naw, I'll take my chances."

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.

* * * * *

I was glad enough to hop to the cinders at El Paso. But El Paso at that
time was "unhealthy" for hoboes. They were holding twenty or thirty of
us in the city jail, and mysterious word had gone down the line in all
directions, that quick telegraph by word-of-mouth that tramps use among
themselves, to avoid the town--that it was "horstile."...

* * * * *

Again rolling miles of arid country. But this time, like a soldier on a
long march, I was prepared: I had begged, from door to door, enough
"hand-outs" to last a week ... throwing away most of the bread ...
keeping the cold meats and the pie and cake. I sat in my open box-car,
on a box that I had flung in with me, reading my Bible and eating my
"hand-outs" and a millionaire had nothing on me for enjoyment.

I was half-way to San Antonio when I fell in with as jolly a bunch of
bums as I ever hope to see in this world ... just outside a little town,
in the "jungles."

These tramps were gathered together on a definite plan, and I was
invited to join them in it: the plan was, to go, _en masse_, from town
to town, and systematically exploit it; one day one man wo