been made that-a-way in a reform
school where they took him young and tried to work the cussedness out'n
him by batting him around. They worked it out, and purty nigh everything
else along with it, I guess. Looney had had a pardner whose name was
Slim, he said; but a couple of years before Slim had fell overboard
off'n a barge up to Duluth and never come up agin. Looney knowed Slim
was drownded all right, but he was always travelling around looking
at tanks and freight depots and switch shanties, fur Slim's mark to be
fresh cut with a knife somewheres, so he would know where to foller and
ketch up with him agin. He knowed he would never find Slim's mark, he
said, but he kept a-looking, and he guessed that was the way he got the
name of Looney.

Looney left me at Evansville. He said he was going east from there, he
guessed. And I went along south. But I was hindered considerable, being
put off of trains three or four times, and having to grab these here
slow local freights between towns all the way down through Kentuckey.
Anywheres south of the Ohio River and east of the Mississippi River
trainmen is grouchier to them they thinks is bums than north of it,
anyhow. And in some parts of it, if a real bum gets pinched, heaven help
'im, fur nothing else won't.

One night, between twelve and one o'clock, I was put off of a freight
train fur the second time in a place in the northern part of Tennessee,
right near the Kentuckey line. I set down in a lumber yard near the
railroad track, and when she started up agin I grabbed onto the iron
ladder and swung myself aboard. But the brakeman was watching fur me,
and clumb down the ladder and stamped on my fingers. So I dropped off,
with one finger considerable mashed, and set down in that lumber yard
wondering what next.

It was a dark night, and so fur as I could see they wasn't much moving
in that town. Only a few places was lit up. One was way acrost the town
square from me, and it was the telephone exchange, with a man operator
reading a book in there. The other was the telegraph room in the depot
about a hundred yards from me, and they was only two fellers in it,
both smoking. The main business part of the town was built up around the
square, like lots of old-fashioned towns is, and they was jest enough
brightness from four, five electric lights to show the shape of the
square and be reflected from the windows of the closed-up stores.

I knowed they was likely a watchman som