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Tomato-cans used to be able to talk in those days and the hoboes were very good to them always used to drink out of them and carry them to save them from walking. This can had a picture of its big red face on the outside. 'Give us a lift? said the can. 'Where to? said the old hobo. 'Back to California, where I came from, said the can.
The tramp who brought the paper pretended to know nothing, except this: the paper had been passed along from a "hobo" in Johnsville, who seemed to know the information would be valuable to us. Again the long distance telephone came into requisition. Mr. Jamieson called the hospital, while we crowded around him.
"But that's all the more reason why we must get him where he can have attention. The village of Dunfield is four miles below here. We must get him there at once. And we'll march the hobo there, too, in the hope that the village has a lock-up." "It hasn't," snarled the tramp. "Oh, we wouldn't take your word on a vital point like that," jeered Darry.
The glance he gave the young man, up and down, conveyed his full meaning. "Well, I must say that's saucy talk from a hobo," declared one of the women. "Mother!" warned the third member of the party. Farr turned his cynical gaze from the older woman to the younger from the bleached hair and rouged lips to a fresh, pure, and vivid loveliness. He saw her profile once more.
"Cheyenne is a kind of hobo puncher that rides the country with his little old pack-horse, stoppin' by to work for a grubstake when he has to, but ramblin' most of the time. He used to be a top-hand once. Worked for me a spell. But he can't stay in one place long. Wish you could meet him sometime. He can tell you more about this State than any man I know.
"I wonder," grunted the hobo. "I wonder." Later on Dick and his chums prepared a supper, of which all partook except the peddler, who needed sleep and warmth more. The tramps slept on the floor, later on. Tom, Dave and Harry slept on their cots, while the other three high school boys remained awake.
He was roughly dressed now, in overalls, short sheepskin coat, and "chaps." He shouted a salutation to the trio, his usually immobile face transformed into an expression of scowling anxiety. "Hullo!" he boomed, his guttural bass sounding hoarse with passion, "You fellows didn't meet that d d hobo on the trail, I suppose? . . . I'm looking for him in the worst way!"
With a most ungallant ejaculation he swung on his heel and started towards the stable, beckoning hastily to Yorke and Redmond to follow. "Yu hear that?" he burst out on them, with lowered, savage tones. "I knew ut I felt ut at th' toime that shtinkin' rapparee av a hobo was lyin' whin he said he did not renumber a harse bein' brought back. We must go get um right-away!"
He was always a crooked sort of feller, and after that just boozed around, joined in with hobo gangs, and they believe touched up a few jobs himself. There, that's all we know; and now, what you been doing?" "Too long a story to tell just now," declared Frank. "The colonel knows, and perhaps he'll amuse you after we've gone."
Often and often have I met hoboes earnestly inquiring if I had seen anywhere such and such a "stiff" or his monica. And more than once I have been able to give the monica of recent date, the water-tank, and the direction in which he was then bound. And promptly the hobo to whom I gave the information lit out after his pal.