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Updated: May 7, 2025
This freight-car talk is pitched just above the ordinary tone it is an overtone of conversation, one might say and it is distinctly nasal. The brakie could talk above the racket, and so, of course, could Lefty Joe. They sat about in the center of the train, on the forward end of one of the cars.
"The brakie," they said, "will soon be 'round, and if he finds ye he'll put us all in jail." Poor Archie grew pale at the thought of being put in jail, and huddled himself closer in the corner. After a time the train started, and the tramps, he noticed, climbed up into some sort of compartment under the roof of the car, where they wouldn't be observed, leaving Archie alone down-stairs.
He saw Lefty sway toward him; but, all stories aside, it is a very bold tramp that cares for argument of a serious nature with a brakie. And even Lefty Joe was deterred from violent action. In the darkness his upper lip twitched, but he carefully smoothed his voice. "You don't know nothing, pal," he declared. "Don't I?" "Nothing," repeated Lefty.
"Confound Donnegan. Who's Donnegan? I ask you, who's Donnegan?" "A guy that makes trouble," replied the brakie, evidently hard put to it to find a definition. "Oh, don't he make it, though? Confound him!" "You ought to of stayed shut of him, Lefty." "Did I hunt him up, I ask you? Am I a nut? No, I ain't. Do I go along stepping on the tail of a rattlesnake? No more do I look up Donnegan."
Then Kennebec Lou and the Clipper get sore at the way you treat Suds. So here you are back on the road with your gang all gone bust. Hard luck, Lefty." But Lefty whined with rage at this careless diagnosis of his downfall. "You're all wrong," he said. "You're all wrong. You don't know nothin'." The brakie waited, grinning securely into the night, and preparing his mind for the story.
The wind became a hurricane. But to the brakie all this was no more than a calm night. His thoughts were raging in him, and if he looked back far enough he remembered the dollar which Donnegan had given him; and how he had promised Donnegan to give the warning before anything went wrong.
The brakie stirred a little, wabbling from side to side as he found a more comfortable position; instead of looking straight before him, he kept a side-glance steadily upon his companion, and one could see that he intended to remember what was said on this night. "Even Suds," echoed the brakie. "Good heavens, and ain't he a man for you?"
He caught the face of the other with a rapid side glance, but Lefty Joe was sufficiently concealed by the dark. "Heard you were the main guy with a whole crowd behind you," went on the brakie. "Yeh?" "Sure. Heard you was riding the cushions, and all that." "Yeh?" "But I guess it was all bunk; here you are back again, anyway." "Yep," agreed Lefty.
The tramp watched him go with laughter. It was silent laughter. In the most quiet room it would not have sounded louder than a continual, light hissing noise. Then he, in turn, moved from his place, and worked his way along the train in the opposite direction to that in which the brakie had disappeared. He went expertly, swinging from car to car with apelike clumsiness and surety. Two cars back.
Where that young fellow in Youth's Encounter wanted to be a bishop and a soldier and everything Just like me, except Schoenstrom is different, from London, some ways! I always wanted to be a brakie, and then a yeggman. But I wasn't bright enough for either. I just became a garage man. And I Some day I'm going to stop using slang. But it'll take an operation!"
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