Around noon we built up more fire, heated some beans, made some coffee, filled ourselves with all we could hold, and then began to boil up. I boiled everything, even my suit. What to do with the money I didn’t know but I climbed the bank, stuck it in an angle of the abutment, put a stone over it, and came on back. We worked on ourselves, first in the cold water in the river, then in the hot that we kept boiling, until we were pretty clean. The soap came in as handy as anything, and we took turns with it, scrubbing and slopping and lathering with it, until it was just a sliver and then even that was gone. Around four maybe, our clothes were dry and we got dressed. But along toward sundown dogs began barking downriver, and if there’s one thing a real hobo hates worse than work it’s dogs. Hosey began to get nervous and it was easy to see if we were going to keep him we had to move. We talked about where we’d move to, and he was scared to death to go through Phoenix again on a train, as he said they’d “be laying for us, sure.” And yet we all wanted to beat West, instead of going back East, on account of the weather. Finally we decided to break up, each one to hitchhike separately by road, and meet again in Shorty Lee’s jungle in Yuma, that Hosey said was the best in the U. S., bar none. So that’s what we did. We had to break up, because three guys together would scare any private driver to death, and on the trucks, on account of a new no-rider clause in the insurance, there was no chance at all. There had been trouble, hijacking and stuff like that, so the companies put it in the policies that if riders were aboard, all bets were off. Kind of rugged for Mr. Thumb, but it gives you an idea how things were.
Me, though, I caught a through bus. The driver looked at me funny, but I knew I didn’t stink so I looked right back, and when I got out my roll that talked. It was a day coach, not very full, so there was plenty of room on the wide seat at the rear. I stretched out, got comfortable, and counted my money. There were two or three tens, some fives, and the rest ones, altogether around ninety dollars. I shoved it in my pocket again, then sat there, staring out at the road where it was rolling out behind, working on something that had been bothering me all day: Why had I hid that money? Why hadn’t I said something about it to Buck and Hosey? Why hadn’t I cut them in? Here they were, maybe not the buddies I would have picked some night when I was all dressed up in a dinner coat three years before, but some kind of buddies, and what was pretty important too, all the buddies I had. And yet, at my first stroke of luck, I had ratted on them one hundred per cent, like any real hobo. I began thinking about something else: Why had I passed up the silver? So nobody could hear it clink, seemed to be the answer. Yeah, but who? A cop, when I was toting that sack, if he ever got near enough to hear something clink, would already have nabbed me. Once more, it spelled Buck and Hosey. And at last I admitted to myself, what had been slewing around in the back of my head: I had kept quiet, I had even passed up the silver, because I was afraid of them. On food, as Hosey had said, there’d be nothing to tell. At most it would be thirty days in jail, or more likely ten, serve your time or vag out by sundown. But money was different. Buddies or no buddies, rat or no rat, I’d never put myself in their power by letting them in on it.
Or at least so it seemed at that time.
Shorty Lee, the hobo’s friend, had fixed up a jungle that was a lulu, all right, and though I wouldn’t exactly trade off my membership in the University Club to get into it, it did things to you that somebody had put up a couple of shacks that guys could sleep in, got them some clean pots to cook in, bricks for their fires, and connected up a shower so they could get clean and a water tap so they could drink. I didn’t go there right away, though. I hit town around ten o’clock, checked in at a little hotel down by the river, then went to a café for dinner. It was just a cheap café, like a million of them all over the country that had opened up since Prohibition got repealed. It was the first time in my life I’d ever been in a bar. In Baltimore, they had served liquor, of course, but it had come in a cup and had no name and you drank it quick. I ordered a Martini, with steak, fried potatoes and coffee. Then I noticed two girls on stools, talking to each other and not with anybody that I could see. They were just Western barflies, in checked blouses, dungaree pants, and stitched boots, but not so bad either. One of them saw me, looked sharp, then looked again. I looked back. Then I began to wonder if she was having any effect on me. I mean, I was trying to figure if it was getting anywhere, this campaign Buck and I had started by stealing some grub. Next thing I knew the waiter was shaking me to wake up and eat. Looked like I had some little way to go. I felt my money. It was still there.
In the morning I found some other place, and had sliced orange, ham and three eggs, flapjacks, and coffee. They treated me O.K., but by now I was getting more and more self-conscious about my scrubbed-out jeans. I began looking for clothes. The good places I stayed out of, because I figured they’d be shy of the stuff I wanted. But on a side street, back of one of the hotels, I spotted a place that said “summer clearance sale,” and walked over there. First I picked out a pair of heavy khaki work pants, the kind that go up under your chin in front and fasten with a pair of suspenders behind. Then I tried on shoes. I needed brogans, but got the best-looking pair I could see. Then I got two pair of woolen stockings. I think they felt best of all. On the road, if you’ve got any socks at all you’re lucky, but if they’re not all full of holes that cut your toes and blister your heels, then you’re asleep, dreaming. To wobble my foot and feel clean wool all over it was wonderful. Then I picked out drawers, undershirt, and shirt. I wanted a check, like the girls had had, but I happened to think it might be the one thing somebody would remember me by, if they were pinned down in court. I said make it khaki, to go with the pants. Then I picked out flannel pants, to wear under the khaki, a dark coat, and a brown hat, one of the two-and-a-half-gallon jobs that practically everybody wears in that neck of the woods. I dressed in the backroom, and told them to throw my old stuff away. Was I glad to kick it all in a corner, and step out of there clean, whole, and with a decent smell!
Outside, on a bench, at a bus stop, I counted up again, and had nearly sixty dollars. I sat there, trying to think what I was going to do. Across from me girls kept going up and down, and I wondered if my sixty dollars, provided I ate three times a day, would get me in shape so they looked like girls, instead of just things in skirts. But I had to cut Buck and Hosey in, I knew that, and if I felt it had to be my own way, to be safe, I still had to do it. I walked on down to the store again, and bought them the same outfits. There was no trouble over sizes. I’d heard them call theirs, so many times, in the missions, I’d have known them in my sleep. I took the stuff up over to the hotel, taking care to keep all sales slips in my hip pocket, in case. I still had a little money left, so I went out and bought beans, bacon, eggs, and stuff. I still had my gunny sack, that I had washed out with the other things in the Salt River, so I opened all packages, dumped them in, and threw away the wrappings. I shook it up, like it had been filled in a hurry. I took it over to the S.P. tracks. From there, following Hosey’s directions, I hit the jungle, and there, believe it or not, feeding a fire he’d made between two piles of bricks, was Buck. “Well, for God’s sake look at Adolph Menjou!”
“Buck, how are you?”
“Sir, I’m fine.”
“Hosey here?”