U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [28]
"I thought I'd find some Pul man passengerrs . . . Al right, byes, stand and deliver, or else you'l go to the constabulary."
"Aw hel ," said Ike, crawling forward.
"Currsin' and swearin' won't help ye . . . If you got a couple o' quid you can ride on to Winnipeg an' take your chances there . . . If not you'l be doin' a tidy bit on the roads before you can say Jack Robinson."
The brakeman was a smal blackhaired man with a
mean quiet manner.
"Where are we, guv'ner?" asked Ike, trying to talk like an Englishman.
"Gretna . . . You're in the Dominion of Canada. You can be had up, too, for il egal y crossin' Her Majesty's frontier as wel as for bein' vags."
"Wel , I guess we'd better shel out . . . You see we're a couple of noblemen's sons out for a bit of a-bloody lark, guv'ner."
"No use currsin' and prevarricatin'. How much have you?"
" Coupla dol ars."
"Let's see it quick."
Ike pul ed first one dol ar, then another, out of his pocket; folded in the second dol ar was a five. The Scotch-man swept the three bil s up with one gesture and slammed the sliding door to. They heard him slip down
-69-the catch on the outside. For a long time they sat there quiet in the dark. Final y Ike said, "Hey, Mac, gimme a sock in the jaw. That was a damn fool thing to do . . . Never oughta had that in my jeans anyway . . . oughta had it inside my belt. That leaves us with about seventy-five cents. We're up shit creek now for fair . . . He'l probably wire ahead to take us outa here at the next big town.""Do they have mounted police on the railroad, too?" asked Mac in a hol ow whisper. "Jez, I don't know any more about it than you do." The train started again and Ike rol ed over on his face and went glumly to sleep. Mac lay on his back behind him looking at the slit of sunlight that made its way in through the crack in the door and wondered what the inside of a Canadian jail would be like. That night, after the train had lain stil for some time in the middle of the hissing and clatter of a big freight-yard, they heard the catch slipped off the door. After a while Ike got up his nerve to slide the door open and they dropped, stiff and terribly hungry, down to the cinders. There was another freight on the next track, so al they could see was a bright path of stars overhead. They got out of the freightyards without any trouble and found themselves walking through the deserted streets of a large widescattered city.
" Winnipeg's a pretty friggin' lonelylookin' place, take it from me," said Ike.
"It must be after midnight."
They tramped and tramped and at last found a little lunchroom kept by a Chink who was just closing up.
They spent forty cents on some stew and potatoes and coffee. They asked the Chink if he'd let them sleep on the floor behind the counter, but he threw them out and they found themselves dogtired tramping through the broad deserted streets of Winnipeg again. It was too cold to sit down anywhere, and they couldn't find anyplace
-70-that looked as if it would give them a flop for thirtyfive cents, so they walked and walked, and anyway the sky was beginning to pale into a slow northern summer dawn. When it was ful y day they went back to the Chink's and spent the thirtyfive cents on oatmeal and coffee. Then they went to the Canadian Pacific employment office and signed up for work in a construction camp at Banff. The hours they had to wait til traintime they spent in the public library. Mac read part of Bel amy Looking Backward and Ike, not being able to find a volume of Karl Marx, read an instalment of "When the Sleeper Wakes" in the Strand Magazine. So when they got on the train they were ful of the coming Socialist revolution and started talking it up to two lanky redfaced lumberjacks who sat opposite them. One of them chewed tobacco silently al the while, but the other spat his quid out of the window and said, "You blokes 'l keep quiet with that kinder talk if you knows what's 'ealthy for ye.""Hel , this is a free country, ain't it? A guy's free to talk, ain't he?" said Ike.
"A bloke kin talk so long as his betters don't tel him to keep his mouth shut.""Hel , I'm not tryin' to pick a fight," said Ike. "Better not," said the other man, and didn't speak again. They worked for the C. P. R. al summer and by the