They’s bad ones n’ good ones. Bulls is like anything else, some good, some bad. There’ve been times a bull’s helped me into a boxcar. And there’s some I know pretty good. I’ll give ‘em the high sign if I’m passin’ through their yard, an’ they’ll wave back. There was this one, this kid, he comes over to my fire and says he’s sorry but he’s got to ask me to leave the property. This was on the Erie. I had a pot a beans boilin’, an’ I asked him if he minded if I eat first. He sat there by the fire with me while I et. All the time he’s sittin’ there, I could tell he’s doin’ some thinkin’. You know how it is when a guy’s mullin’ somethin’ over. He’s staring into the fire kinda determined like. After a while, he gets up and says, “ Hell with it. If I have to run guys like you off the railroad to keep this job, the front office can stick it up their ass.” And he got in his car and drove off.

Some tramps won’t budge off a train for the President of the line himself. There’s this time me an’ two guys was on the S.P. over in Dunsmuir. Used to be that was a good place to jungle. Camp right by the river there in the mountains. Plenty a fish. Big trees. I seen twenty, thirty tramps scattered up and down the river bank. Now, they got “no trespassing” signs, “no loitering” signs all over the town. There’s people got vacation homes up there, an’ they don’t want no tramps around. Just a little yard, no bigger than a glorified siding. Tramps been comin’ through there some thirty years, maybe. They got this bull now, shaking everything down. Me an’ these guys was just ridin’ through, not planing on stoppin er nothin’. The bull comes over an’ tells us to get off the train an’ get our asses up on the highway an’ start hitchhikin’. Hell, I figgered what’s this guy tryin’ to prove. I started gettin’ my gear together, an’ one a the two guys I was ridin’ with tells the bull if he wants him off the car, he’s gonna hafta come up an’ drag him off. He started in on that bull, sayin’ how none a them people ‘bout to pick up three old tramps standin’ by the side of the road. He says to come up and drag him off ‘cause that’s the only way he’s gettin’ off the train. Well, that bull backed off an’ tells us OK this time it’s a warning. Warning my ass. No way was he gonna try an’ drag all three of us off that line.

Down in El Reno, Oklahoma there was this one bull’d give tramps a bad time. Anybody with a lick a sense knew that son of a bitch wasn’t gonna last long. Turned out he went missing for three days, and they found him laying in an empty boxcar, shot to hell. Took care a that son of a bitch for good. Lotta guys know who done it, but nobody’s talkin’.

66.