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Wherefore it was that by the time the authorities awoke to the fact that something

had happened Billy Byrne was fifty miles west of Joliet, bowling along aboard a

fast Santa Fe freight. Shortly after night had fallen the train crossed the

Mississippi. Billy Byrne was hungry and thirsty, and as the train slowed down

and came to a stop out in the midst of a dark solitude of silent, sweet-smelling

country, Billy opened the door of his box car and dropped lightly to the ground.

So far no one had seen Billy since he had passed from the ken of the trussed

deputy sheriff, and as Billy had no desire to be seen he slipped over the edge of

the embankment into a dry ditch, where he squatted upon his haunches waiting

for the train to depart. The stop out there in the dark night was one of those

mysterious stops which trains are prone to make, unexplained and doubtless

unexplainable by any other than a higher intelligence which directs the

movements of men and rolling stock. There was no town, and not even a switch

light. Presently two staccato blasts broke from the engine's whistle, there was a

progressive jerking at coupling pins, which started up at the big locomotive and

ran rapidly down the length of the train, there was the squeaking of brake shoes

against wheels, and the train moved slowly forward again upon its long journey

toward the coast, gaining momentum moment by moment until finally the way-

car rolled rapidly past the hidden fugitive and the freight rumbled away to be

swallowed up in the darkness.

When it had gone Billy rose and climbed back upon the track, along which he

plodded in the wake of the departing train. Somewhere a road would presently

cut across the track, and along the road there would be farmhouses or a village

where food and drink might be found.

Billy was penniless, yet he had no doubt but that he should eat when he had

discovered food. He was thinking of this as he walked briskly toward the west,

and what he thought of induced a doubt in his mind as to whether it was, after

all, going to be so easy to steal food.

"Shaw!" he exclaimed, half aloud, "she wouldn't think it wrong for a guy to swipe

a little grub when he was starvin'. It ain't like I was goin' to stick a guy up for his

roll. Sure she wouldn't see nothin' wrong for me to get something to eat. I ain't got

no money. They took it all away from me, an' I got a right to live--but, somehow, I

hate to do it. I wisht there was some other way. Gee, but she's made a sissy out o'

me! Funny how a feller can change. Why I almost like bein' a sissy," and Billy

Byrne grinned at the almost inconceivable idea.

Before Billy came to a road he saw a light down in a little depression at one side

of the track. It was not such a light as a lamp shining beyond a window makes. It

rose and fell, winking and flaring close to the ground.

159

The Mucker