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    In Laredo the cells were all on one side, he learned. The whip boss at Huntsville was named Crying Tom. In Hillsboro, Missouri, prisoners got sheets and mattresses.
    They spoke too of good fortune: one had once been taken into a minister’s home for two months; another had come upon a drunken girl in a cattle car; another had found a new jacket hanging in a reefer into which he had climbed one night in Carrizozo.
    Dove learned that Beaumont was tough. That Greensboro, in some place called Nawth Klina, was a right mean little town to get through. That Boykin, right below it, was even harder. That toughest of any was any town anywhere in Georgia. If you were caught riding there you heard the long chain rattling. But they gave you fifteen cents every week and a plug of tobacco on Sundays. ‘
That
part’s not so bad,’ thought Dove Linkhorn.
    ‘Stay ’way far from Waycross,’ an old canboy warned him – ‘’less you want to do a year in a turp camp.’ And he began beating a tin-can in time with a song—
‘I didn’t raise my boy to be a soldier
I brought him up to be my pride and joy.’
    East Texas was rough but the Rio Grande Valley was easy – all the crews asked was that you get off on the side away from the station. You could get through Alabama all right provided you didn’t stand on the spine like a tourist and wave at the sheriff. And stayed off the A. & W.P.
    Those A. & W.P. bulls made a point of putting you off at a water tank in the wilderness called Chehawee and you walked forty-four miles to get to Montgomery. For a fiver, cash down on the barrelhead, you could ride.
    Look out for a town in Mississippi called Flomaton, because that’s Wing Binga’s town. One night he pistol-whupped two ’boes and they came back and shoved him under the wheels. That was how he lost his right wing. He was mean before that but he’d gotten meaner since.
    Look out for Marsh City – that’s Hank Pugh’s. Look out for Greeneville – that belongs to Buck Bryan. Buck’ll be walking the spines dressed like a ’bo – the only way you’ll be able to spot him is by his big floppy hat with three holes in the top. And the hose length in his hand.
    Your best bet is to freeze and wait. You can’t get away. He likes the hose length in his hand but what he really loves is the Colt on his hip. So just cover up your eyes and listen to the
swwwissshhh
. He’s got deputies coming down both sides. God help you if you run and God help you if you fight. God help you if you’re broke and God help you if you’re black.
    Look out for Lima – that’s in Ohio. And look out for Springfield, the one in Missouri. Look out for Denver and Denver Jack Duncan. Look out for Tulsa. Look out for Tucson. Look out for Joplin. Look out for Chicago. Look out for Ft Wayne – look out for St Paul – look out for St Joe – look out – look out – look out—
    Dove saw a crippled one caught like a rabbit in the great head-lamps’ glare, turning blinded eyes to the engineer and the engineer waving – ‘Go
on, go on
—’
    Of their pathetic efforts to keep clean, merely to keep clean, Dove never heard them tell. Yet they were forever begrimed and begging soap and water. As soon as his thirst was quenched, the ’bo was washing his one shirt. On every fence post at every junction faded shirts hung, wet weather or dry. Combs, pocket mirrors and toothbrushes, carried by a string around the neck, were treasured.
    He could tell carnie hands and circus roustabouts because they took their money out of grouch-bags, pouches drawn by string, like tobacco pouches.
    Once he saw a grizzled old hand passing a woman’s black elbow-length glove, the kind that strip-teasers once tossed to the front rows. As it passed from hand to hand, each man sniffed at it and swore he could smell its perfume yet. Its owner finally pocketed it as if secretly relieved that he didn’t have to fight anyone to get it back.
    And one told of a young boy