DANNY'S OWN STORY BY DON MARQUIS TO MY ... - Pink Monkey

kick him, and when he talked he had a silly little
giggle. He had been made that-a-way in a reform
school where they took him young and tried to
work the cussedness out'n him by batting him
around. They worked it out, and purty nigh everything
else along with it, I guess. Looney had had
a pardner whose name was Slim, he said; but a
couple of years before Slim had fell overboard off'n
a barge up to Duluth and never come up agin.
Looney knowed Slim was drownded all right, but
he was always travelling around looking at tanks
and freight depots and switch shanties, fur Slim's
mark to be fresh cut with a knife somewheres, so he
would know where to foller and ketch up with him
agin. He knowed he would never find Slim's mark,
he said, but he kept a-looking, and he guessed that
was the way he got the name of Looney.
Looney left me at Evansville. He said he was
going east from there, he guessed. And I went
along south. But I was hindered considerable,
being put off of trains three or four times, and having
to grab these here slow local freights between
towns all the way down through Kentuckey. Anywheres
south of the Ohio River and east of the
Mississippi River trainmen is grouchier to them they
thinks is bums than north of it, anyhow. And in
some parts of it, if a real bum gets pinched, heaven
help 'im, fur nothing else won't.
One night, between twelve and one o'clock, I was
put off of a freight train fur the second time in a
place in the northern part of Tennessee, right near
the Kentuckey line. I set down in a lumber yard
near the railroad track, and when she started up
agin I grabbed onto the iron ladder and swung myself
aboard. But the brakeman was watching fur
me, and clumb down the ladder and stamped on my
fingers. So I dropped off, with one finger considerable
mashed, and set down in that lumber yard
wondering what next.
It was a dark night, and so fur as I could see they
wasn't much moving in that town. Only a few
places was lit up. One was way acrost the town