CHAPTER VII.

THE TRAMP.


About the middle of November, after the now famous express robbery had
taken place, a man, roughly dressed in a coarse suit of blue, wearing a
woolen shirt open at the neck, and, knotted around his throat, a gaudy
silk handkerchief, was strolling leisurely along the east bottoms near
Kansas City. His face was tanned by exposure to the sun, and his shoes
had the flattened and battered condition which is the natural
consequence of a long and weary tramp. He walked as if he had no
particular objective point, and looked like one of those peripatetic
gentry who toil not neither do they spin, the genus "tramp." He
complacently puffed a short clay nose-warmer, with his hands in his
pockets, and taking first one side and then the other of the road, as
his fancy dictated, found himself near the old distillery at the
outskirts of the city.

A saloon near at hand, with its front door invitingly open, attracted
his attention, and the cheering sounds of a violin, scraping out some
popular air, gave a further impetus to inclination, and the tramp turned
to the open door and entered. Seated on an empty barrel, his foot
executing vigorous time to his own music, sat the magician of the horse-
hair bow.

Leaning against the bar, or seated at the small tables scattered around,
the tramp saw a goodly number of the disciples of Bacchus, while from an
inner room the clicking of ivory chips and half suppressed expressions