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HATS BEATEN UP and hearts beating fast, we headed into the hobo jungle in the brush beside the Big Hole River. The kip, as they called it, turned out to be a gravel bar down from a state highway department gravel pit and storage area, where culverts and bridge beams and steel guardrails were stacked. Bunched there in the open-air kip, maybe twice as many as were on the bus with us, was a band of men sitting around rolling their smokes in brown cigarette paper. Like beached pirates, was my thought, to go with Herman’s roguish missing eye. Imagination aside, it was written in the sparks flying upward from the open campfire and the bubbling of the blackened stewpot hung over the flames that we were joining the bottom end of society, manual laborers with leather gloves stuck in a hind pocket, maybe their only possessions beyond a bindle and a bedroll. Now I was the one swallowing hard.
Blessedly, Highpockets intercepted us before we reached the campfire circle.
“Now, I’m not saying you two don’t know how to take care of yourselves,” that point made itself in his tone of voice. “But after dark here, it’s colder than old Nick.” Night was fast coming on, and I was remembering the gripping chill outside the Old Faithful Inn. Highpockets shifted his gaze significantly to my scanty suitcase and Herman’s sagging duffel. “I don’t notice any bedroll makings on you. Better do something about that.”
“Ja, what is your recommend?” Herman surprised us both.
“Doesn’t speaka the English, eh?” Highpockets gave me an unblinking look. “That’s your own business. Uptown at the merc, they sell bedroll fixings, old army blankets and the like.”
“I will get fixings,” Herman startled me further. Chicken hunter he may have been, but Wisdom did not seem to offer much prospect along that line.
I would worry about that later, right now I had a basic concern about getting any kind of shelter over us for the night. “Ah, Mr. Highpockets, I was wondering—”
“No misters in the Johnson family,” he said not unkindly.
“Okay, sure, uhm, Pockets. Do you suppose Gramps and me could have dibs on one of those culverts?”
“That’s inventive, anyway. Sling your plunder in there to stake your claim,” he gave his blessing, turning away toward the kip. “Then better come on down for mulligan before it’s gone.”
I hustled to the nearest steel shelter with my suitcase, Herman following with his duffel and looking thoughtful at the prospect of the metal tunnel just large enough to hold us if we slept end to end. “Go be acquainted,” he more or less shooed me to the hobo gathering. “I will be a little while in town.”
Another worry popped out of me. “What are you gonna use for money? We’re just about broke again, remember?”
“Nothing to worry. I have eye-dea.”
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WHATEVER IT WAS, I left him to go to town with it, in all meanings of the phrase, while I made my way down to the kip and its inhabitants. But beforehand, at the edge of the brush I encountered Pooch hunched over like a bear as he scrounged dry branches along the riverbank for firewood. When I asked if I could help, he replied, “Damn straight,” without looking up, and I started tromping downed cottonwood limbs in half until I had a good armful.