But I was a little cranky. I made up my mind to be a musician. I could play the trombone. The Volks theatre, a cheap beer garden, took me on. I worked like a slave for four days. Saturday night I went around to the manager and asked for my pay. I was starved. I had only eaten what I could pick up. For four days I had haunted the saloon lunch counters. I used to sneak in, grab a sandwich, duck, grab another and get kicked out.

"You mangy little ragamuffin," the manager swore, with more oaths than I had ever heard before. "Get out of here!"

He knocked me against the wall. I had an old bulldog pistol. I fired at him and ran.

The shot went wild. I saw that, but I saw, too, that I had to run. I didn't stop until I had climbed onto a blind baggage car bound for St. Louis. Then I crept into a hog car, pulled the hay over me and slept until I was dumped off at the stockyards in Kansas City.

It was the first time I was on the dodge. It is an ugly thing for a boy of 11 to attempt murder, but self-protection was the only law I knew. Society might shelter other youngsters. I had had to fight for almost every crust I had eaten. I was forced to take the law in my own hands or be beaten down by the gaunt poverty that warped my early life.

It was fight that won me a brief home at the stockyards. I had a scrap with the kid terror of the shambles. We fought to a finish. Grown men stood about and shouted with laughter. Blood streamed from my nose and mouth. The fight was a draw.

The terror's father came over and shook my hand. I went home with them and stayed for a month. The kid and I would have died for each other in a week.

We cleaned out every other youngster in the yard. The kid's mother, slovenly and intemperate as she was, had the sunny kindness of people that have hungered and suffered. She was like a mother to me.