[Illustration:  Unconscious in the gutter]

CHAPTER XIV.

“The Noble Work of the Salvation Army.”

A most decided change had come over Joseph McDonald when he again reported himself ready for duty.  Since his struggle with Kansas Shorty he had repeatedly weighed every word this rascal had spoken and adduced from it that something most dishonorable must have been Jim’s fate, and the oftener he attempted to unravel the mystery that lay concealed behind the ill-omened remarks made by this scoundrel, the more morose he became from the constant strain, for his troubled conscience caused him to feel that he was equally to be blamed for any disgrace that might have overtaken his missing brother.

The more he worried the more he became resolved that even should he never be able to see his brother again, the chances that he would some day run across Kansas Shorty were far more favorable, as he well knew how drifters of his class roved aimlessly over the country as their fancy, the wanderlust, and more often the police drove them onward.

To find Kansas Shorty became an obsession with Joe.  If luck favored him in his search, he planned to plead with the scoundrel, but should this prove of no avail, then he intended to strangle him until he would divulge the secret which shrouded Jim’s fate.

Oftentimes, especially when late in the night, after the passengers had gone to sleep upon the coach seats, and Joe thought himself unobserved, his fellow trainmen, to whom he had confided his life’s story, watched Joe, to whom a troubled conscience refused peace, raise his hands before him and slowly close the fingers with such suggestive motions, that it caused the trainmen to shudder when they imagined the same fingers executing like motions while entwined about Kansas Shorty’s throat.

Joe’s second hobby was to study the hobo monickers written upon or carved into the railroad company’s property.  From the time his train left the Chicago Terminal until it pulled into the Union Station at Omaha, where Joe’s “trip” ended, he employed every spare moment while they stopped at stations or water tanks, to carefully read every hobo sign that the drifters passing to and fro over the line had left behind them, ever hoping to discover a clue to Kansas Shorty’s whereabouts by finding his name-de-rail with a date and an arrow beneath it pointing in the direction he was traveling.

Joe’s third and favorite hobby was to hunt hoboes who dared to beat their way upon his train.  He finely discriminated between the man in search of employment, the harmless tramp who had fallen a victim to the wanderlust, the sneaking rogue who “toted” a six-shooter for the special purpose of killing human beings, preferring railroad employees and hoboes, and the rascal who had trained other people’s sons to beg a living for him, exactly as an Italian organ grinder would train a performing monkey or bear.