But now the ramp was filled with people. The cops were getting off the elevator. I jumped up and ran over to where Steve was standing.
The building inspector was staring bug-eyed at his huge car. Somebody went around the stall and saw the six-inch car crawling out. Somebody else took hold of the stall and shook it. “Where’s my car? What’s going on?”
Well, a mob is a funny thing. In about half a minute there were eight hundred people in that basement, and all of them tearing apart the reducing stall.
Slim and I hesitated no longer. We ran up the stairway and sifted out through the crowd. …
At three o’clock in the morning Slim said to me, “You think that brakeman will kick us off?”
The brakeman came to us, sitting up there in the fresh night breeze on top of a carload of lettuce going east from California. He looked at me and then, as if he didn’t believe it, he held his lantern up and examined my head all the way around.
“Why don’t you go back to the farm? This ain’t no life for you,” he growled.
“I am considering that very seriously,” I said with as much dignity as I could.