The Gila Monster Route
The lingering sunset across the plain
Kissed the rear-end door of an east-bound train,
And shone on a passing track close by
Where a ding-bat sat on a rotting tie.
He was ditched by a shock and a cruel fate.
The con high-balled, and the manifest freight
Pulled out on the stem behind the mail,
And she hit the ball on a sanded rail.
As she pulled away in the falling light
He could see the gleam of her red tail-light.
Then the moon arose and the stars came out—
He was ditched on the Gila Monster Route.
Nothing in sight but sand and space;
No chance for a gink to feed his face;
Not even a shack to beg for a lump,
Or a hen-house to frisk for a single gump.
He gazed far out on the solitude;
He drooped his head and began to brood;
He thought of the time he lost his mate
In a hostile burg on the Nickle Plate.
They had mooched the stem and threw their feet,
And speared four-bits on which to eat;
But deprived themselves of daily bread
And shafted their coin for “dago red.”
Down by the track in the jungle’s glade,
In the cool green grass, in the tules’ shade,
They shed their coats and ditched their shoes
And tanked up full of that colored booze.
Then they took a flop with their skins plumb full,
And they did not hear the harnessed bull,
Till he shook them out of their boozy nap,
With a husky voice and a loaded sap.
They were charged with “vag,” for they had no kale,
And the judge said, “Sixty days in jail.”
But the John had a bindle—a worker’s plea—
So they gave him a floater and set him free.
They had turned him up, but ditched his mate,
So he grabbed the guts of an east-bound freight,
He flung his form on a rusty rod,
Till he heard the shack say, “Hit the sod!”
The John piled off, he was in the ditch,
With two switch lamps and a rusty switch—
A poor, old, seedy, half-starved bo
On a hostile pike, without a show.
From away off somewhere in the dark
Came the sharp, short notes of a coyote’s bark.
The bo looked round and quickly rose
And shook the dust from his threadbare clothes.
Off in the west through the moonlit night
He saw the gleam of a big head-light—
An east-bound stock train hummed the rail;
She was due at the switch to clear the mail.
As she drew up close, the head-end shack
Threw the switch to the passenger track,
The stock rolled in and off the main,
And the line was clear for the west-bound train.
When she hove in sight far up the track,
She was workin’ steam, with her brake shoes slack,
She hollered once at the whistle post,
Then she flitted by like a frightened ghost.
He could hear the roar of the big six-wheel,
And her driver’s pound on the polished steel,
And the screech of her flanges on the rail
As she beat it west o’er the desert trail.
The John got busy and took the risk,
He climbed aboard and began to frisk,
He reached up high and began to feel
For the end-door pin—then he cracked the seal.
’Twas a double-decked stock-car, filled with sheep,
Old John crawled in and went to sleep.
She whistled twice and high-balled out—
They were off, down the Gila Monster Route.
