But I took the needle--it
had black thread in it--and stuck it through the timetable. He opened
the page and laughed awful loud and queer. Albuquerque was where the
needle went in. He couldn't say the name right, but he kept lookin' at
it.
"Then he went out and was gone all day and all night. When he come back
he showed me a whole wad of money. I says, 'Where did you get it?' He
got mad and tells me to shut up.
"That day we got on a train. I says, 'Where are we goin'?' and he says
to never mind, and did I want some peanuts.
"We kept ridin' and ridin' in the same car, and eatin' bananas and
san'wiches and sleepin' settin' up at nights. I was just about sick when
we come to Albuquerque. You see, that was where the needle went through
the timetable, and dad said we would get off there. He got awful drunk
that night.
"Next day he said he was goin' to quit liquor and make a fresh start. I
knowed he wouldn't, 'cause he always said that next mornin'. But I guess
he tried to quit. I don't know.
"One night he didn't come back to the room where we was stayin' upstairs
over the saloon. They found him 'way down the track next day, all cut to
pieces by the train."
The boy paused, reached forward, and plucked a withered stem of grass
which he wound round and round his finger.
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