Bums, thieves, beggars, and yeggs appeared as if they had magic carpets. In no time the thing assumed the proportions of a convention. Everybody had money. The crowd soon split up into units. Each unit had its cook and cooking outfit. The “captain” of each unit collected from the individuals and sent the younger bums into the town to buy alcohol, beer, and the “makin’s” of mulligans. There was drinking, fast and furious, eating, washing, shaving, while some of the older bums mended their clothes with expert needle. Cripples discarded their crutches and hopped about the camp fires grotesquely. “Crawlers” with cut-off legs swung themselves along on their hands drunkenly, like huge toads. Because of George our unit easily had all the class of the convention. He sat in state on a coal-oil can by the fire, bottle in hand, royally receiving the congratulations of bums from the four points of the compass. Somewhere near by at another fire a bum sang in a raucous, beery voice, “Oh, Where Is My Wandering Boy To-night.” “The Face on the Barroom Floor,” “My Blue Velvet Band,” and “Ostler Joe” were alcoholically recited by a fat, red-faced bum in a greasy coat, after which the convention stretched out on the warm ground and slumbered peacefully in the balmy summer air. The cook of our party was a stranger to me. A tall, lank man of fifty, with a straggly black beard and matted black hair hanging to his shoulder. He never spoke except when the bottle was passed to him. Then he would hold it aloft and in a dead, empty voice offer his unfailing toast. “The stool pigeon is the coming race.” “Kid,” said George, when I asked him about the cook. “He’s crazy as a bed bug and the best ‘mulligan’ maker on the road. ‘Montana Blacky’ is welcome at any bum camp anywhere, and he spends his life going from jungle to jungle.” Each day the bums drank more and ate less. The cooks were drunk and would prepare no food. The fiery alcohol had done its work. The bums that could stand up were fighting or snapping and snarling at each other. Many lay on their backs helpless, glass-eyed and open-mouthed, while others crawled about on all fours like big spiders. No more laughter, songs or recitations. Gloom settled over the camp and Tragedy waited in the wings for his cue to stalk upon the stage. Just when the convention was about to close for the want of able drinkers, a fresh contingent of bums arrived from over the Oregon Short Line. They were brass peddlers and had a big assortment of “solid gold” wedding rings. A big young fellow they called “Gold Tooth” seemed to be “captain” of the outfit. Along toward dark they finished the last of our liquor, and Gold Tooth and his tribe prepared to go into the town to make a “plunge.” He detailed a couple of them to take the main “drag,” another to make the railroad men’s boarding houses, another to the saloons.