King of tramps is an elusive member of hunting party


It has been three years since a ghost began revealing himself to me on
hunting trips, and I'm still not sure what message he means to send from
the afterlife. It is clear he has a fondness for hunting dogs or perhaps
all dogs of a friendly nature, and he must enjoy the lonely prairies of
the Midwest.

He has attached himself to my hunting Labrador, Finn, and I wonder on
some days when I'm afield if they share a chuckle when I miss a bird or
fall in a badger hole.
His name is Tex. He was a real person, as far as I can tell, having
carved his name on buildings throughout the Midwest. His vandalism is
legendary. In small towns and railroad stations where the vagabond
landed, Tex used his penknife to scratch a signature in five letters:
"Tex" and "K.T."
I'm told the initials stand for "King of the Tramps."

Whether he was really the king of tramps, I don't know. He has never
spoken to me about this. His voice is too far, too faint to hear.
Sometimes, I think I see him standing along a long-abandoned railroad
track in the Dakotas, a satchel slung over his shoulder. This apparition
has appeared to me late in the evening each fall, when long shadows cast
themselves across the prairie, a cool dampness invades my nostrils and
the silhouettes of mallards and wigeons wing across the sky, headed for
the roost.

On such nights, I imagine Tex is never in a hurry to catch the next
train. He takes a deep breath and listens for birds on the wing. He
lingers near the tracks and watches a hunter and dog tiredly retreat
from the fields with pheasants or a mallard in a game bag.

INITIAL MEETING
Ifirst met Tex in Fulda, Minn. In a stroke of historic pride, the Fulda
town fathers never tore down their quaint wood railroad station. Three
years ago, I drove into town and found an antiques store operating in
the old railroad depot. Stopping to stretch my legs, I was inexplicably
drawn into the depot.
The owner showed me around, pointing to various sporting antiques —
duck decoys, fishing lures — he thought I might be interested in. We
stepped outside into a bright October afternoon sun. He pointed to a
small square building.

"That's the old privy that has always stood next to the depot,'' he said
with admiration for its historic preservation. "You don't see those
anymore."
Some etching on the side of the outhouse caught my eye.
"Looks like someone liked it enough to carve their initials into it,'' I
said.
I looked closer. "Tex" and "K.T." came into view.
"Oh, that was left by some hobo back in the '30s,'' the store owner
said. "It seems he traveled a lot in Minnesota, leaving his initials on
depots all over."

"What does K.T. stand for?"
"King of the Tramps."
There was something idiosyncratic about Tex's calling card. Why put
quotation marks around them? And how, after all these years, had Tex's
legend filtered down to an antiques storeowner in Fulda? The storeowner
shrugged off my questions. "I don't know,'' he said simply.
Weeks passed. The bird-hunting season was nearing an end. A snowstorm
ripped across South Dakota, and once more the dog and I traveled west to
hunt pheasants.

We became lost in a cattail slough one afternoon, but shot a limit of
three roosters. We slept in a cheap motel, and in the middle of the
night, a distant train whistled through the storm.
I awoke and saw the dog standing at the door, ears cocked and eyes
staring intently as if someone had called her name. Firmly, I told her
to lie down. With a great sigh, she eased back onto the floor but still
stared at the door.

We finished the pheasant season in Minnesota, killing two roosters near
the end of the season on a public hunting area. Winter was settling on
the prairie. Returning home, we both knew the season had been a success
— sharptails in North Dakota, pheasants in Minnesota and South Dakota
and ruffed grouse in northern Minnesota.

PHOTO OP
One evening, with the dog curled up at my feet and snow drifting past my
office window, I thumbed through pictures from that hunting season. I
paused at a snapshot of Finn in North Dakota. I had posed her next to an
abandoned building, hoping for a snapshot for the scrapbook.
Suddenly, a detail in the photo caused a chill to run up my spine.

The dog stood against the building in bright sunlight. It had been a
brisk morning of sharptail hunting, and the dog, after seeing the
rough-hewn building in the distance, ran to it as if possessed. I picked
the sunny spot to take her picture, framed by big bluestem grasses and
the stout logs that had been chiseled into square beams and set to
create walls.
I stared at the picture.
Behind the dog's head were the unmistakable letters "Tex" and "K.T."
I studied the carved letters and replayed the trip like a newsreel in my
head.

The picture had been taken in central North Dakota, nearly the center of
a square mile of empty grasslands. I remembered it was the only building
I saw that day. The picture had been taken four weeks before I stopped
in Fulda and learned who Tex was.
In six consecutive frames, Tex's initials glowed like a beacon over the
dog's right shoulder, almost as if Tex's signature indicated ownership
over the dog. I looked closer. In the photos, the dog almost seemed to
be smiling.

An amazing coincidence, I thought. The string of events had drawn the
three of us — Tex, the dog and me — together for some purpose. The
odds of "Tex" appearing so brazenly was more than coincidence, I
decided.
Looking at the photos, it creeped me out.
But for the rest of the winter, his initials loomed large in my
imagination. A search of the Internet didn't turn up any information on
Tex. I tried to recall the ancient log building where I had found his
initials in North Dakota. Had railroad tracks once passed there and Tex
had sought refuge near the building, just as Finn had been so drawn to
it? Or had the building been moved to the field from a nearby small town
where Tex passed through?

The answers are elusive. So is Tex. A dead hobo haunts my hunting trips.
The ghost has a fondness for a certain black Labrador who sleeps near me
every night. He leaves his initials where I can find them, the sly
vandal.
So, when Finn and I prowl the prairies this fall, I imagine Tex will be
along for the ride. Maybe someday he'll have something to say.

For now, I'll look for him in the long shadows of October, a tramp like
myself hoping to get out of the cold.

Chris Niskanen can be reached at cniskanen@pioneerpress.com or
651-228-5524.