Copyright

Copyright © 2005 by Jeanette Ingold
Reader’s guide copyright © 2006 by Harcourt, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to [email protected] or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Ingold, Jeanette.
Hitch/Jeanette Ingold.
p. cm.
Summary: To help his family during the Depression and avoid becoming a drunk like his father, Moss Trawnley jobs the Civilian Conservation Corps, helps build a new camp near Monroe, Montana, and leads the other men in making the camp a success.
1. Civilian Conservation Corps (U.S.)—Juvenile fiction.
[1. Civilian Conservation Corps (U.S.)—Fiction. 2. Conservation of natural resources—Fiction. 3. Leadership—Fiction. 4. Depressions—1929—Fiction. 5. Montana—History—20th century—Fiction. 6. United States—History—1933–1945—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.1533Hi 2005
[Fic]—dc22 2004019447

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of the characters
to actual people, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

ISBN: 978-0-15-204747-4 hardcover
ISBN: 978-0-15-205619-3 paperback

eISBN 978-0-547-74596-1
v2.0117

Dedication

For Troy and John

Author’s Note

Although the events and characters in this book are fictional, they tell a story that was lived by many during the Great Depression. There was no Cold Day Camp or Civilian Conservation Corps Company 597 in Montana, but real CCC camps—4,500 of them, spread nationwide—provided homes, jobs, and training to three million enrollees, most of them like Moss and his buddies. These young men gave us replanted forests, restored rangeland and farmland, wildlife refuges, parks, monuments, and scenic lookouts. They faced tough times head-on and made something good of them.

Part I

Chapter 1

I woke up shivering in the boxcar where I’d spent the night. Late October might be the tail end of summer in Texas, but it wasn’t up here, wherever here was.

I coughed and ran my tongue over the grit clinging to my teeth. My body jangled with the vibration coming up from the train wheels.

Sharp lines of sunlight edged the wide, almost closed doors of the car and lay in stripes across the forms of men sprawled around me. We must have passed out of the dust storm, I thought, remembering the day before, when the train rushing north across farmland had entered a blackness of blowing dirt unlike anything I had ever seen.

First I’d wondered if the huge cloud moving toward us, too dark brown for rain, might be smoke. Then somebody called it for what it was, just before we got swallowed up in a violent torrent of sandpapering earth.

I’d fallen asleep to the howl of it.