Jack London Bookstore

N the course of my tramping I encountered hundreds of hoboes whom I hailed or who hailed me, and with whom I waited at water-tanks and beat trains, and who passed and were seen never again. On the other hand, there were hoboes who passed and repassed with amazing frequency, and others, still, who passed like ghosts, close at hand, unseen, and never seen.
     It was one of the latter that I chased clear across Canada, and never once did I lay eyes on him. His monica was "Skysail Jack." I first ran into it at Montreal. Carved with a jack-knife was the skysail-yard of a ship. It was perfectly executed. Under it was "Skysail Jack." Above was "B.W.10-15-94." This latter conveyed the information that he had passed through Montreal, bound west, on October 15, 1894. He had one day the start of me. "Sailor Jack" was my monica at that particular time, and promptly I carved it alongside of his, with the date and the information that I, too, was bound west.
     I had misfortune in getting over the next hundred miles, and eight days later I picked up Skysail Jack's trail three hundred miles west of Ottawa. There it was, carved on a water-tank, and by the date I saw that he had also met with delay. He was only two days ahead of me. I was a "comet" and a "tramp-royal"; so was Skysail Jack; and my pride and reputation put it up to me to catch up with him. I "railroaded" day and night, and I passed him; then turn about he passed me. Sometimes he was a day or so ahead, and sometimes I was. From hoboes bound east I got word of him occasionally, when he happened to be ahead; and from them I learned that he had become interested in Sailor Jack and was making inquiries about me.
     We'd have made a precious pair, I am sure, if we'd ever got together; but get together we couldn't. I kept ahead of him clear across Manitoba, but he led the way across Alberta, and early one bitter gray morning, at the end of a division just east of Kicking Horse Pass, I learned that he had been seen the night before between Kicking Horse Pass and Rogers Pass. It was rather curious the way the information came to me. I had been riding all night in a "side-door Pullman," and nearly dead with cold I crawled out at the division to beg for food. A freezing fog was drifting past, and I "hit" some firemen I found in the roundhouse. They fixed me up with the leavings from their lunch-pails, and in addition I got from them nearly a quart of heavenly "Java" (coffee). As I sat down to eat, a freight pulled in from the west. I saw a side door open and a road-kid (a boy-hobo) climb out. Through the drifting fog he limped over to me. I shared my Java and grub with him, learned about Skysail Jack, and then learned about him. Behold, he was from my own town, Oakland, California, and he was a member of the celebrated Boo Gang—a gang with which I had affiliated at rare intervals. We talked fast and bolted the grub in the half-hour that followed. Then my freight pulled out, and I was on it, bound west on the trail of Skysail Jack.
     I was delayed between the passes, went two days without food and walked eleven miles on the third day before I got any, and yet I succeeded in passing Skysail Jack along the Fraser River in British Columbia. I was riding "passengers" then and making time; but he must have been riding passengers, too, and with more luck or skill than I, for he got into Mission ahead of me.
     Now Mission was a junction, forty miles east of Vancouver. From the junction one could proceed south through Washington and Oregon over the Northern Pacific. I wondered which way Skysail Jack would go, for I thought I was ahead of him. As for myself, I was still bound west to Vancouver. I proceeded to the water-tank to leave that information, and there, freshly carved, with that day's date upon it, was Skysail Jack's monica. I hurried on into Vancouver. But he was gone. He had taken ship immediately and was still flying west on his world-adventure. A week later I, too, got my ship, and on board the steamship Umatilla, in the forecastle, was working my way down the coast to San Francisco. Skysail Jack and Sailor Jack—gee! If we'd ever got together!
     Water-tanks are tramp directories. Not all in idle wantonness do tramps carve their monicas, dates, and courses. Often and often have I met hoboes earnestly inquiring if I had seen anywhere such and such a hobo or his monica. And more than once I have been able to give the monica of recent date, the water-tank, and the direction in which he was then bound. And promptly the hobo to whom I gave the information lit out after his pal. I have met hoboes who, in trying ot catch a pal, had pursued clear across the continent and back again, and were still going.
     "Monicas" are the "noms de rail" that hoboes assume or accept when thrust upon them by their fellows. Leary Joe, for instance, was timid, and was so named by his fellows. Very few tramps care to remember their pasts during which they ignobly worked, so monicas based upon trades are very rare, though I remember having met the following: Molder Blacky, Painter Red, Chi Plumber, Boilermaker, Sailor Boy, and Printer Bo. "Chi" (pronounced "shy"), by the way, is the argot for Chicago.
     A favorite device of hoboes is to base their monicas on the localities from which they hail, as: New York Tommy, Pacific Slim, Buffalo Smithy, Canton Tim, Pittsburg Jack, Syracuse Shine, Troy Micky, K. C. Bill, and Connecticut Jimmy. Then there was "Slim Jim from Vinegar Hill, who never worked and never will." A "shine" is always a negro, so called, possibly, from the high lights on his countenance. Texas Shine or Toledo Shine conveys both race and nativity.
     Among those that incorporated their race, I recollect the following: 'Frisco Sheeny, New York Irish, Michigan French, English Jack, Cockney Kid, and Milwaukee Dutch. Others seem to take their monicas in part from the color-schemes stamped upon them at birth, such as: Chi Whitey, New Jersey Red, Boston Blacky, Seattle Browny, Yellow Dick, and Yellow Belly—the last a Creole from Mississippi, who, I suspect, had his monica thrust upon him.
     Texas Royal, Happy Joe, Bust Connors, Burly Bo, Tornado Blacky, and Touch McCall used more imagination in rechristening themselves. Others, with less fancy, carry the names of their physical peculiarities, such as: Vancouver Slim, Detroit Shorty, Ohio Fatty, Long Jack, Big Jim, Little Joe, New York Blink, Chi Nosey, and Broken-backed Ben.
     By themselves come the road-kids, sporting an infinite variety of monicas. For example, the following, whom here and there I have encountered: Buck Kid, Blind Kid, Midget Kid, Holy Kid, Bat Kid, Swift Kid, Cooky Kid, Monkey Kid, Iowa Kid, Corduroy Kid, Orator Kid (who could tell how it happened), and Lippy Kid (who was insolent, depend upon it).
     On the water-tank at San Marcial, New Mexico, a dozen years ago, was the following hobo bill of fare:

     Main-drag fair.
     Bulls not hostile
     Roundhouse good for kipping.
     North-bound trains no good.
     Privates no good.
     Restaurants good for cooks only.
     Railroad House good for night-work only.

     Number one conveys the information that begging for money on the main street is fair; number two, that the police will not bother hoboes; number three, that one can sleep in the roundhouse. Number four, however, is ambiguous. The north-bound trains may be no good to beat, and they may be no good to beg. Number five means that the residences are not good to beggars, and number six means that only hoboes that have been cooks can get grub from the restaurants. Number seven bothers me. I cannot make out whether the Railroad House is a good place for any hobo to beg at night, or whether it is good only for hobo-cooks to beg at night, or whether any hobo, cook or non-cook, can lend a hand at night, helping the cooks of the Railroad House with their dirty work and getting something to eat in payment.
     But to return to the hoboes that pass in the night. I remember one I met in California. He was a Swede, but he had lived so long in the United States that one couldn't guess his nationality. He had to tell it on himself. In fact, he had come to the United States when no more than a baby. I ran into him first in the mountain town of Truckee. "Which way, Bo?" was our greeting; and " Bound east" was the answer each of us gave. Quite a bunch of tramps tried to ride out the overland that night, and I lost the Swede in the shuffle. Also, I lost the overland.
     I arrived in Reno, Nevada, in a box-car that was promptly side-tracked. It was Sunday morning, and after I had thrown my feet for breakfast, I wandered over to the Piute camp to watch the Indians gambling. And there stood the Swede, hugely interested. Of course we got together. He was the only acquaintance I had in that region, and I was his only acquaintance. We rushed together like a couple of dissatisfied hermits, and together we spent the day, threw our feet for dinner, and late in the afternoon tried to "nail" the same freight. But he was ditched, and I rode her out alone, to be ditched myself in the desert twenty miles beyond.
     Of all desolate places, the one at which I was ditched was the limit. It was called a flag-station, and it consisted of a shanty dumped inconsequentially into the sand and sage-brush. A chill wind was blowing, night was coming on, and the solitary telegraph operator who lived in the shanty was afraid of me. I knew that neither grub nor bed could I get from him. It was because of his manifest fear of me that I did not believe him when he told me that east-bound trains never stopped there. Besides, hadn't I been thrown off an east-bound train right at that very spot not five minutes before? He assured me that it had stopped under orders. He advised me that it was only a dozen or fifteen miles on to Wadsworth and that I'd better hike. I elected to wait, however, and I had the pleasure of seeing two west-bound freights go by without stopping, and one east-bound freight. I wondered if the Swede was on the latter. It was up to me to hit the ties to Wadsworth, and hit them I did, much to the telegraph operator's relief, for I neglected to burn his shanty and murder him. Telegraph operators have much to be thankful for. At the end of half a dozen miles, I had to get off the ties and let the east-bound overland go by. She was going fast, but I caught sight of a dim form on the first blind that looked like the Swede.
     That was the last I saw of him for weary days. I hit the high places across those hundreds of miles of Nevada desert, riding the overlands at night, for speed, and in the daytime riding in box-cars and getting my sleep. It was early in the year, and it was cold in those upland pastures. Snow lay here and there on the level, all the mountains were shrouded in white, and at night the most miserable wind imaginable blew off them. It was not a land in which to linger. And remember, gentle reader, the hobo goes through such a land, without shelter, without money, begging his way and sleeping at night without blankets. This last is something that can be realized only by experience.
     In the early evening I came down to the station at Ogden. The overland of the Union Pacific was pulling east, and I was bent on making connections. Out in the tangle of tracks ahead of the engine I encountered a figure slouching through the gloom. It was the Swede. We shook hands like long-lost brothers, and discovered that our hands were gloved. "Where d'ye glahm 'em?" I asked. "Out of an engine cab," he answered; "and where did you?" "They belonged to a fireman," said I; "he was careless."
     We caught the blind as the overland pulled out, and mighty cold we found it. The way led up a narrow gorge between snow-covered mountains, and we shivered and shook and exchanged confidences about how we had covered the ground between Reno and Ogden. I had closed my eyes for only an hour or so the previous night, and the blind was not comfortable enough to suit me for a snooze. At a stop, I went forward to the engine. We had on a "double-header" (two engines) to take us over the grade.
     The pilot of the head engine, because it "punched the wind," I knew would be too cold; so I selected the pilot of the second engine, which was partly sheltered by the first. I stepped on the pilot and found it occupied. In the darkness I felt out the form of a young boy. He was sound asleep. By squeezing, there was room for two, and I made the boy move over and crawled up beside him. It was a "good" night, the "shacks" (brakemen) didn't bother us, and in no time we were asleep. Once in a while hot cinders or heavy jolts arouse me when I snuggled closer to the boy and dozed off to the coughing of the engines and the screeching of the wheels.
     The overland made Evanston, Wyoming, and went no farther. A wreck ahead blocked the line. The dead engineer had been brought in, and his body attested the peril of the way. A tramp, also, had been killed, but his body had not been brought in. I talked with the boy. He was thirteen years old. He had run away from his folks in some place in Oregon, and was heading east to his grandmother. He had a tail of cruel treatment in the home he had left that rang true; besides, there was no need for him to lie to me, a nameless hobo on the track. And that boy was in a hurry, too. He couldn't cover the ground fast enough. When the division superintendents decided to send the overland back over the way it had come, then up on a cross "jerk" to the Oregon Short Line, and back along that road to tap the Union Pacific the other side of the wreck, that boy climbed upon the pilot and said he was going to stay with it. This was too much for the Swede and me. It meant traveling the rest of that frigid night in order to gain but a dozen miles or so. We said we'd wait till the wreck was cleared away, and in the meantime get a good sleep.
     Now it is no snap to strike a strange town, broke, at midnight, in cold weather, and find a place to sleep. The Swede hadn't a penny. My total assets consisted of two dimes and a nickel. From some of the town boys we learned that beer was five cents, and that the saloons kept open all night. There was our chance. Two glasses of beer would cost ten cents, there would be a stove and chairs, and we could sleep till morning. We headed for the lights of a saloon, walking briskly, the snow crunching under our feet, a chill little wind blowing through us.
     Alas! I had misunderstood the town boys. Beer was five cents in only one saloon in the whole burg, and we didn't strike that saloon. But the one we entered was all right. A blessed stove was roaring white hot, and there were cozy, cane-bottomed armchairs; but a none too pleasant looking barkeeper glared suspiciously at us as we came in. A man cannot spend continuous days and nights in his clothes, beating trains, fighting soot and cinders, and sleeping anywhere, and maintain a good "front." Our fronts were decidedly against us; but what did we care? I had money.
     "Two beers," said I nonchalantly to the barkeeper, and while he drew them the Swede and I leaned against the bar and yearned secretly for the armchairs by the stove.
     The barkeeper set the two foaming glasses before us, and with pride I deposited the ten cents. Now I was dead game. As soon as I learned my error in the price I'd have dug up another ten cents. Never mind if it did leave me only a nickel to my name, a stranger in a strange land. I'd have paid it all right. But the barkeeper never game me a chance. As soon as his eyes spotted the dime I had laid down, he seized the two glasses and dumped the beer into the sink behind the bar. At the same time, glaring at us malevolently, he said:
     "You've got scabs on your nose. See!"
     I hadn't either, and neither had the Swede. Our noses were all right. The direct bearing of his words was beyond our comprehension, but the indirect bearing was clear as print: hd didn't like our looks, and beer was ten cents a glass.
     I dug down and laid another dime on the bar, remarking carelessly, "Oh, I thought this was a five-cent joint."
     "Your money's no good here," he answered, shoving the two dimes across the bar to me.
     Sadly, I dropped them back into my pocket, sadly we yearned toward the blessed stove and the armchairs, and sadly we went out into the frosty night. I have seen much of the world since then, have journeyed among strange lands and peoples, opened many books, sat in may lecture-halls; but to this day, though I have pondered long and deeply, I have never been unable to divine the meaning in the cryptic utterance of the barkeeper in Evanston, Wyoming. Our noses were all right.
     We slept that night over the boilers in an electric lighting-plant. How we discovered that kipping-place I can't remember. We must have just headed for it instinctively, as horses head for water or carrier-pigeons head for the home-cote. But it was a night not pleasant to remember. A dozen hoboes were ahead of us on top of the boilers, and it was too hot for all of us. To complete our misery, the engineer would not let us stand around down below. He gave us our choice of the boilers or the snow outside.
     "You said you wanted to sleep, and so sleep," said he to me, when, frantic and beaten out by the heat, I came down into the fire-room.
     "Water," I gasped, wiping the sweat from my eyes, "water!"
     He pointed out-of-doors and assured me that down there somewhere in the blackness I'd find the river. I started for the river, got lost in the dark, fell into two or three drifts, gave it up and returned half frozen to the top of the boilers. When I had thawed out I was thirstier than ever. Around me the hoboes were moaning, groaning, sobbing, sighing, gasping, panting, rolling and tossing and floundering heavily in their torment. We were so many lost souls toasting on a griddle in hell, and the engineer, Satan incarnate, gave us the sole alternative of freezing in the outer cold. The Swede sat up and anathematized passionately the Wanderlust that had sent him tramping and suffering hardships such as that.
     "When I get back to Chicago," he finished, "I'm going to get a job and stick to it."
     And, such is the irony of fate, next day, when the wreck ahead was cleared, the Swede and I pulled out of Evanston in the ice-boxes of an "orange special," a fast freight laden with fruit from sunny California. Of course the ice-boxes were empty on account of the cold weather, but that didn't make them any warmer for us. We entered them through hatchways in the top of the car. The boxes were constructed of galvanized iron, and in that biting weather were not pleasant to the touch. We lay there, and with chattering teeth held a council wherein we decided that we'd stay by the ice-boxes day and night till we got out of the inhospitable plateau region and down into the Mississippi Valley.
     But we must eat, and we decided that at the next division we would throw our feet for grub and make a rush back to our ice-boxes. We arrived in the town of Green River late in the afternoon but too early for supper. Before meal-time is the worst time for "battering" back doors, but we put on our nerve, swung off the side ladders as the freight pulled into the yards, and made a run for the houses. We were quickly separated; but we had agreed to meet in the ice-boxes. I had bad luck at first, but in the end, with a couple of "hand-outs" poked into my shirt, I chased for the train. It was pulling out and going fast. The particular refrigerator-car in which we were to meet had already gone by, and half a dozen cars down the train from it I swung onto the side ladders, went up on top hurriedly, and dropped down into an ice-box. But a shack had seen me from the caboose, and at the next stop a few miles farther on, Rock Springs, he stuck his head into my box and said: "Hit the grit, you son of a toad! Hit the grit!" Also, he grabbed me by the heels and dragged me out. I hit the grit all right, and the orange special and the Swede rolled on without me.
     Snow was beginning to fall. A cold night was coming on. After dark I hunted around in the railroad yards until I found an empty refrigerator-car. In I climbed, not into the ice-boxes, but into the car itself. I swung the heavy doors shut, and their edges, covered with strips of rubber, sealed the car air-tight. The sides were thick. There was no way for the outside cold to get in. But inside was just as cold as the outside. How to raise the temperature was the problem. But trust a "profesh" for that. Out of my pockets I dug up three or four newspapers. These I burned, one at a time, on the floor of the car. The smoke rose to the top. Not a bit of the heat could escape, and, comfortable and warm, I passed a beautiful night. I didn't wake up once.
     In the morning it was still snowing. While throwing my feet for breakfast I missed an east-bound freight. Later in the day I nailed two other freights and was ditched from both of them. All afternoon no east-bound trains went by. The snow was falling thicker than ever, but at twilight I rode out on the first blind of the overland. As I swung aboard from one side, somebody swung aboard from the other. It was the boy who had run away from Oregon.      "Say," I said to the fireman, at my first breathing spell, "there's a little kid back there on the first blind. He's pretty cold."
     The cabs on the Union Pacific engines are quite spacious, and we fitted the kid into a warm nook in front of the high seat of the fireman, where he promptly fell asleep. We arrived at Rawlins at midnight. The snow was thicker than ever. Here the engine was to go into the roundhouse, being replaced by a fresh engine. As the train came to a stop, I dropped off the engine steps plump into the arms of a large man in a large overcoat. He began asking me questions, and I promptly demanded who he was. Just as promptly he informed me that he was the sheriff. I drew in my horns and listened and answered.
     He began describing the kid who was still asleep in the cab. I did some quick thinking. Evidently the family was on the trail of the kid, and the sheriff had received telegraphic instructions from Oregon. Yes, I had seen the kid. I had met him first in Ogden. The date tallied with the sheriff's information. But the kid was still behind somewhere, I explained, for he had been ditched from that very overland that night when it pulled out of Rock Springs. And all the time I was praying that the kid wouldn't wake up, come down out of the cab, and put the kibosh on me.
     The sheriff left me in order to interview the shacks, but before he left he said:
     "Bo, this town is no place for you. Understand? You ride this train out, and make no mistake about it. If I catch you after it's gone—"
     I assured him that it was not through desire that I was in his town; that the only reason I was there was that the train had stopped there; and that he wouldn't see me for smoke the way I'd get ou tof his darn town.
     When he went to interview the shacks, I jumped back into the cab. The kid was awake and rubbing his eyes. I told him the news and advised him to ride the engine into the roundhouse. But he made the same overland out, riding the pilot with instructions to make an appeal to the fireman at the first stop for permission to ride in the engine. As for myself, I got ditched. The new fireman was young and not yet lax enough to break the rules of the company against having tramps in the engine; so he turned down my offer to shovel coal. I hope the kid succeeded with him, for all night on the pilot in that blizzard would have meant death.      Without a word he led me out into the snow. "There's an orange special down there in the yards," said he.
     "It's a mighty cold night," said I.
     "It pulls out in ten minutes," said he.
     That was all. There was no discussion. And when that orange special pulled out, I was in the ice-box. I thought my feet would freeze before morning, and the last twenty miles into Laramie I stood upright in the hatchway and danced up and down. The snow was too thick for the shacks to see me, and I didn't care if they did.
     My quarter of a dollar bought me a hot breakfast at Laramie, and immediately afterward I was on board the blind baggage of an overland that was climbing to the pass through the backbone of the Rockies. One does not ride blind baggages in the daytime; but in this blizzard at the top of the Rocky Mountains I doubted if the shacks would have the heart to put me off. And they didn't. They made a practice of coming forward at every stop to see if I was frozen yet.
     At Ames's Monument, at the summit of the Rockies, a shack came forward for the last time. "Say, Bo," he said. "You see that freight side-tracked over there to let us go by?"
     I saw. It was on the next track, six feet away. A few feet more in that storm and I could not have seen it.
     "Well, the after-push of Kelly's Army is in one of them cars. They've got two feet of straw under them, and there's so many of them that they keep the car warm."
     His advice was good, and I followed it, prepared, however, it it was a "con game" he had given me, to take the blind as the overland pulled out. But it was straight goods. I found the car, a big refrigerator-car with the leeward door wide open for ventilation, and climbed in. I stepped on a man's leg, next on some other man's arm. The light was dim, and all I could make out was arms and legs and bodies inextricably confused. Never was there such a tangle of humanity. They were all lying in the straw, and over, and under, and around one another. Eighty-four husky hoboes take up a lot of room when they are stretched out. The men I stepped on were resentful. Their bodies heaved under me like the waves of the sea, and imparted an involuntary forward movement to me. I could not find any straw to step on, so I stepped on more men. The resentment increased, so did my forward movement. I lost my footing and sat down with sharp abruptness. Unfortunately, it was on a man's head. The next moment he had risen on his hands and knees in wrath, and I was flying through the air. What goes up must come down, and I came down on another man's head.
     What happened after that is very vague in my memory. It was like going through a thrashing-machine. I was bandied about from one end of the car to the other. Those eighty-four hoboes winnowed me out till what little was left of me, by some miracle, found a bit of straw to rest upon. I was initiated, and into a jolly crowd. All the rest of that day we rode through the blizzard, and to while the time away it was decided each man was to tell a story. It was stipulated that each story must be a good one, and, furthermore it must be a story no one had ever heard before. The penalty for failure was the thrashing-machine. Nobody failed. And I want to say right here that never have I sat at so marvelous a story-telling debauch. Here were eighty-four men from all the world—I made eighty five; and each man told a masterpiece. It had to be so, for it was either a masterpiece or thrashing-machine.
     Late in the afternoon we arrived in Cheyenne. The blizzard was at its height, and though the last meal of all of us had been breakfast, no man cared to throw his feet for supper. All night we rolled on through the storm, and next day found us down on the sweet plains of Nebraska and still rolling. We were out of the storm and the mountains. The blessed sun was shining over a smiling land, and we had eaten nothing for twenty-four hours. We found out that the freight would arrive about noon at a town, if I remember right, was called Grand Island. We took up a collection and sent a telegram to the authorities of that town. The text of the message was that eighty-five healthy, hungry hoboes would arrive about noon and that it would be a good idea to have dinner ready for them. The authorities of Grand Island had two courses open to them: they could feed us or they could throw us in jail. In the latter event they'd have to feed us anyway, and they decided wisely that one meal would be the cheaper way.
     When the freight rolled into Grand Island at noon, we were sitting on the tops of the cars and dangling our legs in the sunshine. All the police in the burg were on the reception committee. They marched us in squads to the various hotels and restaurants, where dinners were spread for us. We hadn't been thirty-six hours without food, and we didn't have to be told what to do. After that we were marched back to the railroad station. The police had thoughtfully compelled the freight to wait for us. She pulled out slowly, and the eight-five of us, strung out along the track, swarmed up the side ladders. We "captured" the train.
     We had no supper the evening—at least the "push" didn't, but I did. Just at supper-time, as the freight was pulling out of a small town, a man climbed into the car where I was playing pedro with three others. The man's shirt was bulging suspiciously. In his hand he carried a battered quart-measure from which arose steam. I smelled Java. I turned my cards over to one of the hoboes who was looking on, and excused myself. Then, in the other end of the car, pursued by envious glances, I sat down with the man who had climbed aboard and shared his Java and the hand-outs that had bulged his shirt. It was the Swede.
     At about ten o'clock in the evening, we arrived at Omaha.
     "Let's shake the push," said the Swede to me.
     "Sure," said I.
     As the freight pulled into Omaha, we made ready to do so. But the people of Omaha were also ready. The Swede and I hung upon the side ladders, ready to drop off. But the freight did not stop. Furthermore, long rows of policemen, their brass buttons and stars glittering in the electric lights, were lined up on each side of the track. The Swede and I knew what would happen to us if we ever dropped off into their arms. We stuck by the side ladders, and the train rolled on across the Missouri River to Council Bluffs.
     General Kelly, with an army of two-thousand hoboes, lay in camp at Chautauqua Park, several miles away. The after-push we were with was General Kelly's rear guard, and, detraining at Council Bluffs, it started to march to camp. The night had turned cold, and heavy wind-squalls, accompanied with rain, were chilling and wetting us. Many police were guarding us and herding us to the camp. The Swede and I watched our chance and made a successful get-away. The rain began coming down in torrents, and in the darkness, unable to see our hands in front of our faces, like a pair of blind men we fumbled about for shelter. Our instinct served us, for in no time we stumbled upon a saloon—not a saloon that was open and doing business, not merely a saloon that was closed for the night, and not even a saloon with a permanent address, but a saloon propped up on big timbers, with rollers underneath, that was being moved from somewhere to somewhere. The doors were locked. A squall of wind and rain drove down upon us. We did not hesitate; smash went the door, and in we went.
     I have made some tough camps in my time, "carried the banner" in infernal metropolises, bedded in pools of water, slept in the snow under two blankets when the spirit thermometer registered seventy-four degrees below zero (which is a mere trifle of one hundred and six degrees of frost); but I want to say right here that never did I make a tougher camp, nor pass a more miserable night than that night I passed with the Swede in the itinerant saloon at Council Bluffs. In the first place, the building, perched up in the air as it was, had a multitude of openings in the floor through which the wind whistled. In the second place, the bar was empty; there was no bottled fire-water with which we could warm ourselves and forget our misery. We had no blankets, and in our wet clothes, wet to the skin, we tried to sleep. I rolled under the bar, and the Swede rolled under the table. The holes and crevices in the floor made sleep impossible, and at the end of half an hour I crawled up on top of the bar. A little later the Swede crawled up o top of his table. And there we shivered and prayed for daylight. I know, for one, that I shivered until I could shiver no more, till the shivering muscles exhausted themselves and merely ached horribly. The Swede moaned and groaned, and every little while, through chattering teeth, he muttered, "Never again, never again." He muttered this phrase repeatedly, ceaselessly, a thousand times; and when he dozed he went on muttering it.
     At the first gray of dawn we left our house of pain, and, outside, found ourselves in a mist, dense and chill. We stumbled on till we came to the railroad track. I was going back to Council Bluffs to throw my feet for breakfast; my companion was going on to Chicago. The moment for parting had come. Our palsied hands went out to each other. We were both shivering. When we tried to speak our teeth chattered us back into silence. We stood alone, shut off from the world; all that we could see was a short length of railroad track, both ends of which were lost in the driving mist. We stared dumbly at each other, our clasped hands shaking sympathetically. The Swede's face was blue with cold, and I know mine must have been.      Speech strove for utterance in the Swede's throat; then, faint and distant, in a thin whisper from the very bottom of his frozen soul, came the words,
     "Never again a hobo."
     He paused; then, as he went on again, his voice gathering strength and huskiness as it affirmed his will. "Never again a hobo. I'm going to get a job. You'd better do the same. Nights like this make rheumatism."
     He wrung my hand. "Good-by, Bo," said he.
     "Good-by, Bo," said I.
     The next moment we were swallowed up from each other by the mist. It was our final passing. But here's to you, Mr. Swede, wherever you are. I hope you got that job.

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