The Road | Page 7

was I being
trapped into going east. It was a trap, and I hadn't the heart to tell her
that it was all a miserable lie. And while I made believe that I was
delighted, I was busy cudgelling my brains for some way to escape. But
there was no way. She would see me into the mail-car -- she said so
herself -- and then that mail-clerk relative of hers would carry me to
Ogden. And then I would have to beat my way back over all those
hundreds of miles of desert.
But luck was with me that night. Just about the time she was getting
ready to put on her bonnet and accompany me, she discovered that she
had made a mistake. Her mail-clerk relative was not scheduled to come
through that night. His run had been changed. He would not come
through until two nights after-ward. I was saved, for of course my
boundless youth would never permit me to wait those two days. I
optimistically assured her that I'd get to Salt Lake City quicker if I
started immediately, and I departed with her blessings and best wishes
ringing in my ears.
But those woollen socks were great. I know. I wore a pair of them that
night on the blind baggage of the overland, and that overland went
west.
* * *
Holding Her Down
* * *
Barring accidents, a good hobo, with youth and agility, can hold a train
down despite all the efforts of the train-crew to "ditch" him -- given, of
course, night-time as an essential condition. When such a hobo, under

such conditions, makes up his mind that he is going to hold her down,
either he does hold her down, or chance trips him up. There is no
legitimate way, short of murder, whereby the train-crew can ditch him.
That train-crews have not stopped short of murder is a current belief in
the tramp world. Not having had that particular experience in my tramp
days I cannot vouch for it personally.
But this I have heard of the "bad" roads. When a tramp has "gone
underneath," on the rods, and the train is in motion, there is apparently
no way of dislodging him until the train stops. The tramp, snugly
ensconced inside the truck, with the four wheels and all the framework
around him, has the "cinch" on the crew -- or so he thinks, until some
day he rides the rods on a bad road. A bad road is usually one on which
a short time previously one or several trainmen have been killed by
tramps. Heaven pity the tramp who is caught "underneath" on such a
road -- for caught he is, though the train be going sixty miles an hour.
The "shack" (brakeman) takes a coupling-pin and a length of bell-cord
to the platform in front of the truck in which the tramp is riding. The
shack fastens the coupling-pin to the bell-cord, drops the former down
between the platforms, and pays out the latter. The coupling-pin strikes
the ties between the rails, rebounds against the bottom of the car, and
again strikes the ties. The shack plays it back and forth, now to this side,
now to the other, lets it out a bit and hauls it in a bit, giving his weapon
opportunity for every variety of impact and rebound. Every blow of
that flying coupling-pin is freighted with death, and at sixty miles an
hour it beats a veritable tattoo of death. The next day the remains of
that tramp are gathered up along the right of way, and a line in the local
paper mentions the unknown man, undoubtedly a tramp, assumably
drunk, who had probably fallen asleep on the track.
As a characteristic illustration of how a capable hobo can hold her
down, I am minded to give the following experience. I was in Ottawa,
bound west over the Canadian Pacific. Three thousand miles of that
road stretched before me; it was the fall of the year, and I had to cross
Manitoba and the Rocky Mountains. I could expect "crimpy" weather,
and every moment of delay increased the frigid hardships of the

journey. Furthermore, I was disgusted. The distance between Montreal
and Ottawa is one hundred and twenty miles. I ought to know, for I had
just come over it and it had taken me six days. By mistake I had missed
the main line and come over a small "jerk" with only two locals a day
on it. And during these six days I had lived on dry crusts, and not
enough of them, begged from the French peasants.
Furthermore, my disgust had been heightened by the one day I had
spent in Ottawa trying to get an outfit of