sas Shorty
laughingly replied: "Never fret, Nevada Bill, I have trained many a road
kid into good plingers." Nevada Bill then told him where a gang of
plingers had their headquarters, and as Kansas Shorty seemed to be
acquainted with most of them whose monickers Nevada Bill repeated to
him, he decided to pay this gang a visit.

They wended their way through Denver's lowest slums and finally arrived
at the headquarters of this gang of professional tramp beggars, who
always prefer cities in which to ply their trade, and only strike out to
visit smaller places and the country at large--and then only in separate
pairs--when too many of them drifted into the same city, so as to make
combing the public for money an unprofitable business, or when the
police made a general raid upon vagrants of their class.

This last reason was hardly to be feared, for as in this gang's case,
they invariably have their headquarters in the building above a slum
saloon, whose proprietor would and could not be in business very long
unless he knew how to protect his lodgers against police interference,
as a gang's quarters needed to be raided only one time, and ever after
all plingers in the land would give this unsafe "dump," as tramps call
this class of hangout, a wide berth, as this raid sufficiently proved to
them that this slum saloon was not properly "protected."

Up the well-worn stairway they climbed and when they reached the second
floor of the building Kansas Shorty knocked on a door, which was only
opened to them after he had given an account of his identity, and when
they entered the room, that by another open door was connected with an
adjoining second one, Jim, to his complete surprise found himself in the
company of eight grown, burly hoboes of the roughest imaginable type and
almost a school class of road kids.

Kansas Shorty was most cordially welcomed by the men occupying the
rooms, who insisted that he and his road kid should make their home with
them during their stay in Denver, which offer he gladly accepted. Then
he introduced Jim as "Dakota Jim" to the others and made the lad shake
hands with each and everyone of the ragged, filthy and foul-visaged
fellows, who, as Kansas Shorty had told Jim upon the street before he
had found their hiding place, were "proper" tramps and explained to him
that this meant that all of them were recognized amongst their own kind
as worthy members of the fraternity.

After he had shaken hand