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 at 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 "stiffs" 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 a Sunday morning, and after I threw 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 sagebrush. 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 out of 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 of an east-bound
train right at that very spot not five minutes before? He assured me
that it had stopped under orders, and that a year might go by before
another was stopped under orders. He advised me that it was only a
dozen or fifteen miles on to Wadsworth and that I'd