ed with him, for all night
on the pilot in that blizzard would have meant death.

Strange to say, I do not at this late day remember a detail of how I
was ditched at Rawlins. I remember watching the train as it was
immediately swallowed up in the snow-storm, and of heading for a
saloon to warm up. Here was light and warmth. Everything was in full
blast and wide open. Faro, roulette, craps, and poker tables were
running, and some mad cow-punchers were making the night merry. I had
just succeeded in fraternizing with them and was downing my first
drink at their expense, when a heavy hand descended on my shoulder. I
looked around and sighed. It was the sheriff.

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 damn 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-boxes. 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' Monument, at the summit of the Rockies,--I forget the
altitude,--the 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, if it was a
"con game" the shack 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. Up I
climbed and in. I stepped on a man's leg, next on some