vestibule of the Wildcat's car he encountered a locked door.
Inside the car, on a seat beside the rag-head Hindoo, the Wildcat
curled himself up as a preface to twelve long chapters of easy sleep.

"Sho's noble when de train stops; boy can sleep peaceful 'thout gittin'
his insides scrambled."

"Bam!"

The fat bad actor shot the lock off the door of the Wildcat's car.

"Boy sure can sleep noble. Good mawnin--"

The rest of the sentence was action and not words. On the echo of the
shot from the fat bad actor's gun the Wildcat leaped automatically. He
ran fast enough to sidestep two more shots that crashed into the night
after him. The Hindoo passed him in the darkness.

Down along the track the Wildcat's feet tore up great gobs of
right-of-way. He passed the flagman, going like a brunet typhoon ten
days overdue. After the first mile he began putting his feet down a
little slower before he stepped on them. At the second mile his hind
legs were dragging, and then suddenly, instead of the hard ground
beneath his feet, there was nothing but a black void.

He rolled a few times like a 'possum falling off a limb. He landed on
the hard sand of the river bank. Night had fallen.

"Lady Luck, here us is. Whah at is we?"

The Wildcat curled up and went to sleep.

He woke up five minutes later. "Sho' is peaceful. How come I's so
thirsty?"

Beside him the river offered him a solution to his thirst problems. On
all fours he crawled to the river edge. He shoved his bow under the
water and nearly sank himself absorbing as much of the Columbia river
as could flow into his wide mouth.

"Whuff! Sho' is noble water."

The black rippling water before him was suddenly shot with silver. Then
it became a solid glistening black. A school of smelt, seeking the
quiet water of the bank, fought their way upstream. The Wildcat reached
a tentative exploring paw into the stream of fish.

"Fish, howdy. De table sho' is set. Come out heah."

With his bare hands he snatched ashore a breakfast four sizes too big
for his optimistic estimate of his stomach's capacity.

"Quit floppin'. Ole Wilecat's done caught you." He felt for the box of
Pullman matches in the pocket of his shirt, beneath the folds of the
parade-leading Prince Albert. Here was food and a chance to sleep. With
the Wildcat, all was well.

He accumulated a pile of firewood from the river bank, and presently a
great fire was blazing. For an hour he gorged himself on smelt.