I stepped on the cowcatcher and
found the pilot occupied. In the darkness I felt out the form of a
young boy. He was sound asleep. By squeezing, there was room for two
on the pilot, and I made the boy budge over and crawled up beside him.
It was a "good" night; the "shacks" (brakemen) didn't bother us, and
in no time we were asleep. Once in a while hot cinders or heavy jolts
aroused me, when I snuggled closer to the boy and dozed off to the
coughing of the engines and the screeching of the wheels.

The overland made Evanston, Wyoming, and went no farther. A wreck
ahead blocked the line. The dead engineer had been brought in, and his
body attested the peril of the way. A tramp, also, had been killed,
but his body had not been brought in. I talked with the boy. He was
thirteen years old. He had run away from his folks in some place in
Oregon, and was heading east to his grandmother. He had a tale of
cruel treatment in the home he had left that rang true; besides, there
was no need for him to lie to me, a nameless hobo on the track.

And that boy was going some, too. He couldn't cover the ground fast
enough. When the division superintendents decided to send the overland
back over the way it had come, then up on a cross "jerk" to the Oregon
Short Line, and back along that road to tap the Union Pacific the
other side of the wreck, that boy climbed upon the pilot and said he
was going to stay with it. This was too much for the Swede and me. It
meant travelling the rest of that frigid night in order to gain no
more than a dozen miles or so. We said we'd wait till the wreck was
cleared away, and in the meantime get a good sleep.

Now it is no snap to strike a strange town, broke, at midnight, in
cold weather, and find a place to sleep. The Swede hadn't a penny. My
total assets consisted of two dimes and a nickel. From some of the
town boys we learned that beer was five cents, and that the saloons
kept open all night. There was our meat. Two glasses of beer would
cost ten cents, there would be a stove and chairs, and we could sleep
it out till morning. We headed for the lights of a saloon, walking
briskly, the snow crunching under our feet, a chill little wind
blowing through us.

Alas, I had misunderstood the town boys. Beer was five cents in one
saloon only in the whole burg, and we didn't strike that saloon. But
the one we entered was all right. A blessed stove was roaring
white-hot; there were cosey, cane-bottomed arm-c