We were
quickly separated; but we had agreed to meet in the ice-boxes. I had
bad luck at first; but in the end, with a couple of "hand-outs" poked
into my shirt, I chased for the train. It was pulling out and going
fast. The particular refrigerator-car in which we were to meet had
already gone by, and half a dozen cars down the train from it I swung
on to the side-ladders, went up on top hurriedly, and dropped down
into an ice-box.

But a shack had seen me from the caboose, and at the next stop a few
miles farther on, Rock Springs, the shack stuck his head into my box
and said: "Hit the grit, you son of a toad! Hit the grit!" Also he
grabbed me by the heels and dragged me out. I hit the grit all right,
and the orange special and the Swede rolled on without me.

Snow was beginning to fall. A cold night was coming on. After dark I
hunted around in the railroad yards until I found an empty
refrigerator car. In I climbed--not into the ice-boxes, but into the
car itself. I swung the heavy doors shut, and their edges, covered
with strips of rubber, sealed the car air-tight. The walls were thick.
There was no way for the outside cold to get in. But the inside was
just as cold as the outside. How to raise the temperature was the
problem. But trust a "profesh" for that. Out of my pockets I dug up
three or four newspapers. These I burned, one at a time, on the floor
of the car. The smoke rose to the top. Not a bit of the heat could
escape, and, comfortable and warm, I passed a beautiful night. I
didn't wake up once.

In the morning it was still snowing. While throwing my feet for
breakfast, I missed an east-bound freight. Later in the day I nailed
two other freights and was ditched from both of them. All afternoon no
east-bound trains went by. The snow was falling thicker than ever, but
at twilight I rode out on the first blind of the overland. As I swung
aboard the blind from one side, somebody swung aboard from the other.
It was the boy who had run away from Oregon.

Now the first blind of a fast train in a driving snow-storm is no
summer picnic. The wind goes right through one, strikes the front of
the car, and comes back again. At the first stop, darkness having come
on, I went forward and interviewed the fireman. I offered to "shove"
coal to the end of his run, which was Rawlins, and my offer was
accepted. My work was out on the tender, in the snow, breaking the
lumps of coal with a sledge and shovelling it forward to h