"is there anything
wrong about it?" "Not that I know of," she gurgled between gasps; "but
what does it mean?" I explained, but I do not remember now whether or
not I got that two-bits out of her; but I have often wondered since
as to which of us was the provincial.

When I arrived at the depot, I found, much to my disgust, a bunch of
at least twenty tramps that were waiting to ride out the blind
baggages of the overland. Now two or three tramps on the blind baggage
are all right. They are inconspicuous. But a score! That meant
trouble. No train-crew would ever let all of us ride.

I may as well explain here what a blind baggage is. Some mail-cars are
built without doors in the ends; hence, such a car is "blind." The
mail-cars that possess end doors, have those doors always locked.
Suppose, after the train has started, that a tramp gets on to the
platform of one of these blind cars. There is no door, or the door is
locked. No conductor or brakeman can get to him to collect fare or
throw him off. It is clear that the tramp is safe until the next time
the train stops. Then he must get off, run ahead in the darkness, and
when the train pulls by, jump on to the blind again. But there are
ways and ways, as you shall see.

When the train pulled out, those twenty tramps swarmed upon the three
blinds. Some climbed on before the train had run a car-length. They
were awkward dubs, and I saw their speedy finish. Of course, the
train-crew was "on," and at the first stop the trouble began. I jumped
off and ran forward along the track. I noticed that I was accompanied
by a number of the tramps. They evidently knew their business. When
one is beating an overland, he must always keep well ahead of the
train at the stops. I ran ahead, and as I ran, one by one those that
accompanied me dropped out. This dropping out was the measure of their
skill and nerve in boarding a train.

For this is the way it works. When the train starts, the shack rides
out the blind. There is no way for him to get back into the train
proper except by jumping off the blind and catching a platform where
the car-ends are not "blind." When the train is going as fast as the
shack cares to risk, he therefore jumps off the blind, lets several
cars go by, and gets on to the train. So it is up to the tramp to run
so far ahead that before the blind is opposite him the shack will have
already vacated it.

I dropped the last tramp by about fifty feet, and waited. The