But this I have heard of the “bad” roads.  When a tramp has “gone underneath,” on the rods, and the train is in motion, there is apparently no way of dislodging him until the train stops.  The tramp, snugly ensconced inside the truck, with the four wheels and all the framework around him, has the “cinch” on the crew—­or so he thinks, until some day he rides the rods on a bad road.  A bad road is usually one on which a short time previously one or several trainmen have been killed by tramps.  Heaven pity the tramp who is caught “underneath” on such a road—­for caught he is, though the train be going sixty miles an hour.

The “shack” (brakeman) takes a coupling-pin and a length of bell-cord to the platform in front of the truck in which the tramp is riding.  The shack fastens the coupling-pin to the bell-cord, drops the former down between the platforms, and pays out the latter.  The coupling-pin strikes the ties between the rails, rebounds against the bottom of the car, and again strikes the ties.  The shack plays it back and forth, now to this side, now to the other, lets it out a bit and hauls it in a bit, giving his weapon opportunity for every variety of impact and rebound.  Every blow of that flying coupling-pin is freighted with death, and at sixty miles an hour it beats a veritable tattoo of death.  The next day the remains of that tramp are gathered up along the right of way, and a line in the local paper mentions the unknown man, undoubtedly a tramp, assumably drunk, who had probably fallen asleep on the track.

As a characteristic illustration of how a capable hobo can hold her down, I am minded to give the following experience.  I was in Ottawa, bound west over the Canadian Pacific.  Three thousand miles of that road stretched before me; it was the fall of the year, and I had to cross Manitoba and the Rocky Mountains.  I could expect “crimpy” weather, and every moment of delay increased the frigid hardships of the journey.  Furthermore, I was disgusted.  The distance between Montreal and Ottawa is one hundred and twenty miles.  I ought to know, for I had just come over it and it had taken me six days.  By mistake I had missed the main line and come over a small “jerk” with only two locals a day on it.  And during these six days I had lived on dry crusts, and not enough of them, begged from the French peasants.

Furthermore, my disgust had been heightened by the one day I had spent in Ottawa trying to get an outfit of clothing for my long journey.  Let me put it on record right here that Ottawa, with one exception, is the hardest town in the United States and Canada to beg clothes in; the one exception is Washington, D.C.  The latter fair city is the limit.  I spent two weeks there trying to beg a pair of shoes, and then had to go on to Jersey City before I got them.

But to return to Ottawa.  At eight sharp in the morning I started out after clothes.  I worked energetically all day.  I swear I walked forty miles.  I interviewed the housewives of a thousand homes.  I did not even knock off work for dinner.  And at six in the afternoon, after ten hours of unremitting and depressing toil, I was still shy one shirt, while the pair of trousers I had managed to acquire was tight and, moreover, was showing all the signs of an early disintegration.