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 train started.  I saw the lantern of the shack on the first blind.  He was riding her out.  And I saw the dubs stand forlornly by the track as the blind went by.  They made no attempt to get on.  They were beaten by their own inefficiency at the very start.  After them, in the line-up, came the tramps that knew a little something about the game.  They let the first blind, occupied by the shack, go by, and jumped on the second and third blinds.  Of course, the shack jumped off the first and on to the second as it went by, and scrambled around there, throwing off the men who had boarded it.  But the point is that I was so far ahead that when the first blind came opposite me, the shack had already left it and was tangled up with the tramps on the second blind.  A half dozen of the more skilful tramps, who had run far enough ahead, made the first blind, too.