At the next stop I am off and ahead in the darkness.  This time, when the train pulls out, both shacks are on the first blind.  I divine their game.  They have blocked the repetition of my previous play.  I cannot again take the second blind, cross over, and run forward to the first.  As soon as the first blind passes and I do not get on, they swing off, one on each side of the train.  I board the second blind, and as I do so I know that a moment later, simultaneously, those two shacks will arrive on both sides of me.  It is like a trap.  Both ways are blocked.  Yet there is another way out, and that way is up.

So I do not wait for my pursuers to arrive.  I climb upon the upright ironwork of the platform and stand upon the wheel of the hand-brake.  This has taken up the moment of grace and I hear the shacks strike the steps on either side.  I don’t stop to look.  I raise my arms overhead until my hands rest against the down-curving ends of the roofs of the two cars.  One hand, of course, is on the curved roof of one car, the other hand on the curved roof of the other car.  By this time both shacks are coming up the steps.  I know it, though I am too busy to see them.  All this is happening in the space of only several seconds.  I make a spring with my legs and “muscle” myself up with my arms.  As I draw up my legs, both shacks reach for me and clutch empty air.  I know this, for I look down and see them.  Also I hear them swear.

I am now in a precarious position, riding the ends of the down-curving roofs of two cars at the same time.  With a quick, tense movement, I transfer both legs to the curve of one roof and both hands to the curve of the other roof.  Then, gripping the edge of that curving roof, I climb over the curve to the level roof above, where I sit down to catch my breath, holding on the while to a ventilator that projects above the surface.  I am on top of the train—­on the “decks,” as the tramps call it, and this process I have described is by them called “decking her.”  And let me say right here that only a young and vigorous tramp is able to deck a passenger train, and also, that the young and vigorous tramp must have his nerve with him as well.

The train goes on gathering speed, and I know I am safe until the next stop—­but only until the next stop.  If I remain on the roof after the train stops, I know those shacks will fusillade me with rocks.  A healthy shack can “dewdrop” a pretty heavy chunk of stone on top of a car—­say anywhere from five to twenty pounds.  On the other hand, the chances are large that at the next stop the shacks will be waiting for me to descend at the place I climbed up.  It is up to me to climb down at some other platform.