I go over to the fence, at the edge of the right of way, and watch.  Ah, ha!  What’s that?  I see a lantern on top of the train, moving along from front to rear.  They think I haven’t come down, and they are searching the roofs for me.  And better than that—­on the ground on each side of the train, moving abreast with the lantern on top, are two other lanterns.  It is a rabbit-drive, and I am the rabbit.  When the shack on top flushes me, the ones on each side will nab me.  I roll a cigarette and watch the procession go by.  Once past me, I am safe to proceed to the front of the train.  She pulls out, and I make the front blind without opposition.  But before she is fully under way and just as I am lighting my cigarette, I am aware that the fireman has climbed over the coal to the back of the tender and is looking down at me.  I am filled with apprehension.  From his position he can mash me to a jelly with lumps of coal.  Instead of which he addresses me, and I note with relief the admiration in his voice.

“You son-of-a-gun,” is what he says.

It is a high compliment, and I thrill as a schoolboy thrills on receiving a reward of merit.

“Say,” I call up to him, “don’t you play the hose on me any more.”

“All right,” he answers, and goes back to his work.

I have made friends with the engine, but the shacks are still looking for me.  At the next stop, the shacks ride out all three blinds, and as before, I let them go by and deck in the middle of the train.  The crew is on its mettle by now, and the train stops.  The shacks are going to ditch me or know the reason why.  Three times the mighty overland stops for me at that station, and each time I elude the shacks and make the decks.  But it is hopeless, for they have finally come to an understanding of the situation.  I have taught them that they cannot guard the train from me.  They must do something else.

And they do it.  When the train stops that last time, they take after me hot-footed.  Ah, I see their game.  They are trying to run me down.  At first they herd me back toward the rear of the train.  I know my peril.  Once to the rear of the train, it will pull out with me left behind.  I double, and twist, and turn, dodge through my pursuers, and gain the front of the train.  One shack still hangs on after me.  All right, I’ll give him the run of his life, for my wind is good.  I run straight ahead along the track.  It doesn’t matter.  If he chases me ten miles, he’ll nevertheless have to catch the train, and I can board her at any speed that he can.

So I run on, keeping just comfortably ahead of him and straining my eyes in the gloom for cattle-guards and switches that may bring me to grief.  Alas!  I strain my eyes too far ahead, and trip over something just under my feet, I know not what, some little thing, and go down to earth in a long, stumbling fall.  The next moment I am on my feet, but the shack has me by the collar.  I do not struggle.  I am busy with breathing deeply and with sizing him up.  He is narrow-shouldered, and I have at least thirty pounds the better of him in weight.  Besides, he is just as tired as I am, and if he tries to slug me, I’ll teach him a few things.