“No kid is a road-kid until he has gone over ‘the hill’”—­such was the law of The Road I heard expounded in Sacramento.  All right, I’d go over the hill and matriculate.  “The hill,” by the way, was the Sierra Nevadas.  The whole gang was going over the hill on a jaunt, and of course I’d go along.  It was French Kid’s first adventure on The Road.  He had just run away from his people in San Francisco.  It was up to him and me to deliver the goods.  In passing, I may remark that my old title of “Prince” had vanished.  I had received my “monica.”  I was now “Sailor Kid,” later to be known as “’Frisco Kid,” when I had put the Rockies between me and my native state.

At 10.20 P.M. the Central Pacific overland pulled out of the depot at Sacramento for the East—­that particular item of time-table is indelibly engraved on my memory.  There were about a dozen in our gang, and we strung out in the darkness ahead of the train ready to take her out.  All the local road-kids that we knew came down to see us off—­also, to “ditch” us if they could.  That was their idea of a joke, and there were only about forty of them to carry it out.  Their ring-leader was a crackerjack road-kid named Bob.  Sacramento was his home town, but he’d hit The Road pretty well everywhere over the whole country.  He took French Kid and me aside and gave us advice something like this:  “We’re goin’ to try an’ ditch your bunch, see?  Youse two are weak.  The rest of the push can take care of itself.  So, as soon as youse two nail a blind, deck her.  An’ stay on the decks till youse pass Roseville Junction, at which burg the constables are horstile, sloughin’ in everybody on sight.”

The engine whistled and the overland pulled out.  There were three blinds on her—­room for all of us.  The dozen of us who were trying to make her out would have preferred to slip aboard quietly; but our forty friends crowded on with the most amazing and shameless publicity and advertisement.  Following Bob’s advice, I immediately “decked her,” that is, climbed up on top of the roof of one of the mail-cars.  There I lay down, my heart jumping a few extra beats, and listened to the fun.  The whole train crew was forward, and the ditching went on fast and furious.  After the train had run half a mile, it stopped, and the crew came forward again and ditched the survivors.  I, alone, had made the train out.

Back at the depot, about him two or three of the push that had witnessed the accident, lay French Kid with both legs off.  French Kid had slipped or stumbled—­that was all, and the wheels had done the rest.  Such was my initiation to The Road.  It was two years afterward when I next saw French Kid and examined his “stumps.”  This was an act of courtesy.  “Cripples” always like to have their stumps examined.  One of the entertaining sights on The Road is to witness the meeting of two cripples.  Their common disability is a fruitful source of conversation; and they tell how it happened, describe what they know of the amputation, pass critical judgment on their own and each other’s surgeons, and wind up by withdrawing to one side, taking off bandages and wrappings, and comparing stumps.