But it was not until several days later, over in Nevada, when the push caught up with me, that I learned of French Kid’s accident.  The push itself arrived in bad condition.  It had gone through a train-wreck in the snow-sheds; Happy Joe was on crutches with two mashed legs, and the rest were nursing skins and bruises.

In the meantime, I lay on the roof of the mail-car, trying to remember whether Roseville Junction, against which burg Bob had warned me, was the first stop or the second stop.  To make sure, I delayed descending to the platform of the blind until after the second stop.  And then I didn’t descend.  I was new to the game, and I felt safer where I was.  But I never told the push that I held down the decks the whole night, clear across the Sierras, through snow-sheds and tunnels, and down to Truckee on the other side, where I arrived at seven in the morning.  Such a thing was disgraceful, and I’d have been a common laughing-stock.  This is the first time I have confessed the truth about that first ride over the hill.  As for the push, it decided that I was all right, and when I came back over the hill to Sacramento, I was a full-fledged road-kid.

Yet I had much to learn.  Bob was my mentor, and he was all right.  I remember one evening (it was fair-time in Sacramento, and we were knocking about and having a good time) when I lost my hat in a fight.  There was I bare-headed in the street, and it was Bob to the rescue.  He took me to one side from the push and told me what to do.  I was a bit timid of his advice.  I had just come out of jail, where I had been three days, and I knew that if the police “pinched” me again, I’d get good and “soaked.”  On the other hand, I couldn’t show the white feather.  I’d been over the hill, I was running full-fledged with the push, and it was up to me to deliver the goods.  So I accepted Bob’s advice, and he came along with me to see that I did it up brown.

We took our position on K Street, on the corner, I think, of Fifth.  It was early in the evening and the street was crowded.  Bob studied the head-gear of every Chinaman that passed.  I used to wonder how the road-kids all managed to wear “five-dollar Stetson stiff-rims,” and now I knew.  They got them, the way I was going to get mine, from the Chinese.  I was nervous—­there were so many people about; but Bob was cool as an iceberg.  Several times, when I started forward toward a Chinaman, all nerved and keyed up, Bob dragged me back.  He wanted me to get a good hat, and one that fitted.  Now a hat came by that was the right size but not new; and, after a dozen impossible hats, along would come one that was new but not the right size.  And when one did come by that was new and the right size, the rim was too large or not large enough.  My, Bob was finicky.  I was so wrought up that I’d have snatched any kind of a head-covering.