From Thursday afternoon, when I left Omaha, until Saturday evening, I walked as far as Columbus, then rested over Sunday. On Monday morning the course was still the line of the Union Pacific, which had now turned southwestward in following the bank of the river. Tuesday’s march was the longest that I had made so far. From a point near Clarksville I went to one a little beyond Grand Island, which was, I judged, about forty miles in all; but as various lifts had carried me quite a fifth of the way, the actual walking was not much above the normal amount. On Wednesday morning, August 24th, my funds were low. I saw the way to a dinner in the middle of the day, but to no supper or bed at night. Settling down to work would now be a welcome change, however, after hard walking, just as I always found the life of the road a grateful relief, at first, from the strain of heavy labor. After dinner I began to think of something to do. It would be easy to apply for work upon some of the many farms that I was passing, and not difficult to find it, I fancied, from the reports of the farmers with whom I had talked on the road from Omaha. Still, I had had a little experience as a farm-hand and I wished to extend the range of the experiment as far as I could within the limits of unskilled labor, so I thought again. I was a little beyond the town of Gibbon. It was a hot August afternoon, and glancing down the line I saw a gang of section-hands at work, the air rising in quivering heat-waves about them, and the glint of the sunshine on the rails. When I reached them I could easily pick out the boss, a white-haired, smooth-shaven, ruddy Irishman with a clear blue eye, and, as it proved, a tongue as genial as it was coarse. Two of his sons were of the gang, well-grown lads, scarcely out of their teens, dark, good-looking, and reserved. He told me that they were his sons, and he gave me much information besides; for my applying for a job had been a signal to the whole gang to quit work and soberly chew the cud of the situation, while the old man gossiped. The fourth hand was a slovenly youth, who stood contentedly leaning on his shovel and listening idly to what was said. No, the boss could not give me work; he already had the full number of men, but he knew that the gang of the next section to the west was short a man when he saw them last, and he thought that my chance of employment with them was good. I walked something more than three miles into the next section, which was the Thirty-second, before I came up with the gang that worked it. They were three men when I found them and they were bracing the sleepers near a little station which is known as Buda. I went up to them and asked for Osborn, the boss, and was answered by a tall, frank-eyed young Westerner of unmistakable native birth.