It was a welcome escape to get off at Grand Island. Like boys set free from school we clambered over the long freight-train, laden with sleepers, that stood waiting for us on a siding. Our orders were perfectly clear. We were to distribute ourselves through the train and, at a given signal, to unlade the sleepers as fast as we could, throwing them along the road-bed well free of the line. Each man was to remember, moreover, that, at the end of his own section, he was to leave the train. I found myself in a box-car with three other navvies, all strangers to me. Sleepers lay piled to the roof from end to end of the floor, with only a passage across the middle wide enough for us to begin the work. A blue-eyed young Swede and I had just agreed to be partners when the Superintendent passed in his way along the train, noting the number of men in each car. In a few moments we were off, and we had not gone far before the prearranged signal came. Then we bent to the work with a will. It was a break in the regular routine and we took it as a lark. Two men attacked one side of the passage and the Swede and I the other. Soon it was a race between us to see which could unload the faster. The train moved slowly, discharging sleepers that piled themselves in grotesque confusion along the sides of the embankment, while above the noise of the cars, rose the voices of the men as they shouted excitedly in the unwonted rivalry. Before I realized that we had gone half so far, I caught sight of the Buda station. Our car was nearly empty, and as nearly empty at our end as at the other, the Swede and I thought, but our fellow-navvies claimed a victory when, at the end of the section, I jumped to the ground with much care to avoid the flying sleepers. Osborn was there, and soon the other members of the gang gathered, and then we returned to the usual work until six o’clock. For two weeks or more I remained at work on this section, then I knew that I must be going; for the autumn was at hand, and I aimed to cross the Rockies and reach the milder climate of the Southwest by the beginning of winter. But the actual parting with the gang presented the usual embarrassments. I had become used to the men, and they to me, and we worked together harmoniously and were on terms of easiest friendliness. Besides, no one had appeared who would take my place, and there were many sleepers to be laid. I always stipulated with my employers at the beginning of an engagement that I wished to be free to go when I pleased, as they were free to discharge me when they wished, but this rarely smoothed the way of going, for they lost sight of the agreement as they grew accustomed to me as a hand.