One night as I was meandering over Kearny Street toward the Coast somebody fell into step beside me. I looked around and saw Soldier Johnnie. We were well met, and I asked about his visit home. “Hell, I only got as far as ‘Chi.’ I bumped into a tribe of hungry bums, winter-bound and starving there. They were living off the free-lunch counters and the weather was so fierce they couldn’t stay out on the street long enough to beg a dime for a ten-cent ‘flop’ in the Knickerbocker Hotel. They were so miserable and forlorn that I went over to the West Side and rented a housekeeping joint and gave them an indoor ‘convention.’ In six weeks my thousand dollars was gone and I put in the rest of the winter hanging around Hinky Dink’s and Bathhouse John’s. When the weather got right I rambled west to Salt Lake. I was going to hold it down in ‘The Lake’ till George came out, but I met a beggar that had put in the winter here in the city and he implored me to come out here and take one look at the ‘box’ in the Wigwam Theater. I’ve looked it over and it’s the softest thing I ever saw. It’s older than I am and I can beat it with a fifty-cent hammer.” “Do you need any help?” “No. An outside man would only attract the cops. I’ll plant inside before the place closes and get out some way after I get the coin.” Johnnie didn’t even waste fifty cents for a hammer. He found one in the stage carpenter’s kit. He got something over a thousand dollars, all in gold, and I persuaded him to let me buy tickets to Sacramento, where I exchanged it for paper money. We got “under” a night passenger train and held it into Truckee, where we spent a few days fishing and drinking mickies of alcohol with some congenial bums we found by the river. The weather was fine, and we journeyed through Nevada on slow freight trains, sitting in the open side door of a clean box car, with our legs dangling outside, looking for the scenery. If the brakeman came along and wanted fifty cents apiece from us, we refused and got off at the next stop, where we drank cool beers in the saloon and waited for another train. We waited a week at Ogden for Foot-and-a-half George who showed up on the day. His head looked a little more pointed, his eyes a little deader, and his limp a little more pronounced. He was in good spirits and condition after “stopping his jolt” in the stir and anxious to start “rooting.” Sanc failed to appear, and the three of us jumped into Pocatello to pay our respects to Salt Chunk Mary. In a few days her hospitality palled, and George voted that we move down to the jungle and celebrate his release from prison.