My observations and experience have convinced me that the drug habit, like most of our other habits, is largely mental. In another chapter I shall submit a few facts in support of this opinion. Kansas City had nothing of interest for me now, and I left it, never to return. A cheap excursion ticket took me back west to the town of Los Angeles, where I finished the winter, fraternizing with the bums and yeggs from the road, polishing up old acquaintances, and gathering gossip from the four quarters of the underworld. CHAPTER XX Spring came. For me that meant moving, and while I was trying to decide where to go I made by chance the acquaintance of a coal miner who had worked in a small mine in one of the middle-west provinces of Canada. In the course of our talks I learned by asking a few casual questions that the mine worked between thirty and forty men; that it was on a short branch road off the Canadian Pacific; that the pay-off was in cash, on or about the first of every month, and that the money was shipped by express from the city of Winnipeg, Manitoba. The fact that the payroll had to be held one night at the point where it was transferred to the branch road into the mine interested me. I knew the place, and that there was little or no police protection. There were four or five thousand dollars that had to lie somewhere in a small town overnight, practically unprotected. The two thousand miles I would have to travel meant nothing. If the thing couldn’t be handled, I would still be in the midst of fertile fields where I could make a living without taking tough chances against wised-up city police and the busy stool pigeon. Bidding farewell to the bums and yeggs at “Mother Moustache’s” wine dump in “Sonora Town,” where they all hung out and did their drinking, I discarded my gray suit for a pair of overalls, a rough coat, a blue shirt, and a cap, and took to the road for a three-week jump. Through California, across Oregon, and into Spokane, Washington, where I found my bartender friend and recovered my “instruments,” which had been lying unused in the safe. The gun I left with him, as it was cumbersome and useless to me on the road. I could get one when I got nearer my destination. On through Butte, Great Falls, and to the Canadian line I traveled; on north to Calgary again, but this time I turned eastward and soon arrived at the town where the mine payroll had to be transferred. I had managed my money carefully during the winter and still had enough to carry me for a few months by economizing. The first thing I did was to take a look at the “box” in the depot, which was the express office as well. I had confidently expected to find a safe of cheap or obsolete make, such as was generally in use then in the smaller towns.