The engine jerked slack out of the long train and nearly dislodged him. One at a time he moved his hands from the coupling to the base of the wall. He edged in a little closer. The train gathered speed.
He wasn't really on but he couldn't safely get off. He'd intended climbing under the caboose to its rear truck, but the bulls and his own lack of agility made this impossible so now he must ride where he was, exposed to battering wind and searching cold as the train crossed the High Sierras, and also exposed to the whims of the trainmen if any should come out on the platform and look down.
He'd seen men shot off trains. But he didn't worry about it. Instead, like the old hand he was, he tried to sleep while clinging there.
At Sparks the train stopped for a maintenance check. The guards formed a perimeter but Ollie was inside it. Too stiff to move far, he stayed in a shadow while the mechanics inspected, then he climbed under the caboose and stretched out on a girder separating two tires of the rearmost, six-tired truck.
The tremendous tires fanned up hot winds when rolling, and these had warmed the steel he lay on. Before the train started he ate a roll, sucked the orange, and stretched out face down for the speed run across the central Nevada flatlands.
The guards stayed behind. After the train had started, one of them shined a light directly in Ollie's eyes.
The train kept on. And he was too close to the tires to be shot at; rubber-coated death whirled within three inches at either side of him.
As the train picked up speed he was careful to lie still, but beyond making sure he didn't touch the tires Ollie tried to put all thought of risk from his mind.
He saw a sudden vivid picture of his dead wife and son as they'd looked before the undertaker fixed them. They'd been killed while travelling. In times when to succeed was to get somewhere, they'd been killed en route. He couldn't remember where to.