Summer came and the memorable World’s Fair. I saw it all, but it put an awful dent in my bankroll and winter was coming. I heard wonderful tales of New York City and its opportunities, told by the hop smokers in California Jack’s, and had almost made up my mind to go there for the winter when I met an intelligent young chap who knew all about it. He advised me to stay away from New York.
“It’s the toughest town in the United States for an outsider to get by in,” he said in answer to my questions. “I’ll tell you what you’re up against. You go in there single-handed. If you get by the wise coppers and the hungry fences, you’ve still got the gangs to beat. Almost all the thieves belong to gangs—the Irish, the Jews, and the dagoes. They fight each other, but they make common cause against an outsider, especially if he’s from the West, and they’ll know you in a minute with your soft hat and your Western talk.
“The gangs are made up of natives and ‘home guards,’ and some of them are not above snitching on you if you go in there and get too prosperous. If you show up in any of the hangouts with money they will beat you up and take it away from you like any sucker. Of course if you got into a gang they would protect you. The gang protects you, and the ward alderman protects the gang, see? But even then you’d never have anything, for the money’s split too many ways.
“Those hop fiends are raving when they tell you New York is a simple spot to make a living in. Everything is simple and easy and rosy to them when they get a few pills under their belts; but you take my advice and stay away from it. I can get dollars in the West where I couldn’t get dimes in New York, and I wouldn’t go back there on a bet. I’m for Chicago and points west where you don’t have to wear a derby hat to get by a policeman,” he finished in disgust.
Turning this gloomy picture over in my mind for a few days, I decided to let New York alone and go back West. My spare clothes were left with the landlord, and after a soft, easy year I went back to the hardships of the road almost gladly. I made long jumps under fast trains into St. Paul and then on to the Dakota harvest fields.
Thousands of harvest hands were leaving with their season’s earnings and a horde of yeggs, thieves, gamblers and their women beset them on every side. Some of the more wary and experienced laborers bought tickets and got out of the danger zone unscathed; others dallied with the games of chance and were shorn, or fell into the yeggs’ clutches and got “catted up.”
Harvest workers were called blanket stiffs or gay cats, and the process of pistoling them away from their money was known as catting them up. Train crews flourished by carrying the gay cats over their divisions in the box cars at a dollar each. Bands of yeggs worked with the brakemen, who let them into the cars, where they stuck up the cats, took their money, and forced them to jump out the side doors between stations. By the time they walked into a town and reported their losses, the train was far ahead, the money split with the train crew, and the yeggs were holding a convention in some safe jungle.
After several seasons the cats began buying tickets out of the harvest fields and the profitable industry of catting up went by the board.
I traveled along slowly now, uncertain where to go or what to do. Meeting many who had seen me and Foot-and-a-half George on the road, I told them freely the story of his finish and my getaway. My prestige grew and I came to be accepted everywhere as “Stetson,” which, in the language of the road, means first class.
Being young I naturally got puffed up and superior. I looked wise and mysterious, said nothing, and “connected” only with the higher-ups among the knights of the road. Stepping out on the street one morning at Great Falls, Montana, an icy wind out of the north reminded me that winter had come. I was almost broke, and fearing a Montana winter without money, I made a dash for the coast. I traveled north through Lethbridge, at the Canadian line, and into Calgary, Alberta; then west over the Canadian Pacific toward Vancouver, where I hoped to spend the winter. The snow had piled up in the Selkirk range, delaying trains for days and making life on the road uncertain and very unpleasant. My money had dwindled till buying a ticket was out of the question. Riding the rods of passenger trains meant freezing, and I was forced to take the slow and infrequent freights with their open box cars. At one of the larger towns in British Columbia I stopped off to rest up, get a decent night’s sleep, and thaw myself out.