“We waited there that night and all the next day, sharing stories. It may have been foolhardy, but I trusted him and I slept for a while, and I shared some of my food. Bob said that he’d never had anyone point a gun at him his whole life, but that in the past three days, he’d had guns pointed at him three different times. He said,‘And you just now, Soldier Boy, was the third!’ I had to laugh at that. I pumped him for information on ‘hoboing’— like where and how to catch trains, what cars it was safe to ride on or in, and even where it was safe to ride if you couldn’t get inside a car.
“Petaluma Bob was right about the next train heading my intended direction. We could see them using a small DRGW switcher engine to hook up the cars for a couple of hours in the evening. The train was scheduled to leave at 11:10 p.m. I wanted to get down there and pick out a car early, but Bob advised me to wait until the brakeman did his rounds checking brake lines and ‘bulling’ the cars. He made his final check, carrying some kind of big lantern, around 10:30. Finally, Bob said, ‘You can go hop onboard now, Pilgrim. Pick out a boxcar marked Northern Pacific, and you won’t go wrong. Good luck.’ I wished him God’s speed. His southbound was due to leave the next morning. I prayed that he made it. He was a nice old guy.
“I found a Northern Pacific boxcar near the middle of the train with an open door. I got in as quietly as I could. All that was in the car was fifteen or twenty flattened cardboard boxes, great big ones for appliances. I positioned two of them at one end of the car and set my gear down. Then I gathered four more and draped them over the top of me, and my gear. I wanted to be as inconspicuous as possible, in case someone made another ‘bull’ run. The train pulled out right on schedule. I was absolutely thrilled. I was making progress north at a great rate. We went over the Douglas Pass around midnight. Then I fell asleep for several hours. I woke up at civil twilight, and watched the miles go by, praising God.
“The train’s route took it north though the Salt Lake City area, and that had me nervous, that being a metropolitan area. I couldn’t see any signs of trouble in the Salt Lake area aside for the power being out. There was a stop to switch out some cars in Ogden, late in the afternoon. That was a nervous time.
Luckily, my car ended up with the train that continued north. I stayed hunkered beneath my boxes the whole time we were in the yard. The train pulled out again around sunset. We had another brief stop at what I suppose would have been Logan, based on the timing. When the train was stopped there, I heard a couple of men’s voices. One guy said,‘Hey let’s try this one—this one’s empty!’ I yelled in my best command voice, ‘This car is not empty! Move along!’ One of the guys answered all meek-like:‘Okay, okay, we were just leaving! Sorry to bother you.’
“I got off when the train stopped in Pocatello, because it was going to continue west to Boise, and I, of course, needed to go north. So I was back to Shank’s Mare. After the train, it was quite a letdown. It was full daylight by the time I was all the way out of Pocatello proper. A paperboy on his rounds stopped his bike and put both of his feet flat on the ground and watched me walk by. I waved at him and said ‘Hi.’ He must have thought I was from another planet. I often wondered how many more days he was delivering papers. That might have been his last day.
“I paralleled I-15 up past Idaho Falls. It was pretty slow going, since I had a heavy load, and again, I was trying to avoid contact with anyone. I averaged around ten miles a day. I traveled mainly at night. I could hear shooting and fire engines sirens, and police sirens in even some of the smaller towns, so it was clear that the situation was deteriorating.
“I cut off to the west, following Highway 28, since it went through less population than if I’d continued on I-15. That route would have taken me through Butte. Highway 28 follows the Lemhi River and the Salmon River, up through the town of Salmon. That’s Elmer Keith’s old stomping grounds. I nearly froze up in the Lemhi National Forest, way up in the Lemhi mountain range. A storm front came through and dumped about five inches of early snow. Here it was the second week of November, and it was already starting to snow at the higher elevations, and I still had over two hundred miles to go!
“When that snow hit, I had to build a shelter quick, or freeze to death. I found a ponderosa pine that had blown over, and still had a big root ball of soil on it. I cut a bunch of limbs off of some fir trees with my cable saw, and piled them around the base of that tree, weaving them together into a wickiup with a vent at the top, snugging them down with parachute cord. I put my tube tent, a space blanket, and a couple of trash bags between the layers. I got a fire going, hunkered down, and did my best to dry out my clothes. The wickiup worked pretty well, but I don’t know what was worse, the cold or the smoke from that fire.
“The snow stopped the next day, and it took another day and a half to all melt. During that time, I got busy with my AR-7, and shot a marmot. By the way, I’m glad I have a .22 rifle. The .308 is a lot louder, and doesn’t leave much usable meat on small game. The marmot was pretty tough, but nutritious. I cooked it all in strips skewered on sticks over the open fire. I ate the whole marmot in a day and a half.
“Also during that time, I melted a bunch of snow in my canteen cup to refill my water bottles with boiled water. You have to melt an outrageous quantity of snow just to fill one two-liter bottle. Of course I could have used water from a creek, but then I would have wasted purification tablets. Besides, I had a fire going all the time, and nothing but time on my hands. Like my dad used to say,‘What’s tiiiime to a hawwwg?’”
Kevin Lendel interrupted, asking, “Pardon me, did you say hog?”
“Yeah, hog. It was one of my dad’s favorite jokes: ‘A traveling salesman is driving through Arkansas. He sees a farmer struggling under the weight of a hundred-pound pig, carrying it from tree to tree, so that it can nibble on the apples that are hanging. The salesman is dumbfounded by what he sees. Finally, he can’t stand it any longer, and he goes and asks, ‘What are you doing?’ And the farmer answers, ‘I’m just a-feedin’ my hawwwg.’ Then the salesman asks, ‘Why don’t you just knock down a bunch of apples?’ ‘I jus prefer to do it this away,’ the farmer says. Then the salesman asks, ‘Isn’t it a waste of time, doing it that way?’And the farmer asks,‘Well, what’s tiiiime to a hawwwg?’”
Kevin and the others laughed. Carlton took a sip of coffee and resumed his tale. “I slowly worked my way north. The days were getting shorter and progressively colder. It took me fifteen days to make it from Pocatello to Salmon.
“As I got farther north, water wasn’t nearly as much of a problem as it had been down in the Pocatello and Idaho Falls area. That’s dry country. A couple of times down there I had to purify water that I got out of cattle tanks.
“I foraged as I went. I shot a couple of rabbits and another marmot. I had some snares and a gill net, but I didn’t get a chance to use them, because I was never in one place long enough. I got pretty good at fire starting, even when things were damp. First you….”
The TA-1 on the C.Q. desk made its distinctive cricket-like chirp, interrupting Doug’s story. It was Rose. She inquired, “Mike was supposed to have relieved me fifteen minutes ago. Where is he?”When he was relayed the message, Mike apologized profusely for losing track of the time, and then dashed out the door.
“Where’s he headed?” Doug asked.
Dan replied casually, “LP/OP.”
Doug nodded his head. “Sounds like you have a squared-away tactical operation here. Now where was I? Oh yeah, fire starting. The trick is to always start with a tiny fire and work it bigger gradually. I always carry a little dry tinder. Dried moss works the best. And, if you have nothing but damp kindling to light, nothing beats using half a trioxane fuel bar or a full hexamine tablet. That’ll start just about anything.