while the sheep were being fed and watered. On the morning of the third
day they landed, not at Chicago, as Kansas Shorty had until now made Jim
believe, but at Denver, the beautiful capital city of Colorado.

While they walked about the streets of the city, Kansas Shorty met a
friend whom he addressed as "Nevada Bill," and who as soon as the former
told him that Jim was "his road kid", placed his hand under the boy's
chin and after sizing the lad up just as a butcher would a beef, he
whispered: "Well, well, Kansas Shorty, I see you have brought a fine
'broncho' to town with you. I hope that you will be able to make a
first-class road kid of him." To which coarse remarks Kansas Shorty
laughingly replied: "Never fret, Nevada Bill, I have trained many a road
kid into good plingers." Nevada Bill then told him where a gang of
plingers had their headquarters, and as Kansas Shorty seemed to be
acquainted with most of them whose monickers Nevada Bill repeated to
him, he decided to pay this gang a visit.

They wended their way through Denver's lowest slums and finally arrived
at the headquarters of this gang of professional tramp beggars, who
always prefer cities in which to ply their trade, and only strike out to
visit smaller places and the country at large--and then only in separate
pairs--when too many of them drifted into the same city, so as to make
combing the public for money an unprofitable business, or when the
police made a general raid upon vagrants of their class.

This last reason was hardly to be feared, for as in this gang's case,
they invariably have their headquarters in the building above a slum
saloon, whose proprietor would and could not be in business very long
unless he knew how to protect his lodgers against police interference,
as a gang's quarters needed to be raided only one time, and ever after