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father’s erratic behavior and violent discipline.
    Once he joined the races, the stable duties were too hard and too humiliating. Instead, he found another newsboy partner in Cincinnati, a redheaded adventurer who introduced himself as Reddy Cadger. Cadger was a fearless and seemingly invincible companion, “the shiftiest youngster on his feet I have ever known,” Thurston later recalled, “a wonder at jumping freights. I have seen him swing on passenger trains under circumstances that would make the most expert hobo think twice before risking his bones.” They were both fourteen. Cadger taught him the finer points of “beating the rattlers,” which suddenly made every midwestern city available for adventure, free of charge. They jumped “blind baggage,” the space between the engine and baggage car, sometimes rode the cowcatcher, just beneath the sight of the engineer, or “hit the decks,” clinging to the top of the passenger cars. The most dangerous procedure was to ride the “ticket,” a long board under the car, where they could lie just above the track. Climbing beneath the train, the boys endured the roar of the rails and the squeal of the trucks; they were pelted with dust, pebbles, ashes, and cinders; they clung perilously to the boards until their knuckles became numb, because with a sudden lurch they could be thrown beneath the wheels. “Boring through the night on a teetering, racketing, plunging locomotive is very much what I imagine riding a cannon ball might be like,” Thurston wrote.
    The boys bounced from Chicago, to Cleveland, and then back to Cincinnati. Howard thought about returning home, feared that his father would confine him to a house of corrections, and instead followed Cadger to St. Louis for the summer. They effortlessly earned money by selling papers, slept with the hoboes, stole food when necessary, or took advantage of the big-city newsboy charities. Reddy bought a copy of Modern Magic for his friend, who carried it with him everywhere as the pages became dog-eared.
    One night the two boys jumped “blind baggage” on a train out of Chicago, but the brakeman chased them off. They dashed back as the train lurched from the train yard. Thurston scrambled up to the second baggage car. He thought he saw Cadger swinging onto the “ticket” underneath, but he couldn’t find him when the train reached Kansas City, Missouri. It was nearly a year later, in St. Louis, when Thurston heard from their friends that Reddy Cadger had been thrown to the tracks that night and killed.
    He returned to the races, moving on to Iowa. In Oskaloosa, he was humiliated by a popular hazing ritual, “an old stable trick,” inflicted by the wise-guys at the track. At eighty pounds, Thurston was told that he would have to lose some weight, so he was confined, up to his neck, inside a tall barrel of manure for a full day. When he was pulled out and scrubbed clean, he was too weak to stand, let alone sit upright on a horse. The trainer gave him twenty cents and told him to “beat it.”
    Thurston returned to the life of a tramp, riding freights and living in “hobo jungles” near rail yards. He scoured the newspapers to watch for the latest magicians and traveled to Louisville, Peoria, and Indianapolis just to see conjuring shows. He saw Herrmann again, studying his new tricks, as well as Harry Kellar, America’s own homegrown wizard. Hoffmann’s Modern Magic was the efficiently written textbook on magic that also whispered of impossible dreams; the chapters seamlessly transitioned from coin and card tricks to the costly, stage-sized marvels—appearing assistants, floating ladies—that were staples of Herrmann’s performances. The boy carried a dirty deck of cards with him everywhere, practicing the palm, the pass, and the force: the rudiments of a secretive art.
    As winter came, Thurston moved south, settling back in the fairgrounds and longingly visiting the racetracks. In Denison, Texas, he met