III
When I made up my mind to quit the railroad I looked ‘round for somethin’ else to do. It was kind of hard times just then and a good many were out of work and I couldn’t find anything that suited me. Of course I never had much schoolin’ and ‘twa’n’t every kind of job I could hold anyhow. I went back out to the stock yards, but they was layin’ off men and there wa’n’t anything there. One mornin’ I went over to see Sol Goldstein. He was a nice old man that we used to buy potatoes of. He told me that he was gettin’ so old and kind of sick that he thought he’d have to give up peddlin’ and let his boys take care of him the rest of his time. He said he didn’t think it would be very long anyhow, and they could do that much for him so long as he’d done so much for them. He said as I hadn’t any job why didn’t I buy his horse and express wagon and go to peddlin’. I could take his license, that hadn’t run out yet, and go right along over his route. I told him I hadn’t any money to buy his horse and wagon with, but he told me that didn’t make any difference, I could pay for ‘em when I earnt the money. So I made a bargain; got the horse and wagon and harness and two old blankets for fifty dollars. Of course they wa’n’t worth much: the horse had a ringbone and the heaves and kind of limped in one of its hind legs. Goldstein said that was on account of a spavin, but he told me there was another one comin’ on the other hind leg and as quick as that got a little bigger he’d stop limpin’ because he couldn’t favor both hind legs to once. Goldstein said the ringbone had been killed and the heaves wouldn’t bother him much. All I had to do was to wet the hay before I fed him. So I bought the rig. I didn’t know nothin’ about horses but I knew what Goldstein said was all right for we’d been friends a long time.
“I went down to Water Street and bought a load of potatoes and went to work. I haven’t time to tell you all about my peddlin’: anyhow it ain’t got much to do with the case, not much more’n any of the rest. My lawyer always said any time I told him anything, ‘Well, what’s that got to do with your killin’ her?’ and the judge said about the same thing whenever we asked any questions. He couldn’t see that anything I ever done had anything to do with it except the bad things. He let ‘em prove all of them and they looked a good deal worse when they was told in court and in the newspapers than they seemed when I done ‘em. I guess there ain’t nobody who’d like to hear every bad thing they ever done told right out in public and printed in the newspapers. I kind of think ‘twould ruin anyone’s character to do that, ‘specially if you wa’n’t allowed to show the goods things you’d done.
“I hadn’t been peddlin’ very long until an inspector asked me for my license and I showed it to him, and he said that it wa’n’t any good, that I couldn’t use Goldstein’s license; that it was just for him, and that I must stop peddlin’ until I went down to the City Halland paid twenty-five dollars for another one. I didn’t know where to get the twenty-five dollars; anyhow I don’t see why anyone should have to pay a license for peddlin’; nobody but poor people peddles and it’s hard enough to get along without payin’ a license. Anybody don’t have to pay a license for sellin’ things in a store and I don’t think it’s fair. But I went and seen the alderman and told him about it, and he said he could get it fixed and to go right on just as if nothin’ had happened and if anyone bothered me again to send ‘em to him. So I went right ahead. I don’t know what he done but anyhow I wa’n’t bothered any more until Goldstein’s license had run out.
“Peddlin’ is kind of hard work. You’ve got to get up before daylight and go down and get your potatoes and veg’t’bles and things, then you have to drive all over and ask everyone to buy, and most people won’t take anything from you ‘cause you’re a peddler and they’re ‘fraid you’ll cheat ‘em. Of course we do cheat a little sometimes. We get a load of potatoes cheap that’s been froze, and then again we get a lot of figs that’s full of worms and roll ‘em in flour and then sell ‘em out, but all figs is full of worms, and I guess ‘most everything else is, even water, but it’s all right if you don’t know or think anything about it. And of course, half of the year it’s awful hot drivin’ ‘round the streets and the other half it’s awful cold, and sometimes it rains and snows and you get all wet and cold, and it ain’t very healthy either. Most peddlers have the consumption, but then there’s lots of poor people has consumption. It’s funny, too, about where you can sell stuff; you’d think you ought to go where people has got money but this ain’t no use; they never will buy nothin’ of peddlers and they won’t even let you drive on their high-toned streets, even after you’ve paid a license. If you want to sell anything you’ve got to go among the poor people. Of course they can’t buy very much, but then they pay more for what they get. It’s queer, ain’t it, the way things are fixed; them as works hardest has to pay the most for what they eat, and gets the poorest stuff at that. Did you ever go and look at one of them meat markets on the south side? Do you s’pose that they’d take any of the meat that’s in ours? They might buy it for their dogs and cats but they wouldn’t eat it themselves.
“Once in a while I used to take the kid along with me when I was sellin’ things, and he always liked to go, but if it commenced to rain or turned cold I had to go back with him, and then he always got tired before night. So I didn’t take him very often. I kind of laid out to take him when she done the washin’, so he’d be out of her way, and he used to kind of like to drive, and I amused him a good deal that way.
“I think mebbe I made about as much peddlin’ as I did on the railroad, but not any more, after I paid for my horse feed and the rent of the barn and gettin’ the wagon and harness fixed once in a while. Anyhow I didn’t get out of debt any faster, and the furniture men kept threatenin’ me until I went to one of them chattel-mortgage fellers and borrowed the money and mortgaged all I had andpaid five dollars for makin’ out the papers and five percent a month for the money. This didn’t seem like so very much but it counts up pretty fast when you come to pay it every month. Then one day my horse up and died. I didn’t know what was the matter with him. He seemed all right at night and in the mornin’ he was dead. I didn’t know what to do at first so I went and seen the alderman. He gave me a letter to some men who run a renderin’-plant and I went out there and bought an old horse for five dollars. It was one they was goin’ to kill, and it seemed too bad to make him work any more; still I guess he’d rather work than be killed; that’s the way with people and I guess horses is about like people. I always thought that horses had about the worst time there is; they can’t never do anything they want to, they have to get up just when you tell ‘em to and be tied in a stall and eat just what you give ‘em and depend on you to bring ‘em water. Even when they’re goin’ along the road they can’t turn out for a mud hole but have to go just where you want ‘em to and never have a chance to do anything but work.
“This horse wa’n’t much good but I managed to use him in my business. The boys would holler at me and ask me if I was goin’ to the bone-yard or the renderin’-plant, and once or twice one of the humane-officers stopped me and came pretty near takin’ it away and killin’ it, but nobody ever saw me abusin’ it, and I fed it all I could afford. I remember one night in the winter, about the coldest night we had, I heard it stampin’ and I couldn’t go to sleep. I knew it was stampin’ because it was so cold. We didn’t have any too much cover ourselves, but it worried me so much I got up and went out to the barn and strapped an old blanket on the horse and then came back and went to bed. I guess this was the other horse though, the one that died, for I didn’t have this last one over a winter. But I don’t know as it makes any difference which horse it was.
“Well, I can’t tell you all about my peddlin’, it ain’t worth while, and I must go on and tell you about how it happened. It was on the 26th day of November. You remember the day. There’s been a lot said about it in the newspapers. It was just three days before Thanksgivin’. I remember I was thinkin’ of Thanksgivin’, for we’d been livin’ pretty poorly, not very much but potatoes, for it was a rather hard fall on all us poor folks. I always hated to take the money for the things I sold but I couldn’t help it. You know I couldn’t give things away as if I was Rockefeller or Vanderbilt. Well, I knew we was goin’ to get a turkey from the alderman Thanksgivin’, just two days later, and I should have thought that would have cheered me up, but it didn’t. That mornin’ it was pretty cold when I got up. It was the first snow of the season, one of them blindin’, freezin’ days that we get in November, and then, of course, I wa’n’t used to the cold weather and wa’n’t dressed for it either. I didn’t have much breakfast for we didn’t have much stuff in the house. She got up and fried some potatoes and a little pork and that was about all, and then I hitched up the old horse and drove away. No one else was on the street. There wa’n’t generally, whenI started after my loads in the mornin’. The old horse didn’t like to go either; he kind of pulled back on the hitch strap when I led him out of the barn, the way you sometimes see horses do when they hate to go anywhere or leave the barn. I s’pose horses is just like us about bein’ lazy and sick, and havin’ their mean days, only they can’t do anything about it. Well, I went down and got my load. In the first place I had some trouble with the Dago where I got the potatoes; they were pretty good ones but had been nipped a little by the frost in the car, and he couldn’t have sold ‘em to the stores, at least to any of the stores on the north side or the south side. They was just such potatoes as had to go to us poor folks and most likely to peddlers, and he wanted to charge me just about as much as if they was all right. I told him that I’d some trouble in sellin’ ‘em and I ought to make somethin’ off’n ‘em. He said I’d get just as much as I could for any kind, and I told him that I might possibly, but if I was goin’ to pay full price I wanted my customers to have just as good potatoes as anyone got, and besides I might lose some of my customers by sellin’ them that kind of potatoes. Then he dunned me for what I owed him and threatened not to trust me any more and by the time I left with my load I was worried and out of sorts, and made a poor start for the day.
“Well, I drove over along Bunker Street, among the sheeneys, and commenced calling ‘po-ta-toes.’ Nobody much seemed to buy. A few people came out and picked ‘em all over and tried to jew me down, and mebbe bought half a peck. I don’t know how they thought I could make any money that way. Still the people was all poor; most of ‘em worked in the sweat-shops and hadn’t any money to waste on luxuries. I worked down Maxwell Street and things didn’t get much better. It seemed as if everybody was out there sellin’ potatoes, and it was awful cold, and I hadn’t any coat on, and the horse was shiverin’ every time we stopped. Of coarse I always put the blanket on him if we stayed long, but the blanket was pretty old and patched. Then I drove down south, where the people lives that work in the stock yards. It went some better down there but not very much; anyhow I didn’t get any warmer. Along toward noon I hitched the horse under a shed and gave him a few oats and I went into the saloon and bought a glass of whiskey and took four or five of them long red-hots that they keep on the counter. They tasted pretty good and I never stopped to think what they was made of; whether they was beef, or pork, or horse, or what, though you know everybody always says they work in all the old horses that don’t go to the renderin’-plant and some that does, but they was good enough for me and was hot, and when I went away I felt better and I guess the old horse did, too. Well, I drove on down around the streets and did the best I could. I remember one place where an old lady came out and said she hadn’t had anything to eat since yesterday and there wa’n’t nothin’ in the house, and I up and gave her half a peck, though I couldn’t hardly afford to do it. You know that half a peck was more to me than it is to Rockefeller when he gives a million to the school, but my lawyer wouldn’t let me proveit when I tried; he said the judge would only laugh if he ever mentioned it. The newspapers never printed a word about it either, although I kind of thought it might lighten up the people’s feelin’ some and help me a bit; but they did prove all about the time I struck her and some other things I wa’n’t on trial for, although my lawyer objected all he could and said I wa’n’t on trial for ‘em, which I wa’n’t; but the judge said no, of course I wa’n’t, but they’d show malice, so they went in and was printed in the newspapers, and the jury looked awful at me, but I bet every one of ‘em had done most as bad. When I gave the old woman the half peck of potatoes she called on all the saints to bless me to the end of my days. I felt kind of better as I went away, and thought mebbe they’d do somethin’ for me, and this wa’n’t more than seven or eight hours before it happened.
“Of course, most folks would think that anyone like me wouldn’t have given away a half a peck of potatoes, but they don’t really understand them things; you’ve got to do a thing before you can know all about it. If I was makin’ the laws I wouldn’t let anyone be on a jury and try a feller for murder unless he’d killed someone. Most fellers don’t know anything about how anyone kills a person and why they do it, and they ain’t fit to judge. Now, of course, most everybody would think that anyone who had killed anyone, unless it was in war or somethin’ like that, was bad through and through; they wouldn’t think that they could ever do anything good; but here I give away that half peck of potatoes just because I knew the lady was poor and needed ‘em—and I see things every day here in jail that shows it ain’t so. Just a little while ago one of the prisoners was took down with small-pox and everyone was scared, and another prisoner who was in here for burglary went to the ward and nursed him and took care of him, and took the disease and died. And most all of the fellers will do anything for each other. The other day there were five fellers on trial for robbin’ a safe, and the State’s Attorney done all he could to get one of ‘em to tell on another feller who hadn’t been caught or indicted, and he promised every one of ‘em that he wouldn’t do a thing with ‘em if they’d tell, and he couldn’t get a word out of any of ‘em, and they went to the penitentiary, just because they wouldn’t tell; and the State Attorney and the judge all of ‘em seemed to think that if they could get one feller to tell on someone else that he’d be the best one of the lot and ought to be let out. If you’d just stay here a few days and see some of the wives and fathers and mothers come into the jail and see how they’d cry and go on over some of these people, and tell how good they was to them, it would open your eyes. They ain’t one of them people, unless it’s me, that don’t have someone that loves ‘em, and says they’ve been awful good to ‘em and feel sorry for ‘em and excuses ‘em, and thinks they’re just like everybody else. Now there was them car-barn murderers that killed so many people and robbed so much. Everyone wanted to tear ‘em to pieces and no one had a single good word for ‘em, but you’d ought to seen Van Dine’s mother and how she hung on to her boy and criedabout him and loved him and told how many good thing’s he done, just like anyone else; and then that Niedemeyer, who tried to kill himself so he couldn’t get hung, you know he went to a detective and confessed a lot of crimes, so that the detective could get the money after he was hung, and the detective agreed to divide the money with his mother. If you was here a while you’d find these fellers doin’ just as many things to help each other as the people on the outside. It’s funny how human nature is, how anybody can be so good and so bad too. Now I s’pose most people outside can’t see how a murderer or a burglar can do anything good any more than the poor people down our way can see how Rockefeller can charge all of us so much for his oil and then give a million dollars to a church or a school.
“There was feller came over here to the jail to talk to our Moral Improvement Club and he had some queer ideas. Most of the prisoners rather liked what he said and still they thought he was too radical. I never heard any such talk before and I don’t quite see how they let him do it, but I’ve thought about what he said a good deal since then and think mebbe there’s somethin’ in it. He was a good deal different from the other ones that come. Most of ‘em tell us about our souls and how we can all make ‘em white if we only will. They all tell us that we are a bad lot now; but he kind of claimed that the people inside the jail was just like the people outside, only not so lucky; that we done things because we couldn’t help it and had to do ‘em, and that it’s worse for the people on the outside to punish the people on the inside than to do the things we done. Now, I hain’t had anything to do but think about it and what I done, and it don’t seem as if I could help it. I never intended to kill anybody but somehow everything just led up to it, and I didn’t know I was gettin’ into it until it was done, and now here I am. Of course, when I was out I used to rail about these criminals and think they was awful bad just the same as everyone else did, but now I see how they got into it too, and how mebbe they ain’t so bad; even them car-barn murderers,—if they’d been taken somewhere out west on a ranch where they could have had lots of air and exercise and not put in school which wa’n’t the place for boys like them, I believe they’d ‘ve come out all right and been like most other boys and sobered down after they got older. I really think if they’d been taken away they’d ‘ve tried to be good and if they’d been given plenty of exercise, like herdin’ cattle and things like that, mebbe it would have been just as good as to kill ‘em. Anyhow there was them Younger boys and Frank James who killed so many people and they are out now and all right. Nobody’s afraid of ‘em and they won’t likely never do anything of that kind any more.
“But I’m gettin’ clear off’n my subject again, just as I always am. I was tellin’ you about that day. Well, after I gave the lady the half peck of potatoes I went on peddlin’, but didn’t seem to sell much. I ought to ‘ve got through by two or three o’clock. It was a long enough day for me, and the horse, too, but I had so many potatoes left that I couldn’t stop, so I kept on. I got down aroundThirty-fifth Street and was pretty cold and went into a saloon where I saw one of the boys. One of ‘em was runnin’ for the legislature and he asked us all to take a drink, and of course we did; then he asked us to take another and we done that; and in a few minutes that feller that was runnin’ for the senate, he come in and he asked us all to take a drink and of course we done that, and he said a few words about the election and how he hoped we all would vote for him, and we told him we would, and that as near as we could find out all the boys was with him, that the other feller was a kind of stiff anyhow. He went out, and then, just as I was leavin’, the feller that was runnin’ against him, he come in and he set ‘em up a couple of times and said he hoped we was all with him, and of course we told him we was, and then he went away. Well, of course, I took whiskey every time because I was cold and that kind of warmed me up. Then I went out to the wagon again and drove on down Thirty-fifth Street to sell the rest of the potatoes. Finally the horse began to go lame, and seemed pretty tired, and I turned back toward the house, peddlin’ on the way. I guess I didn’t sell anything after I left Thirty-fifth Street, though I kept callin’ out until my voice got kind of husky and all stopped up. I guess it was the cold air that I wa’n’t used to yet. The snow was comin’ down pretty fast as I drove along and the wind was blowin’ quite a bit in my face and it was a bad night. It commenced gettin’ dark pretty soon after. You know the days are short along the last of November.
“Then I kep’ thinkin’ about the cold weather. I always hated winter anyhow, and I hadn’t expected ‘twould turn cold quite so quick and of course I wa’n’t ready for it. I couldn’t seem to think of anything but the winter. I s’pose that was the reason I done the things I did afterward. I got to thinkin’ about the house and how many cracks there was in it and how much coal it took to heat it. Then I began to think about the price of coal and how it’s cheaper in the summer than in the winter, and how the price keeps goin’ up so much a month all the time until winter, so, of course, all the rich people can get their coal in the summer when it was cheap and leave the poor people to get it in the winter when it got high. Then I thought how everything seemed to be against the poor and how you couldn’t get on no matter what you done.
“I hadn’t got my potatoes more’n two-thirds sold out and I didn’t have any good place to keep ‘em. I couldn’t afford to take chances of ‘em gettin’ frost-bitten any more. You know how easy potatoes freeze. You have to watch out while you’re peddlin’ ‘em in the fall and winter and some days you don’t dare take ‘em out at all. Before I got home I thought I’d have another drink so I stopped at a saloon where they always had the pollin’ place and where a good many politicians usually hung out; and I found some of the boys there, and the fellow that was runnin’ for assessor was in the saloon. He asked us all to drink a couple o’ times, and then he told us how easy he was in assessin’ the poor people’s property, and asked us to vote for him. We all said we would, and thenhe told us how he was assessor last year and how he’d stuck it onto the rich people and the corporations and how they was all against him this year. We all liked that, and then he gave us another drink. I was gettin’ so I felt it just a little, but of course I wa’n’t drunk. I could walk all right and talk pretty straight. I don’t suppose I’d taken more’n ten or twelve drinks in all day, and you know that won’t hurt anybody. I don’t know what I would’ve done such a cold day if it hadn’t been for the drinks. Oh, yes, in the last place they got to talkin’ about the alderman and said as how he wa’n’t goin’ to give out any turkeys this year. I didn’t like that and some of the fellers had quarreled about ‘em and then some of ‘em had been givin’ ‘em to us and we didn’t see what right he had to quit. They said the reason he wa’n’t goin’ to give ‘em was because a lot of the fellers had quarreled about ‘em and then some of ‘em had taken his turkeys and voted the other ticket, and some people had found fault with him because they didn’t get any turkey, and it looked as if he was losin’ votes instead of makin’ ‘em. Well, I’d been dependin’ on the turkey and it made me feel a little blue, for I didn’t know how I was goin’ to get anything for Thanksgivin’, and I didn’t think that you could have much of a Thanksgivin’ just on potatoes and mebbe a little pork. So I wa’n’t feelin’ none to good when I got on the wagon and drove away from the last place. It seemed as if everything had turned against me and I didn’t know what I was goin’ to do. It’s funny how much difference luck makes with a feller. You know somethin’ can happen in the mornin’ and make you feel good all day, and then again somethin’ will go wrong and no matter what you are doin’ it seems as if there was a sort of a weight pullin’ down on you. Well, I felt kind of blue as I drove home. I don’t think I could hardly have kept up only for the whiskey I’d drunk. I was kind of wonderin’ what it was all for and I didn’t see any reason for anything, or any chance that anything would be any better, or any real reason for livin’.
“Before I went to the house I drove up to the barn and unhitched the horse and led him in, and then I run the wagon in, and took the potatoes out and put ‘em under a little bag of hay that I had in the corner, and threw the horse blanket over ‘em. Then I unharnessed the horse and bedded him down and gave him some hay and a little oats. I’d watered him at one of the last places I stopped—one of them troughs they have in front of saloons. Then after I got the horse tended to I went into the house.”
Hank got up and went to the door and spoke to the guard. He was still sitting on the stool and talking to the prisoner in the next cell. Once more he handed Hank a cigar.
“Give one to Jim,” he said. “I can’t do much more for him, poor devil; I’m awful sorry.”
Jim came up and took the cigar and looked down at the guard.
“I don’t s’pose nothin’ has come for me, has there?”
“No, not yet,” was the answer.
“Well, I presume it’s’ no use.”
Just then the noise of pounding and driving nails and low voices was heard over in the court yard.
“What’s that?” Hank asked.
“Don’t you know! That’s the fellers buildin’ the scaffold; they always do it the night before. Strange, ain’t it; somehow it don’t seem to me as if it was really me that was goin’ to be hung on it; but I s’pose it is. Now, isn’t it strange about the governor; just one word from him could save my life. I’d think he’d do it, wouldn’t you? I s’pose he don’t really think how it seems to me. I know I’d do it, no matter what anyone had done.
“But it’s gettin’ late and I must go on with my story or I won’t get it finished before—before you have to go. It’s pretty hard to tell all ‘bout this part, but I’m goin’ to tell it to you honest and not make myself any better’n I am. I’ve thought about this a good deal when I’ve tried to account for how I done it, and I guess I can tell everything that happened. When I look at it now it seems years ago, almost a lifetime, not as if it was last November. I guess it’s because so much has happened since then. It seems, too, as if it wa’n’t me that was doin’ it, but as if ‘twas someone else. I guess that’ll make it easier for me to tell; anyhow, I want you to know how it was, and then some time you can tell the boy, if you think it’s the right thing to do.”