CHAPTER IX
Tosay I was shocked, stunned, or humiliated on entering the penitentiary would not be the truth. It would not be true in nine cases out of any ten. It would be true if a man were picked up on the street and taken directly to a penitentiary, but that isn’t done. He is first thrown into a dirty, lousy, foul-smelling cell in some city prison, sometimes with an awful beating in the bargain, and after two or three days of that nothing in the world can shock, stun, or humiliate him. He is actually happy to get removed to a county jail where he can perhaps get rid of the vermin and wash his body. By the time he is tried, convicted, and sentenced, he has learned from other prisoners just what thepenitentiary is like and just what to do and what to expect. You start doing time the minute the handcuffs are on your wrists. The first day you are locked up is the hardest, and the last day is the easiest. There comes a feeling of helplessness when the prison gates swallow you up—cut you off from the sunshine and flowers out in the world—but that feeling soon wears away if you have guts. Some men despair. I am sure I did not.
Inside the prison I was brought before a convict clerk who took my name, age, and nativity. I lied about them all. I couldn’t cheat the scales or a measuring machine, and they got my correct weight and height. I did screw my face up a little when I was photographed, and felt good about it. My clothes were not taken, nor was my hair cut. I had a bath and was turned loose in the yard where there were about one hundred prisoners, some, like myself, in outside clothes awaiting trial, and others in convict stripes doing time. The penitentiary was small then. There was no work except farming and gardening, which was all done by “cohabs,” Mormons convicted of unlawful cohabitation, and a very decent lot of men they were, never complaining of persecution, always ready to help their fellow prisoners, and freely dividing the food, money, and tobacco with which they were well supplied by friends and relatives.
The other prisoners played poker all day in the yard on blankets, and occasionally a game of baseball, when they could get up enough ambition. The food was fair. There was no discipline. Prisoners were expected to appear at their cells at evening to be locked in, and to stay in them till they werelet out in the morning. They didn’t always do that. In prison parlance, the place was a “playhouse.”
The first man to speak to me in the yard was Shorty, the safe expert we had visited. He came directly up to me and put out his hand. “Kid, that was tough about Smiler. I wanted to see you both and apologize. I thought you put me in the hole for some coin, but I found out that the people lost just what you both said. I couldn’t imagine a gambling house with a six-hundred-dollar bankroll.”
Shorty was one of the patricians of the prison, a “box man” doing time for bank burglary. “I’ll put you in with the right people, kid. You’re folks yourself or you wouldn’t have been with Smiler.”
I had no friends in the place. But the fact that I had been with Smiler, that I had kept my mouth shut, and that Shorty had come forward to help me, gave me a certain fixed status in the prison that nothing could shake but some act of my own. I was naturally pleased to find myself taken up by the “best people,” as Shorty and his friends called themselves, and accepted as one of them.
Shorty now took me into the prison where we found the head trusty who was one of the “best people” himself, a thoroughgoing bum from the road. The term “bum” is not used here in any cheap or disparaging sense. In those days it meant any kind of a traveling thief. It has long since fallen into disuse. The yegg of to-day was the bum of twenty years ago.
“This party,” said Shorty, “is one of the ‘Johnson family.’” (The bums called themselves “Johnsons” probably because they were so numerous.) “He’s goodpeople and I want to get him fixed up for a cell with the right folks.”
“Why don’t you go out and see George and his outfit? There’s an empty bunk in their cell.”
We hunted up “George and his outfit.” They knew all about me apparently, for George said, “Sure, put him in with us. If you don’t they’ll only stick some gay cat in there and we’d have to throw him out in the middle of the night.”
“What have they got on you, kid?” asked George.
I sat down with them all and went over the whole thing from the shooting of Smiler to my arrival at the prison.
“And you’ve made no statement yet?”
“No.”
“Not even to the shyster?” George inquired.
“Not even to the shyster,” I replied.
George turned to the others. “He’ll beat that case.”
“Sure, he will,” they all said.
“Judge Powers can beat that case before lunch any day,” said Shorty.
“How’s he going to get the judge to defend him? He hasn’t a dime, and you’re talking about the best lawyer in the state,” George wanted to know.
It was Shorty’s time to get superior now. “Where did I get that two hundred dollars that’s out in the office? Didn’t him and Smiler bring it up here to me for my end of that chippy gambling house’s bankroll. The judge will take this case for a hundred; it’s only an hour’s work for him.”
George smiled. “Shorty, I knew damned well you’d do that,” and to me, “Kid, that’s what comes of bein’on the square. If you’d burnt Shorty for his end of that coin, you’d have been here just the same, and you’d have got a beatin’ instead of a lawyer and a lot of good advice from real people.”
My case was disposed of right there. I had an attorney. But the bums had already tried me and I was found not guilty. All I had to do was wait for the day to come and I would be free. I was very grateful to them all, and tried to tell them. “Aw, forget it,” they said.
“You can pay me the money when you get out and are lucky,” said Shorty. “I’ll send for Judge Powers in the morning.”
At supper time I fell in line with my new friends and ate at the same table, after which we marched to our cells and were locked in. These scheming yeggs had managed to get possession of the most desirable cell in the prison, probably by bribing the trusty prisoner whose duty it was to look after the cell house. On each side of the cell was a framework ingeniously made of angle iron that contained two bunks, one above the other. The mattresses were filled with clean straw, the blankets were new and clean. George gave me a small feather pillow. In the center of our cell at the upper end was a table on which stood a fine Rochester oil lamp that gave plenty of light. Newspapers were produced, and the “best people” settled themselves for the evening.
George, who by reason of his age and experience was “captain of the outfit,” explained to me that, being the last man in the cell, it was my duty to empty the slop bucket in the morning and sweep out.
I must stop to describe briefly my three cellmates, allpersistent and professional criminals, because of their influence on my after life.
A name on a prison register doesn’t usually mean anything. Although I knew George well later, I never learned from him his family name or birthplace. To ask about those things in the underworld is to invite suspicion. All criminals conceal them carefully and resent questions. George was known on the road and to the police as “Foot-and-a-half George” because of an injury to one of his feet that cost him a couple of toes and caused a slight limp. It happened in this way, as he told me one night when we were waiting to open up the powder house at a rock quarry and get a supply of fresh dynamite, caps and fuse.
“I always crush into these powder shacks for my ‘puff’ for two reasons; first, it’s always in good condition; second, if you buy it you’ve got to leave your mug with the storekeeper. He’s always suspicious of anybody buying explosives and is apt to remember you and cause trouble later in case of a pinch.
“I got this bum foot,” he said, sticking it out, pointing to the shoe with its bent-up toe, “through buying a roll of rotten fuse at an out-of-the-way general store in Montana. I was goin’ against ‘P.O.’s’ then. I always favored post offices because in the small country ones the postmaster has to furnish the box himself and gets the cheapest one he can find. He don’t care because the government stands the loss if it’s a plain burglary from the outside.
“Besides that, you’re a cinch to get some coin and a bundle of stickers out of every ‘P.O.’ You can peddle the stamps anywhere at sixty or eighty per cent and they can’t be identified. Then again, if you dofall, the government don’t hang a lot of prior convictions on you and bury you. The limit for a ‘P.O.’ is five years and you never get that if you use a little judgment. Yes, I’m strong for the government,” mused the veteran, reflectively.
“This caper I’m tellin’ you about was a third-class ‘P.O.’ outside of Butte, Montana. It was soft, and good for a few hundred dollars so I decided to go against it alone. No use takin’ a bunch of thirsty bums along and stealin’ money for them to slop up in some saloon the next day. Anyway, I had a hole in the old box an’ a shot in it in half an hour. I strung the fuse to a window and touched it off from the outside. It spluttered along the floor and up to the door of the box, but nothing happened. After a few minutes I went back inside to put on a fresh piece of fuse. Just as I got in front of the box there was a roar, the door came off, and knocked me flat. The edge of it caught my foot on the floor and smashed all the toes.”
“Did you get the coin?”
“You’re damn right, I did.
“After my wind came back I got the coin and stickers, limped outside where I had an old ‘swift’ tied to a hitching rack. I had no saddle and it was a tough ride into Silver Bow Junction. But I got there before daylight and grabbed a rattler into Pocatello where ‘Salt Chunk Mary’ put me away, got a doctor, and got rid of my ‘stickers.’ That’s why I’m so particular about my fuse,” he concluded.
This grizzled old yegg was a by-product of our Civil War. Apprentice to a village blacksmith, he was drafted into the army, where he learned thedisruptive force of powder, and many other things useful to him in his profession of safe breaking. His rough war service, his knowledge of mechanics and explosives combined to equip him for what he became—one of the pioneers of safe breaking. From black powder he turned to dynamite and afterward was one of the first to “thrash out the soup”—a process used by the bums and yeggs for extracting the explosive oil, nitro glycerine, from sticks of “dan” or dynamite. He boasted that he had never done a day’s work outside of prison since he was mustered out of the army, except one year in a safe factory in the East where he went deliberately and worked for starvation wages to learn something of the construction of a very much used make of safe and its lock. Fortified with this knowledge, he followed that particular make of safe to many parts of the world, and, as he said, “knocked ’em open like ripe watermelons.”
George inherited a very ordinary set of features to start with. His war scars and rough bouts on the road and in prison hadn’t served to add anything to them in the way of refinement. His head rose to a point from all four sides. The “Sanctimonious Kid,” one of my cellmates, once said of George: “If you were to put a dime on the top of George’s head and start it sliding down the back it would fall inside his shirt collar; if you started it down his forehead it would wind up in his mouth, his lower jaw sticks out so far.” His eyes were small and cunning. They looked as if they had been taken out, fried in oil, and put back. Dead, pale blue and expressionless, they gave no hint of the cunning, always-busy brain behind them. His nose wasn’t worth lookingat, just a small knob of soft red flesh, long since collapsed and hanging like a pendant from between his eyes. He was of medium height, broad, heavy and rugged. With all his ill-favored appearance and his rolling, limping walk that seemed to start at his shoulders and work its way down into his legs, he had a heart of gold and oak, and knowing him one readily forgave him ungovernable temper and violent outbursts of rage. He was square. His life was stormy and his death sudden and violent as “Smiler’s.” But that has another place in this story.
The “Sanctimonious Kid” was, in point of years and experience, second to George, and naturally second in say in the cell. All matters of importance were submitted to George first, then to “Sanc” and lastly to “Soldier Johnnie,” the third man. Nothing was submitted to me. I had no say about anything. All I had to do was to keep my mouth shut and listen all I wanted to.
“Sanc” had everything that George lacked. Tall, six feet, slender and soft stepping, more active than most men half his size, you would not suspect him of two hundred pounds, solid flesh and bone. Straight without stiffness, natural, like an Indian. Dark hair, eyes and skin. Handsome, intelligent. Years after, I saw him in the dock of a crowded court room in a big city. His head was the finest, his face the handsomest, and his poise the surest of any there, from the judge down to the alternate juror. His nose, eyes and forehead might have been those of a minister or divinity student. But there was a hard look about his mouth, and something in his jaw that suggested the butcher. He was educated and a constant reader.Whether it was his appearance or his careful manner of speech that got him his monoger, “The Sanctimonious Kid,” I never knew. He was serving a short sentence for house burglary, at which he was an expert.
We traveled together for several years after he was released, and I found him one of the squarest and most resourceful thieves I ever knew. At last, after one of the cleverest prison escapes on record, he went to Australia where he was hanged for the murder of a police constable.
“Soldier Johnnie,” who had served a term in the army, was the youngest of the three. He was an industrious and trustworthy yegg who made his living serving as “target” or outside man, for the yegg mobs that preyed on country banks. The “target” is the most reliable man in the mob. To him is given the job of sticking up the town bull if he appears while the others are inside. He is the first one to get shot at and the last. It’s his job to carry the heavy artillery and stand off the natives while the others get the coin, and then to cover the get-away.
He was born lucky. His face and figure were neutral. A hard man to pick up on his description. Medium size and weight. After one look at him you couldn’t say whether his hair was brown or black, whether his eyes were gray or blue. Quiet, unobtrusive, soft-spoken, a copper would hesitate before halting him on the street.
Such were my companions, guides, friends and philosophers, day and night, till the day of my trial, which soon came.
Shorty’s letter to Judge Powers brought one of hisoffice men out to see me the next day, who got the points in my case and went away with one hundred dollars of Shorty’s money. I felt better after his visit, he was so fresh, vigorous, confident. “Nothing to it, young man,” he said breezily, “I’ll be in court when you appear to plead and have a day set for your trial; that is, if they want to waste their time trying you.”
I went back into the prison yard with his card in my hand and gave it to Shorty. He passed it to George and then to “Sanc.”
“I know him,” Sanc said. “He is in Powers’ firm. Powers will tell him what to do. You are all right. True, he is but a second-class man, but that’s not so bad. These second-class lawyers can skin a first-class bunko man any day in the week. I see no reason why he cannot skin a third-class judge in a territorial court.”
I soon saw that these three cellmates of mine practically controlled the inside of the prison. They had brains and character backed by courage and the valuable background of a reputation for doing things outside.
I say they had character because, while they did wrong things, they always tried to do them in the right way and at the right time. The thief who goes out and steals money to pay back room rent rather than swindle his poor landlady has character. The one who runs away without paying her has no character. The thief who holds out a lady’s watch on his pal to give to his girl has no character.
In the underworld one has good or bad character as in any other layer of society. The thief who paysoff borrowed money, debts, or grudges has a good character among his fellows; and the thief who does the reverse has a bad character. Thieves strive for good character and make as great sacrifices to keep it as men do anywhere else. A burglar can have friends, but he has to pay his room rent or he will lose them, and they will despise him.
Because of this quality these three men had money in the prison office, sent them by friends at liberty.
They had visitors frequently, who kept them well supplied with books and magazines. The evening mail brought newspapers from many cities. They kept well informed, particularly about criminal and legal doings. The papers were carefully read at night, and the next morning “routed” throughout the prison till, torn and read ragged, they found their way into the hands of the lowliest “bindle stiff” in the farthest corner of the yard.
There were fat times when we didn’t go into the dining room for a week. A half-gallon bucket of milk was left at the cell every evening. Loaves of fresh, hot bread were smuggled up from the bakeshop, and juicy steaks from the guards’ quarters. These creature comforts helped to take the curse off the place, and mitigate the prison pangs. Our light was put out, not when the nine o’clock bell rang, but when George, or Sanc, or Johnnie felt like going to sleep. The guards looked the other way when they went by in their felt-soled shoes, on their night rounds through the prison.
In the prison yard there was a deep well from which water for bathing and other uses was pumped to a large tank on the prison roof. The pump was mannedby four prisoners who had to work in one-hour shifts. A gang of eight men were detailed each week for this work, which was not hard—nothing more than exercise—and no one ever complained. My name was called one Saturday evening and I was instructed to report at the pump the following Monday morning. I thought nothing of it, and would have pumped cheerfully. But that night “Soldier Johnnie,” who was something of a jail lawyer and agitator for his and his friends’ rights, remarked that they were wrong in forcing me to work because I had not been convicted of any crime and that I ought to refuse to do it. The other two took the matter up and it was argued pro and con. They were pretty technical about it, and the weight of opinion was that it would be establishing a dangerous precedent for an unconvicted man to do any work of any kind in the prison and a test case should be made of it.
I was willing enough, and, looking back at it now, I believe I was glad of the chance to do something to raise myself in the estimation of these distinguished characters.
Monday morning I refused to work, explaining to the officer in charge that I was not lazy, but felt they had no right to order me to work before I was convicted. He appeared surprised, and took me to the office of the prison captain. He heard me out, and turning to the guard, said: “Throw this fresh kid in the cooler and leave him there till he gets ready to work.”
I was given an old pair of overalls and a cotton shirt to wear in the “cooler,” where my outside clothes would have been ruined. The cooler or dark cell wasthe same as other cells, except that there was nothing in it and the door was solid, admitting no light. The floor and walls were of thin steel and very cold. I slept on the floor without any kind of bedding or cover. There was but one fixture in the cell, a sheet-metal bucket smelling strongly of chloride of lime. My sentence carried the further punishment of bread and water, one thick slice a day and about a quart of water.
A guard opened the cell in the afternoon the first day and put in a quart tin cup of water but no bread. As he was closing the cell, he said, not unkindly: “You’re a damned fool, kid. You’d better weaken and promise to go on the pump. I’ll tell the captain now, if you want, and you won’t have to freeze in here to-night.”
“No, I won’t weaken,” I declared.
“All right, but if you change your mind just rap on the door with that tin cup.”
My teeth were chattering before nine o’clock that night, it was so cold. I could not sleep on the cold steel floor and walked up and down in my stocking feet all night. The next morning it became warmer and I slept in fits till noon when the guard came with my bread and a fresh cup of water. The bread was about half eaten when something got between my teeth that made me stop chewing, hungry as I was.
I examined it, lying on my belly at the bottom of the door, where there was a crack of light. It was a piece of chicken quill about an inch long. I couldn’t imagine how it got into the bread, and out of curiosity and having nothing else to do, I broke it apart. There was a tightly rolled piece of paper inside, on which was written: “Stick. We’ll feed you to-night.”There was no name, no explanation. I knew it was from my cellmates, and put in the balance of the day trying to figure how they would manage to get food into that tight cell in plain view of a guard all day and night.
The cell above me was part of the prison proper, and was occupied by two prisoners doing time. That afternoon I heard unusual noises in it, and they indicated that some one was moving out or in. Immediately after “lockup” in the evening there was another new noise. Prisoners in dungeons rely almost entirely on sounds to tell them what is going on about them. Every sound has its meaning. No sound escapes them, and any new or unusual sound must be thought out and classified at once.
The sound that attracted my attention was a low, grinding rasping that seemed to come from the floor of the cell above, which was the roof of my cell. One person above walked back and forth with his shoes on, making considerable noise. Something very unusual. The rasping became more distinct, and after an hour’s thought I concluded that somebody up above was boring a hole through the thin steel floor and that the walking was to cover the noise of drilling and to keep watch for the guard. Before nine o’clock there was an inch hole in the floor, and strips of tender meat, long pieces of bread, toasted to hold them together, cigarettes, and matches were being lowered into my cell. After them came a long, thin piece of rubber hose, from which I sucked about a quart of strong coffee.
I spent about three weeks in the cooler and never missed my evening meal. My cellmates bribed thenight guard to give me a blanket at night, which he took away from me before he went off watch in the morning, to protect himself. All in all, I didn’t fare so badly and was getting pretty well settled down to life in the dark cell when they took me out one evening and sent me back to my cell with instructions to be ready in the morning to go to court. I found my clothes in good shape and a clean shirt had been procured for me by my cellmates.
They seemed to think they owed me an apology for not being able to get food into the dark cell until the second night, explaining in great detail how they had to get two gay cats moved out of the cell above me and have two members of the “Johnson family” put in it, who would attend to the matter. I was instructed by them to ask for an immediate trial; the captain had declared that he would keep me in the cooler till I either got acquitted or went to work pumping.
The next morning the man from Judge Powers’ office was in court and told me to plead not guilty. When this formality was done with, he asked for a trial on the earliest possible date, saying that it would not take more than two hours to try the case.
“Two hours,” said the judge, looking over his calendar, “how would the day after to-morrow do?”
There was no objection from either side. The case was set for trial. I went back to the prison and into the cooler. That evening my rations came down as usual. The guard gave me my blanket, but I couldn’t sleep. Everybody was confident I would be acquitted, but I was afraid. I remembered my experience in Denver when the judge gave me fifteen days withouta hearing, and at Port Costa when Casey gave us ten days. I imagined the procedure would be about the same in this case and was very uneasy.
The next evening I was sent back to my cell. I found plenty to eat waiting me, and after a good supper my case was tried by my cellmate lawyers. They threshed it out from every conceivable angle, and declared that if I got convicted I would have to do it myself on the witness stand. They were so sure I wouldn’t come back that George gave me a ten-dollar bill.
“Take that, Kid, you’ll need it. You can send it back when you feel able.”
I promised to write them, and we agreed on a fictitious name for me to use. They all shook hands, bade me good-bye, and sent me away in high hopes.
Judge Powers himself was in court the next morning. A fine, tall, gray, elderly gentleman, he patted me on the back in a fatherly manner.
“Young man, I am going to put you on the witness stand and ask you one question: ‘Are you guilty or not guilty of this charge?’ You answer ‘No,’ and don’t answer any other questions from anybody unless I tell you to.”
The jury was drawn in ten minutes. The witnesses that testified at the police court came on in the same order and gave the same testimony. Judge Powers asked the veiled woman we were preparing to rob if she had seen me at her house on the night in question or on any other night. She answered that she saw but one man, the one she shot. The detectives confined themselves to the truth. Powers looked at his watch with the air of a busy man being detainedover a trifling matter, and dismissed them without cross-examination. He waved the landlord off the stand without questioning him. When the prosecutor said: “That’s our case, Your Honor,” Powers looked at him, and then to the jury.
“Is that all?” he asked, frowning.
I was put on the witness stand and answered “No” very positively to his question. The prosecutor hadn’t anything to cross-examine me about. He started a few questions, but was stopped and gave up. My attorney made some motion and was overruled. He then offered to let the case go without argument from either side, but the prosecutor wanted to talk and the judge told him to go ahead.
He argued about the same as the prosecutor in the police court, waved the bloody room-rent receipt and harped about the change of clothes and my absence from the room, and my refusal to make any statement. He dingdonged away till the judge ordered him to stop.
Judge Powers went over the case in five minutes, the jury was instructed in five more, and went away to the jury room. I was nervous. I thought my attorney had not asked enough questions, hadn’t argued enough. The judge went into his chambers. Judge Powers followed him in for a visit. A few courtroom hangers got up and went out. Nobody paid any attention to me. The bailiff who had me in charge strolled about the room, gossiping. There was no dock in the courtroom. I was sitting outside the railed-off enclosure at the attorneys’ table. The jury hadn’t been out fifteen minutes, but I was so nervous I couldn’t sit still, and got up to stretch my legs. Thebailiff was busy talking to a man who came in from the street. His back was turned to me as I walked a few steps up the aisle in the direction of the door, and then back.
The next time I walked farther toward the door before turning, and still he never looked at me. The third time I went to the door and out, and oozed down the broad, single flight of stairs into the main street. Dodging between two hacks at the curb I crossed to the opposite side of the street and looked back up the stairway to the courtroom—no alarm yet. Directly in front of me was a basement restaurant. I went downstairs, straight through the dining room to the kitchen, into the back yard, and then to the alley without being molested. When I got out of the alley I turned every corner I came to for fifteen minutes and finished in the railroad yards, instinctively.
The whistles were blowing for twelve o’clock, noon. I saw no signs of any outgoing trains and decided to plant myself somewhere nearby till night, when I could get a train or walk out of town in safety. I found an old deserted barn and hid up in the loft, hungry and thirsty, till dark.
A passenger train was due out on the Rio Grande at eight. With much caution I made my way along between lines of box cars till I got near enough to the depot to get aboard the blind end of a baggage car. I held the train all night, carefully dodging about at every stop.
At daylight, as the train slowed down for a stop, a man climbed up beside me. “You’re arrested,” he shouted, tapping a big gun in its holster.
I was discouraged. After all my hiding anddodging and starving, I must now go back to Salt Lake. He took me off the train and held my arm as the train pulled out. I was scared and desperate. I could see the penitentiary opening up for me again, and the dungeon. As the last coach was even with us, I gave the constable, that’s who he was, a vicious push and he fell into a ditch beside the track.
The train was moving fast now, but with a tremendous effort I clutched one of the handbars and the momentum threw me up on the rear steps. Just as I landed, one of the trainmen opened the rear door and saw me. He had his mouth open to say something when he saw the constable crawling out of the ditch, firing his pistol in the air and making signs to him. He pulled the bell cord.
As the train slowed down two more trainmen appeared and the three began kicking me. I jumped off and fell into the hands of the constable, who came up reënforced by some natives from the depot. They all fell on me and gave me an unmerciful skull dragging. After they got done scruffing me around, two of them took me by each arm and the constable fastened both hands in my coat collar from behind. The ones that couldn’t find a place to lay hold on me surrounded us, a tribe of small boys appeared from nowhere, and I was dragged, pushed, and bumped across the fields to the village and thrown into the jail.
When I was safely locked in, the constable mopped his forehead with his sleeve, and, shaking his fist at me, said: “Sure as God made little apples I’ll see that you get ten days.” They all went away then except the small boys. They lingered around all afternoon peeping in at the windows.
It was a mail-order jail—two steel cells on a concrete foundation. A cheap wooden shack had been built around the cells to keep the weather out. The door of the shack was always open and there was plenty of light. The cell they put me in was clean, and there was a roll of new blankets in it. I was the only prisoner.
I unrolled the blankets and, stretching out on the floor, tried to figure out what had happened. I couldn’t understand the constable’s threat to get me ten days, and concluded he was so excited that he said ten days when he meant ten years.
He turned out to be a very decent fellow. He was postmaster, section boss, and constable. He appeared at the jail in the evening with a big dishpan full of food—bread, meat, butter, a fruit jar full of fresh milk, and half a pie. He apologized for having lost his temper and treating me so roughly, asked me if I wanted tobacco, and made a special trip back to his house for some old magazines.
I was surprised to learn that I had been arrested for trespass, or stealing a ride. He explained that the bums had burned a string of box cars farther up the road and the “company” had sent out orders to arrest them on sight and give them ten days.
“It’s a wonder somebody along the road didn’t tell you about it,” he said. “You’re the first one I’ve seen for a month. The bums are all going over the Union Pacific now instead of the Rio Grande. It’s too bad, you’ll get ten days sure in the morning. Company’s orders. Good night.”
I put in most of the night trying to think up a talk for the judge next morning. After bringing mybreakfast the constable went after him, and about nine o’clock they appeared, a few town loungers following them. They didn’t even take me out of the cell for my “trial.”
The judge asked my name, read the law from a code he brought along, listened patiently to my talk, and solemnly sentenced me to ten days in the jail. I asked him to take my ten-dollar bill and let me go, but he refused it.
“Sorry, young man. Can’t do it. Company’s orders, ten days.”
One of the loungers threw me a Salt Lake newspaper, another gave me a sack of tobacco, cigarette papers, and matches. When they had gone I opened the paper and found the story of my escape from the courtroom. The reporter treated it humorously, and made fun of everybody connected with my trial. I didn’t know what he saw about it that was so funny till I got to the end of it, where he said the jury came in with their verdict of “not guilty” before I was out of the block.
This took a big load off my mind; nothing to fear now. I could go back to Salt Lake and wait for my friends to come out of prison. The Sanctimonious Kid had but two weeks more to do, Soldier Johnnie but a month. George had almost a year yet to do.
All thought of going home was gone. I owed money to Shorty and George. That must be paid. All worry was off my mind now and I began planning to get some money when I got out. My head was full of schemes I had absorbed during my month in the penitentiary. George’s tales of fat post offices and country general stores came back to me. Idle all day in mycell, my eyes and thoughts turned to the big general store directly across the street from the jail.
The constable often talked to me in the evening while I ate supper. I learned from him that all the money in the town was in the big safe in the store, his post office money and stamps included. The store owner, as was often the case in small towns, did a banking business and had acquired about all the money in the place.
It was a puzzle to me how to get out of the town when my time was up without spending my ten dollars for fare. This was not to be thought of. The constable solved it by volunteering to put me on a freight train that stopped there in the daytime and fix it with the crew to let me ride back to Salt Lake, where I could start east over the Union Pacific.
The morning my ten days expired I went over to the store, bought some tobacco, and waited around till time for the train. I got the make of the big safe, its location in the store, and any other information I could, without asking questions, and decided to report the matter to my friends at Salt Lake. The constable fixed me for a ride, as he promised, but instead of stopping at Salt Lake I went on to Ogden and wrote a letter to Sanc, telling him where I would be when he came out. I was careful with my ten dollars and had half of it when he appeared at Ogden.
I at once told him of my ten-day sentence and about the fat general store. He had promised to wait for Soldier Johnnie, who was due in three weeks, and offered to pay my expenses till then, when something might be done about my store.
Johnnie was discharged in due time and arrived atOgden. He was pretty well supplied with money and there was no rush about doing anything. We talked over the general store, but Johnnie didn’t like the looks of it. The night trains didn’t stop at the town, and it was so far from Salt Lake that horses were out of the question.
“No getaway,” he said. “I can beat the box all right, but we can’t get out of there if we do get the money.” Sanc agreed.
During my ten-day stay in the town I had turned over in my mind a hundred plans, but only one of them seemed feasible, and I was almost afraid to broach that to them. At last, when I saw they were going to give it up as a bad job, I said to them:
“Can’t you both go over there, get yourselves ten days like I did, make a key for the cell, and go out at night and get the box? You could plant the money and lock yourselves up again. Then when your time is up you can go away and come back for the coin when the thing cools off.”
They looked at me and laughed. An hour later Sanc said to Johnnie:
“Say, there might be something in that, after all. We would have a perfect alibi.”
The bizarre appealed to Sanc.
After some discussion they decided to “look into it.”