Pa and the Bad Boy Among the Train Robbers--Pa Tries to Persuade the
Head Bandit to Become a Financier--The Bandit Prefers Train Robbery and
Puts Up a Good Argument.
I used to think I would like to be a train robber, and have a nice gang
of boys to do my bidding. I have often pictured my gang putting a red
light on the track and stopping a train laden with gold, holding a
revolver to the head of the engineer, and compelling him to go and
dynamite the express car. Then we would fill our pockets and haversacks
with rolls of bills that would choke a hippopotamus, and ride away to
our shack in the mountains, divide up the swag, go on a trip to New
York, bathe in champagne, dress like millionaires, go to theaters
morning, noon and night, eat lobster until our stomachs would form an
anti-lobster union, and be so gay the people would think we were young
Vandergoulds. Since Pa and I were captured by the Hole-in-the-Wall
gang I have found that all is not glorious in the train-robbing and
capturing-for-ransom business, and that robbers are never happy except
when a robbery is safely over, and the gang gets good and drunk.
The first day or two after Pa and I and the traitorous cowboys were
captured, we had a pretty nice time, eating canned stuff and elk meat,
and Pa was kept busy telling the gang of what had happened in the
outside world for several months, as the gang did not read the daily
papers. When they robbed a train they let the newsboy alone for fear he
would get the drop on them.
[Illustration: Pa Told Them About the Wave of Reform.]
Pa told them about the wave of reform that was going over the country,
and how the politicians were taking the railroads and monopolists by
the neck, and shaking them like a terrier would shake a rat; how the
insurance companies that had been for years tying the policy holders
hand and foot, and searching their pockets for illicit gains had been
caught in the act, and how the presidents and directory were liable to
have to serve time in the penitentiary. Pa told the Hole-in-the-Wall
gang all the news until he got hoarse.
“And how is my old friend Teddy, the rough rider?” asked one of the
gang, who claimed he had gone up to San Juan hill with the president.
“The president is in fine shape,” said pa, “and he is making friends
every day, fighting the trusts, and trying to save the people from
ruin.”
“Gee, but what a train robber Teddy would have made, if he had turned
his talents in that direction, instead of wasting his strenuousness in
politics,” said the leader of the gang. “I would give a thousand dollars
to see him draw a bead on the engineer of a fast mail, and make him get
down and do the dynamite act, and then load up the saddle bags and pull
out for the Hole-in-the-Wall. That man has wasted his opportunities, and
instead of being at the head of a gang of robbers, with all the world at
his feet, ready to hold up their hands at the slightest hint, living a
life of freedom in the mountains, there he is doing political stunts,
and wearing boiled clothes, and eating with a fork.” And the bandit
sighed for Teddy.
“Well, he will make himself just as famous,” said pa, “if he succeeds in
landing the holdup men of Wall street, and compelling them to disgorge
their stealings. But say,” said pa, looking the leader of the bandit
gang square in the eyes, “why don't you give up this bad habit of
robbing people with guns, and go back east and enter some respectable
business and make your mark? You are a born financier, I can see by the
way you divide up the increment when you rob a train. You would shine
in the business world. Come on, go back east with me, and I will use my
influence to get you in among the men who own automobiles and yachts,
and drive four-in-hands. What do you say?”
“No, it is too late,” said the leader of the Hole-in-the-Wall gang of
train robbers, with a sigh. “I should be out-classed if I went into
Wall street now. I have got many of the elements in my make up of the
successful financier, and the oil octopus, and if I had not become a
train robber I might have been a successful insurance president, but I
have always been handicapped by a conscience. I could not rob widows and
orphans if I tried. It would give me a pain that medicine would not
cure to know that women and children were crying for bread because I
had robbed them and was living high on their money. If it wasn't for my
conscience I could take the presidency of a life insurance company, and
rob right and left, equal to any of the crowned heads who are now in the
business. But if I was driving in my automobile and should run over a
poor woman who might be a policy holder, I could not act as would be
expected of me, and look around disdainfully at her mangled body in the
road, and sneer at her rapidly-cooling remains, and put on steam and
skip out with my mask on. I would want to choke off the snorting,
bad-smelling juggernaut and get out and pick up the dear old soul and
try to restore her to consciousness, which act would cause me to be
boycotted by the automobile murderers' union and I would be a marked
man.
“As president of a life insurance company I could not vote myself a
hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year salary, and take it from
fatherless children and widows and retain my self respect. Out here in
the mountains I can occasionally take my boys, when our funds get low,
and ride away to a railroad, and hold up the choo-choo cars, and take
toll, but not of the poor passengers. Who do we rob? Why the railroads
are owned by Standard Oil, and if we take a few thousand dollars, all
Mr. Rockefeller has to do is to raise the price of kerosene for a day
or two and he comes out even. The express car stuff is all owned by Wall
street, and when we take the contents of a safe, ten thousand or twenty
thousand dollars, the directors of the express company sell stock short
in Wall street and make a million or so to cover the loss by the bandits
of the far west, and pocket the balance. So you see we are doing them a
favor to rob a train, and my conscience is clear. I am always sorry when
an engineer or expressman is killed, and when such a thing occurs I find
out the family and send money to take care of them, but of late years we
never kill anybody, because the train hands don't resist any more, for
they do not care to die to save Wall street money. Now when I say to an
engineer: 'Charley, turn her off and stop here in the gulch and take a
dynamite stick and go wake up the express fellow by blowing off the door
of his car,' the engineer wipes his hands on his overalls and says: 'All
right, Bill, but don't point that gun at my head, 'cause it makes me
nervous.' He blows up the express car as a matter of accommodation to
me, and the expressman comes to the door, rubbing his sleepy eyes open
and says: 'It's a wonder you wouldn't let a man get a little rest. That
dinky little safe in the corner hasn't got anything in it to speak of.'
And then we blow up the little safe first, and maybe find all we want,
and we hurry up, so the boys can go on about their business as quietly
as possible. It is all reduced to a system, now, like running a railroad
or pipe lines, and I am contented with my lot, and there is no strain
on my conscience, as there would be if I was robbing poor instead of
the rich. Of course, there are some things that I would like to have the
government do, like building us a house and furnishing us steam heat,
because these caves are cold and in time will make us rheumatic, but I
can wait another year, when we shall send a delegate to congress from
this district who will look out for our interests. The Mormons are
represented in congress, and I don't see why we shouldn't be.”
[Illustration: I Say to the Engineer--“Charley, Turn Her Off and Stop
Her!”]
“Well, you have got gall, all right,” said Pa to the bandit. “You mean
to tell me you had rather pursue your course as a train robber, away out
here in the mountains with no doctor within a hundred miles of you,
and no way to spend your money after you get it, sleeping nights on the
rocks and eating canned stuff you pack in here after robbing a grocery,
than to enter the realms of high finance and be respected by the people,
and be one of the people, with no price on your head, one of the great
body of eighty million men who rule a country that is the pride of the
earth? You must be daffy,” said pa, just as disgusted as he could be.
“Sure, Mike,” said the robber. “Everybody here respects me, and who
respects the Wall street high finance and life insurance robber? Not
even their valets. Me one of the people? Ye gods, but you watch these
same people for a few years. You say they run the government! They and
their government are run by Wall street, which owns the United States
senate, body and soul. The people are pawns on a chess board, moved by
the players, and they only talk, while the Wall street owners act. Let
me tell you a story. I once had a dog trained so that he would lay down
and roll over for a cracker, and would hold a piece of meat on his nose
until his mouth would water and his eyes sparkle, but he would wait for
me to snap my fingers before he would toss the meat in the air with his
nose and snatch it in his mouth, and swallow it whole for fear I would
get it away from him. He would stand on his hind legs and speak and beg
for a bone to be thrown to him so he could catch it. Do you know, the
people of this country remind me of that dog. If they do not assert
themselves and take monopoly, high finance, insurance robbery, grafting
and millionaire and billionaire ownership of everything that pays by
the throat and strangle them all, and do business themselves instead of
having business done for them by the money power, they will never get
noticed except when they do their tricks like my old dog. When the time
comes that the people wear collars and are led by chains, and they have
to stand on their hind legs and speak to their rich and arrogant masters
for bones, and hold meat on their noses until Wall street snaps its
fingers, you will want to come out here in the mountains and live the
free life of a train robber with a conscience. What do you think about
it, bub?” said the robber to me.
“Well,” says I to him, “you talk like a socialist, or a Democrat, but
you talk all right. If I am one of the people I will do as the rest do,
but I'll be darned if I will get down and roll over for anybody.”