Pa Plays Surgeon and Earns the Good Will of the Bandits--They Give Him
a Course Dinner--Speeches Follow the Banquet--Pa is Made Honorary Member
of the Band--Pa and the Bad Boy Allowed to Go Free Without Ransom.
We had the worst and the best two weeks of our lives while prisoners of
the train robbers at the Hole-in-the-Wall, because we had plenty to eat,
and good company, with hunting for game in the foothills by day, and
cinch at night, but the sleeping on the rocks of the cave, with buffalo
robes for beds, was the greatest of all. Pa got younger every day, but
he yearned to be released and would look for hours down the dinosaurus
valley, hoping to see soldiers or circus men who might hear of our
capture, charging down the opposite hills and up the valley to our
rescue, but nobody ever came, and Pa felt like Robinson Crusoe on the
island.
Some times for a couple of days the robbers would go away to rob a train
or a stage coach, and leave us with a few guards, who acted as though
they wanted us to try to escape, so they could shoot us in the back, but
we stayed, and fried bacon and elk meat and sighed for rescue.
One day the robbers came back from a raid with piles of greenbacks as
big as a bale of hay, and it was evident they had robbed a train and
been resisted, because one man had a bullet in his thigh, and Pa had
to use his knowledge of surgery to dig out the shot, and he made a big
bluff at being a surgeon, and succeeded in getting the balls out and
healing up the sores, so the bandits thought Pa was great. When he
insisted that the leader let him know how much it would be to ransom us,
so we could send to the circus for money, the leader told Pa he had been
such a decent prisoner, and had been such good company, and had been
such a help in digging the bullets out of the wounded, that the gang was
going to let us go free, without taking a cent from us, but was going to
consider us honorary members of the gang and divide the money they had
secured in the last hold-up with us.
[Illustration: One Day the Robbers Came Back from a Raid with Piles of
Greenbacks.]
Pa said he wanted his liberty, thanked the leader for his kind words,
but he said there was a strong feeling in the east against truly good
people like himself taking tainted money, and while he would not want to
make a comparison between the methods men adopt to secure tainted money,
in business or highway robbery, he hoped the gang to which he had been
elected an honorary member would not insist on his carrying away any of
the tainted money.
“You are all right in theory, old man,” said the leader of the gang,
“but this money which might have been tainted when it was chipped by
express from Wall street to the far west, has been purified by passing
through our hands, where it has been carried over mountain ranges on
pack horses, in blizzards, till every tainted germ has been blown away.
Now, we propose to give you a banquet to-morrow night, at which we shall
all make speeches, and then you will be provided with horses, supplies
and money, and guided away from here blindfolded, and within 48 hours
you will be free as the birds, and all we ask is that you will never
give us and our hiding place away to Billy Pinkerton. Is it a go?”
Pa said it was a go all right except taking the tainted money, but he
would think it over, and dream over it, and maybe take his share of
the swag, but he wanted to be allowed to return it if, after calling
a meeting of his board of directors, they should refuse to receive the
tainted money. Pa added that the board of directors of a circus might
not be as particular as a church or college, and he thought he could
assure the gang that the money would not come back to bother them.
The leader of the gang said that would be all right, and for pa and I
and the boys to begin to pack up and get ready to return to civilization
and all its wickedness. We worked all day and played cinch for hundred
dollar bills all the evening, and the next day arranged for the banquet.
When night came, and the pine knots were lit in the cave, about 15
bandits and Pa and I sat down to a course banquet on the floor of the
cave, and ate and drank for an hour. We had few dishes, except tin cups
and tin plates, but it was a banquet all right. The first course was
soup, served in cans, each man having a can of soup with a hole in the
top, made by driving a nail through the tin, and we sucked the soup
through the hole. The next course was fish, each man having a can of
sardines, and we ate them with hard tack. Then we had a game course,
consisting of fried elk, and then a salad of canned baked beans, and
coffee with condensed milk, and a spoonful or two of condensed milk for
ice cream. When the banquet was over the leader of the bandits rapped on
the stone floor of the cave with the butt of his revolver for attention,
and taking a canteen of whisky for a loving cup, he drank to the health
of their distinguished guest, and passed it around, so all might drink,
and then he spoke as follows:
“Fellow Highway Robbers: We have with us to-night one who comes from the
outside world, with all its wickedness, this old man, simple as a child,
and yet foxy as the world goes, this easy mark who is told that the
dinosaurus still exists, and believes it, and comes to this valley to
find it. If some one told him that Adam and Eve were still alive, and
running a stock ranch up in the Big Horn basin, he would believe it, and
if it came to him as a secret that Solomon in all his glory was placer
mining in a distant valley over the mountains, he would rush off to
engage Solomon to drive a chariot next year in his show. Such an
ability to absorb things that are not so, in a world where all men are
suspicious of each other, should be encouraged. This old man comes to
our quiet valley, where all is peace, and where we are honest, fresh
from the wicked world, where grafting is a science respected by many,
and where the bank robber who gets above a million is seldom convicted
and always respected, while we, who only occasionally meet a train with
a red light and pass the plate, and take up a slight collection,
are looked upon as men who would commit a crime. Why, gentlemen, our
profession is more respectable than that of the man who is appointed
administrator of the estate of his dead friend, and who blows in the
money and lets the widow and orphan go to the poorhouse, or the officer
of a savings bank who borrows the money of the poor and when they hear
that he is flying high demand their money, and he closes the bank, and
eventually pays seven cents on the dollar, and is looked upon as a great
financier. It has been a pleasure to us to have this kindly old man
visit us, and by his example of the Golden Rule, to do to others as you
would be done by, make us contented with our lot. We are not the kind
of business men who try to ruin the business of competitors by poisoning
their wells, or freezing them out of business. If any other train
robbers want to do business in our territory, they have the same rights
that we have, and the world is big enough for all to ply their trade.
Now I am going to call upon our friend, Buckskin Bill, my associate in
crime, who was wounded by a misdirected load of buckshot in our latest
raid, which buckshot were so ably removed from his person by our
distinguished friend who is so soon to leave us, and the leader again
passed the loving cup and gave way to Buckskin Bill, who said:
[Illustration: Dad among the cowboys.]
“Pals--I do not know if you have ever suspected that before I joined
this bunch I was steeped in crime, but I must confess to you that I was
a Chicago alderman for one term, during the passage of the gas franchise
and the traction deal, but I trust I have reformed, because I have led a
different life all these years, I like this free life of the mountains,
where what you get in a hold-up is yours, and you do not have to divide
with politicians, and if you refuse to divide they squeal on you, and
you see the guide board pointing to Joliet. I would not go back to the
wicked life of an alderman, to make a dishonest living by holding up
bills until the agent came around and gave me an envelope, but I do
want to hear from my old pals in the common council, and I would ask
our corpulent friend, who so ably picked the buckshot out of my remains,
when he passes through Chicago to go to the council chamber and give my
benediction to my colleagues, and ask them to repent before it is too
late, and come west and go into legitimate robbery, far away from the
sleuths who are constantly on their trails. While the lamp continues to
burn the vilest alderman may buy a ticket to the free and healthy west,
and we will give him a welcome. Old man, shake,” and Buckskin Bill shook
pa's hand and sat down on his knees, because his wounds were not healed.
The leader of the gang then called upon Pa for a few remarks, and Pa
said: “Gentlemen, you have done me great honor to make me an honorary
member of your organization, and I shall go away from here with a
feeling that you are the highest type of robbers, men that it is a
pleasure to know, and that you are not to be mentioned in the same
category of the wicked men who rob the poor right and left, in what we
consider civilization in the east. You only take toll from the great
corporations who have plenty, and your robberies do not bring sorrow and
sadness to the poor and hungry. No matter what inducements may be
held out to me in the future, to join the life insurance robbers, the
political robbers, the great corporations that wring the last dollar
from their victims, I shall always remember, in declining such
overtures, that I am an honorary member of this organization of honest,
straightforward, conscientious hold-up men, who would rob only the rich
and divide with the poor, and I hope some day, if our country goes to
the dogs, so a respectable man cannot hold office, or do business on the
square, to come back here and become one of you in fact, and work the
game to the limit. If you find you cannot make it pay out here, come
east and I will give you the three-card monte and the shell game
concession with our show next summer, where you can make a good living
out of the jays that patronize us, and always have a little money
left when we get through with them, which it is a shame for them to
be allowed to carry home after the evening performance. I thank you,
gentlemen.”
[Illustration: The Robbers Guided Us In the Dark Through the Valley.]
Then the loving cup was passed, we saddled our horses and the robbers
guided us in the dark through the valley, and out towards the railroad,
pa's saddlebags filled with the tainted money. At daylight the next
morning, when the guides left us, Pa took a big roll of bills out of
his saddlebags and opened it and, by gosh, if it wasn't a lot of old
confederate money that wasn't worth a cent. Pa used some words that made
me sick, and then I cried. So did pa.