There was a legend on the road that the Mormon Tabernacle in Salt Lake
City was a veritable storehouse of gold, silver, and precious stones and
it was this that lured Smiler back to that city. At that time a high
adobe wall surrounded the block on which stood the Tabernacle and the
then unfinished Mormon Temple. We looked it over for several days and
nights but could get nothing tangible to work on. Sunday we attended
services and the plate was to be seen, silver and gold; more than we
could carry away if we got it. At last we decided to go over the wall
and give the place a good reconnaissance. If it looked feasible we could
get a couple of other idle burglars and give it a thorough looting.
On top of the wall we pulled up our light ladder and placed it inside.
Smiler went down first. I barely had my feet off the ladder when a dozen
men rose up out of the shrubbery armed with shotguns, and surrounded us.
We stood still by the wall. One of them spoke, sternly, evenly: “Go back
over that wall.”
Little we knew the Mormons. We went up the ladder, pulled it up, and
went down and away.
When Smiler’s good humor returned he held up his hand. “Kid, I’ll never
try to rob another Mormon. I’ll go to work first.”
The next day we went into a small gambling house where we hung out to
read the papers. We sat at a table near the big safe in a corner of the
room. A man in overalls was taking the lock apart. The place had changed
hands a few days before and the new proprietors were having the numbers
of the combination changed. When the mechanic finished his work he wrote
some numbers on two slips of paper. These he threw on the floor beside
his tools and went back to the bar for a drink. Smiler stooped, picked
up the slips, looked at them closely, and threw them back on the floor.
Outside, he said: “We’ve got the combination of that box, kid. Those two
pieces of paper are for the new proprietors, their new combination.”
Neither one of us knew enough about safes to feel sure of opening one
even when we had the numbers. Smiler knew a chap doing time in the
penitentiary who knew all about safes. The “stir” was only a mile out of
the city and we decided to go up and get some expert advice.
Next day we visited the expert at the “stir,” who gladly gave us
instructions and declared himself in with any money we got.
That night Smiler opened the box as easily as if it belonged to him and
locked it again. We got but a few hundred dollars where we expected
several thousands. The new owners had no bankroll, just opened up on a
shoestring, hoping to get off lucky and win. The next morning they
accused each other of the theft, almost fought with pistols, and
dissolved partnership, calling each other thieves.
The money was split three ways. The expert at the “stir” took his bit
with bad grace, intimating that we got more than we were dividing, and
that we were thieves. As we were leaving, Smiler said: “Good-by,
‘Shorty.’ Everything’s all right now, ain’t it?”
“Oh, sure,” he grouched. “Everything’s all right—just like Denmark.”
“Kid, we’ll go up to that joint and give them a chance to win their
money back,” said Smiler. “I feel lucky.”
We went up, but they were closed and we had to go elsewhere to gamble.
The habit had fastened on him. He became a fiend for gambling. When his
money was gone I let him play mine in, and he kept us broke. In a few
days the money from our last venture was gone, and we were sparring
about for more.
The oldest and commonest system of the house burglar in locating money
and jewelry is to stand about theaters, cafés, and the better shops,
watching their patrons and following them home if they display wealth.
Smiler and I followed a woman and man to their home one night from the
theater. The woman wore enough diamonds to stun any thief or pawnbroker.
They went into a well-kept, two-story house, back in a big yard full of
trees and shrubs, only a dozen blocks from the main street. They let
themselves in with a key and appeared to be the only occupants of the
place.
We looked the spot over for several days and evenings. There was a
servant girl about the place, but no children and no dogs. This was
good. Children, particularly young ones, often need attention in the
night, which interferes with the prowler. Dogs, young or old, are the
bane of the burglar’s life. A dog inside a house where people are
sleeping prohibits burglary, and the smaller he is, the louder he
prohibits. So far as we could see, the place looked made to order for
us. House burglars customarily work single-handed. Two men prowling
about in a house in the dark are apt to get confused if any one wakes
up, and shoot each other. It has happened.
“I wish this stool-pigeon moon wasn’t so bright to-night, kid,” said
Smiler as we waited in the shrubbery for our people to put out lights
and retire. At eleven o’clock the house was in darkness. “About three
hours more, kid, and we’ll get busy.”
We had been in the yard since nine o’clock, tense, watching, listening.
Six hours lying on the damp grass and wet from the heavy dew. And still
the burglar wonders how he catches those terrible colds that hang on and
on and finally develop into T.B.
It was agreed that I should stay outside and lend a hand in case
anything went wrong in the house with Smiler. Inside the house,
inexperienced as I was, I would be in the way. Smiler looked at his
watch for the hundredth time.
He removed his shoes, putting one in each hip pocket as far as it would
go, buttoned his coat tightly, and pulled his hat far down over his
eyes. Always clean, handsome, smiling, he wasn’t good to look at now. We
stepped toward the house, keeping out of the moonlight when possible. On
the rear porch Smiler tried the door and windows—all fastened. He
motioned me to stay where I was, and disappeared around the side of the
house in search of an unlatched window. No burglar uses force till he is
sure there is no window or door unfastened.
He was gone so long that I was getting worried when he silently appeared
from the other side; he had gone around the house. I left the porch and
joined him beside a window he had found unfastened. He pointed to some
vines near by, where I took my stand to wait till he rejoined me. I
watched him intently, a pupil, apt at learning. The bottom of the window
was about even with his shoulder. He stood with arms upraised, hands
against the window sash, slowly, silently pushing it up. I listened, but
he made no sound. The night was calm, still, dead.
Then came a blinding flash of fire and the deadly roar of a rifle.
Broken glass, falling, tinkled, and a woman shrieked once hysterically.
My eyes had never left Smiler. He staggered back from the window
clutching his throat with both hands; his legs trembled like a spent
fighter’s, as he sank slowly to his knees.
For a moment I shrank with fear and shock, cold and helpless, into the
vines beside the house. The flash and deafening explosion coming out of
the still night when my nerves were at their highest tension petrified
me on the spot. Then my legs ran away with me and I found myself at the
back gate to the alley, the way we came in, fumbling at the latch. My
mind was clearing up now. The gate was open. I was wondering whether to
run up or down the alley, into the city or out of it. I expected to hear
more shots. Then I thought of Smiler, and looked back.
He was there in front of the window in the moonlight, on his hands and
knees now, shaking his head from side to side slowly.
There was no alarm yet. The night was calm and still again. There was
the smell of burnt powder in the air.
This was my first desperate experience. I didn’t know what to do. I
wanted to run on and save myself and I wanted to help Smiler.
Something—I don’t know what it was, but I don’t think it was courage or
bravery—turned me around and I ran back through the shrubbery to a spot
opposite the window from which the shot had been fired. In the clear
moonlight I could see that it was raised about six inches and one of its
lower panes was shattered.
The house was still in darkness. There was no sound inside. I must have
been in a panic still. No sane-thinking human would have done what I did
next. I ran out in front of the window to Smiler, and standing over
him, put my arms under his, lifting him slowly to his feet. Blood was
streaming out of his mouth. He slowly and weakly put one arm around my
neck. I held it there, grasping the hand that hung limply over my
shoulder, and with my other arm around his waist slowly dragged him to
the gate and out into the alley where he collapsed. His dead weight was
too much for me. I let his body slip gently to the ground. A twitching
shudder ran through him. He straightened out on his back and threw his
arms wide. He was dead.
Still no sound came from the house. Next door I now heard a window
thrown up and voices calling, a light appeared. It seemed an age since
the shot was fired, yet it wasn’t three minutes. Smiler was beyond my
help. I must be off. I was drenched with the blood that spurted from a
wound in his neck. It was on my face and hands. My shirt front was
saturated with it. My coat was dripping blood. I thought of our room
downtown—no chance to make it in that condition.
Smiler’s watch chain glistened in the moonlight. I tore at his pockets
and found his money. I went through them all, took everything, and ran
for blocks and blocks through the alley toward the outskirts of the
city. The dawn was coming fast. I must hide. I turned out of the
alley into a street and walked on wondering what to do, where to go.
A “For Rent” sign on a large, neglected-looking residence halted me. Not
a soul was in sight on the street. I dodged into the yard, around to the
back, and found the kitchen door unlocked. Inside, I went into what had
been the dining room and sat down on the floor exhausted, nervous, and
covered with blood.
When it became light enough I explored the old house, finding nothing
but rags and old papers. There was no water in it and washing was out of
the question. I gathered up an armful of the rags and papers, making a
pallet of them by a window upstairs in a front room, where I could look
out on the street. I sat down on the pallet and began to think things
over. It was the first good chance since I had left my father. I
heartily wished myself back with him. If this was adventure I wanted no
more of it. I was done with it. It had brought me to this. Tired,
hungry, bloody, afraid to go to sleep even if I could, lest I should be
found and dragged off to jail and surely convicted. Smiler was dead. I
had no ties to bind me to the road.
Yes, I would get out of this mess somehow and go back to my father. I
was sorry for poor Smiler and would have stayed with him on the road,
but now it was different. I felt no remorse for any of the things we had
done. I wasn’t sorry. I didn’t even think they were wrong. That phase of
it never entered my mind.
Then I fell to thinking of Smiler’s tragic end; trying to puzzle it out:
Why the woman shrieked, why the house remained so dark and silent, and
why I wasn’t shot when I went to his assistance. There was no answer to
it all. I felt easier in my mind now that I had decided to quit the road
and go home, and longed for the night to come when I could leave my
hiding place and wash the blood off my hands and face and get fresh
clothes.
As the day wore on, feeling more secure, I stretched out on my bed of
rags and paper and tried to sleep, but it wouldn’t come to me. Later, in
the afternoon, I removed my coat and shoes and managed to doze fitfully
till evening. When it was dark enough to walk through the streets safely
I left the house and made my way to a hot sulphur spring that gushed out
of a hillside a mile away. There I stripped and scrubbed myself as best
I could in the dark, and without soap. My clothes were stiff with dried
blood. I threw the shirt and underwear away, put my handkerchief about
my neck, and, buttoning my coat, started off in search of a store where
I could get a new outfit.
Since the night Smiler stole the coat for me we had never allowed
ourselves to get flat broke. With all his passion for gambling he would
hold on to a few dollars. With the money I found on him and my own, I
counted up thirty dollars. His watch wasn’t worth two dollars, a cheap
one he bought in San Francisco. I kept it as a memento. There was
nothing else of value in his pockets.
In a few minutes I found one of the many little general stores that
flourished in Salt Lake at that time, and purchased a suit, the cheapest
one there, for twelve dollars, and a fifty-cent shirt. I went back to
the spring with my bundle, where I donned the cheap bullswool suit and
threw my good one away. Tired and hungry, I crawled aboard a street car
citybound from the sulphur springs.
In the car I looked closely at my hands and saw there was still some
blood around my finger nails; there were dark spots on my shoes, too.
Hungry as I was, I first went into a barber shop, had a bath, and
scrubbed my shoes. Then to a restaurant, and while eating I decided to
go to our room and have a good sleep and get a suit of underclothes and
a few other things that I would need on my way home. I turned the whole
thing over in my mind and was sure there was no danger in going to the
room.
I was sitting at the table nearest the kitchen, finishing my meal, when
a policeman came in and sat opposite me. The waiter brought a steak
which was ready and waiting for him.
“Did they identify the dead burglar yet?” the waiter asked.
“No, not a thing on him.”
“How did it happen, anyway?”
“Just like the morning paper says. The woman’s husband was called away
unexpectedly. The hired girl had the night out and she was alone in the
house, sleeplessly walking around the rooms when this bird appeared at
the window. Scared half to death she got her husband’s rifle and fired
at him; then she fell in a faint. When she revived, the neighbors were
called and they got the police. The bird ran as far as the alley, and
dropped dead. The bullet cut an artery in his neck.”
From the restaurant I went directly to our room and to bed, where I
slept the sleep of exhaustion till some time next forenoon, when I was
roused by heavy knocking at my door. When I opened it, two big,
red-faced men shouldered in, told me I was under arrest, and ordered me
to put on my clothes. I washed and dressed. One of them put handcuffs on
me and made me sit in a chair while they searched the room without
finding anything that interested them.
The other then produced a bloodstained piece of paper, and, holding it
out before my eyes, said:
“Did you ever see that before?”
I looked at it. It was the landlord’s receipt for our room rent. They
had found it in a corner of one of Smiler’s pockets. Smiler had
continually drummed it into me never to answer any questions in case we
were arrested.
“Just clam up, kid. Tell them you’d rather not say anything till you get
a lawyer. They might slug you, but don’t talk; that’s your only
salvation.”
I remembered his advice and said to them as respectfully as I knew how:
“You gentlemen have arrested me for something, I don’t know what. But I
would rather not make any statement till I can see an attorney and get
his advice.”
The landlord now came to the room.
“Was this young man in this room night before last?”
“The bed wasn’t slept in,” he replied.
“That’s good, we’ll lock him up. Maybe he’ll talk then. You come along
with us, too. We want you to identify the dead one.”
The city jail was but a few blocks away and all four of us walked there
together. They took me inside and unlocked the handcuffs. A man at a
desk asked my name and age. I was then taken out the back door, and
across a yard into the jail building and locked in a cell with a solid
iron door, in a remote corner of the building. They didn’t threaten to
beat me up, and asked no more questions. A jailer came at noon with a
trusty, who put a pan of very good stew, a tin cup of coffee, and half a
loaf of bread in the cell.
I said to the jailer: “Mister, could I see a lawyer?”
He shut the door and locked it without answering me. The door wasn’t
opened again till midnight. I was lying awake on a bunk fighting bedbugs
in the dark. It seemed they were trying to eat me alive.
“Step out here, young man.”
I stepped out in my stocking feet.
“Put your shoes on, and come with us.”
They were the same two men that arrested me. They took me out and up
the streets into the next block where we stopped at an undertaker’s.
They led me to a back room and up beside a table on which a figure was
lying, covered by a long, sheetlike, white cloth. I stood there beside
the table between the two officers for a moment. Then, suddenly, one of
them snatched the sheet away from the upper part of the figure. The
other shook me violently and shouted:
“Did you ever see that man before?”
I knew Smiler was there before he snatched the sheet off. When we went
into the undertaker’s I felt they were going to show me his body, but I
couldn’t understand why. I learned later that some people are unnerved
at the sudden sight of a gruesome corpse, and, weakening, talk.
It hurt me to look at Smiler, his smile forever gone, changed to a
hideous, snarl-like grin, and a gaping hole in his throat.
I couldn’t think of anything else, so I said: “I want to see an
attorney, please.”
“You’ll get a lawyer when we get done with you. You were with that
fellow when he was shot and we are going to charge you with an attempt
to commit burglary if you don’t tell us where you were night before
last.”
I was locked up again.
The following day the two officers took me out to the booking desk where
I was formally charged, and on the morning of the third day I went into
the police court for my hearing. One of the shyster lawyers, or “stir
steerers,” as the bums call them, came over to me.
“They tell me you want a lawyer,” pointing to the officers.
“Yes, I do.”
“Got any money, or friends?”
“I’ve got fifteen dollars in the office—and no friends.”
“Give me an order for the money, and I’ll look after you,” he said.
I gave him the order, he spoke to the two officers for a minute, and
then asked the judge for a continuance of twenty-four hours. This was
granted, and I was led back to the bedbugs in the dark cell.
The next day, when my case was called, the lawyer stood up and started
talking.
“Sit down!” roared the judge.
He obeyed.
A woman wearing a thick veil was called. I could not distinguish her
features. In a few words she told of shooting a man at her window. She
saw but one man, the one she shot. She was excused and hastily left the
courtroom.
My landlord was called, and testified that I was the roommate of the
dead burglar; that I was not in the room the night he was killed, and
when I appeared the following night I had on a different, a new suit.
The officers testified that they arrested me in the room and that I had
refused to make any statement. The prosecutor stood up.
“Officer, when you accused this defendant of being an accomplice of the
dead man, did he deny it?”
“No, sir, he did not.”
The prosecutor looked wise, and sat down with a satisfied air—as if I
had been found guilty.
“Anything more?” asked the judge.
The prosecutor got up again. “It’s as plain as the nose on your face,
Your Honor. The dead man and this chap went out to rob that house. When
the other fellow was shot, this chap tried to help him away, but he was
too far gone. Then, what did he do?
“Your Honor,” he said, ominously pointing a finger at me, “he robbed his
dead companion. The dead man’s pockets were turned inside out. But in
his haste this man overlooked this—this telltale blood-soaked receipt,”
and he waved it about with great effect.
The judge frowned at me. The courtroom chair warmers craned necks in my
direction.
“What about that new suit he has on?” continued the prosecutor. “He
either bought it or stole it since the shooting. Why? Because the suit
he wore that night had blood on it. Blood, Your Honor, blood,” he
finished hoarsely.
I looked down at my shoes, wondering if the wizard was going to point
out the dark spots on them that I hadn’t succeeded in scrubbing off
entirely.
“Anything for the defense?” inquired the judge.
“We waive our defense,” said the “stir-steerer.” He left the room, and
luckily I never saw him.
“Defendant held to await the action of the grand jury.”
I was led away.
It was a relief to get into the county jail, away from the bedbugs. It
was clean. I was put in a cell with a fine old Mormon farmer, charged
with polygamy—unlawful cohabitation, to use the legal phrase. He was
well supplied with tobacco and food, from friends outside, which he
shared with me. We were confined to the cells all the time, and I made
no acquaintances while there. I did not try. I was much discouraged at
this turn of things against me, but was still hopeful of getting out and
returning to my father.
“You’ve been indicted by the grand jury,” said the jailer one morning,
some three weeks later, “and to-day you go up to the ‘big house.’”
Utah then was a territory and all persons indicted were at once
transferred to the custody of the United States marshal who, in addition
to his other duties, acted as warden of the territorial penitentiary. An
hour later I was taken out of my cell and turned over to a big, rawboned
man with a worn pistol swinging from a holster on his belt.
“Young feller, I don’t put irons on none of ’em,” he said to me, tapping
his gun. “Ef you want ter run, that’s yore business.”
In an hour I was at the penitentiary, where I made friends and incurred
obligations that turned my thoughts away from home and sent me back on
the road.