During my stay in San Francisco I lived at the Reno House, a small
workingman’s lodgings in Sacramento Street. It was owned by a man named
Rolkin, a carpenter, who invested his small savings in it knowing
nothing about the hotel business. He had a “crazy notion” that he could
put clean linen on every bed every day in this cheap place and survive.
His competitors said he was insane. He persisted, however, and on that
“crazy idea” he built a string of fine hotels that he counts to-day like
a barefoot Franciscan counting his beads.
I brought a terrible cold out of the Seattle jail that hung on for
months. I got worried about it and went to a doctor. After looking me
over carefully he pronounced one of my lungs bad and said I was in a
fair way to fall into consumption. He advised me to go to a different
climate, not to worry and get into a panic about it, and to take
cod-liver oil. “Not the emulsion,” he said, “but the raw oil. It’s nasty
stuff to take, but it will save you. Take it for a year if you can
stomach it that long.”
I followed his advice. The cold was gone in a week, and in a month I
gained ten pounds. I stuck to the nauseating raw oil for a year, and
to-day I firmly believe that if I hadn’t I would have long ago succumbed
to the dreaded prison scourge, T.B.
One night as I was meandering over Kearny Street toward the Coast
somebody fell into step beside me. I looked around and saw Soldier
Johnnie. We were well met, and I asked about his visit home. “Hell, I
only got as far as ‘Chi.’ I bumped into a tribe of hungry bums,
winter-bound and starving there. They were living off the free-lunch
counters and the weather was so fierce they couldn’t stay out on the
street long enough to beg a dime for a ten-cent ‘flop’ in the
Knickerbocker Hotel. They were so miserable and forlorn that I went over
to the West Side and rented a housekeeping joint and gave them an indoor
‘convention.’ In six weeks my thousand dollars was gone and I put in the
rest of the winter hanging around Hinky Dink’s and Bathhouse John’s.
When the weather got right I rambled west to Salt Lake. I was going to
hold it down in ‘The Lake’ till George came out, but I met a beggar that
had put in the winter here in the city and he implored me to come out
here and take one look at the ‘box’ in the Wigwam Theater. I’ve looked
it over and it’s the softest thing I ever saw. It’s older than I am and
I can beat it with a fifty-cent hammer.”
“Do you need any help?”
“No. An outside man would only attract the cops. I’ll plant inside
before the place closes and get out some way after I get the coin.”
Johnnie didn’t even waste fifty cents for a hammer. He found one in the
stage carpenter’s kit. He got something over a thousand dollars, all in
gold, and I persuaded him to let me buy tickets to Sacramento, where I
exchanged it for paper money. We got “under” a night passenger train and
held it into Truckee, where we spent a few days fishing and drinking
mickies of alcohol with some congenial bums we found by the river. The
weather was fine, and we journeyed through Nevada on slow freight
trains, sitting in the open side door of a clean box car, with our legs
dangling outside, looking for the scenery.
If the brakeman came along and wanted fifty cents apiece from us, we
refused and got off at the next stop, where we drank cool beers in the
saloon and waited for another train. We waited a week at Ogden for
Foot-and-a-half George who showed up on the day. His head looked a
little more pointed, his eyes a little deader, and his limp a little
more pronounced. He was in good spirits and condition after “stopping
his jolt” in the stir and anxious to start “rooting.”
Sanc failed to appear, and the three of us jumped into Pocatello to pay
our respects to Salt Chunk Mary. In a few days her hospitality palled,
and George voted that we move down to the jungle and celebrate his
release from prison.
Bums, thieves, beggars, and yeggs appeared as if they had magic carpets.
In no time the thing assumed the proportions of a convention. Everybody
had money. The crowd soon split up into units. Each unit had its cook
and cooking outfit. The “captain” of each unit collected from the
individuals and sent the younger bums into the town to buy alcohol,
beer, and the “makin’s” of mulligans. There was drinking, fast and
furious, eating, washing, shaving, while some of the older bums mended
their clothes with expert needle. Cripples discarded their crutches and
hopped about the camp fires grotesquely. “Crawlers” with cut-off legs
swung themselves along on their hands drunkenly, like huge toads.
Because of George our unit easily had all the class of the convention.
He sat in state on a coal-oil can by the fire, bottle in hand, royally
receiving the congratulations of bums from the four points of the
compass.
Somewhere near by at another fire a bum sang in a raucous, beery voice,
“Oh, Where Is My Wandering Boy To-night.” “The Face on the Barroom
Floor,” “My Blue Velvet Band,” and “Ostler Joe” were alcoholically
recited by a fat, red-faced bum in a greasy coat, after which the
convention stretched out on the warm ground and slumbered peacefully in
the balmy summer air.
The cook of our party was a stranger to me. A tall, lank man of fifty,
with a straggly black beard and matted black hair hanging to his
shoulder. He never spoke except when the bottle was passed to him. Then
he would hold it aloft and in a dead, empty voice offer his unfailing
toast. “The stool pigeon is the coming race.”
“Kid,” said George, when I asked him about the cook. “He’s crazy as a
bed bug and the best ‘mulligan’ maker on the road. ‘Montana Blacky’ is
welcome at any bum camp anywhere, and he spends his life going from
jungle to jungle.”
Each day the bums drank more and ate less. The cooks were drunk and
would prepare no food. The fiery alcohol had done its work. The bums
that could stand up were fighting or snapping and snarling at each
other. Many lay on their backs helpless, glass-eyed and open-mouthed,
while others crawled about on all fours like big spiders. No more
laughter, songs or recitations. Gloom settled over the camp and
Tragedy waited in the wings for his cue to stalk upon the stage.
Just when the convention was about to close for the want of able
drinkers, a fresh contingent of bums arrived from over the Oregon Short
Line. They were brass peddlers and had a big assortment of “solid gold”
wedding rings. A big young fellow they called “Gold Tooth” seemed to be
“captain” of the outfit. Along toward dark they finished the last of
our liquor, and Gold Tooth and his tribe prepared to go into the town to
make a “plunge.” He detailed a couple of them to take the main “drag,”
another to make the railroad men’s boarding houses, another to the
saloons.
“I’ll make the cribs myself. I’m dynamite with them old brums in the
cribs,” he declared, with a satisfied, confident air.
The “brass” was portioned out and they started uptown to “tell the
natives how it happened.” There is no more industrious person than a
half-drunk brass peddler out on the street “making a plunge” for enough
coin to buy himself another micky of alcohol. The first peddler
returned in an hour with his quota of “Dr. Hall” (alcohol), and the
drinking began afresh. George, Johnnie, and I had enough; we drank
sparingly. One by one they straggled in with their bottles till all had
arrived but Gold Tooth.
There was much speculation as to what had happened to him, and his
“tribe” finally decided he had been “yaffled by the town whittler.” In
the language of the bums “yaffled” is arrested, and the “town whittler”
is the constable, so-called because he is usually found sitting in some
comfortable place whittling a stick.
When Gold Tooth did show up, it was evident that he would have been
lucky had the town whittler got him first. Blood was running down his
face from wounds on his head, his shirt was in strands, and he was
raving.
“Look at me,” he screamed, “this is the rankest deal I’ve got in my ten
years on the road. And where do you think I got it? In Salt Chunk
Mary’s. I go in her joint and drop a hoop to one of her frowsy little
brums for nine dollars. I’m decent enough to buy her a bottle of beer
when she pays me for my brass. When she goes out for the beer she shows
the hoop to Mary. She comes in and deliberately orders me to blow back
the jane’s nine bucks. I tells her there’s nothing doin’ and starts for
the door. Mary hits me in the back of the head with a bottle of beer,
and when I go down she puts the boots to me.”
George sat up and looked at the speaker curiously.
Still standing by the fire, he continued: “That’s what I get for bein’ a
good bum. I’m goin’ back up there to-night and burn down her shack; the
dirty, big, red-headed Amazonian battle-ax. I’ll——”
“Hey, you,” said George from across the fire, “you’re a liar.” His
little dead blue eyes were blazing like a wounded wild boar’s. “You was
a good bum, but you’re dog meat now.” A gun flashed from beneath his
coat, and he fired into Gold Tooth twice. Six feet away, I could *feel*
the slugs hit him. His head fell forward and both hands went to his
chest, where he was hit. He turned round, like a dog getting ready to
lie down and fell on his face. His hat rolled into the fire. His hands
were clawing the red-hot coals.
Soldier Johnnie ran around and pulled him away from the fire by the
feet. George stood, with the gun smoking, glaring at the others of Gold
Tooth’s tribe. They slunk away into the dark, gibbering drunkenly.
Some of the drunken sleepers by the fire were not even aroused by the
shots. Johnnie kicked them awake; they got up and staggered away.
Montana Blacky, our crazy cook, reeled unsteadily into the circle of
firelight, wabbling like an old crow on a dead limb. Holding his bottle
aloft, he croaked: “Oh, then the bums began to fight, and there was
murder right and tight.” Waving his arm over the scene as if conferring
his benediction on the fire, the dead man, George, Johnnie, and myself,
he disappeared, muttering: “The stool pigeon’s the coming race.”
George handed me his pistol. “Throw this in the river, Kid.” I broke it
open, took out the slugs and empty shells, threw them into the water at
one place, and the gun at another. We hurried away toward the railroad
yards. On the way up, we decided that Johnnie should stay in Pocatello
and intimidate any of the weaker bums who might talk, and also try to
shoo them all out of town.
In the railroad yards, I had my eyes opened to one of the safest
getaways ever discovered—that of “springing” into a loaded box car.
Johnnie got an iron bar out of a scrap pile. Equipped with this, we went
through the long lines of loaded cars waiting to be routed out of
Pocatello, and in a few minutes found a car of merchandise billed to
Great Falls, Montana. The process of “springing in” was simple. With
the iron bar Johnnie lifted the bottom of a side door till it was clear
of the hasps that held it in place. Placing one foot against the car,
he pulled the bottom of the door out, away from its position, making
space enough for us to crawl up into the opening. When we were safely
inside, he sprang the door back into its place with his bar. Usually one
or both end doors were fastened on the inside, making it easy to get
out.
In those days this was the bums’ best getaway, and it never failed
unless they went to sleep and snored so loud that the brakeman heard
them when the train was on a sidetrack. Supplied with food and water,
men have traveled across the continent in safety while sheriffs and
posses beat up the jungles for them in vain.
Luckily enough, we got into a train that was already “made up” for
departure, and it pulled out in an hour. Making ourselves comfortable
on top of the cases of merchandise, we took turn about sleeping, and
after a ride of almost twenty-four hours, got into Silver Bow Junction,
where we opened an end door and crawled out, hungry and thirsty. Then a
walk of six miles, and we were in Butte City, where we got food and a
room.
George was well known to the police in Butte, but took no pains to hide
himself, feeling sure that the masonry of the road and jungle would
protect him against the common enemy—the law.
The next afternoon we were picked up on the street by plain-clothes men
and taken before the chief of police.
“What’s wrong now, chief?” queried George.
“Oh, nothing much, Foot-’n’-a-half, just a telegram from
Pocatello—murder charge,” smiled the chief.
“What about me?” I asked.
He looked at a telegram on his desk. “Hold anybody found with him.”
They searched us thoroughly and held everything found on us. We were
locked up alone, in separate cells. “You’ve got plenty of money, boys,”
said the jailer, “you can buy anything you want in the way of food and
tobacco.”
I sat on the side of my iron cot, wondering who had kicked over the bean
pot. A rat-eyed trusty came down the corridor and stopped in front of
George’s cell, directly across from mine. “What’s the trouble,
old-timer?”
George looked at him coldly. “Oh, nothing much. I just bit a baby’s arm
off.”
The trusty went away. Something told him to ask no more questions.
Idaho officers came the next day and we went back with them to
Pocatello, not caring to waste our money fighting extradition, and
feeling confident there was nothing more than a suspicion of guilt
against us. We were taken straight from the train at Pocatello to an
undertaker’s. Every town official was there. Inside, in the back room,
they led George up to a table where his victim was laid out under a
white cloth. He knew what was coming, and so did I. The cloth was jerked
off the body and one of the officers pointed his finger at George.
“There’s the poor devil you shot, you damned, murdering ———, and we’ll
hang you for it.”
George coolly and calmly placed his right hand on the dead man’s brow
for an instant. Then, taking it away, he held his arm out full length
with the palm of his hand up, and said to the officer:
“If I killed that man, there’s the hand that held the gun, and there’s
the finger that pulled the trigger” (jerking his index finger back and
forth), and, pulling up his coat sleeve, “there’s my pulse! Do you want
to feel it?”
They weakened. The old yegg had beaten them at their own game.
“Lock them up!” ordered somebody in authority. The marshal and
a crowd of citizens took us to the calaboose, a small, one-room
shack in the middle of a big lot. They waited around till a pair of
villainous-looking Bannock Indians appeared with rifles. They were
hired to watch us and took turn about, sitting on a box outside by the
door, day and night, silent, motionless. At evening the marshal brought
a basket of food from a near-by restaurant, and a bundle of clean, new
blankets.
Pocatello boasted of two lawyers, brothers. One prosecuted cases in the
magistrate’s court, and the other defended anybody foolish enough to
hire him. Salt Chunk Mary sent the defender over to see us the next
day. He hadn’t influence enough to have us brought to his office, so he
talked to us through the calaboose-door wicket. We were not going to
waste any money on him. We decided to wait and see if we needed a lawyer
first. George thanked him for coming, told him we had done nothing, and
didn’t need an attorney.
Every day for a week we were taken out and questioned. At the end of
that time, having exhausted their stock of questions and patience, the
marshal and his deputy had us into the justice’s court charged with
vagrancy. In ten minutes we were tried, convicted, and sentenced to six
months each in the county jail at Blackfoot.
No matter how small the town is, somebody can be found to fix things.
Mary was on the job and got the town fixer to “see the judge.” He
consented to suspend the sentences if we would get out of the town and
stay out, warning us that if we ever came back we would automatically
start serving our time.
We went over to Mary’s to get out of sight till train-time, and find out
what had caused our arrest. Soldier Johnnie had not appeared at her
place. He folded his tent and stole away with other members of the
convention, and so precarious was the life we led that it was fifteen
years till I saw him again. All Mary had gathered was that the marshal,
noting the scarcity of bums about town, had gone down to the jungle,
where he found a dead man sprawled beside a burnt-out fire. Searching
the jungle further, he came upon poor old Montana Blacky, raving mad. He
was taken in and later sent to an asylum. He was the only bum in
Pocatello the day after the convention’s tragic close. We never knew
what caused our arrest, but surmised that Blacky in his ravings might
have named George as the killer.
When our train pulled out, the marshal was there to see that we got
aboard and to ascertain where we were going. We foiled him by neglecting
to buy tickets, and at the same time saved ourselves money by paying a
hungry conductor half fare cash to ride us into Butte.
There I began my apprenticeship at the dangerous and fascinating
business of breaking open safes. As was proper, I did all the fetching
and carrying. I stole the dan, bought the drills, got railroad
time-tables, and guidebooks. I was sent out to make the preliminary
survey of the “spot” George had designs on. I reported to him whether
the spot was “flopped” in. I looked up the getaway, the all-important
thing. No place is fat enough to tempt unless some feasible getaway can
be figured out.
I located the blacksmith shop, where heavy tools could be had if needed,
and the livery stable, where saddle horses could be got if required. I
learned what trains passed, and when. I checked the town whittler’s
comings and goings. I was careful to look over the place for dogs, the
bane of the burglar’s life. If my report satisfied George, he looked it
over once to make sure. When we went against a spot he did the
“blacksmithing” inside, while I covered the outside.
We traveled on foot, on horseback, or on trains as the occasion
required. A hike of twenty, thirty, or even forty miles was not rare. We
never got any such great amounts of money as burglars get to-day. A
thousand dollars was considered a good “touch.” I believe a thief could
get more out of a thousand dollars thirty years ago than he could out of
five thousand to-day. Living was cheaper, police fewer and less active,
shyster lawyers not so greedy and well organized, and the fences and
fixers not so rapacious. “Justice” was not so expensive.
Only the large cities attempted anything in the way of identification.
The Bertillon system was in the experimental stage and finger printing
unknown in police work. We jumped from one state to another, kept away
from the cities, lived almost entirely on the road except in the dead of
winter, and spent our money in the jungles with the bums or played it in
against faro bank in the mining towns. When we got a decent piece of
money we quit stealing till it was almost spent, but while we were
spending it we always tried to locate new spots against the day when we
would be broke. George, although past fifty, never spoke of quitting. I
doubt if the thought ever entered his mind. He was as much attached to
his trade as any carpenter or bricklayer, and went about it as
methodically as any mechanic.
His cold-blooded shooting of Gold Tooth caused many bums to avoid him.
After he was dead, I learned by accident why he did it, but it was too
late then to shake hands with him over it.
A year after we were banished from Pocatello, a letter from Mary told us
that the Sanctimonious Kid was arrested in Denver, charged with a tough
burglary, and wanted help. She wanted to help him, but didn’t know how
to go about it. I sneaked into Pocatello for her generous contribution,
and with what we could spare we went to Denver and got him the best
lawyer there—Tom Patterson, afterward Senator Patterson from Colorado.
We stayed in the state, turning every dollar we could steal into his
lawyer’s office, but in vain. Sanc got everything Patterson had in the
way of service, and finished with fifteen years at Canon City.
A small post office in Utah yielded us a few dollars and a big bundle of
“stickers.” I had no fear of Pocatello after getting in and out of it
once, and we thought it only right that Mary should have the stamps and
get the profit on them. I got into her place with them, but she hadn’t
enough money and I had to wait till morning for her to get it from the
bank. Instead of staying quietly in her house, as she advised, I went
out for a look at the town and the whittler got me.
He threw me in the calaboose, promising to take me to Blackfoot the next
day to start on my six months. He hired no Indians this time, but just
locked the door and went back uptown, probably to look for George. I
paced up and down the length of the calaboose, cursing my carelessness.
About midnight there came a rap on the door.
“Are you in there, Kid?” It was Salt Chunk Mary. She passed in a small
bottle of whisky and some sandwiches. I implored her to go over by the
depot and try to find some bum that would break the lock and let me out.
“No use, Kid,” she said. “The town has been hostile ever since the
convention. A bum can’t light here any more. I’ll try to get some
gambler to do it.”
She hurried away. In an hour she came back alone, armed with a crowbar.
She put the pointed end of it into the neck of the lock and with a
mighty wrench twisted it off and threw the door open. I stepped out.
That pale, light-fingered ghost, “The lady that’s known as Lou,” would
have fainted in my arms. Not Mary. When I reached for her hand, she
pushed me away.
“Don’t waste time thanking me. Here’s the coin for your stickers. I
borrowed it from the girls. You’ve got to hurry; there’s a train
leaving in ten minutes.”
While I was still pouring out my thanks to Mary she turned away, and I
hastened to the railroad yards, where I hid myself till the train pulled
in. I didn’t go near the depot to buy a ticket, but crawled under a
coach and deposited myself on the rods. Before daylight I crawled out
at Ogden and hiked straight out of the town. I waited at the first
station out, and in a few hours got a train into Salt Lake, where George
was waiting for me.
He had seen Judge Powers, who defended me when I ran away from the
verdict of not guilty. The judge assured him that there was no claim on
me and the worst I need fear was a charge of “vag” from some sore-head
copper. I at once told him of my troubles at Pocatello and my delivery
from the calaboose by Mary.
“You don’t have to tell me what a grand character she is, Kid. I know
all about that. She’s righter than April rain. If you knew half what I
know about her you’d have put a couple of slugs into Gold Tooth
yourself. You probably thought I ‘smoked him off’ because I was full of
‘Hall’ (alcohol) and wanted to cut some crazy caper. I croaked him
because he was slandering the best woman that ever stood in two shoes.
I’m not lookin’ for a chance to kill anybody. I got my belly full of
that in the war, an’ that ain’t all. No matter what they say, dead men
do tell tales. Robbery and burglary are soon forgotten and outlawed,
but when you leave a dead man behind you they’ve got the balance of
your life to catch you and hang you. A couple of those bums could go
into the Salvation Army ten years from now and get religion and hang
me.
“I’ve packed a gun for thirty years, and every time I fired it I was in
the wrong except, maybe, when I let that Gold Tooth have it. That’s
because my business is wrong. But it don’t include murder and I won’t
travel with anybody that deliberately shoots people.
“When the town ‘bull’ interferes with you at night shoot at him, of
course, and shoot at him first; but don’t hit him. He thinks you’re
tryin’ to kill him and that’s enough. He’ll go after reënforcements and
you get away. If he shoots at you that’s just a common incident; if he
hits you it’s a rare accident.
“You’re only beginning at this racket, Kid,” finished the veteran yegg.
“Take my advice and be careful with your gun. It’s a good servant, but
don’t let it become your master or it will hang you.”
We hadn’t been in Salt Lake ten days till one of the “dicks” that put me
on trial in Smiler’s case came into the “Gold Room,” a gambling house we
hung out in, and took me off to jail. They held me all day and that
night, trying to dig up some charge to put against me. Judge Powers came
the following day, and after a lot of palaver they charged me with
vagrancy. He got me a bond and I was later dismissed.
Harry Hinds, who kept the Gold Room, saw the police and came back with
the good news that we could stay in Salt Lake as long as we didn’t
“bother” anybody in the city and that they didn’t care what we did
outside the city limits.
We made our headquarters in the city for more than a year. We hung out
in the Gold Room and our persistent attempts to beat the faro game kept
us continually jumping into the near-by towns to replenish our bankroll.
Dynamite was easy to get and we didn’t trouble ourselves to go to Ogden
for the parcel I had left in the safety vault. We became quite
established in Salt Lake and came to know many people. We lived at a
quiet, second-class hotel, and went about our business in a decent,
orderly manner.
George lost all interest in bums and their gatherings after the
convention at Pocatello, and kept away from them. They still attracted
me, and occasionally I went down to the jungle on the banks of the river
Jordan that empties into the Great Salt Lake.
On one of those visits I fell in with a crippled beggar who had been
down on the “poultice route” in southern Utah. He had formerly been a
very capable thief, but the loss of a leg under a train at once disabled
and reformed him, and he turned to begging, as many do when they can no
longer steal. I had a bottle of “Dr. Hall” and as we passed it back and
forth the beggar bewailed his misfortune in losing his leg and having to
“dingdong” his way about the country for a few “lousy dimes.” “There’s a
box,” he wailed, “in the county treasurer’s office in the courthouse at
the town of ——— that I could chop the back out of with an ax, if I was
able-bodied. The town whittler goes to bed when the general store closes
at nine o’clock at night. There ain’t five hundred people in the town
and they’re all in bed before ten o’clock. I went in to beg the county
treasurer and he gave me four bits. The ‘box’ was open and I saw a stack
of ‘soft stuff’ (paper money) that would make Rockefeller’s mouth
water.”
He drank himself speechless and went to sleep mumbling his misfortune.
I told George about it and we looked it up on the map and found it was
twenty miles off a railroad. “I don’t like the way it’s situated, Kid,”
said George, “but there’s three or four thousand dollars there now while
they’re collecting taxes, and we’d better look at it.”
We got a small roll of blankets each, and bought tickets to a town forty
miles distant from the county seat. George went first, and I followed
the next day. At this base he hired a saddle horse, and departed to
look the spot over. He got back in a few days and reported that it was
even “softer” than the cripple had pictured it.
“We’ll hike the forty miles into the town, Kid, by easy stages, beat off
the box, and get a couple of horses out of the livery stable. By
daylight we ought to be thirty miles away, where we will ditch the
horses and plant in the jungles till night. After that we will have to
hike nights till we get back to ‘The Lake.’”
The following Sunday night we got into the town, but found there was a
social gathering in the church, next door to the courthouse. That
delayed us till twelve o’clock. At one o’clock we went into the stables
across the street, and saddled two gentle horses, leaving them in their
stalls. The town was dark, dead, and we went into the courthouse and to
a rear room where the safe stood.
The master coolly removed his coat, throwing it on top of the safe. On
the coat he laid a big “cannon.” I opened the small parcel containing
the “dan” and “stems” (drills). From the blacksmith shop we had taken a
carpenter’s hand brace and a pinch bar. With this primitive outfit
George attacked the box in a most workmanlike manner. I went outside,
but there was nobody in sight, and the only sound was the pawing of a
horse in the stable across the street. At two o’clock George came out to
look around himself. He was ready to “shoot her.” The make of the box
required that the door be blown entirely out of place and the explosion
seemed tremendous in the dead, quiet night with nerves on edge. But the
town slumbered on.
George waited outside, but there was no alarm, and he went back,
returning in five minutes with a small but heavy bag of gold pieces that
clinked sweetly when he dropped it into his coat pocket.
“You carry this head of cabbage, Kid,” passing me a pack of greenbacks
about the size of a brick.
Dawn was graying the east as we went into the stable and bridled the
horses. George went out first, pulling his reluctant horse by the bridle
rein pulled over his head. In the door his horse stopped, and George,
standing outside on the inclined platform, tugged with both hands while
I slapped the horse on his rump. Suddenly George dropped the bridle rein
and his hand went to the waistband of his trousers for a gun.
A voice shouted, “Here, you damned horse thief,” and a shotgun belched
murderously, then again. George got both barrels. He was almost blown
off his feet. He toppled over sidewise and his body rolled slowly down
the incline to the ground.
The man with the shotgun knew his bloody business. I plainly heard the
sinister click of the breech-lock as he snapped it shut after reloading.
Neither of the horses was gun-shy; they stood still. The gunshot echoes
died away. A whiff of powder smoke drifted above and across George’s
body. The silence was awful. I could feel the shooter outside standing
at “ready” with his murderous gun. I was trapped; my pistol was useless
against such odds. Somewhere in the stable a horse, heaving heavily to
his feet, shook the floor and roused me from my trance of fear and
shock. I remembered having seen a door in the side of the barn opposite
where the man with the gun was. I ran to it and out into a lot. Across
the street was the courthouse and the general store. There was a cellar
beneath the store. I had looked into it while George was working on the
“box.” Its old-fashioned inclined doors were open and it was piled full
of farm implements, empty boxes, crates, kegs of nails, etc.
Half panicky, I dashed across the street and into the cellar, where I
hid amongst the junk at the end farthest from the door. In a half hour
the town was on fire with excitement. The store was opened and I heard
loud voices and the tramp of many feet above me. There was a clattering
of horses’ hoofs in the street, and I knew the hue and cry was on. I
burrowed deeper into boxes and bales, prepared for a long wait.
When daylight came I saw a pair of stairs leading up to a trapdoor in
the store floor. There was much coming and going all day, and the steady
hum of voices. I strained my ears, but couldn’t make head or tail of the
talk. I put in a long, hard day, and when night came and the store was
closed I was famished for food and water. All day I had been debating in
my mind whether I should sneak out at dark and try to hike away, or hold
down the cellar for another twenty-four hours. I had just decided to go
out and chance it when I heard the cellar doors banged down from the
outside, then the click of a padlock. I was locked in.
About midnight I went up the steps and found the trapdoor unfastened.
The store was dark, but I soon found the cheese and crackers and
carefully “weeded” out a good portion of each. There was a bucket of
water in the back of the store, and I filled an empty bottle from it,
after drinking all I could.
Letting myself out of a window at the back, I closed it carefully after
me, and hiked out of the town. Before daylight I carefully planted my
“head of cabbage” in a field and crawled into a clump of bushes a
hundred yards away to sleep and rest up for the next night.
Between hunting in fields, gardens, and orchards at night for food, and
walking as fast as I could, it took me four nights to get to the main
line of the railroad sixty miles away. Counting the money, I found there
was three thousand dollars of “green and greasy,” worn paper money, in
small bills.
During my long hike I had plenty of time to decide what to do. I made up
my mind not to go near Salt Lake, where I was known. This money had been
the death of poor old George, and I felt that he would turn over in his
grave if I lost it and my liberty, too. I took out a hundred dollars
and buried the rest with the utmost care.
At Provo, Utah, I got some fresh clothes and settled down to wait till
the business cooled off. From the papers I gathered that George was
killed by the livery-stable owner, who had got up early to go duck
shooting. Going to his stable to get a horse, he found the back door
open and waited to see what was going on. He thought he had a horse
thief, and only fired when George reached for his gun. Two thousand
dollars in gold was found in George’s coat pocket, and returned to the
county. The hunt was still on for the burglar with the big end of the
money. Nobody claimed the dead man’s body and he was buried unnamed and
unknown.
After a miserable month’s wait, I dug up my money and bought a ticket to
Chicago by the way of Denver and Omaha, going a roundabout way for fear
of meeting my father and having to face his clear, cold eyes. If it had
been honest money I would have gone to him and offered him any part of
it, but I was afraid to face him with a lie.
I got into Chicago safely and immediately put my fortune in a safety
box. Then I bought plenty of good clothes and got myself a nice room
near the corner of Clark and Madison Streets. That seemed to be the
center of the night life, and I instinctively anchored there. I put in
the winter investigating the cheap dives, hurdy-gurdies, and dance
halls. The tough Tenderloin district attracted me also. The beer bums
and barrel-house five-cent whisky bums came under my notice. Not very
different from the winos of San Francisco. I visited the five-cent
barber shops of lower Clark Street and the ten-cent “flops” and dime
ham-and-bean joints. Nothing escaped me. I nibbled at the faro games,
but was careful and never got hurt. Every night I looked into Hinky
Dink’s and Bathhouse John’s bars and heard the same old alarm, “here
comes the wagon.” But those two kings of the First Ward were “Johnnie on
the spot” and never allowed any of “their people” to languish in the
“can” overnight.
I discovered the saloon of “Mush Mouth” Johnson, a negro politician of
power, and, fascinated, watched his patrons, each in turn trying to make
the bone dice roll his way.
I stumbled upon the hop joint of “California Jack,” an old Chinaman from
Sacramento, who was waxing fat in his make-believe laundry in South
State Street. Thieves, pickpockets, and pimps and their girls smoked
unmolested day or night. Now and then a tired waiter or bartender threw
himself wearily on a bunk.
I fell in with a wolfish-eyed girl of the streets, hungry and shivering
in a doorway, so shabby that men would not throw an appraising glance at
her. Like Julia she was almost “ready for the river.” I bought her food
and clothes and a room. I gave her no advice and sought no profit from
the transaction. With better clothes and food she plied her trade
confidently and prospered. I saw her often on the streets. One night
she paid me the money I had spent for her.
Then came a midnight when she knocked at my door, pale, panting with
fear. “You must help me,” she implored. “I have no friend but you. A man
is dead in my room. If he is found there the police—you know—they’ll say
it’s murder.”
On the street we got a hack and in ten minutes were at her place. A
shabby parlor fronted on the street; in back of it was a bedroom. On the
bed, fully dressed, lying crosswise with feet on the floor, was the body
of a man. Well dressed, about fifty, he might have been a clerk. I went
out the back door and to the alley. There was no one in sight. When I
came back she was shivering in a chair. I put the dead man’s hat in my
pocket and asked her to help me lift him to my shoulder. She refused to
touch “the thing.” With an effort I got it to my shoulder, the head and
arms hanging down my back. Clasping my arms around its legs, I staggered
out the back way toward the alley.
Stumbling up the dark alley over tins, wires, broken boxes, and other
rubbish, I carried my dangerous burden almost to the cross street and
threw it down, leaving the hat beside it. Annie Ireland, or “Irish
Annie” as she was called by the street girls, was still huddled in the
chair in a corner of the room farthest from the bed when I returned.
“Where did you leave it?” she whispered.
“Up the alley,” I told her shortly. I had no stomach for this business,
and wanted to be away and done with her. I felt sure she had dealt the
man a jolt of chloral or some other stupefying drug.
“Look here, Annie,” I warned her, “if you’ve got any of that guy’s junk
around here you’d better ditch it. They will find him in the morning,
and every crib in the block might be searched.”
“No, no,” she protested. “I didn’t touch him. I picked him up on the
street. When we came in here he stretched out across the bed and went to
sleep. I took my hat and coat off and tried to wake him, but couldn’t.
After a while his hands turned cold and I saw he was dead. Then I went
for you.”
I went out, and she followed me. “Where are you going now?” I asked.
“Oh, I don’t know—outside, anywhere. I can’t stay in there. I’ll go down
the line and get drunk, I guess.”
I left her at the corner, resolved to see no more of her. But that
wasn’t to be, for there came a day, years after, when she held up her
hand in a court and perjured me into prison. The next day I moved to
another part of the city and kept away from the blocks she walked at
night. I met her no more, and she soon fell into the background of my
memory. I watched the papers, but saw nothing except a few lines
reporting the finding of the body of an unidentified man in an alley. A
dead man in an alley didn’t mean much in Chicago then and his body
probably went to the potter’s field or a medical college.