When spring came, my Chinese “tillicum,” which is Chinook for friend,
and I were the only felony prisoners in the “skookum house,” or jail.
The two half-breeds had finished their time and a couple of others had
been brought in to take their places, four prisoners in all. The Indians
watched us and we watched them. The tough end of our job was not to beat
the jail or the drunken jailer, but the watchful trusties, our fellow
prisoners.
I decided to cut the bars in the daytime and have my cellmate keep a
lookout at the door against the appearance of our jailer or the Indians.
The saws were dug up out of a crack and day after day, slowly,
noiselessly, they bit into the thick bars. At night I put them away
safely in their hiding place, and we slept as usual. Our jailer drank
more and more, and we were searched oftener, but never once did he or
his Indians look at the bars in our window. We were so closely watched
and the jail was so tight the thought of our getting anything to “crush
out” with never entered his foggy mind.
Strangely enough the China boy’s “cousins” never appeared at the jail
after the day they brought him the saws. Whether they were afraid or
thought they had done enough for him I never knew. To all my queries
about them he “no sabied.” At the start I had figured on help in the way
of money and food from them. Now I had to dismiss this. I determined not
to go near the Chinese if we got out, but to get into a train and stay
in it till hunger forced me out.
After weary weeks the work was done; the bars cut so nearly through I
was afraid they would fall out every time the cell door was slammed
shut. I hid the worn saws, and waited patiently till our jailer got
drunk and gave us our searching. On those nights he never made a second
appearance. Satisfied, he always went direct to bed and we could hear
his alcoholic snores in another part of the building. The Indian
trusties went to sleep and I rolled our blankets into dummies that
looked passable. At twelve o’clock the freight train pulled in and went
on a side track to get a fresh engine and allow the passenger train to
go by at one o’clock. I broke the bars out and hid them under the
blankets. The China boy’s knees were shaking as he crawled out and
dropped to the ground. I followed him, not any too calm and cool myself.
He had no hat, otherwise he was dressed as I was—duck pants and a thin
shirt.
There was no time to try to steal clothing, food, or money. As we
hurried toward the freight yards where the train stood I had but one
comforting thought—we wouldn’t be missed till seven in the morning.
The Chinaman was helpless. At the side track I ran frantically about in
search of something to spring a car door with. At last I found a pile of
scrap iron and dug a fishplate out of it. The train was an all-through
freight, billed to Vancouver, the terminus. I soon discovered a
battered box car that suited, and sprang a side door away from its
bearings. Then I showed the Chinaman the end door and tried to explain
to him, mostly by signs, that he should get in the side door while I
pulled it out, and then unfasten the end door from the inside to admit
me after I put the side door back in place. He refused to budge. At last
I made him pull the door out while I got into the car. When I got the
end door open I had to get out, go down, and get him and put him in.
Then I sprang the side door back in position, went to the end door,
crawled in, and fastened it on the inside the way I found it.
We didn’t have a pocketknife, not a dime, not a match; but we were safe,
and I wouldn’t have exchanged the security of that box car for a soft
berth in the sleeper on the departing passenger train. We were barely
settled inside when there was a bumping and jolting of cars and our
train slowly got under way. We were in a car loaded with barrels of
lime. They stood on end and it was painful to stretch out on them. The
ride was a nightmare. Hungry, thirsty, cold, racked with fear and
suspense, we got into Vancouver after twenty-four hours.
Clothes were the first problem, any kind of rags to cover our jail
uniforms. I got out of the car with the half-dead China boy at once, and
went directly back to the caboose on the train we rode. The conductor
and brakeman were already gone. The caboose was deserted. The boy hid
between box cars while I went to the top of the caboose, through the
cupola, and down inside. In a locker were greasy coats and pants, and a
cap for the Chink. The clothes were too big for him and the cap too
small. He knew Vancouver and wanted to take me to his “cousins” in
Chinatown, but I was afraid we couldn’t get by a copper together, so he
struck out alone after making me promise to hunt him up at his company’s
headquarters. I crawled into an empty car to wait for daylight, when it
would be safer to go through the streets.
It was Sunday morning. I heard a church bell ring and knew it was
somewhere around six o’clock. When I looked out of the car I saw that a
heavy fog had settled over the city like a blessed benediction. I melted
into it, making my way out of the freight yards and into the streets.
The fog was so dense that I couldn’t have found my way if I had known
the town. After walking blocks along a street I saw that the stores
were getting smaller and farther apart. Vacant lots became more numerous
and everything indicated that I was going in the wrong direction. A few
doors ahead of me an old, rheumatic, mongrel dog appeared out of a
hallway. He was the only living thing in sight, and when I got abreast
of him I stopped and looked at him idly. He came over to me, gave me a
rather doubtful look, and sat back on his haunches. After balancing
himself carefully, he lifted a stiff hind leg and made a futile effort
to dislodge the hungry fleas from under his collar. Failing at this, he
got up slowly, gave me another looking-over, and limped back to his
doorway. As he went in he glanced at me out of the tail of his eye.
It sounds strange to say that I was suspicious of a mangy, old cur dog;
but it’s true. There was something so human in his glance that I
followed him into the doorway to see what he was up to.
In the entrance behind the door, with his head on the lower step, a man
was sprawled. A second look convinced me that he was a Saturday night
drunk who had got that far and no farther. He was lying on his back,
open-mouthed, and breathing heavily. The old dog stood beside him
watching me.
I could see he was a workingman and ordinarily wouldn’t have given him a
look, but I was now broke, hungry, wolfish. The dog growled a feeble
protest as I began exploring his master’s clothes. He had money in every
pocket. I left some silver in his vest for him to get a drink with when
he woke up. The devoted old mongrel stood in the door as if to bar me
from going out, and eyed me reproachfully when I gently pushed him
aside.
Out in the street I cleansed my conscience by repeating the
Sanctimonious Kid’s favorite parody: “Oh, room rent, what crimes are
committed in thy name!”
Turning the nearest corner, a glance over my shoulder showed me the
loyal dog out on the sidewalk, still accusing me with his tired old
eyes. The town was awake now and I soon found a sailor’s boarding house
where I got a couple of bracing drinks and sat at a long table where
sailors and stevedores were breakfasting in free-for-all, family style.
I didn’t join in the conversation, didn’t have to. The quantity of food
I put away convinced them I belonged on the water front. Paying for a
room in the place, I got into it and took stock. There was enough money
to get an outfit of clothes and feed me for a couple of weeks. I made a
bundle of the jail pants and threw it off a wharf at once. The next day
I bought new clothes, shoes, and hat, got cleaned up, and, dismissing
the burglary charge and broken jail from my mind, proceeded to look
about me.
I had not been photographed or measured in the small town I escaped
from; it didn’t look reasonable that the authorities would travel five
hundred miles on the chance of finding me in Vancouver, so I decided to
stay there till I could get hold of something worth while. Moreover I
was curious to know how my Chinese cellmate had fared, and being young
and somewhat fond of myself, perhaps I wanted to meet his “cousins” and
be admired by them.
After looking over the town, my experience told me the police were not
to be feared and I went into Chinatown in search of my friend. Finding
the company store he described, I went in and bought a small package of
ginger candy. About a dozen Chinese were sitting around, talking or
playing dominos, but the minute I appeared the dominos quit rattling and
the Chinese stopped talking. I looked as mysterious as I could without
making it too strong and surveyed them one by one. Not one uttered a
syllable till I went out; then they all fell to talking and
gesticulating at once. The following night I went back and bought more
candy. A smart-looking, middle-aged Chinaman in European clothes was
behind the counter.
“What you come here for?” he asked in very good English.
“I look for Chew Chee, China boy, my friend. We come Vancouver Sunday
morning in box car. Before—we stop skookum house. Skookum house not
very ‘skookum’ we come Vancouver—very cold, very hungry. Chew Chee tell
me come this house. All right—I come. Now I go. Good-by!”
He remained silent, his face expressionless to me. I knew the Chinese
mistrust of white men, and many of their good reasons for it, and was
not offended or discouraged. He was protecting his countryman; I admired
him for it. At the door I gave him a final dig. “My friend tell me come
your house; I come. You think me ‘luc zhe.’ You very smart man. You
think me policeman. All right. Good-by!”
This was too much for the stoical Chinaman. He followed me out and,
catching up, said in a low voice: “You no ‘luc zhe’; you good man. You
come ‘fi fi’ (quickly).”
I followed him into the next block, then down a narrow, dark lane
between buildings and up shaky stairs where he knocked on a door. An old
man admitted us and barred the door. The place was a big loft. The foggy
air was hot, stifling, and laden with every Chinese smell—opium,
tobacco, fish, and damp clothes drying. Chinamen were cooking, eating,
smoking hop, gambling, or sleeping in curtained bunks that lined the
walls. My conductor was evidently a considerable person. Silence fell on
the room, and many Chinamen stood still in submissive attitudes.
He threw a mangy old cat out of a broken chair near the big stove in the
middle of the room and told me to sit. After a few jerky gutturals to
the old man that let us in, he disappeared in the haze of smoke. The
gambling and chatter started again. Some of the younger Chinese passed
and looked at me curiously.
I sat by the stove and watched the scene with interest. An old
Chinaman—he must have been sixty—shuffled by me hastily with a hop
layout and spread it in a near-by bunk. He was shaking with the “yen
yen,” the hop habit. His withered, clawlike hands trembled as he
feverishly rolled the first “pill,” a large one. His burning eyes
devoured it. Half cooked, he stuck the pill in its place and turning his
pipe to the lamp greedily sucked the smoke into his lungs. Now, with a
long, grateful exhalation, the smoke is discharged, the cramped limbs
relax and straighten out, the smoker heaves a sigh of satisfaction, and
the hands, no longer shaking, turn with surer touch to another “pill.”
This is smaller, rolled and shaped with more care, better cooked, and
inhaled with a slow “long draw.” Each succeeding pill is smaller, more
carefully browned over the lamp, and smoked with increased pleasure. At
last the little horn container, the “hop toy,” is empty. The last pill
is finished with perfect stroke and flourish, the bamboo pipe is put
aside with caressing touch, the lamp blown out with gentle breath, and
the devotee, sighing softly, curls himself up for pleasant dreams.
I was so intent on watching the old man’s magic transformation from a
shattered wreck into a sleeping cherub that the boss Chinaman’s return
escaped me. He touched my shoulder and I followed him into a small room
in a rear corner of the loft, where I found Chew Chee. He shook my hand
awkwardly. His English was almost forgotten. All he could say was, “You
good man, you good man.”
The boss Chinaman was full of business. He drew out some American gold
pieces. “I pay you. Chew Chee pay me some time.”
I explained to him that I had not come for money; that I was there to
see Chew Chee and make friends of his friends, and that if I ever needed
money or help I would ask for it and expect it.
“Well, then,” he said, returning the gold to his pocket, “I give you
China letter to my company man. You come my store to-morrow night.”
He went away and Chew Chee insisted that I go with him and meet his
“cousins.” We walked across the city to a laundry where I was royally
received. Chew Chee was the only Chinese that had a word of English,
but the party was a success anyway. They produced their finest liquor,
their lichee nuts, their daintiest cakes, and choicest tea. The hop
layout was spread, and Chew Chee rolled and toasted me a pill that I
smoked just by way of being a sociable, good fellow. The pill made me
drowsy. A bunk was prepared and I slept out the night peacefully and
safely in the midst of my friends. I bade Chew Chee good-by in the
morning, and never saw him again.
That night, having nothing else to do, I went down to the China store.
The boss had my letter ready. I thanked him for it, and putting it in
my pocket gave it no further thought. And yet that letter snatched me
clear of the law’s clutches on a night when I was caught in a burglary,
overpowered, hog-tied, and waiting for “the wagon.”
I marvel to this day I did not quit my stealing right then and there. I
had all the best of it. I had escaped a sure conviction and sentence. I
could have returned to the “American side” and the Canadian authorities
would have given me good riddance. Yet the thought of turning to the
right, squaring myself, and starting anew never entered my mind.
Probably youthful egotism, which is nothing but confidence born of
ignorance, whispered to me that I could beat a game I knew to be wrong
and full of dangers. So without stopping to cast up accounts or take
stock, I blithely looked about me for fresh endeavors. My money was fast
dwindling, more must be had; and nightly I prowled the town with the
single purpose of locating anything I could do by myself.
It’s difficult to explain to a layman the pride of a professional thief.
Nevertheless he must have pride or he would steal his clothes, beat his
board bills, and borrow money with no thought of repaying it. He doesn’t
do those things day after day, but day after day he takes chances and is
proud that he can keep his end up and pay for the things he needs. All
wrong, of course, but there it is. If I had had brains enough to
grease a griddle, I would have taken a hundred dollars from the boss
Chinaman in the matter of Chew Chee and gone off somewhere, got a job,
and tried to do the right thing by myself and others. But no, I was a
journeyman; I had served a long and careful apprenticeship;
professional pride—I don’t know what else to call it—would not permit
me to take the Chinaman’s money for rescuing him from our common
enemy, the law, and I went out to get money in my own way.
I was wrong. I knew I was wrong, and yet I persisted. If that is
possible of any explanation it is this: From the day I left my father my
lines had been cast, or I cast them myself, among crooked people. I had
not spent one hour in the company of an honest person. I had lived in an
atmosphere of larceny, theft, crime. I thought in terms of theft. Houses
were built to be burglarized, citizens were to be robbed, police to be
avoided and hated, stool pigeons to be chastised, and thieves to be
cultivated and protected. That was my code; the code of my companions.
That was the atmosphere I breathed. “If you live with wolves, you will
learn to howl.”
In my rambles about Vancouver, I met an acquaintance from Salt Lake. He
and his wife were exiled from the Mormon city and could not return in
safety till they got a “bunch of trouble fixed up.” He fell on my neck,
saying: “Just the party I’m looking for. I’ve got something soft for
you; you can’t go wrong.” He invited me to his quarters, a cottage they
had rented. They were both “smokers,” and over the hop he explained the
“soft” thing.
His wife, in buying a can of hop, had tendered the Chinese storekeeper a
large bill. When he went into a rear room for the change, she saw that
he had his money in a box concealed beneath the floor. He made a
purchase later and verified her story.
“That’s all there is to it,” he said. “All you’ve got to do is go get
it.”
I investigated and found that his story wasn’t altogether the rosy dream
of a hop fiend. The storekeeper, an elderly Chinaman, did keep his money
in a box under the floor, but he slept on top of it at night and in a
room adjoining about a dozen Chinese laundry hands slept in bunks. It
didn’t look a bit soft to me. I convinced myself that the money was
there, and that I could get into the place, but that was all I could be
reasonably sure of.
My friend’s wife was a resourceful woman. “Chloroform him, that’s easy.
I’ll get you the chloroform,” she cried.
I hesitated about that. I was practical, I knew nothing about
chloroforming people. Sanc had never once mentioned chloroform and what
he knew about burglary was plenty. In searching my mind for something to
guide me I recalled having met a talkative chap in Chicago at California
Jack’s hop joint, who told me in great detail about his “ether outfit,”
how he injected the fluid through keyholes, putting his victims out
before going into their rooms, how he chloroformed women sleepers by
holding a saturated handkerchief to their noses, and how he stripped
their fingers of rings while they were stupefied. I remembered his talk
didn’t ring just right and that he borrowed two dollars from me at the
finish and never paid them. I had long since dismissed him from my mind
as a magazine burglar, a reader and rehasher of crime stories,
embellished and embroidered by daily devotion to the bamboo pipe.
Still his talk kept in my mind. There might be something in it. The old
Chinaman had money there; I needed it. I was ambitious to learn.
Chloroform seemed to be the only way and I decided to try it. I gave
the place a final looking-over. It was a one-story shack between two
larger buildings. A storeroom in front with its long counter, and
shelves on both sides filled with merchandise, a small room directly
back of it where the storekeeper slept on his pallet. I made sure of
that by rousing him early one morning to make a purchase. The big rear
room accommodated the Chinese laundry hands.
My friend’s wife delivered the chloroform and a clean handkerchief. I
rehearsed the whole business in my mind, and, feeling reasonably safe,
put it to the touch. An open window let me into the bunk room, where I
unfastened the back door, for a getaway.
On a long table in the center of the room a metal lamp in a dish burned
dimly. The tired laundrymen snored or breathed heavily. Here a muscular
brown arm hung limply over the side of a bunk below the curtain, and
there a foot protruded. The door to the old man’s room was open, and I
stood there a long time till I could pick out his gentle, regular
breathing from the chorus of wheezes, grunts, and snores in the bunk
room. I had hoped to find him lying on his back. I don’t know just why,
but that was the way I had him in my rehearsals. Sure enough he was in
that position, sleeping like a baby.
Holding the handkerchief at arm’s length, I saturated it liberally with
the chloroform and returned the bottle to my pocket. Then I knelt beside
him and held the handkerchief above his nostrils. With the first breath
of it he stirred uneasily, and slowly turned over, facing the wall. Here
was something I hadn’t anticipated. I was sure he hadn’t enough; he
breathed regularly again. I must give him more. Reaching over him, I
held the stuff near his nose as before. One whiff, and he floundered
away from it, turning over, facing me, but still asleep.
I grew alarmed. This tossing from side to side would soon wake him. I
thought of giving it up and going away quietly. My heart was pounding
with the suspense. It seemed to grow and expand till it filled my chest
and almost stopped my breath. I must go through with it. Carefully this
time, I held the handkerchief near his face with both hands. His body
twitched nervously now. His breathing was labored. I was sure of him,
and held it closer.
With a scream that woke every Chinaman in the bunk room, he sat bolt
upright, and throwing his arms out fastened his clawlike fingers in my
clothes.
Believing he was about to be murdered, the old man fought and screamed
in a frenzy of fear. I saw red-handed capture in front of me, and tried
desperately to throttle him. The noise of our struggle had roused the
sleepers in the back room and I could hear their startled cries as they
dropped out of their bunks. I had no thought of the money now; it was a
question of getting away. Just when the old man was exhausted and I was
in a fair way to get out of his clutches, some of the more daring
Chinamen from the back room rushed in. I got a blow on the head that
knocked me half out, and they fell on me like a pack of wolves,
smothering me with kicks, cuffs, digs, and scratches. The whole thing
was over quicker than I can write it. I was stretched out on my back on
the floor with two Chinamen holding each of my arms down, two sitting on
each leg, and another with both hands in my hair. They all chattered at
once. Then one came with a lamp, and I was inspected curiously, like
some strange, fearsome monster that had been trapped.
The old man, now recovered from the battle, gave a sharp order. A short,
muscular, knotty-legged China boy went to the back room and returned
with a rope. I was carefully raised to a sitting position and my arms
held to my sides while the boy threw a couple of half hitches around my
body, pinioning me safely. The rope was then run to my ankles, where he
deftly tied some more strange and wonderful Chinese knots, and I was
secured; scratched, bruised, bleeding, and asking myself if they were
going to send for the police or execute me on the spot.
Another order from the boss and they lifted me bodily and sat me on a
box in the corner of the little room. They stood by, eyeing me in
silence now. The old man sat on his pallet. There was an odor of
chloroform in the room, but he did not appear to be any the worse for
what he had inhaled. Our struggle had probably worn it off. He picked
the handkerchief from the floor where it had fallen and sniffed it.
Holding it out toward me, he asked in fair English: “What for, him?”
Something told me I had a chance yet. I decided to tell the old man the
truth. “Him medicine,” I answered.
“What for medicine?”
“Make you sleep.”
“What for sleep?”
“I think maybe take your money.”
“How you know me money?”
“I come your store; I look see.”
He got up, rolled his blankets away, and, raising up the small trapdoor
in the floor, opened his box and made sure that it had not been
disturbed. They all began talking again. I heard the fatal words “luc
zhe,” “luc zhe,” which means policeman.
In desperation I cried, “No, no, no luc zhe. Him no good. I got plenty
good China friends. Me good friend Chew Chee, China boy. Before—Chew
Chee stop ‘skookum house’ I bring him Vancouver. Me good man.” I
remembered my Chinese letter and cried out desperately: “You look my
pocket; you see China letter; him good letter. You look my pocket.”
The name of Chew Chee was like magic on them. They became silent and
listened closely to my talk. I was tied up so that I couldn’t reach the
vest pocket the letter was in, but I managed to touch it with a finger.
“You look my pocket,” I cried frantically to the old man.
He came over to where I sat on the box and gingerly put his fingers into
the pocket, bringing out the letter. By the lamplight he studied it
long and carefully. Others then read it, and the powwowing started
again, while I sat listening for the fatal “luc zhe,” and picturing
myself back in the jail I had so lately escaped from. The boss now got a
box and sat opposite me with the letter in his hand and a thoughtful,
puzzled look on his leathery, wrinkled old face. The other Chinamen
stood behind him, silent again. I saw I was going to be tried or
examined, and hoping for an out, I began to figure some kind of a
defense.
His accusing words bit into me like an acid. They were laden with scorn.
I turned hot with shame and confusion. Tapping the letter with a long,
bony finger, he said: “Him letter talk you good man. What for, you good
man?”
These were short, plain words and called for a plain answer. No use
trying to deceive this old man after trying to rob him. No use putting
up a crying talk for mercy. I could see he scorned me as a robber, a
thief in the night, and made up my mind not to bring more contempt upon
myself by pleading weakly and in fear. I answered him as I imagined he
would have answered me if by any chance our positions had been reversed.
“Maybe me good man,” I said. “Maybe bad man, I no know. Long time
policeman make me plenty trouble. Long time I stop jail house. Then I
come Vancouver. No more money, no more eat. I look see your money, I
come your house steal your money. No can do; you catch me. You send me
jail house, long time me no come home. More better you kill me now.
Policeman talk me bad man; plenty Chinaman talk me good man. Maybe good
man, maybe bad man; I no know.”
I spoke firmly, looking him in the eyes frankly, and finished my
argument for the defense with as much force and feeling as any barrister
ever put into a plea for a client’s life. His face was blank as a board.
His little brownish-black eyes were fastened on mine, but I saw no hope
in them. I couldn’t even tell whether he had understood what I said.
After studying me for a long time he turned and said something to one of
his boys. The boy went into the bunk room and came back with a heavy
meat cleaver that the Chinese use to chop pork and fowl. Another order
and I was lifted, box and all, out of the corner and placed in the
middle of the room. The China boy with the cleaver stepped behind me.
Something in the pit of my stomach seemed to collapse. I tried to say
something to the old boss, but the words wouldn’t come; they just
rattled around in my throat. The old man bored into me with his eyes
like a blacksnake “charming” a bird. Suddenly he uttered a short, sharp
exclamation that sounded like “Chut.” I snatched my eyes away from his
and closed them, prepared for the fatal blow that my guilty mind told me
was about to fall on my head from behind. The blow did not fall, but I
was almost dead anyway and swayed on my box till the China boys had to
support me. I felt a fumbling at my ankles and opened my eyes to find
the knotty-legged boy kneeling at my feet, untying his knots. When the
rope was taken off me, I turned my head and saw the boy standing behind
me, holding his cleaver at “ready,” prepared to strike me down only if I
started anything rough. One of them handed me my hat. I put it on, and
stood up slowly and with an effort. The old man waved his arm toward the
back room.
“You go ou’,” he ordered sternly.
“My letter?” I asked meekly and respectfully.
“No more letter,” he said, crumpling it in his hand.
The Chinese boys stood aside as I started into the bunk room to go out
the back door. I was shamed, humiliated, covered with confusion. Turning
back, I took off my hat, and facing the old man held up my right hand.
“If I ever rob another Chink I hope to rot in the gutter.” I was so
intent on expressing my gratitude that I forgot my Chinese lingo.
He understood no word of it, I’m sure, but pointed again to the back.
“You go ou’.”
I went out, humble and crestfallen. In the alley I threw the bottle of
chloroform against a building, and its crash somewhat relieved my
feelings. That was my first and last experience with chloroform as an
aid to burglary. As an agent for stupefying a sleeping person without
waking him, I maintain, in spite of the opinions of fiction writers and
romancing thieves, “it can’t be done.” Making my way to the cottage of
my Salt Lake friends who had promoted me, I reported my disastrous and
humiliating failure. Had they been inclined to entertain any doubts
about my story, my appearance would have set them at rest. I was
scratched, clawed, bruised, and had a big lump on my head.
They were very sympathetic. I was invited to “stick around a few days”
till they could look up something else for me. I excused myself as
tactfully as possible, resolving to locate my own work from there on. I
went to my room and to bed, and stayed there several days because of the
terrible mauling the Chinamen had given me. Yet, with all this, I
couldn’t but respect them for letting me go free, heaping coals of fire
on my guilty head. I remembered Smiler and our resolve never to pester
another Mormon when we had been captured in the Temple yard and
released. I vowed never to molest another Chinaman, and never since have
I imposed upon one except on one occasion, and that was under great
necessity.
Years after, I got out of a train at Cheyenne, racked with the opium
habit, after an all-day ride to escape the Denver police. Making a hasty
survey of the gambling houses and joints I failed to find anybody I knew
who could direct me to a place to “smoke.” It was almost midnight, cold
and storming, and I set out to find a laundry. There was one near by,
the laundrymen were resting after the day’s toil, and through the glass
door I saw one lying in his bunk, smoking his day’s ration of hop. The
door was locked, and they refused to open up for me.
No hop fiend’s wits ever fail to work when the “yen yen” arrives. In
desperation I hastened to one of the gambling houses, and going into a
rear room took off my vest and wrapped it in a newspaper. Hurrying out,
I got a messenger and gave him fifty cents to take the bundle to the
Chinese laundry. I was at his heels. The Chinamen seeing what they
thought was a parcel of laundry opened the door and I shouldered myself
in behind the boy. Once inside, I took my vest away from him and going
directly to the bunk where the smoker lay threw down some silver,
explaining what I wanted. The smoker turned out to be the boss
laundryman. The sight of my money mollified him somewhat, and after much
protesting and objecting he let me lie down on his bunk and smoke my
fill. In an hour we were friends. He explained that he refused to open
the door because he thought I was a “ketchum money man”—a robber.
In the days of my sad experience at the Chinese store, Vancouver was a
much smaller town than it is now. There were few opportunities worth
while, and I decided to leave. Moreover every Chinese store, laundry,
and business house reminded me of that disastrous night. I was afraid
of bumping into Chew Chee or the boss Chinaman that had given me the
letter. I was sure they had heard about it, and didn’t want to face
them. I was nearly broke again, and had to bestir myself.
The American side seemed the only place to go, and not having enough
money to buy a ticket, I went down to the railroad yards to get a train.
The blind baggage, or “stormy end” as the bums call it, was so crowded
when the train pulled out that I saw they would all be thrown off at the
first stop. I didn’t want to get underneath on the rods and ruin my
clothes for a short jump of fifty miles to the junction, so I got on top
of a coach. Something must have been wrong with the engine, for there
was one continual shower of red-hot cinders falling on me that burned
holes in my clothes, ruining them and blistering my skin.
At the first stop I got down, intending to go in a coach and steal a hat
check, or crawl under a seat out of sight. Looking about I saw that the
last coach was in darkness, and thinking it was a dead, empty car, I
waited till it came along and boarded the front end, hoping to find the
door unlocked. The door opened to my touch, but when I went inside I
found myself in a luxuriously furnished private car instead of a dead
coach.
There are only three degrees of tough luck—bad, worse, and worst. When
you reach the worst you have the satisfaction of knowing that if your
luck changes it has to change for the better. I considered my Waterloo
at the Chinese store the direst degree of bad luck. Not only had I lost
a big bunch of money; I was hurt somewhere else.
At that time I thought it was my professional pride that suffered
because of failure. Now I know I was hurt because the old Chinaman had
shown himself so superior to me. If he had sent me to jail I would have
done my time and forgotten him, but to this day thinking about him and
writing about him make me feel uneasy. I wonder what I would have done
had he made me promise to quit stealing?
But I was in this private car, feeling that my luck was due for a
change, and with a chance to heal my wounded pride. The air inside the
car was warm, live, vibrating. I sensed an occupant. Making my way along
the aisle toward a stateroom at the far end, I looked about closely for
an attendant but there was none in sight. The stateroom door was open,
with a chair against it, probably for better ventilation. A heavily
shaded lamp was burning, and by its soft light I saw the form of a big
man rolled in the blankets on a broad berth. His back was toward the
door, and nothing but a shock of coarse gray hair showed above the
covers. A glance told me I was in the presence of power, wealth,
affluence. I hadn’t enough money to pay for that man’s breakfast.
On a small table at the head of the sleeper’s berth there was a large
silver pitcher, a glass, two books, a fat leather pocketbook, a thick
bill fold, a pocket purse, and a heavy gold watch, with a small, black
ribbon guard. I took all the articles except the pitcher, glass, and
books, and started for the door I entered, praying that the attendant
wouldn’t appear. I saw nothing of him, and concluded he was somewhere
forward, gossiping or shooting dice with the porters.
It was but a minute’s work to get back upon the top of a coach, where I
lay and let the cinders do their worst. The next stop was a junction,
where I intended to get off and cross the line into Washington. The
only train in sight was a westbound passenger waiting on a sidetrack. I
was afraid to hang around, and when it pulled out I went underneath on
the rods and got back into Vancouver after an absence of five hours. I
planted the watch in the railroad yards, and never saw it again.
On my way uptown to get a room, I emptied the bill fold and purse,
throwing them away. In the room I looked over the money, and found I had
enough to keep me six months, if I kept away from the faro tables.
The fat pocketbook held no money, but was bulging with valuable personal
papers. Looking through them I saw that their owner was one of the
higher officials of the Canadian Pacific Railway. I realized there would
be a terrific roar in the morning, and was on the point of burning the
papers and destroying the pocketbook when the thought came to me that I
could gain nothing by that, while I would be causing the owner an
immense loss and no end of inconvenience. I secreted the pocketbook in
the rear of the hotel, and went to bed trying to think up some safe way
of returning it to the owner. No use in inflicting a profitless injury
on him; and its return might take the sharp edge off his resentment.