Staying in a house full of things for friends who were away once there
was a burglary. I never knew till a day or two after. Well, the things
were mostly recovered; it was an old servant and his partner who did
it. When we looked around there was an outside adobe store room that
would not open and a locksmith said that the door was not locked.
After some gymnastics we found through an extremely dusty window that
there was something against the door. The crafty George had jammed a
crowbar into the floor and leaned it against the door so that when
shut the other end of the bar dropped under a crosspiece and held the
door like a rock. Wonder where he learned that.
[Illustration: California--Voices of the Night.]
[Illustration: Pincher--All That Could be Seen, or Heard.]
One night, being away from a ranch some one went into my bedroom and
took the cash box (only $225 and $50 was mine and $15 A. C. J's).
There were two men playing chess in the next room who never went to
see what was going on though all the dogs were wild the men say, and
the men's quarters are some distance away. We found the broken box on
the tennis court, house table, all the money, but $19 church money in
an envelope, gone of course. Never knew who did it. Another time, at a
little ranch I had five miles from town, I used to walk out sometimes
at night. Some one broke in one night as I found the door open but
nothing gone. So next Sunday I left everything just the same and came
out after dark but earlier and lay down with my gun just opposite the
door, at twelve whoever it was came (there was no house near) and I
lay trying to hear what they said but could not. They came to the door
and then that little fiend Pincher (my fox terrier) turned up from
some where and "raised Cain"; they left and I followed a little way;
it was a black night; struck one that searching for gentlemen one had
not been introduced to, able to see nothing ahead and with the light
from the open door in one's rear, was not correct; so I went to bed.
Next morning found where they had tied their horses in the willows
down by the creek. Mexicans from the mountains probably. Have not
had many robbery games. Father went down once long ago with a sawed
off shotgun and I went to open the door. I asked him after "what he
thought about?" and he said that he thought he should spoil a new
carpet.
Another time still further back, when so small that I was sleeping in
his room, I woke him to see the shadow of a ladder on the blind in
London. There were burglars, but in the next house. He caught one and
let him go and the grateful ruffian sent him a paper of written rules
as to how to make his house safe.
[Illustration: "Marshals Them the Way That They Should Go?"]
[Illustration: "Oh Lie Down P.---- It's All Right."]