CHAPTER XLII.
A SAN JUAN FIDDLER IN THE ROLE OF ROMEO—SALLY BERNHEIM LEAVES A WIFE AT LAKE CITY AND STARTS TO EUROPE, FINDING A NEW JULIET ON BOARD SHIP—A FLIRTATION OF THE SEA RIPENS INTO LOVE ON THE RHINE AND MATRIMONY UPON RETURNING TO THE CENTENNIAL STATE—THE DESERTION OF THE SAN JUAN WIFE FOLLOWED BY THE DESERTION AND ROBBERY OF THE DENVER BRIDE—PURSUIT AND CAPTURE OF THE FLEEING BIGAMIST AND THIEF—A TERM IN THE PENITENTIARY.
During the latter part of October, 1877, Judge Foster, a judge in one of the districts of the United States courts in Kansas, was spending a few days in Colorado, enjoying the delightful autumn weather of this climate, when there came a sudden call upon him to go home to hear proceedings in an important railroad suit, in which the Kansas Pacific company was interested. It was a case demanding almost immediate attention, and distance must be annihilated in some way. The Kansas Pacific railroad was the connecting link between Denver and the point at which the judge’s presence was wanted. He had hardly expressed his desire one evening to be in Lawrence, Kan., the next morning in time to open court, when an engine with a sleeping car attached was announced to be at his disposal. A few moments later and Judge Foster had seated himself in the car and the engineer was told to fly.
Just as the car wheels were beginning to revolve, an encited individual rushed unnoticed through the dark and caught the car as the rear end passed by him. Swinging himself from the ground to the seat of the rear platform he became a fellow traveler with Judge Foster on his lightning express, they being the only passengers. There was considerable difference between the two men, in social position, in official rank and all that makes man well-to-do and respected in the world. The man who had joined the judge was a thief, a bigamist, a strolling fiddler and now a fugitive from justice. A queer combination—the same fast train hurrying one individual off that he might mete out justice and another that he might evade justice.
The train rushed out of Denver into the prairie land beyond, and pushed on through the darkness towards the east at the rate of fifty miles an hour. Judge Foster lay back in his cosy apartments and went to sleep. His fellow passenger clung desperately to his hard board seat in the rear and busied himself in holding his place, while the train bounced junkety junk over the rail couplings. The subject of his revery as he sat thus confined to his seat must have been a medley of women, of dance hall music, of police officers, of a lovely little home with wife and child down in the silvery San Juan, of a voyage and illicit courtship on the ocean, of wandering along the banks of foreign streams talking of home in the Rocky mountains, while still he was far away in the Faderland. Whatever the reverie may have been, it was suddenly interrupted after it had had full sway for some five hours, by a heavy hand falling upon the shoulder of the fugitive.
“Who are you?” was demanded.
“My name is Bernheim.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I am going east.”
“How did you get on?”
“I jumped on.”
“With whose permission?”
“With my own.”
“Then you will have to get off.”
“All right.”
This is a portion of a conversation which our fugitive had with the brakeman of the little train. The party was nearing Wallace, Kan., where it was desired to stop, and the brakeman had come out to be at his post of service when the whistle of the locomotive should warn him that it was time to apply the brake. The shrill cry was heard just as the conversation was concluded, and the trainman turned to do his duty. In a few seconds the train had stopped perfectly still and the brakeman turned to the unwelcome passenger to renew his command to move off. But the fellow had anticipated him and had jumped off as the train slackened and had disappeared. He thus bade adieu to Judge Foster and his fast train, the latter having been of all the service to him that it was possible to be, as he had cleared the limits of Colorado and felt that he had given the officers a slip which one scamp in ten thousand does not have the opportunity to give.
We, too, dismiss the judge and his whirling car and also for the present the fugitive from justice and take him up at another time of life. We still for the present stick to the Kansas Pacific road, however.
In the fall of 1876, a year previous to the occurrence above described, on an eastern-bound train, two Germans, a man and a woman, became acquainted. At first the acquaintance was commonplace, made up of formal courtesies, but when upon comparing notes the two travelers found that each was bound for the same country, Germany, and that that was the native land of each of them, and when later they became passengers on the same vessel across the ocean, the acquaintance assumed something of a romantic nature. To make it brief, they landed in the old world affianced. The lady’s name was Miss Maggie Harencourt, of Denver, a cousin of Mr. Jacob Schuler, of the same place, and she was visiting Germany for her health. The man’s name, as given the lady, was Sally Bernheim, a native of Dusseldorff, Germany, and as he represented to Miss Harencourt, a merchant from Lake City, Colo., on his way to visit the scenes of his boyhood.
In Germany they saw much of each other, Bernheim urging the lady to become his wife, and she repeatedly refusing on account of her health. When he returned to America, which he did in the following spring, he obtained from his sweetheart a promise to marry him on her return to this country. She at the same time informed him of a legacy to which she had recently come into possession, the amount of which she did not disclose, but it was supposed to be something handsome.
A correspondence was opened between the two, which was kept up with regularity and fervor on both sides. The lady had proposed that the marriage take place upon her arrival in New York, Bernheim to go to that point from Colorado to meet her. Pleading the unnecessary expense and the demands of his business, the lover succeeded in gaining the consent of his fiancee to a marriage in Denver, to be consummated whenever Bernheim should learn from her of her arrival in the city. Miss Harencourt arrived October 20, 1877, and registered at the American house, and notified her waiting true love at Lake City of the fact of her presence. She remained at the hotel three days and then repaired to the residence of her cousin, Mr. Schuler, whom she told of her expected early marriage.
A few nights later the Denver and Rio Grande train from the south brought among its passengers Mr. Sally Bernheim, of Lake City, who took a room at the American. The next day he called upon his promised bride, and their meeting was most affectionate. A speedy marriage was urged by Bernheim and consented to by the lady.
In the course of the forenoon they took a walk about the city, and the confiding Miss Maggie told Bernheim that she had nine new $100 bills, with which she hoped to endow him, a small portion of the legacy to which she had lately come into possession. With a natural and becoming solicitude the groom expectant urged the impropriety of her carrying so large a sum of money with her, and suggested that she entrust the funds to him, and that he would deposit the money in the Exchange Bank in her name and subject to her check. A thankful consent was given, and leaving the lady at her house, Bernheim went to the bank and deposited the $900—in his own name.
That afternoon at 3 o’clock the pair called at the residence of Rev. J. G. Leist, of the German Methodist church, and the twain were made one flesh. They, now Mr. and Mrs. Sally Bernheim, repaired at once to Brunell’s boarding house, then a fashionable place, on Fourteenth street, where the best the house afforded was extended to them, and Sunday was passed in the delectability of the honeymoon. Monday forenoon a man giving his name as H. A. Thompson, who was introduced to Mrs. Bernheim by the husband as a friend from Garland, called on them at Brunell’s, the bearer of a letter from Bernheim’s partner at Lake City, which stated the necessity of purchasing a bill of groceries at Kansas City. The letter was written in a business-like manner and shown to the bride, who was forced to admit the necessity of a brief separation from her husband, for, of course, the expense and trouble of her accompanying him was not to be thought of. It was decided then that Bernheim was to go East to purchase goods.
For some reason this plan was not acted upon, or rather a new phase in the affair changed the course of the plot, as will be seen. The following day Mr. and Mrs. Bernheim repaired to Dr. Buckingham’s office, the lady requiring medical attention. While there a man entered the office, and walking to Bernheim, said loudly:
“How is wife number two?”
Receiving no reply he turned to the horrified bride and asked:
“Are you this man’s wife?”
She replied, greatly agitated, “I am, sir.”
“Why,” said the stranger, “you are not; and this man, if he has married you, is a bigamist, and has a wife and child in this very state. I am a sheriff from his home and have come to arrest him.”
Imagine the feelings of the poor woman, her dream of happiness thus rudely brought to a close. But where was the man who had wronged her? While the stranger and the woman had been talking, Bernheim had slipped out of the room and could not be found. The stranger rushed in pursuit, but had no sooner passed out of the office than the husband returned, saying he had simply hidden. He admitted to the weeping woman the truthfulness of the charge. He was married, but was carried into the terrible wrong he had done by his passionate love for her. Now, nothing remained for him but to fly. He left the heart-broken woman swooning in the office and started by the rear entrance to the building for the depot. This was about 3 o’clock in the afternoon.
Dr. Buckingham was informed by the woman of the wretchedness of her condition, and that worthy gentleman hastened at once to the office of the Rocky Mountain Detective Association, where he laid the matter before Chief Cook, bringing that officer and also Sheriff Abe Ellis, of Pueblo, who was in the office, to the room where Mrs. Bernheim was waiting their coming. In broken sentences the woman told them her story. Sheriff Ellis at once recognized from her description of her husband a somewhat noted character of Southern Colorado, named Charles Blume, a fiddler who had furnished music for social parties and dance houses in Garland, Lake City, Las Animas and other towns for the past three or four years. He had married a young woman at Las Animas in 1875, who with their baby was living in Lake City.
The detectives undertook to find Bernheim, or Blume, if possible, although the outlook seemed very gloomy. No one could be found who had seen the rascal since he had disappeared from Dr. Buckingham’s office, and there was no trace to be had of him. The next day the man Thompson, who had brought the letter to Bernheim, was arrested at the American house. He denied all knowledge of the affair, except that he bore a letter from Lake City to Denver for Bernheim. But when, upon searching him, a telegram, written to be sent Bernheim at Wallace, was found in his pocket, he confessed that he knew something was wrong, and that he had come to Denver in answer to a telegram from Bernheim, and had received from that worthy the letter he represented as having brought from Lake City. He said, furthermore, that his name was H. A. Morris, and that he took a fictitious name at Bernheim’s instigation, as he knew that party had done. Thompson was locked up.
The next morning, November 1, Deputy Smith, at the instigation of Chief Cook, took the east-bound express on the Kansas Pacific in pursuit of Bernheim, or Blume, it being very evident from the dispatch found on Thompson that he was somewhere on that road. At noon of the same day a telegram was received from Deputy Smith to the effect that Bernheim had stolen a ride on the special car carrying Judge Foster to Wallace, and instructing the officers to head the man off by telegraph. The wires were at once clicking, sending word to the agents of the detective association at Junction City, Topeka, Leavenworth and Kansas City, and that night about 9 o’clock word came over the wire from Sheriff D. R. Kiehl, at Junction City:
“Your man Bernheim is under arrest.”
He was brought back without difficulty, and had to serve out an eight year’s sentence in the penitentiary at Cañon City. At last accounts his first wife was still living in Lake City, and the second was still in Denver. Morris was discharged from custody.
TWO OF A KIND.