Finally I returned to my own native land, poor, but fired with a mighty ambition. I went west and proceeded at once to debut. I went west to hold up the country. I was very successful, indeed, and have had my hands in the pockets of our most eminent men.
We were isolated from society a good deal, but we met the better class of people now and then in the course of our business. I did not like so much night work, and sometimes we had to eat raw pork because we did not wish to build a fire that would attract mosquitoes and sheriffs. So we were liable more or less to trichina and insomnia, but still we were free from sewer gas and poll tax. We did not get our mail with much regularity, but we got a lick at some mighty fine scenery.
But all this is only incidental. What I desired to say was this: Fame and distinction come high, and when we have them in our grasp at last we find that they bring their resultant sorrows. I worked long and hard for fame, and sat up nights and rode through alkali dust for thousands of miles, that I might be known as the leading robber of the age in which I lived, only to find at last that my great fame was the source of my chief annoyance. It made me so widely known that I felt, as Christine Nilsson says, “as though I lived in a glass case.” Everyone wanted to see me. Everyone wanted my autograph. Everyone wanted my skeleton to hang up in the library.
I could have traveled with a show and drawn a large salary, but I hated to wear a boiler iron overcoat all through the hot weather, after having lived so wild and free. But all this attention worried me so that I could not sleep, and many a night I would arise from the lava bed on which I had reclined, and putting on my dressing-gown and slippers, I would wander about under the stars and wish that I could be an unknown boy again in my far away home. But I could not. I often wished that I could die a natural death, but that was out of the question.
Finally, it got so that I did not dare to take a chew of tobacco, unless I did so under an assumed name. I hardly dared to let go of my six-shooter long enough to wipe my nose, for fear that someone might get the drop on me.
That is the reason why I came to Canada. Here among so many criminals, I do not attract attention, but I use a nom de plume all the time, even here, and all these hot nights, while others take off their clothing, I lie and swelter in my heavy winter nom de plume.