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.”