“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.