“Charlie is of standard make,” wrote Jim’s sister, enthusiastically; “and you can depend upon it he’ll deliver the goods or there’ll be no coin.”
This, Mrs. Hammon said to me in the most positive vein, upon my arrival in Columbus. After the first experience I was somewhat sceptical, but I ventured the hope that the young man would do all that was expected of him, and more. From the description of him, it seemed to me he was worth a trial. Jim had conceived a plan by which he could be put on the outside of the walls, provided the right sort of a deal could be made with any one of the contractors who carted goods in or out of the prison. It was a ticklish undertaking, and, so far as reaching any of the contractors was concerned, a complete failure. However, through the exercise of some ingenuity, Jim ascertained that the son of Contractor Osborn was addicted to wild ways and seldom had money enough to maintain the pace. Jim put out a “feeler,” and young Osborn responded—responded like the needle to the magnet. Presently he bargained to deliver Jim on the outside of the prison for two hundred dollars spot cash, and the balance to be paid according to any agreement between the interested parties after the success of the undertaking.
I met Osborn, and we discussed the plan. It included the manipulation of a “right” driver of one of his father’s teams, and as a teamster was expected to resign in a few days, it was my duty to furnish the new one to fill the vacancy. Making a flying trip to New York, I perfected arrangements for the second time, and, returning, brought my faithful Frank with me. He took lodgings at a working-man’s hotel, disguised to fit the part, while I went to the Neil House. The day after the teamster resigned Frank applied for the place, but was told to return the following day, which he did, only to find another man had been hired. Now, young Osborn had no control over the hiring of men in his father’s employ, and had he, I doubt that it would have been wise for him to assume the responsibility for a man who might later be suspected of complicity in the escape of a convict. But Osborn was made of the sort of material we wanted in this emergency; indeed, was very much riper for the undertaking than I imagined he would be. We were discussing what would be done next, when he suddenly declared his determination to personally carry out his agreement and without a “right” driver.
Accordingly, two days later, at two o’clock in the afternoon, my man Frank was waiting with a fine pair of bays and a smooth-running buggy, in a field not far from the rear of the prison wall and close by the bank of the Scioto River. He was well out of the view of any one on the walls, but when I came up at the rear of one of the storehouses of the prison, where many of the supplies were kept, I could plainly see him, and I waved the signal that all was progressing favorably. It was the work of some of the teamsters in the employ of Contractor Osborn to haul supplies and do other kinds of carting between the storehouses and the prison. Charlie Osborn had planned to deliver a certain package from the prison yard to a platform of one of the storehouses. This done, his part of the bargain would be finished. I had not been long in my hiding-place when I saw a team come hurriedly up to the platform. Young Osborn, who was along, was seen to roll a barrel from the wagon to the platform, and then to turn and direct the driver to hasten to the prison again after another load.
No sooner had the teamster disappeared than Osborn cut the hoops away from the barrel with a hatchet at hand for the purpose, and as the staves fell apart with a clatter, I saw Tall Jim, his face looking like death and gasping for breath, stagger into a standing posture, clothed in the convict stripes.
It was as though Osborn had been a magician, and with one sweep of his wand had smote a barrel and transformed it into a human being.
This done, Osborn was ready to take two crisp one-hundred-dollar bills from me and vanish without a word. Then I turned to Tall Jim. In the quickest possible time I had him in overalls and a linen duster which I had brought along, and was half carrying him to the waiting carriage. He couldn’t have walked there unassisted, it requiring all my strength to support him, he was so nearly prostrated by his journey in the barrel. He had been in it for nearly an hour, I afterward learned. I am satisfied that we would have had a dead man in the barrel had it been delivered one minute later.
In packing him, he had been so wedged in that breathing was nearly impossible. He was in the most intense pain during his transit from the prison yard to the storehouse. I wondered that he lived. But there was no time for delay—five minutes after his release we were humming away from the scene as fast as fleet-footed horses would carry us, and no stop was made till we had put two miles between us and the prison. Then we halted long enough to give Jim a stimulant and clothe him in a suit I had provided to take the place of the convict garb, which we threw in a clump of bushes. Off we went again, in the direction of Delaware, where we intended to board a train for New York. At times I was worried more than I cared to confess over Jim’s condition. It would not have surprised me had he died on our hands. When we had traversed eight miles, he began to show signs of improvement, and when presently he began to evince some interest in his surroundings, I felt more hopeful; and finally, when he asked where we were bound, I knew that he was all right.
“We’re hustling for Delaware,” I explained to him, “as fast as hoofs will take us there.”
“Now, George, you’re making a bull of it,” he whimpered, like a petulant sick child; “that’s not right.”