“No more letter,” he said, crumpling it in his hand.
The Chinese boys stood aside as I started into the bunk room to go out the back door. I was shamed,
humiliated, covered with confusion. Turning back, I took off my hat, and facing the old man held up my right hand.
“If I ever rob another Chink I hope to rot in the gutter.” I was so intent on expressing my gratitude that I forgot my Chinese lingo.
He understood no word of it, I’m sure, but pointed again to the back. “You go ou’.”
I went out, humble and crestfallen. In the alley I threw the bottle of chloroform against a building, and its crash somewhat relieved my feelings. That was my first and last experience with chloroform as an aid to burglary. As an agent for stupefying a sleeping person without waking him, I maintain, in spite of the opinions of fiction writers and romancing thieves, “it can’t be done.” Making my way to the cottage of my Salt Lake friends who had promoted me, I reported my disastrous and humiliating failure. Had they been inclined to entertain any doubts about my story, my appearance would have set them at rest. I was scratched, clawed, bruised, and had a big lump on my head.
They were very sympathetic. I was invited to “stick around a few days” till they could look up something else for me. I excused myself as tactfully as possible, resolving to locate my own work from there on. I went to my room and to bed, and stayed there several days because of the terrible mauling the Chinamen had given me. Yet, with all this, I couldn’t but respect them for letting me go free, heaping coals of fire on my guilty head. I remembered Smiler and our resolve never to pester another Mormon when we had been captured in the Temple yard and released. I vowed
never to molest another Chinaman, and never since have I imposed upon one except on one occasion, and that was under great necessity.
Years after, I got out of a train at Cheyenne, racked with the opium habit, after an all-day ride to escape the Denver police. Making a hasty survey of the gambling houses and joints I failed to find anybody I knew who could direct me to a place to “smoke.” It was almost midnight, cold and storming, and I set out to find a laundry. There was one near by, the laundrymen were resting after the day’s toil, and through the glass door I saw one lying in his bunk, smoking his day’s ration of hop. The door was locked, and they refused to open up for me.
No hop fiend’s wits ever fail to work when the “yen yen” arrives. In desperation I hastened to one of the gambling houses, and going into a rear room took off my vest and wrapped it in a newspaper. Hurrying out, I got a messenger and gave him fifty cents to take the bundle to the Chinese laundry. I was at his heels. The Chinamen seeing what they thought was a parcel of laundry opened the door and I shouldered myself in behind the boy. Once inside, I took my vest away from him and going directly to the bunk where the smoker lay threw down some silver, explaining what I wanted. The smoker turned out to be the boss laundryman. The sight of my money mollified him somewhat, and after much protesting and objecting he let me lie down on his bunk and smoke my fill. In an hour we were friends. He explained that he refused to open the door because he thought I was a “ketchum money man”—a robber.