Dynamite and drills were to be had for the taking at any mine. I invited my friend, the waiter, to “come in on the caper,” but he declined for the very good reason that he had “done enough time.” Compared with the work I had put in getting the mine payroll this was simple and I went against it alone, confident of success and glad I wouldn’t have to split the money with anybody. The “box” was of a make that has long been extinct. It was an experiment on the part of the manufacturers, and a costly one, for the “box men” soon found a fatal weakness in its make-up and hungrily sought them out till the last one went into the junk pile.
The one I had designs on looked more like an old-fashioned clothes closet than a receptacle for money. Its four wheels rested on a heavy wooden platform that served to reënforce the thin floor of the storeroom. The work of putting a hole in it, placing the “shot,” and laying a five-minute fuse took an hour. The man that does this kind of work alone must now take a look at the street to be sure there are no late stragglers around. When he satisfies himself on this point he returns and lights his fuse. While it is burning he goes back to the street some distance away and plants himself in a hall or doorway till he hears the explosion. Then when he is satisfied there is no alarm, he goes after his money.
I was in the door of an all-night saloon when my explosion arrived. Nobody appeared on the street and after a few minutes I went back to the store to finish the business. Inside, I saw that my “shot” had resulted in something entirely unforeseen. The outer plate of the door was torn from its place and lying to one side, bent and twisted. The force of the explosion had shifted the ponderous box from its platform. It had fallen forward on its face and ten sturdy burglars couldn’t have turned it over. Had it remained upright the money would have been mine in five minutes. Lying on its face, its contents were as safe from me as if they had been in the town bank. The next day a gang of men turned it partly over and one of the clerks finished opening it with a crowbar I left in the store.
The storekeepers said “there was nothing in the safe anyway.” My friend, the waiter, who stood by when it was opened, said they hurried to the bank with a fat package and “what was in it was plenty.”
This failure took the heart out of me for a few days, and I don’t know what depths of despondency I might have wallowed in but for my friend. He suggested, with the best intentions I am sure, that I take a job washing dishes in the place where he worked. This was a jolt to my pride. Of course I had nothing against dishwashers or dishwashing. I saw that any able-bodied dishwasher would have more to show for his ten years’ hard work than I had for mine, and if I had been in the notion of going to work I would have taken that kind of job as quick as any. But the thought of working was as foreign to me as the thought of burglary or robbery would be to a settled printer or plumber after ten years at his trade. I wasn’t lazy or indolent; I knew there were lots of easier and safer ways of making a living, but they were the ways of other people, people I didn’t know or understand, and didn’t want to. I didn’t call them suckers or saps because they were different and worked for a living. They represented society. Society represented law, order, discipline, punishment. Society was a machine geared to grind me to pieces. Society was an enemy. There was a high wall between me and society; a wall reared by myself, maybe—I wasn’t sure. Anyway I wasn’t going to crawl over the wall and join the enemy just because I had taken a few jolts of hard luck.
I did go over the wall in the end and take my hat off to society and admit I was wrong, but I didn’t do it because of discouragement, because I was afraid of the future, because of the police. I didn’t do it because I realized I was wrong; I knew I was wrong years before. I did it because—but that’s a separate story, to be told later, in its place.
So, instead of following the waiter’s advice, I busied myself with a few careful hotel burglaries, got a small bankroll together again, bought some presentable clothes, and kept looking around for a decent piece of money. The booming mining town had its share of gamblers, women of the night, thieves, and hop fiends—nearly all of them renegades or fugitives from the “American side.” Their leisure time was given to drinking or smoking hop. I had weaned myself from gambling. I was naturally a light drinker. So it fell out that, in this town of no amusements, the hop joint claimed me.
One afternoon as I lay smoking my day’s portion of hop a voice, a woman’s voice, strangely familiar, came to me through a thin partition from the adjoining room. When she finished talking to the Chinese boy that attended the hop layouts, I fell to wondering who the speaker could be. My contact with women had been very limited, and it didn’t take much elimination to fix the voice as that of the street girl of Chicago, the girl from whose crib I had carried the dead man; the girl I avoided because I believed she had carelessly killed him with an overdose of some drug. Just to satisfy myself that I was right, more than anything, I got up and stepped into her room. No mistake; it was she. She knew me instantly and I needed no introduction, no sponsor.
Irish Annie had changed. She was now a well-poised, confident woman. The world had treated her better than it does most of her kind, and yet she was not spoiled. She instantly referred to “that awful night,” and sincerely acknowledged the service I had done her. We compared notes roughly. She had left Chicago to avoid going to jail for a theft, and after many hardships and adventures found herself in this British Columbia mining camp. A lucky prospector in the mines, finding himself rich overnight, had bought an establishment for her and she was prospering.
To show her gratitude to me, she gave a blowout at her place, introduced me to her “girls” as “an old friend from the States,” set a room apart for me, and insisted upon me making her home my home. The Chinese boy brought meals to my room, a hop layout was procured so I could smoke in peace and security. My room was more comfortable than any I could have had in a hotel, the meals were better than at the restaurants, I was treated with deference by everybody in the place, so I remained there. I paid the rent on rent day, ordered the liquors and provisions, and “slipped” the town marshal his “once a week.” The Tenderloin, the marshal, and his deputies accepted me as Annie’s protector and the man about the place—something I was not and did not aspire to be. I didn’t take the trouble to enlighten them. I preferred to have them believe anything rather than the truth. This would make my stealing easier.