Cured of the habit now, I went back “on the road,” determined to stay in Canada, keep away from big cities and wise coppers, and try to do the twenty-five-year sentence outside instead of at Folsom. I traveled east over the Canadian Pacific Railway to the booming province of Alberta. One morning after an all-night ride, I crawled out of a box car in the town of Strathcona, tired, hungry, and dirty. I was not in distress for money, and looked around for a quiet place where I could lay off for a week and rest up. After a breakfast, a bath, and a shave, I walked around a while and located a quiet, respectable-looking place with a “board and rooms” sign. It looked to be a half-private, out-of-the-way place, so I went in.
A Chinese boy was dusting up in the lounging room, and I asked him for the “boss man.” He disappeared out in the hall. In a few minutes I heard a heavy step and turned around to face Salt Chunk Mary, the friend of the bums and yeggs at Pocatello. More than fifteen years had passed since she disappeared, yet I knew her instantly. The same, level “right now” look from her cold blue eyes; the same severe parting of her brick-red hair; the same careful, clean, starched house dress, and the same few short, sharp, meaningful words told me it was she who had broken open the town jail and set me free when no man would turn a hand.
“Oh, Mary!” I cried, and my hand went out to her. I said something about Pocatello and the night I saw her last, and about Foot-’n’-a-half George, long dead, but she stopped me cold. Looking me straight in the eye, she said in a tone of finality that left no chance of an answer:
“You are mistaken; you don’t know me. My name’s not Mary, and I was never in Pocatello in my life.”
When Mary said no she meant it. I went out and away, envying that courageous woman who had the strength to leave Pocatello and her life there, and bury herself in a far corner of the North.
After much thought I decided that Salt Chunk Mary had washed her hands of the old life and old associates and was trying to spend her remaining days in peace. I saw her no more, and went my solitary way, pistoling people away from their money—the highwayman’s way.
A distinguished chief of police in one of our big cities gave this advice to the public:
“If a holdup man stops you, grab him and yell at the top of your voice.”
That was the advice of a policeman; more, the advice of a policeman who was never stuck up. I know something about the stick-up game. I’ve been stuck up myself. This is the first time I’ve told about it, and it will be the last. I’m not advising any reader what to do in case of a stick-up. I’m only telling what I did.
As I was walking home one mild midnight up Haight Street, a young man came down the street toward me. He was whistling a little tune, his hat was on the back of his head, and he walked briskly, swinging his arms.