Then I fell to thinking of Smiler’s tragic end; trying to puzzle it out: Why the woman shrieked, why the house remained so dark and silent, and why I wasn’t shot when I went to his assistance. There was no answer to it all. I felt easier in my mind now that I had decided to quit the road and go home, and longed for the night to come when I could leave my hiding place and wash the blood off my hands and face and get fresh clothes.
As the day wore on, feeling more secure, I stretched out on my bed of rags and paper and tried to sleep, but it wouldn’t come to me. Later, in the afternoon, I removed my coat and shoes and managed to doze fitfully till evening. When it was dark enough to walk through the streets safely I left the house and made my way to a hot sulphur spring that gushed out of a hillside a mile away. There I stripped and scrubbed myself as best I could in the dark, and without soap. My clothes were stiff with dried blood. I threw the shirt and underwear away, put my handkerchief about my neck, and, buttoning my coat, started off in search of a store where I could get a new outfit.
Since the night Smiler stole the coat for me we had never allowed ourselves to get flat broke. With all his passion for gambling he would hold on to a few dollars. With the money I found on him and my own, I counted up thirty dollars. His watch wasn’t worth two dollars, a cheap one he bought in San Francisco. I kept it as a memento. There was nothing else of value in his pockets.
In a few minutes I found one of the many little general stores that flourished in Salt Lake at that time, and purchased a suit, the cheapest one there, for twelve dollars, and a fifty-cent shirt. I went back to the spring with my bundle, where I donned the cheap bullswool suit and threw my good one away. Tired and hungry, I crawled aboard a street car citybound from the sulphur springs.
In the car I looked closely at my hands and saw there was still some blood around my finger nails; there were dark spots on my shoes, too. Hungry as I was, I first went into a barber shop, had a bath, and scrubbed my shoes. Then to a restaurant, and while eating I decided to go to our room and have a good sleep and get a suit of underclothes and a few other things that I would need on my way home. I turned the whole thing over in my mind and was sure there was no danger in going to the room.
I was sitting at the table nearest the kitchen, finishing my meal, when a policeman came in and sat opposite me. The waiter brought a steak which was ready and waiting for him.
“Did they identify the dead burglar yet?” the waiter asked.
“No, not a thing on him.”
“How did it happen, anyway?”
“Just like the morning paper says. The woman’s husband was called away unexpectedly. The hired girl had the night out and she was alone in the house, sleeplessly walking around the rooms when this bird appeared at the window. Scared half to death she got her husband’s rifle and fired at him; then she fell in a faint. When she revived, the neighbors were called and they got the police. The bird ran as far as the alley, and dropped dead. The bullet cut an artery in his neck.”