“After my wind came back I got the coin and stickers, limped outside where I had an old ‘swift’ tied to a hitching rack. I had no saddle and it was a tough ride into Silver Bow Junction. But I got there before daylight and grabbed a rattler into Pocatello where ‘Salt Chunk Mary’ put me away, got a doctor, and got rid of my ‘stickers.’ That’s why I’m so particular about my fuse,” he concluded.
This grizzled old yegg was a by-product of our Civil War. Apprentice to a village blacksmith, he was drafted into the army, where he learned the disruptive force of powder, and many other things useful to him in his profession of safe breaking. His rough war service, his knowledge of mechanics and explosives combined to equip him for what he became—one of the pioneers of safe breaking. From black powder he turned to dynamite and afterward was one of the first to “thrash out the soup”—a process used by the bums and yeggs for extracting the explosive oil, nitro glycerine, from sticks of “dan” or dynamite. He boasted that he had never done a day’s work outside of prison since he was mustered out of the army, except one year in a safe factory in the East where he went deliberately and worked for starvation wages to learn something of the construction of a very much used make of safe and its lock. Fortified with this knowledge, he followed that particular make of safe to many parts of the world, and, as he said, “knocked ’em open like ripe watermelons.”
George inherited a very ordinary set of features to start with. His war scars and rough bouts on the road and in prison hadn’t served to add anything to them in the way of refinement. His head rose to a point from all four sides. The “Sanctimonious Kid,” one of my cellmates, once said of George: “If you were to put a dime on the top of George’s head and start it sliding down the back it would fall inside his shirt collar; if you started it down his forehead it would wind up in his mouth, his lower jaw sticks out so far.” His eyes were small and cunning. They looked as if they had been taken out, fried in oil, and put back. Dead, pale blue and expressionless, they gave no hint of the cunning, always-busy brain behind them. His nose wasn’t worth looking at, just a small knob of soft red flesh, long since collapsed and hanging like a pendant from between his eyes. He was of medium height, broad, heavy and rugged. With all his ill-favored appearance and his rolling, limping walk that seemed to start at his shoulders and work its way down into his legs, he had a heart of gold and oak, and knowing him one readily forgave him ungovernable temper and violent outbursts of rage. He was square. His life was stormy and his death sudden and violent as “Smiler’s.” But that has another place in this story.
The “Sanctimonious Kid” was, in point of years and experience, second to George, and naturally second in say in the cell. All matters of importance were submitted to George first, then to “Sanc” and lastly to “Soldier Johnnie,” the third man. Nothing was submitted to me. I had no say about anything. All I had to do was to keep my mouth shut and listen all I wanted to.
“Sanc” had everything that George lacked. Tall, six feet, slender and soft stepping, more active than most men half his size, you would not suspect him of two hundred pounds, solid flesh and bone. Straight without stiffness, natural, like an Indian. Dark hair, eyes and skin. Handsome, intelligent. Years after, I saw him in the dock of a crowded court room in a big city. His head was the finest, his face the handsomest, and his poise the surest of any there, from the judge down to the alternate juror. His nose, eyes and forehead might have been those of a minister or divinity student. But there was a hard look about his mouth, and something in his jaw that suggested the butcher. He was educated and a constant reader. Whether it was his appearance or his careful manner of speech that got him his monoger, “The Sanctimonious Kid,” I never knew. He was serving a short sentence for house burglary, at which he was an expert.
We traveled together for several years after he was released, and I found him one of the squarest and most resourceful thieves I ever knew. At last, after one of the cleverest prison escapes on record, he went to Australia where he was hanged for the murder of a police constable.
“Soldier Johnnie,” who had served a term in the army, was the youngest of the three. He was an industrious and trustworthy yegg who made his living serving as “target” or outside man, for the yegg mobs that preyed on country banks. The “target” is the most reliable man in the mob. To him is given the job of sticking up the town bull if he appears while the others are inside. He is the first one to get shot at and the last. It’s his job to carry the heavy artillery and stand off the natives while the others get the coin, and then to cover the get-away.
He was born lucky. His face and figure were neutral. A hard man to pick up on his description. Medium size and weight. After one look at him you couldn’t say whether his hair was brown or black, whether his eyes were gray or blue. Quiet, unobtrusive, soft-spoken, a copper would hesitate before halting him on the street.
Such were my companions, guides, friends and philosophers, day and night, till the day of my trial, which soon came.
Shorty’s letter to Judge Powers brought one of his office men out to see me the next day, who got the points in my case and went away with one hundred dollars of Shorty’s money. I felt better after his visit, he was so fresh, vigorous, confident. “Nothing to it, young man,” he said breezily, “I’ll be in court when you appear to plead and have a day set for your trial; that is, if they want to waste their time trying you.”