“Is that all?” he asked, frowning.
I was put on the witness stand and answered “No” very positively to his question. The prosecutor hadn’t anything to cross-examine me about. He started a few questions, but was stopped and gave up. My attorney made some motion and was overruled. He then offered to let the case go without argument from either side, but the prosecutor wanted to talk and the judge told him to go ahead.
He argued about the same as the prosecutor in the police court, waved the bloody room-rent receipt and harped about the change of clothes and my absence from the room, and my refusal to make any statement. He dingdonged away till the judge ordered him to stop.
Judge Powers went over the case in five minutes, the jury was instructed in five more, and went away to the jury room. I was nervous. I thought my attorney had not asked enough questions, hadn’t argued enough. The judge went into his chambers. Judge Powers followed him in for a visit. A few courtroom hangers got up and went out. Nobody paid any attention to me. The bailiff who had me in charge strolled about the room, gossiping. There was no dock in the courtroom. I was sitting outside the railed-off enclosure at the attorneys’ table. The jury hadn’t been out fifteen minutes, but I was so nervous I couldn’t sit still, and got up to stretch my legs. The bailiff was busy talking to a man who came in from the street. His back was turned to me as I walked a few steps up the aisle in the direction of the door, and then back.
The next time I walked farther toward the door before turning, and still he never looked at me. The third time I went to the door and out, and oozed down the broad, single flight of stairs into the main street. Dodging between two hacks at the curb I crossed to the opposite side of the street and looked back up the stairway to the courtroom—no alarm yet. Directly in front of me was a basement restaurant. I went downstairs, straight through the dining room to the kitchen, into the back yard, and then to the alley without being molested. When I got out of the alley I turned every corner I came to for fifteen minutes and finished in the railroad yards, instinctively.
The whistles were blowing for twelve o’clock, noon. I saw no signs of any outgoing trains and decided to plant myself somewhere nearby till night, when I could get a train or walk out of town in safety. I found an old deserted barn and hid up in the loft, hungry and thirsty, till dark.
A passenger train was due out on the Rio Grande at eight. With much caution I made my way along between lines of box cars till I got near enough to the depot to get aboard the blind end of a baggage car. I held the train all night, carefully dodging about at every stop.
At daylight, as the train slowed down for a stop, a man climbed up beside me. “You’re arrested,” he shouted, tapping a big gun in its holster.
I was discouraged. After all my hiding and dodging and starving, I must now go back to Salt Lake. He took me off the train and held my arm as the train pulled out. I was scared and desperate. I could see the penitentiary opening up for me again, and the dungeon. As the last coach was even with us, I gave the constable, that’s who he was, a vicious push and he fell into a ditch beside the track.
The train was moving fast now, but with a tremendous effort I clutched one of the handbars and the momentum threw me up on the rear steps. Just as I landed, one of the trainmen opened the rear door and saw me. He had his mouth open to say something when he saw the constable crawling out of the ditch, firing his pistol in the air and making signs to him. He pulled the bell cord.