“In that case,” Johnnie replied, “we’ll have to do our ten days and crush right back in again and stay there till we can get the jail all to ourselves.”
“Kid,” said Sanc, as they were leaving, “watch the papers. If it goes all right we’ll be back in about two weeks. If it goes wrong, and you never can tell, you will know from the papers what happened. Then send somebody up to the ‘stir’ to see George and he will tell you what to do.”
Ten days later the burglary was reported in the papers. Four thousand dollars had been taken from the general store and the man hunt was on. The burglars had worked quietly. The theft was not discovered till opening-up time the next morning. The thieves were evidently experts, and left behind them the most complete set of safe-breaking tools seen in years, etc., etc. They had escaped by taking a hand car from the section house. It was found wrecked several miles down the railroad track.
Johnnie and Sanc had strengthened their alibi and strangled any suspicion that might fall on them by taking the “John O’Brien”—the bums’ term for hand car, so called because every other section boss in those days was named O’Brien—and starting it down the railroad. There was a slight grade and it traveled several miles before jumping the track into the ditch, where it was found wrecked, “abandoned by the burglars.”
The hunt started from there. Blanket stiffs looking for work were brought in, questioned, locked up for a day or two, and let go. The trains were searched up and down the line. Bums were brought in, got their ten days, but the burglars escaped and in a week the hue and cry was over. It was almost three weeks before the burglars showed up at Ogden. They were nervous and irritable, complaining that the jail had got uncomfortably filled up the last few days they were there. They got lousy from the blanket stiffs. The constable was sore about the burglary and wouldn’t square them for a ride into Salt Lake as he had done for me, and they had to pay their fare out of the town. Their money was almost gone, and there, in that little burg, was four thousand dollars that couldn’t be touched for at least a month, and somebody was liable to “steal” it on them. I got nervous, too.
We decided to go up to Pocatello and kill the month around Salt Chunk Mary’s, where we would be safe and welcome, and where they could borrow enough money to live on until the time came to go after the four thousand. After a night’s ride we were welcomed by Mary, who spread the customary feed of beans and salt pork before us. She inquired anxiously about “Foot-and-a-half George.” She seemed to know every bum on the road of any consequence.
Johnnie put in his time down in the jungle drinking with the bums. Sanc and I either watched the fine six-foot Indians that stalked about the town looking scornfully at their white inferiors, or the tinhorn gamblers who skinned the railroad men on pay days and each other afterward.
Pay day was coming on and the town took on a busy aspect. Small-money gamblers appeared with their women companions. “Brass peddlers,” bums who sold imitation gold jewelry, principally rings, appeared on the streets with their ninety-cents-a-dozen gold “hoops” made in Wichita, Kansas, and “dropped” them to the Indian squaws and railroad laborers for any price from one dollar up. Other bums had bundles of pants and shoes planted in the jungle, the proceeds of a boxcar burglary on the Oregon Short Line. These articles were peddled openly about the railroad shops and to trainmen in the yards. A band of yeggs on their way to Great Falls and then to the “Canadian side” stopped off to thresh out their “soup” in the jungle.
The “Johnson family” became so numerous that a “convention” must be held. In any well-ordered convention all persons of suspicious or doubtful intentions are thrown out at the start. When a bums’ “convention” is to be held, the jungle is first cleared of all outsiders such as “gay cats,” “dingbats,” “whangs,” “bindle stiffs,” “jungle buzzards,” and “scissors bills.” Conventions are not so popular in these droughty days. Formerly kegs of beer were rolled into the jungle and the “punks,” young bums, were sent for “mickies,” bottles of alcohol. “Mulligans” of chicken or beef were put to cooking on big fires. There was a general boiling up of clothes and there was shaving and sometimes haircutting.
The yeggs threshed out their “soup” and prepared for the road. The “brass peddlers” compared notes and devised new stunts for “dropping” their wares. Traveling beggars, crippled in every conceivable manner, discussed the best “spots” for profitable begging. Beggars of this type are always welcomed at a “convention” or any other place where thieves or bums congregate.