My Life

by Josiah Flynt

He found a melancholy and sentimental pleasure, too, in keeping himself in the background at times when such inaction was contrary to his happier desires. I remember that, in 1887, during the time when he was living in the Under World, after his escape from the reform school and before his appearance at his mother's home in Berlin, he made one brief and characteristic emergence which may throw light upon this trait in him. Josiah was my cousin. At that time the home of my family was in Detroit, Michigan, and one day Josiah put in an appearance at my father's office. He was ragged and unkempt, and uncertain in his account of himself. By his own story he was a detective engaged in an important case, and he asked for money enough to get him to some near city. My father tried to persuade him to go home with him to the house. The little vagabond refused, but he added: "I found out where you lived and went up and looked at the house, and I stood and watched the boys [my brother and myself] playing ball in the next lot." He had remained at the edge of the lot for some time, taking strange and wistful pleasure in his own forlornness.

Reference has been made by others to the fact that there was one romantic passion in Josiah's life. For years he worshiped from afar a girl who possessed grace, intelligence, and beauty, though so far as his friends know he never offered himself to her. In July, 1894, I was with him for a few days at his home in Berlin. He told me at that time that the girl he loved was on the continent, spending the summer at a mountain resort. He had come to the conclusion, he said, that it was time for him to go to her and declare himself. Accordingly, he did make a pilgrimage of many hundred miles to the place where she was staying, dreaming we may not guess what dreams along the way. It was many months before I saw him again. When he began to speak of the girl in the same old terms of distant adoration, I asked him about his journey of the preceding summer. "Well," he said, "I went there, and I saw her, but I didn't speak to her." "Did she see you?" I asked. "No," he answered. Again he had been the watcher by the wayside standing in shy self-effacement while the girl of his heart passed by.

A few years before his death Josiah, in what was undoubtedly an honest and serious determination to improve his health and his habits, went to Woodland Valley, in the Southern Catskills, and there had built for him a comfortable little "shack," on the grounds of a beautifully situated summer hotel. Different friends were with him during the time he spent in the mountains, but every now and again the call of the city became too strong for him to resist. While he was living at the "shack" he made a few of the conventional trips to the summits of near-by mountains, but his interest was usually centered in simply "getting to the top." The goal once reached he would enjoy for a few moments the pleasant sense of obstacles overcome, and then, after a casual glance at the "view," he would say: "Well, now let's go back." His real life at Woodland was his interest in the natives of the valley. He worked himself into close acquaintance with them, and sought to understand their point of view. Even after he had given up his shack, he still held to the valley as his place of refuge. He bought a little tract of land there and, to the time of his death, talked of building upon it a snug but permanent home.

Mr. Charles E. Burr, to whom Josiah so often refers in his narrative, supplies the story of an interesting period. I will quote him. "In the summer of 1904," he says, "I had some correspondence with Flynt, who was then in Berlin. The tone of his letters made me think that a few months in the Indian Territory, where rigid prohibition laws are enforced, would benefit him. I therefore offered him a position as car-trailer on the Southwest Division of the Saint Louis and San Francisco Railroad, with headquarters at Sapulpa, Indian Territory. The offer was accepted, and Flynt came to Sapulpa about the middle of August, by way of Galveston, Texas.

"The duties assigned to him kept him on the road much of the time. Whenever the opportunity came, I saw to it that he made the acquaintance of interesting characters who lived in the Territory and in Oklahoma. Among them were several United States deputy marshals who were known as 'killers,' and he afterwards told me that he had got from these men a fairly complete account of the 'Apache Kid' and his numerous gun-fights. I once sent Flynt to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, to interview the famous Apache, Geronimo, but the old chief was in a bad humor and would not talk.

"During September horses were stolen from a car at Okmulgee, Indian Territory, and Flynt and two United States marshals went with me in pursuit of the thieves.

"The trail led us into the heavily timbered Arkansas bottoms, long the home of the outlaws and 'cattle rustlers' of the Territory. At the end of a continuous forty-mile ride we found some of the stock, and Flynt, who was not accustomed to sitting a horse, then declared that he would rather die on the prairie than ride that broncho any farther. He drove back to Okmulgee with a rancher whom I employed to take the recovered horses.

"Later, Flynt became more accustomed to a saddle, and rode to many points of interest near Sapulpa. He once told me that he had made several trips to the home of a half-breed negro who lived near a ledge of rocks called 'Moccasin Tracks,' about five miles from Sapulpa. This half-breed had a bad record. The United States marshals had him 'marked,' and planned to 'get him' at the first opportunity, but Flynt said that he was a very interesting man to talk with.

"I left Sapulpa in October, and Flynt accompanied me to Chicago, where he remained until March. He was very proud of the certificate which was issued to him when he severed his connection with the Saint Louis and San Francisco.