CHAPTER XV
PECULIARITIES OF “YEGGS”
One night as a group of us lolled about a camp fire I was asked to join a gang of yeggs then about to start out on a trip. I accepted the invitation, and the following two years saw me risking life and liberty in the most dangerous of all the underworld pursuits. The life of a yegg is a life of stirring adventures. In the majority of cases each crime means a fight for a getaway. The yegg keeps to his class and is a strict observer of caste. He hates work as he hates the police, and carries his hatred further to those who do work. The yegg is a rough worker and dresses in the jungles (outside the city) to suit his calling. His greatest passion is drink; he will “slop up” (get drunk) whenever the opportunity is offered, except, of course, in the immediate pursuit of some easy money. Unlike the dip (pickpocket) who has a “skirt” (woman) always near him, the yegg seldom bothers about them. His recreation is gotten from the state of mind which alcohol produces. He lives in the present and cares not a cent what the morrow may bring forth.
Yeggs, as a class, have certain characteristics differentiating them from the rest of the underworld. Loyalty to one another is preeminent in their make-up. Though the yegg has been known to kill in making his getaway, he never degenerates to the cruelty of the stick-up man. He never tortures, nor do I know of any guilty of crimes against womanhood. On the other hand, if a life should stand between him and liberty, he would unhesitatingly take that life. I know of no instance where a life has been taken simply because that life stood between the yegg and money.
To cite an instance of the loyalty of the yegg, I will recount an incident that I know of intimately.
In a small village of one of the Eastern States was a store owned by one of the prominent men of the town. In connection with the store, and in the same building, was the only bank in the town. Over the bank one of the employees always slept. One night in the late winter a gang of yeggs descended upon the village and attacked the bank. They found little difficulty in forcing an entrance and inserting enough “soup” (nitro glycerine) to throw open the door at the first “shot” (explosion). There was an inner door, however, and they went back into the building to insert another charge. In the meantime the employee of the bank, sleeping overhead, was awakened by the first explosion. With more nerve than sense, he grabbed a shotgun, inserted two shells, and noiselessly slipped down the stairs to investigate. At about this time the yeggs were returning for the second shot and they met the employee just at the threshold. The employee shot at the foremost of the yeggs, both barrels throwing their load of lead through the yegg’s right arm, just beneath the shoulder. The arm was nearly severed and the yegg lay stunned on the floor. The rest of the gang took the recumbent form of their pal in their arms and after stopping at a safe distance to give what succor they could, carried him in the face of pursuit for fourteen miles. Twice they were caught up with by the following posses and as many times they eluded them. They eventually escaped altogether. The wounded yegg lost his arm, but not his liberty. There are many such instances of loyalty to clan in the history of the yegg life.
CHAPTER XVI
CONCERNING PRISON MANAGEMENT
During my career as a yegg I was arrested four times and stood trial in two of the cases and “beat” (was acquitted in) both. One case never came to trial, the other one brought me a State prison sentence of fifteen years. The crime was blowing open a safe from which we failed to secure a single penny. Such is the life of a yegg. I heard that sentence of fifteen years pronounced upon me with a feeling mixed with contempt and hatred. I hated society, I was antagonistic to religion, and the sentence of fifteen years but aggravated both. I pictured the bank thief, the respectable crook getting away with the savings of widows and children, with his paltry three years’ punishment. I saw the seducer of chaste women come off the stand with a mere sentence of months. The pictures intensified my hatred and I entered prison to begin my sentence, a criminal in mind and nature.
Dante once wrote that he found this inscription over the doors of hell: “Abandon hope all ye who enter here.” This describes to a nicety the prison in which I was confined for nearly eight years. Over the thousand and one prisoners, a warden of the old school of penology presided. He was one who believed in and practiced the adage, “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” Yes, he even went further than that. He was a man of undoubted executive ability. He would have made an ideal head of some corporation where the question of men’s souls and bodies never entered into consideration. You could have searched the world to find one less worthy to be at the head of an institution of this kind.