The Man Behind the Bars

by Winifred Louise Taylor

Various are the pathways that lead to the illegal taking of life; terrible often the pressure brought to bear upon the man before the deed is done. Deadly fear, the fear common to humanity, has been the force that drove the hand of many a man to strike, stab, or shoot with fatal effect; while anger, righteous or unrighteous, the momentary impulse of intense emotional excitement to which we are all more or less liable, has gathered its host of victims and caused the tragic ruin of unnumbered men now wearing life away in our penitentiaries.

And terribly true it is that some of the "life" men are among the best in our prisons, the "life" men who are all indiscriminately called murderers. That some of them were murderers at heart and a menace to the community we cannot doubt; doubtless, also, some are innocent of any crime; and there are others for whom it would be better for all concerned if they were given liberty to-day.

It seems to be assumed that a man unjustly imprisoned suffers more than the one who knows that he has only himself to blame. Much depends upon the nature of the man. Given two men of equally sound moral nature, while the one with a clear conscience may suffer intensely, from the sense of outrage and injustice, from the tearing of the heart-strings and the injury to business relations, his mental agony can hardly equal that of the man whose heart is eaten out with remorse. The best company any prisoner can have is his own self-respect, the best asset of a bankrupt life. I have been amazed to see for how much that counts in the peace and hope, and the great power of patience which makes for health and gives strength for endurance.

I was deeply impressed with this fact in the case of one man. His name was Gay Bowers, a name curiously inconsistent with his fate, and, "life man" though he was, no one in that big prison ever associated him with murder; no one who really looked into his face could have thought him a criminal. It was the only face I ever saw, outside of a book, that seemed chastened through sorrow; his gentle smile was like the faint sunshine of an April day breaking through the mists; and there was about the man an atmosphere of youth and springtime though he was near forty when we first met; but it was the arrested youth of a man to whom life seemed to have ended when he was but twenty-two.

Gay was country born and bred, loved and early married a country girl, and was known throughout the neighborhood as a hard-working, steady young fellow. He lived in a village near the Mississippi River, and one summer he went down to St. Louis on some business and returned by boat. On the steamboat a stranger, a young man of near his age, made advances toward acquaintance, and hearing his name exclaimed:

"Gay Bowers! why my name is Ray Bowers, and I'm looking for work. I guess I'll go to your town and we'll call each other cousins; perhaps we are related."

The stranger seemed very friendly and kept with Bowers when they reached the home town; there Ray found work and seemed all right for a while.

And here I must let Gay Bowers tell the rest of the story as he told it to me, in his own words as nearly as I can remember them. I listened intently to his low, quiet voice, but I seemed reading the story in his eyes at the same time, for the absolutely convincing element was the way in which Bowers was living it all over again as he unfolded the scene with a certain thrill in his tones. I felt as if I was actually witnessing the occurrence, so vividly was the picture in his mind transferred to mine.

"My wife and I had just moved into a new home that very day, we and our little year-old girl, and Ray had helped us in the moving and stayed to supper with us. After supper Ray said he must go, and asked me to go a piece with him as he had something to say to me.

"So I went along with him. Back of the house the road ran quite a way through deep woods. We were in the middle of the woods when Ray stopped and told me what he wanted of me. He told me that he had been a horse-thief over in Missouri, that his picture was in 'the rogues' gallery' in St. Louis over his own name, Jones; that it wasn't safe for him to be in Missouri, where he was 'wanted' and that he had got on the boat without any plans; but as soon as he saw me, a working, country man, he thought he might as well hitch on to me and go to my place. But he said he was tired of working; and farmer Smith had a fine pair of horses which he could dispose of if I would take them out of the barn into the next county. Ray wanted me to do this because of my good reputation. Everybody knew me and I was safe from suspicion; and he said we could make a lot of money for us both if I went into the business with him.