CHAPTER XX
TALL JIM MOVES FROM COLUMBUS PRISON
A letter came to me in the summer of 1868, two years after the Cadiz, Ohio, bank robbery. It was in June, and upon opening it, with no little curiosity, it proved to be from Mrs. Hammon, a sister of Tall Jim. As will be remembered, Jim was sent to the prison at Columbus.
“If possible, come on to Ohio at once,” the letter said, among other things, “for Jim has reason to think he has a plan to free himself, George Wilson, and Big Bill. As for Jack Utley, he’ll be left to his fate.”
“Well, I think so too,” was my mental comment as to Utley.
Having full confidence in the genuineness of the letter, I made a hurried trip to Columbus and conferred with Mrs. Hammon. The gist of the whole thing was that Tall Jim had found what we called a “right” guard; that is, a prison official who is willing to betray his trust, sell his honor, or do anything in that line provided there’s money enough in it. The guard who promised to do the job said it would cost twelve hundred dollars; that is, he could arrange matters in the tier where Jim’s cell was so that escape to the roof of the hospital would be easy. At that point, outside assistance would be available. Something was said about getting Jack Utley out too, provided all hands were agreed, but I flatly declared that I would not have anything to do with the plot if Utley was to benefit by it. His mean, sneaking ways had poisoned my mind against him for all time. I would not have allowed his treatment of me in the Ohio expedition to stand in the way of his freedom, but his later betrayal of the lads who trusted him was too much for me to overlook. I was firm in this determination, declaring that he must be left in prison, to get out the best way he could--which was no more than a man of his caliber deserved. I had often heard, when a lad, the expression, “Be a Man or a Monkey or a Long-tailed Rat,” and I had placed Utley in the rodent class, with a bright chance of carrying off all the honors.
“This ‘right’ guard will fix the cells of Jim and the boys on any night agreeable to us,” said Mrs. Hammon, “and we can help them from the hospital roof. After that it will be plain sailing.”
The plan seemed to be feasible enough, after I had been thoroughly informed of it, and I told her so. Also I assured her that I’d go to New York and with all possible haste put it in execution. I was determined to do what I could in the way of paying for and working out any plan that would get Jim out.
In a few days I was in Columbus again, with Frank, a trusted lieutenant, plenty of money, and a lot of paraphernalia, including a stout rope ladder. Sulphur Springs, a town about thirty miles away, was made the base of operations, and there I hired a team for the escape and perfected arrangements. The following Saturday night was agreed upon as the earliest hour we could undertake the job. That night was the most favorable one of the week, for on Sunday morning prison life was apt to be more sluggish than at any other time. Friday evening I met the “right” guard at Mrs. Hammon’s, and we discussed his part of the plot from every standpoint, coming to what seemed to be a perfect understanding. If he kept his agreement, I couldn’t see how there’d be a failure. Mrs. Hammon thought so too. Would the man be faithful in the deal? That was the question. I took Mrs. Hammon aside and questioned her about the guard. She said there’d be no mistake in trusting him. At this I handed him twelve hundred dollars, and he left, promising to perform every detail of his part in the plan, by the clock. How I seemed to distrust him! However, I hadn’t anything near tangible upon which to base my suspicion, so I said no more about it. I had been and was associating with many of the best crooks of the country, and I flattered myself that I knew a “square” one the moment I laid eyes on him. But the best of us are sometimes mistaken. However, I had paid him the price, and we must trust to luck. It was a situation that brought to mind the story of the old farmer whose horse was running away downhill. His wife, Sally, was on the seat beside him. “Trust in the good Lord, Joshua!” she screamed; and the farmer, tugging away at the reins, cried out: “Yes, Sal, we’ll trust in Him till the breechin’ breaks, an’ then the Lord knows we’ll jump!”
The following afternoon Frank and I drove from Sulphur Springs to Columbus with a spanking double team for the “get-away.” At nine o’clock that night I was to meet the guard and get the final word, and about midnight the job was to be put through. He was waiting for me, but with much concern and profuse apologies said that the plan could not work that night because a guard upon whom he depended for assistance had been suddenly taken ill and was not on duty. He said, further, that the best that could be done, under the circumstances, was to wait until Wednesday night of the following week.
I left him, very much disgruntled and suspicious, with a promise to meet him on Monday night, when the details of the next attempt would be discussed. I was not at all surprised when he did not put in an appearance then, and I was not much astonished, the following day, when I learned he’d drawn his salary from the state, resigned his position, and flown to parts unknown. We had been well gold-bricked. Swallowing the situation with as much grace as I could, I gathered up my tools, and Frank and I went back to New York, considerably wiser. Only the man who wears the prison stripes can fully appreciate the feelings of the lads when they learned of the “right” guard’s disappearance with the twelve-hundred-dollar bribe. I wondered what would happen to him if Big Bill ever crossed his path. Mrs. Hammon was given to understand that any reasonable promise of money made in the future I would attempt to fulfil, but not a cent would be paid until the lads were delivered on the outside of the prison walls.
I heard no more of Tall Jim for twelve months, then another message came, summoning me to Columbus; also the information that Charlie, the son of Contractor Osborn, who did carting for the prison, had been induced by Jim to assist in a plot to deliver him into friendly hands on the outside of the walls.
“Charlie is of standard make,” wrote Jim’s sister, enthusiastically; “and you can depend upon it he’ll deliver the goods or there’ll be no coin.”
This, Mrs. Hammon said to me in the most positive vein, upon my arrival in Columbus. After the first experience I was somewhat sceptical, but I ventured the hope that the young man would do all that was expected of him, and more. From the description of him, it seemed to me he was worth a trial. Jim had conceived a plan by which he could be put on the outside of the walls, provided the right sort of a deal could be made with any one of the contractors who carted goods in or out of the prison. It was a ticklish undertaking, and, so far as reaching any of the contractors was concerned, a complete failure. However, through the exercise of some ingenuity, Jim ascertained that the son of Contractor Osborn was addicted to wild ways and seldom had money enough to maintain the pace. Jim put out a “feeler,” and young Osborn responded--responded like the needle to the magnet. Presently he bargained to deliver Jim on the outside of the prison for two hundred dollars spot cash, and the balance to be paid according to any agreement between the interested parties after the success of the undertaking.
I met Osborn, and we discussed the plan. It included the manipulation of a “right” driver of one of his father’s teams, and as a teamster was expected to resign in a few days, it was my duty to furnish the new one to fill the vacancy. Making a flying trip to New York, I perfected arrangements for the second time, and, returning, brought my faithful Frank with me. He took lodgings at a working-man’s hotel, disguised to fit the part, while I went to the Neil House. The day after the teamster resigned Frank applied for the place, but was told to return the following day, which he did, only to find another man had been hired. Now, young Osborn had no control over the hiring of men in his father’s employ, and had he, I doubt that it would have been wise for him to assume the responsibility for a man who might later be suspected of complicity in the escape of a convict. But Osborn was made of the sort of material we wanted in this emergency; indeed, was very much riper for the undertaking than I imagined he would be. We were discussing what would be done next, when he suddenly declared his determination to personally carry out his agreement and without a “right” driver.
Accordingly, two days later, at two o’clock in the afternoon, my man Frank was waiting with a fine pair of bays and a smooth-running buggy, in a field not far from the rear of the prison wall and close by the bank of the Scioto River. He was well out of the view of any one on the walls, but when I came up at the rear of one of the storehouses of the prison, where many of the supplies were kept, I could plainly see him, and I waved the signal that all was progressing favorably. It was the work of some of the teamsters in the employ of Contractor Osborn to haul supplies and do other kinds of carting between the storehouses and the prison. Charlie Osborn had planned to deliver a certain package from the prison yard to a platform of one of the storehouses. This done, his part of the bargain would be finished. I had not been long in my hiding-place when I saw a team come hurriedly up to the platform. Young Osborn, who was along, was seen to roll a barrel from the wagon to the platform, and then to turn and direct the driver to hasten to the prison again after another load.
No sooner had the teamster disappeared than Osborn cut the hoops away from the barrel with a hatchet at hand for the purpose, and as the staves fell apart with a clatter, I saw Tall Jim, his face looking like death and gasping for breath, stagger into a standing posture, clothed in the convict stripes.
It was as though Osborn had been a magician, and with one sweep of his wand had smote a barrel and transformed it into a human being.
This done, Osborn was ready to take two crisp one-hundred-dollar bills from me and vanish without a word. Then I turned to Tall Jim. In the quickest possible time I had him in overalls and a linen duster which I had brought along, and was half carrying him to the waiting carriage. He couldn’t have walked there unassisted, it requiring all my strength to support him, he was so nearly prostrated by his journey in the barrel. He had been in it for nearly an hour, I afterward learned. I am satisfied that we would have had a dead man in the barrel had it been delivered one minute later.
In packing him, he had been so wedged in that breathing was nearly impossible. He was in the most intense pain during his transit from the prison yard to the storehouse. I wondered that he lived. But there was no time for delay--five minutes after his release we were humming away from the scene as fast as fleet-footed horses would carry us, and no stop was made till we had put two miles between us and the prison. Then we halted long enough to give Jim a stimulant and clothe him in a suit I had provided to take the place of the convict garb, which we threw in a clump of bushes. Off we went again, in the direction of Delaware, where we intended to board a train for New York. At times I was worried more than I cared to confess over Jim’s condition. It would not have surprised me had he died on our hands. When we had traversed eight miles, he began to show signs of improvement, and when presently he began to evince some interest in his surroundings, I felt more hopeful; and finally, when he asked where we were bound, I knew that he was all right.
“We’re hustling for Delaware,” I explained to him, “as fast as hoofs will take us there.”
“Now, George, you’re making a bull of it,” he whimpered, like a petulant sick child; “that’s not right.”
I insisted that we were doing just what we ought to do, but he persisted in telling me a plan he’d mapped out in his cell, which would take us some forty miles back in the country, and in the very worst direction we could possibly go. Not unlike most men in prison, he was tiptop in building air-castles. He kept arguing until he was about ready to shed tears of disappointment. But I wouldn’t give in an inch. At last I could stand his whining no longer and determined to show my authority. It required just thirty seconds to squelch him and his pet scheme. He never again talked about it.
“See here, Jim,” I said, in a voice that he knew had a business ring in it; “I didn’t come away out here in Ohio to make a blind ‘get-away,’ so there’s two things for you to do--lay aside your advice, or--” and I produced a secret service shield, a United States warrant for John Doe or Richard Roe, and a glistening pair of handcuffs. Amazed at the completeness of my scheme to make certain his escape, Jim “took a tumble to himself,” as the language of the crook has it, and subsided.
When we reached Delaware, the good citizens there who took any notice of us at all, saw, as they believed, a bona-fide officer of the law, stoutly handcuffed to a desperate criminal. We left the team with a liveryman there and money to pay all the bills for its use. He agreed to return it to Columbus, and we, boarding a train, in due time arrived in New York without mishap. Tall Jim was free.
Four days later, to our astonishment, Charlie Osborn appeared in New York, with the expressed determination to remain. He was a good sort of a fellow, faithful and greatly to be depended upon, so I gave him a bookkeeping job in the Brevoort Stables, where he remained until his health, which was not of the best when I first saw him, failed, and he had to seek another and more favorable climate. In relating this story of Jim’s escape, I must not fail to say that I have not given Charlie Osborn’s real name. I did not think it just to him, and again, why should I harrow the feelings of his father, who was a most esteemed citizen of Columbus.
Charlie had great nerve. Not only did he cast Tall Jim from the prison’s interior, but he actually awaited Jim’s coming to the storeroom, packed him in the barrel, put the head in the latter, and personally ordered the teamster to do the loading. Tall Jim easily found an excuse for leaving the shop where he was employed on state contracts.
We saw no possible chance of obtaining the freedom of George Wilson and Big Bill, so they served out their sentences. As for Jack Utley, his father had him pardoned. Two years after Jim escaped, he was rearrested in one of my enterprises and sent to a Pennsylvania prison. After serving his time there, he was taken back to Columbus to finish his unexpired term, but luckily was soon pardoned by Governor Foster.
I well remember how Tall Jim looked, though many years have passed since I set eyes on him. He was of medium height, being a trifle under six feet; of sandy complexion, blue eyes, and usually wore a well-trimmed beard. His pleasing address and ready flow of language made him wonderfully useful in our work of canvassing for lootable banks in Ohio. The only son of wealthy parents in New York, he had been given a thorough business training; but he early developed expensive habits and fast companions, the outcome of which was a twenty-year sentence in Clinton prison, New York. Five years later his father secured his pardon from Governor Fenton, and obtained him a position with Thompson & Company, at Broadway and Wall Street, New York, as a solicitor for their _Bank-note Reporter_, a publication devoted to the suppression of counterfeit money. This, with a magnifying glass, which he sold on the representation that it was the best detector of the counterfeiter’s art ever devised, was bringing him in plenty of money, and he was on a fair road to financial success, when he met George Wilson, whose acquaintance he’d made in Clinton prison. His good father’s advice went to the winds, and back he fell into the old ways. Finally, he entered into a partnership with Wilson, Mark Shinburn, and Big Bill. They robbed a bank near Rochester, New York, which netted them three thousand dollars. Not long after this I met Billy Matthews and was introduced to Wilson, Tall Jim, and the other members of the Ohio bank looting enterprise.