Chapter 12

Settled there in "the jungles," we hilariously voted to crown the cook our king. We held the ceremony, presenting him with a crown made out of an old tin pan, which one of the more expert among us hammered into a circlet and scoured bright with sand....

* * * * *

But soon I grew tired of the gang and started on alone.

"You'd better beat it on out of the South as quick as you can," an old tramp had warned me, "they're hell on a bum down here, and harder yet on a Yankee ... no, they haven't forgot _that_ yet--not by a damn sight!"

I was soon to wish that I had listened to the old tramp's wisdom.

* * * * *

In the chill grey dip of an early spring dawn I dropped off a freight in the yards of the town of Granton.

I drew my threadbare coat closer as I made my way up the track, on the look-out for some place to go into and warm myself. Usually, in chilly weather, each railroad station throughout the country has a stove a-glow in the waiting room ... I found the railroad station, and the stove, red-hot, was there ... it was good to be near a fire. In the South it can be at times heavily cold. There is a moisture and a rawness in the weather, there, that hurts.

I was not alone. Two negro tramps followed me; like myself, seeking warmth and shelter. Then came a white tramp.

We stood around the stove, which shone red in the early half-light of dawn. We shivered and rubbed our hands. Then we fell into tramps' gossip about the country we were in.

The two negroes soon left to catch a freight for Austin. My fellow tramp and I stretched ourselves along the benches. He yawned with a loud noise like an animal. "I'm worn-out," he said, "I've been riding the bumpers all night." I noticed immediately that he did not speak tramp argot.

"And _I_ tried to sleep on the bare boards of a box car."

We had disposed ourselves comfortably to sleep for the few hours till wide day, in the station, when the station master came. He poked the fire brighter, shook it down, then turned to us. "Boys," not unkindly, "sorry, but you can't sleep here ... it's the rules."

We shuffled to our feet.

"Do you mind if we stand about the stove till the sun's high enough to take the chill off things?"

"No."

But, standing, we fell to talking ... comparing notes....

"I've been through here once before," remarked my companion, whom I never knew otherwise than as "Bud."

"There's a cotton seed mill up the tracks a way toward town, and we can sleep there, if you want ... to-day's Sunday, and no one will be around, working, to disturb us. In the South it's all right for a tramp to sleep among cotton seed, provided he doesn't smoke there."

"Come on, then, let's find a place. I can hardly hold my head up."

We slumped along the track. A cinder cut into my foot through the broken sole of one shoe. It made me wince and limp.

Soon we came to the cotton seed house and looked it over from the outside. It was a four-square building, each side having a door. All the doors but one were locked. That one, when pushed against, tottered over. We climbed in over the heavy sacks, seemingly full of cement, with which the unlocked door had been propped to. It also was unhinged.

It was dark inside. There were no windows.

We struck matches and explored. We found articles of heavier hardware scattered and piled about, some sacks of guano, and about a dozen wired bales of hay.

"I thought this was a cotton seed mill," commented Bud, "because I saw so many niggers working around it, when I passed by, the other time."

"Well, and what is it, then?"

"Evidently a warehouse--where they store heavier articles of hardware."

"What are you going to do?"

"Twist the wires off a couple of these bales of hay, use it for bedding, and have a good sleep anyhow."

"But--suppose we're caught in here?"

"No chance. It's Sunday morning, no one will be here to work to-day, and we'll be let alone."

With a little effort we twisted the bales apart and made comfortable beds from the hay.

It seemed I had slept but a moment when I was seized by a nightmare. I dreamed some monstrous form was bending over me, cursing, breathing flames out of its mouth, and boring a hot, sharpened implement into the centre of my forehead. I woke, to find, that, in part, my dream was true.

There straddled over me an excited man, swearing profusely to keep his courage up. He was pressing the cold muzzle-end of a "forty-four-seventy" into my forehead.

"Come on! Get up, you ---- ---- ----! Come on out of here, or I'll blow your ---- ---- ---- brains out, do you hear?"

Then I caught myself saying, as if from far away, perfectly calm and composed, and in English that was almost academic--"my dear man, put up your gun and I will go with you quietly. I am only a tramp and not a desperado."

This both puzzled and at the same time reassured my captor ... and made him swear all the louder,--this time, with a note of brave certainty in his tone.

His gun poked me in the back to expedite my exit. I stepped out at the open door into streaming daylight that at first dazzled my eyes. I saw waiting on the track outside a posse of about fifteen citizens.

"Good work, McAndrews," commended one of them, deep-voiced. The others murmured gruff approval.

McAndrews, from conversation that I gathered, was night-watchman in the yards. He had one red-rimmed eye. The other was sightless but had a half-closed leer that seemed to express discreet visual powers.

"Now go on in an' fetch out the other bum," commanded the deep-voiced member of the posse, speaking with authority.

"There wasn't but only this 'un," McAndrews replied, with renewed timidity in his voice, scarcely concealed, and jerking his thumb toward me.

"But the little nigger said they was--ain't that so, nigger?"

"Yassir, boss--I done seen two o' dem go in dar!" replied a wisp of a negro boy, rolling wide eye-whites in fright, and wedged in among the hulking posse.

"Well, this 'un's all I seen!" protested the night watchman, "an' you betcher I looked about mighty keerful ... wot time did you see 'um break in?" turning to the negro child.

"Jes' at daylight, boss!"

"An' wot was you-all a-doin' down hee-ar?"

"He was a-stealin' coal f'um the coalkiars," put in one of the posse, "in cohse!"

All laughed.

"Anyhow, I done seed two o' dem," protested the boy, comically, "wot evah else I done!"

Everybody was now hilarious.

"Whar's yoah buddy?" I was asked.

"Did unt you-all hev no buddy wit' you?"

"Yes, I did have a buddy with me, but--" trying to give Bud a chance of escape,--"but he caught a freight West, just a little bit ago."

"You're a liar," said the one in authority, who I afterward heard was the head-clerk of the company that ran the warehouse. The negro boy had run to his house and roused him. He had drawn the posse together....

"You're a liar! Your buddy's still in there!"

"No, I'll sweah they haint nobuddy else," protested McAndrews.

But prodded by their urging, he climbed in again over the sacks of guano, and soon brought out Bud, who had waked, heard the rumpus, and had been hiding, burrowed down under the hay as deep as he could go.

There was a burst of laughter as he stood framed in the doorway, in which I couldn't help but join. He had such a silly, absurd, surprised look in his face ... a look of stupefied incredulity, when he saw all the men drawn up to receive him. From a straggled lock of hair that fell over one eye hung several long hay-wisps. His face looked stupid and moon-fat. He rolled his big, brown eyes in a despairful manner that was unconsciously comic. For he was, instinctively, as I was not, instantly and fully aware of the seriousness of what might come upon us for our innocent few hours' sleep.

"Come on, boys. Up with your hands till we go through your pockets."

On Bud's hip they found a whiskey flask, quarter-full. In my inside pocket, a sheaf of poor verse--I had barely as yet come to grips with my art--and, in an outside pocket, the Bible I had filched from the woman's sewing machine in Tuscon.

The finding of the Bible on my person created a speechless pause.

Then--

"Good Gawd! A bum with a Bible!"

Awe and respect held the crowd for a moment.

* * * * *

The march began.

"Where are you taking us to?"

"To the calaboose."

Down a long stretch of peaceful, Sunday street we went--small boys following in a curious horde, and Sunday worshippers with their women's gloved hands tucked in timidly under their arms as we passed by. They gave us prim, askance glances, as if we belonged to a different species of the animal kingdom.

Buck negroes with their women stepped out into the street, while, as is customary there,--the white men passed, taking us two tramps to jail. We came to a high, newly white-washed board fence. Within it stood a two-story building of red brick. On the fence was painted, in big black letters the facetious warning, "Keep out if you can." A passage in through the gate, and McAndrews first knocked at, then kicked against the door.

The sleepy-faced, small-eyed jailer finally opened to us. The wrinkled skin of the old man hung loosely from his neck. It wabbled as he talked.

"What the hell's the mattah with you folks?" protested McAndrews, the night watchman, "slep' late," yawned the jailer, "it bein' Sunday mawhnin'."

By this time the sheriff, summoned from his house, had joined us. A big swashbuckler of a man with a hard face, hard blue eyes with quizzical wrinkles around them. They seemed wrinkles of good humour till you looked closer.

"--s a damn lie ... you 'en Jimmy hev bin a-gamblin' all night," interjected the sheriff, in angry disgust.

* * * * *

They marched us upstairs. The whole top floor, was given over to a huge iron cage which had been built in before the putting on of the roof. A narrow free space--a sort of corridor, ran all around it, on the outside.

Eager and interested, the prisoners already in the cage pushed their faces against the bars to look at us. But at the sheriff's word of command they went into their cells, the latter built in a row within the cage itself, and obediently slammed their doors shut while a long iron bar was shot across the whole length, from without ... then the big door of the cage was opened, and we were thrust in. The bar was drawn back, liberating the others, then, from their cells.

The posse left. Our fellow prisoners crowded about us, asking us questions ... what had we done?... and how had we been caught?... and what part of the country were we from?... etc. etc....

From the North ... yes, Yankee ... well, when a fellow was both a Yank and a tramp he was given a short shrift in the South.

They talked much about themselves ... one thing, however, we all held in common ... our innocence ... we were all innocent ... every one of us was innocent of the crime charged against us ... we were just being persecuted.

* * * * *

That afternoon a negro preacher, short and squat, who, innocent, was yet being held for Grand Jury, delivered us a fearful half-chanted sermon on the Judgment Day. I never heard so moving, compelling a sermon. I saw the sky glowing like a furnace, the star-touching conflagration of the End of Things rippling up the east in increasing waves of fire, in place of the usual dawn ... I heard the crying of mankind ... of sinners ... for mountains to topple over on them and cover them from the wrath of the Lord....

* * * * *

"In co'hse I nevah done it," explained the preacher, "I had some hawgs of mah own. Mah hawgs had an under-bit an' an ovah-bit in dere eahs, an' de ones I's 'cused o' stealin', dey had only an ovah-bit. But heah dey's got me, holdin' me foh de pen."

* * * * *

The little grey-faced pickpocket--caught at his trade at the Dallas Fair, told me how easy it was to add an under-bit to an over-bit to the ears of the two hogs stolen, "Sure that sneakin' niggah pahson did it," he averred--but all the while he likewise averred that _he_ hadn't picked the pocket of the man from whom he was accused of stealing a wallet....

"Yes, I'll admit Ah've done sech things. But this taime they was sure wrong. Ef I git framed up," he added, "I mean tuh study law ... pull foh a job in th' prison libery an' read up ... an' take up practice when I serve my term."

Beside the hog-stealing parson and the little grey-faced pickpocket there were also:

A big negro youth, black as shiny coal, who was being held over on appeal. He'd been sentenced to ninety-nine years for rape of a negro girl ... if it had been a white girl he would have been burned long ago, he said ... as it was, the sheriff's son, who was handling his case, would finally procure his release--and exact, in return, about ten years' of serfdom as payment. And there was a young, hard-drinking quarrelsome tenant-farmer, who was charged with having sold two bales of cotton not belonging to him, to get money for drinking....

There was another negro, hanging-handed, simous-faced, who had, in a fit of jealousy, blown two heads off by letting loose both barrels at once of his heavily charged shotgun ... the heads were his wife's ... and her lover's. He caught them when their faces were close together ... and they were kissing. But he seemed a gentle creature, tractable and harmless.

On the outside of the cage in which we were cooped like menagerie animals, a negro girl had her cot. She slept and lived out there by the big stove which heated the place. She was a girl of palish yellow colour. She was a trusty. She had been caught watching outside of a house while two grown-up negro women went within to rob.

* * * * *

Monday morning "kangaroo court" was called ... that court which prisoners hold, mimicking the legal procedure to which they grow so accustomed during their lives. We were arraigned for trial--the charge against us, that of "Breaking Into Jail."

The cotton thief served as prosecuting attorney. The negro youth in for rape of one of his own colour,--the sergeant-at-arms; while the negro preacher in for hog-stealing defended us ... and he did it so well that we were let off with ten blows of the strap a-piece. We had no money to be mulcted of, nor were we able to procure from friends, as the custom is, funds for the buying of whiskey and tobacco.

* * * * *

In a few days Bud and I had settled down into the routine of jail-life. Every morning we swept our cells, and all the prisoners took turns sweeping the corridor. The fine for spitting on the floor was ten lashes laid on hard. And each day before breakfast we soaked the seams of our clothes in vile-smelling creosote to kill off the lice and nits. We had no chance to bathe, and were given but little water to wash our face and hands.

* * * * *

"I wonder what they are going to do with us?"

"Anything they please," answered Bud gloomily.

"From thirty to ninety days on the county farm, I suppose?"

"We'll be lucky if we don't get from four to ten years in the pen."

"What for?"

"Burglary--didn't we break into that warehouse?"

* * * * *

Our meals were passed in to us through an open space near the level of the floor, at the upper end of the cage, where a bar had been removed for that purpose. We'd line up and the tin plates would be handed in, one after the other ... two meals a day. For breakfast a corn pone of coarse, white corn meal, and a bit of fried sow-belly. For dinner, all the water we could drink. For supper, breakfast all over again, with the addition of a dab of greens. On rare occasions the sheriff's son or the jailer went hunting ... and then we'd have rabbit. The sheriff had the contract, at so much per head, for feeding the prisoners.

Each morning I used to ask the jailer for the occasional newspaper with which he covered the basket in which he brought our food to us. One morning my eyes fell upon an interesting item:

The story of how two young desperadoes had been caught in the warehouse beside the railroad track, in the act of committing burglary ... the tale of our capture was briefly told ... the bravery of the night watchman and the posse extolled ... and the further information was conveyed, that, having waved preliminary examination (and we had, for they told us the justice was continually too drunk to examine us) we were being held over for Grand Jury ... on a charge of burglary.

Though he had predicted this, the actuality of it struck Bud all of a heap. He paced up and down the cage for the full space of an hour, hanging his ungainly head between his shoulders in abandonment to despair.

My reaction was a strange one. I wanted to sing ... whistle ... dance ... I was in the midst of adventure and romance. I was a Count of Monte Cristo, a Baron von Trenck. I dreamed of linguistic and philosophic studies in the solitude of my cell at the penitentiary till I was master of all languages, of all wisdom, or I dreamed of escape and of rising to wealth and power, afterwards, so that I would be pardoned and could come back and magnanimously shame with my forgiveness the community that had sent me up.

Bud stopped his pacing to and fro to stand in our cell-doorway. I was sitting on a stool, thinking hard.

"We can't do a thing," said Bud, "we're in for it, good and proper."

"--tell you what _I'll_ do," I responded, "I'll write a letter to the owner of the warehouse and appeal to his humanity."

"You romantic jack-ass," yelled Bud, his nerves on edge. He walked away angry. He came back calmer.

"Look here, Gregory, I want you to excuse that outburst--but you _are_ a fool. This is _real life_ we're up against now. You're not reading about this in a book."

"We'll see what can be done," I returned.

* * * * *

At the extreme end of the big cage, the end furthest from the entrance door, stood two cells not occupied. The last of these I had chosen for my study, a la Monte Cristo. The sheriff's son had lent me a dozen of Opie Reid's novels, a history of the Civil War from the Southern viewpoint, an arithmetic, and an algebra. Here all day long I studied and wrote assiduously. And it was here I went to sit on my stool and write the letter to the owner of the warehouse ... a certain Mr. Womber....

In it I pointed out the enormity of sending to the penitentiary two young men, on a merely technical charge of burglary. For if we had gone into the place to rob, why had we so foolishly, then, gone to sleep? And what, at the final analysis, could we have stolen but bales of hay, sacks of guano, and plowshares? All of them too unwieldy to carry away unless we had other conveyance than our backs. It was absurd, on the face of it.

Furthermore, I appealed to him, as a Christian, to let us go free ... in the name of God, not to wreck our lives by throwing us, for a term of years, into contact with criminals of the hardened type--to give us one more chance to become useful citizens of our great and glorious country.

Bud laughed sneeringly when I read the letter aloud to him ... said it was a fine effort as a composition in rhetoric, but I might expect nothing of it--if the perpetually drunk jailer really brought it to its destination--except that it would be tossed unread into the wastebasket....

I pleaded with the jailer to deliver it for me ... told him how important it would be to our lives ... adjured him to consider our helpless and penniless state. He promised to deliver it for me.

"I have nothing to give you, now," I ended, "but, if I ever get free, I'll send you twenty-five dollars or so from up home, when I reach the North."

* * * * *

A prisoner's first dream is "escape." Voices outside on the street, the sight of the tops of green trees through bars, dogs barking far away, the travels of the sun as shown by moving bands of light on the walls and in the cells--all remind him of the day when he was, as he now sees it, happy and free ... he forgets entirely, in the midst of the jail's black restraints, the lesser evils of outside, daily life. Even the termagant wife is turned into a domestic angel.

* * * * *

Under the smoky prison lamp made of a whiskey bottle filled with oil, and a shred of shirt drawn through a cork, we planned to cut out.

"The way to do it is easy," said the little pickpocket, "in the sole of every good shoe is a steel spring. I'll take the steel from my shoe. There's already one bar removed from the chuck-hole (No use trying to reproduce the dialect). If we saw out another bar, that will give us enough room for going through. Then it will be easy to dig out the mortar between the bricks, in the jail wall. Once out, we can make for the river bottoms, and, by wading in the water, even their bloodhounds can't track us."

"And once I get over into Indian Territory or Arkansas, you'll never see me in Texas again," I muttered.

"How'll we conceal where we've been sawing?" Bud asked.

"By plugging up the grooves with corn bread blackened with soot that we can make by holding the wick of this smoky lamp against the cage-ceiling."

"And how'll we keep folks from hearing the sawing?"

"By dancing and singing while Baykins here" (alluding to a "pore white" fiddler who had almost killed a man at a dance) "while Baykins here plays 'whip the devil.'"

The very next day we began dancing and singing and taking turns at the chuckhole bar.

"Whip the Devil" is an interminable tune like the one about the "old woman chasing her son round the room with a broom."...

The mistake was, that in our eagerness we "whipped the devil" too long at a time. Naturally, the jailer grew suspicious of such sudden and prolonged hilarity. But even at that it took almost a week for them to catch on. We knew it was all up when, one morning at breakfast, the sheriff came in with the jailer.

"Boys, all back into your cells!" he growled.

The long bar was thrown over our closed doors.

The sheriff stooped down and inspected the chuck-hole.

"Why, Jesus Christ, they'd of been through in two more nights. It's good we caught them in time or they'd of been a hell of a big jail-delivery ... do you mean to tell me," turning to the jailer, "you never noticed this before?" and with one finger he raked out the blackened corn bread.

"You see, I'm a little near-sighted, Mistah Jenkins."

"Too damned near-sighted, an' too damned stupid, too."

The big iron door of the cage was locked again, the long bar thrown off our cell doors.

"Now, you sons of b---- can come out into the cage again; but, mind you, if any of you try such a thing again, I'll take you out one by one and give you all a rawhiding."

We received the abuse in sullen silence. For three days our rations lacked cornpone, for punishment.

We decided among ourselves that the negro preacher, to stand in well with the authorities, had given us away....

And if he had not, panic-stricken, pleaded with the sheriff to be taken out and put in a separate cell, I believe we would have killed him.

* * * * *

There was one more way. It was so simple a way that we had not thought of it before. The mulatto girl, who slept by the big stove, on a cot, just outside the cage ... a trusty and the jailer's unwilling concubine ... this slim, yellow creature was much in love with the lusty young farmer who had stolen the bales of cotton and sold them for a drunk. And it was he who suggested that, through her, we get possession of the keys. For, every day, she informed us, she passed them by where they hung on a nail, downstairs, as she swept and cleaned house for the jailer.