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Page 19
We got them all lined up and pretty quiet, and I went through the bunch.
I found very little on them -- I mean in the way of valuables. One man in
the line was a sight. He was one of those big, overgrown, solemn snoozers
that sit on the platform at lectures and look wise. Before crawling out
he had managed to put on his long, frock-tailed coat and his high silk
hat. The rest of him was nothing but pajamas and bunions. When I dug
into that Prince Albert, I expected to drag out at least a block of gold
mine stock or an armful of Government bonds, but all I found was a little
boy's French harp about four inches long. What it was there for, I don't
know. I felt a little mad because he had fooled me so. I stuck the harp
up against his mouth.
"If you can't pay -- play," I says.
"I can't play," says he.
"Then learn right off quick," says I, letting him smell the end of my
gun-barrel.
He caught hold of the harp, turned red as a beet, and commenced to blow.
He blew a dinky little tune I remembered hearing when I was a kid:
Prettiest little gal in the country -- oh!
Mammy and Daddy told me so.
I made him keep on playing it all the time we were in the car. Now and
then he'd get weak and off the key, and I'd turn my gun on him and ask
what was the matter with that little gal, and whether he had any intention
of going back on her, which would make him start up again like sixty. I
think that old boy standing there in his silk hat and bare feet, playing
his little French harp, was the funniest sight I ever saw. One little
red-headed woman in the line broke out laughing at him. You could have
heard her in the next car.
Then Jim held them steady while I searched the berths. I grappled around
in those beds and filled a pillow-case with the strangest assortment of
stuff you ever saw. Now and then I'd come across a little pop-gun pistol,
just about right for plugging teeth with, which I'd throw out the window.
When I finished with the collection, I dumped the pillow-case load in the
middle of the aisle. There were a good many watches, bracelets, rings,
and pocket-books, with a sprinkling of false teeth, whiskey flasks, fa
ce-powder boxes, chocolate caramels, and heads of hair of various colours
and lengths. There were also about a dozen ladies' stockings into which
jewellery, watches, and rolls of bills had been stuffed and then wadded up
tight and stuck under the mattresses. I offered to return what I called
the "scalps," saying that we were not Indians on the war-path, but none of
the ladies seemed to know to whom the hair belonged.
One of the women -- and a good-looker she was -- wrapped in a striped
blanket, saw me pick up one of the stockings that was pretty chunky and
heavy about the toe, and she snapped out:
"That's mine, sir. You're not in the business of robbing women, are you?"
Now, as this was our first hold-up, we hadn't agreed upon any code of
ethics, so I hardly knew what to answer. But, anyway, I replied: "Well,
not as a specialty. If this contains your personal property you can have
it back."
"It just does," she declared eagerly, and reached out her hand for it.
"You'll excuse my taking a look at the contents," I said, holding the
stocking up by the toe. Out dumped a big gent's gold watch, worth two
hundred, a gent's leather pocket-book that we afterward found to contain
six hundred dollars, a 32-calibre revolver; and the only thing of the lot
that could have been a lady's personal property was a silver bracelet
worth about fifty cents.
I said: "Madame, here's your property," and handed her the bracelet.
"Now," I went on, "how can you expect us to act square with you when you
try to deceive us in this manner? I'm surprised at such conduct."
The young woman flushed up as if she had been caught doing something
dishonest. Some other woman down the line called out: "The mean thing!" I
never knew whether she meant the other lady or me.
When we finished our job we ordered everybody back to bed, told 'em good
night very politely at the door, and left. We rode forty miles before
daylight and then divided the stuff. Each one of us got $1,752.85 in
money. We lumped the jewellery around. Then we scattered, each man for
himself.
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