Black, Jack, 1871-1932; Criminals -- Canada -- Biography; Criminals -- United States -- Biography
The next afternoon we were picked up on the street by plain-clothes men
and taken before the chief of police.
“What’s wrong now, chief?” queried George.
“Oh, nothing much, Foot-’n’-a-half, just a telegram from
Pocatello—murder charge,” smiled the chief.
“What about me?” I asked.
He looked at a telegram on his desk. “Hold anybody found with him.”
They searched us thoroughly and held everything found on us. We were
locked up alone, in separate cells. “You’ve got plenty of money, boys,”
said the jailer, “you can buy anything you want in the way of food and
tobacco.”
I sat on the side of my iron cot, wondering who had kicked over the bean
pot. A rat-eyed trusty came down the corridor and stopped in front of
George’s cell, directly across from mine. “What’s the trouble,
old-timer?”
George looked at him coldly. “Oh, nothing much. I just bit a baby’s arm
off.”
The trusty went away. Something told him to ask no more questions.
Idaho officers came the next day and we went back with them to
Pocatello, not caring to waste our money fighting extradition, and
feeling confident there was nothing more than a suspicion of guilt
against us. We were taken straight from the train at Pocatello to an
undertaker’s. Every town official was there. Inside, in the back room,
they led George up to a table where his victim was laid out under a
white cloth. He knew what was coming, and so did I. The cloth was jerked
off the body and one of the officers pointed his finger at George.
“There’s the poor devil you shot, you damned, murdering ———, and we’ll
hang you for it.”
George coolly and calmly placed his right hand on the dead man’s brow
for an instant. Then, taking it away, he held his arm out full length
with the palm of his hand up, and said to the officer:
“If I killed that man, there’s the hand that held the gun, and there’s
the finger that pulled the trigger” (jerking his index finger back and
forth), and, pulling up his coat sleeve, “there’s my pulse! Do you want
to feel it?”
They weakened. The old yegg had beaten them at their own game.
“Lock them up!” ordered somebody in authority. The marshal and
a crowd of citizens took us to the calaboose, a small, one-room
shack in the middle of a big lot. They waited around till a pair of
villainous-looking Bannock Indians appeared with rifles. They were
hired to watch us and took turn about, sitting on a box outside by the
door, day and night, silent, motionless. At evening the marshal brought
a basket of food from a near-by restaurant, and a bundle of clean, new
blankets.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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