Black, Jack, 1871-1932; Criminals -- Canada -- Biography; Criminals -- United States -- Biography
I was discouraged. After all my hiding and dodging and starving, I must
now go back to Salt Lake. He took me off the train and held my arm as
the train pulled out. I was scared and desperate. I could see the
penitentiary opening up for me again, and the dungeon. As the last coach
was even with us, I gave the constable, that’s who he was, a vicious
push and he fell into a ditch beside the track.
The train was moving fast now, but with a tremendous effort I clutched
one of the handbars and the momentum threw me up on the rear steps. Just
as I landed, one of the trainmen opened the rear door and saw me. He had
his mouth open to say something when he saw the constable crawling out
of the ditch, firing his pistol in the air and making signs to him. He
pulled the bell cord.
As the train slowed down two more trainmen appeared and the three began
kicking me. I jumped off and fell into the hands of the constable, who
came up reënforced by some natives from the depot. They all fell on me
and gave me an unmerciful skull dragging. After they got done scruffing
me around, two of them took me by each arm and the constable fastened
both hands in my coat collar from behind. The ones that couldn’t find a
place to lay hold on me surrounded us, a tribe of small boys appeared
from nowhere, and I was dragged, pushed, and bumped across the fields to
the village and thrown into the jail.
When I was safely locked in, the constable mopped his forehead with his
sleeve, and, shaking his fist at me, said: “Sure as God made little
apples I’ll see that you get ten days.” They all went away then except
the small boys. They lingered around all afternoon peeping in at the
windows.
It was a mail-order jail—two steel cells on a concrete foundation. A
cheap wooden shack had been built around the cells to keep the weather
out. The door of the shack was always open and there was plenty of
light. The cell they put me in was clean, and there was a roll of new
blankets in it. I was the only prisoner.
I unrolled the blankets and, stretching out on the floor, tried to
figure out what had happened. I couldn’t understand the constable’s
threat to get me ten days, and concluded he was so excited that he said
ten days when he meant ten years.
He turned out to be a very decent fellow. He was postmaster, section
boss, and constable. He appeared at the jail in the evening with a big
dishpan full of food—bread, meat, butter, a fruit jar full of fresh
milk, and half a pie. He apologized for having lost his temper and
treating me so roughly, asked me if I wanted tobacco, and made a special
trip back to his house for some old magazines.
I was surprised to learn that I had been arrested for trespass, or
stealing a ride. He explained that the bums had burned a string of box
cars farther up the road and the “company” had sent out orders to arrest
them on sight and give them ten days.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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