Chapter 12

I spent a good deal of my time loafing about in Golden Gate Park and fishing from the wharves or the rocks west of the Presidio or near the Cliff House. As I watched the steamers and occasional windjammers pass through the Golden Gate, I had a longing to go to sea again. I haunted the Embarcadero for a week, trying to get a berth as oiler or water tender, and finally signed on as fireman on the steamer Queen for a trip to Sitka, Alaska. We went up through the Inside Passage, and the scenery was magnificent. I had expected the climate to be quite cold at Sitka, but it seemed to be even warmer there than at San Francisco although the distant mountains were covered with snow. We were there about ten days, and then returned to San Francisco. I was glad to get back, for the work was hard, the food poor, and the crew's quarters in the forecastle were abominable. I had lost all desire for a seafarer's life.

Michael and Tony were still at Johnny's, and I got my old room back. I hunted up Irene, who was working in a factory, and we went together until April, when Michael, Tony and I decided to ramble North. She wanted me to stay and live with her, but I couldn't see it. She was a swell pal, but not the type I could fall for permanently.

At Portland we met "Sardines" and "Sickness" again. Portland was rather hostile to tramps, and they had built themselvs a fair-sized shack across the river near the east end of the Burnside Bridge. The shack was built of lumber that had been jettisoned when a small lumber schooner crashed into another vessel a mile or so upstream. They had contacted several seamen sailing to the Orient who brought them supplies of morphine and cocaine, which they peddled to doctors, druggists, and a few agents who sold direct to the consumers. They said that they were just getting by; but their outfit belied their words, for they had a small fishing boat that must have cost a thousand dollars or more, and their shack was well furnished. We stayed there as their guests for two weeks before moving on to Seattle.

Seattle, and in fact all of western Washington, had been hit hard by the panic of 1893-94. Many of the smaller towns between Portland and Seattle had been practically abandoned for several years. The great lumber industry that had sustained the state had folded up, and was just beginning to put its vast logging camps and sawmills to work again. But Seattle was wide open and prosperous; the city had been given a new lease on life when the Alaskan gold rush began in 1897, and in 1900 it was still the principal port of embarcation for the Yukon. We made our headquarters at Fisherman John's on the waterfront near the foot of Yesler Way. Like most tramp hangouts, it was a saloon with a large back room in which tramps could flop for the night without charge. He had no rooms to rent; but he had slung about thirty navy hammocks from the ceiling rafters of the back room, put a blanket and a quilt in each, and charged twenty cents per night for the use of one. They didn't appeal to us, so we rented rooms in a nearby sailors' lodging house.

I had been there only a few days when I tumbled to the true nature of John's business. I had noticed that he was exceedingly liberal when serving liquor to a few of his customers. If a sailor or a husky young fellow asked for whisky, instead of pouring some into a glass and setting the bottle on the back bar, as was his usual custom, he would set the bottle down on the bar within easy reach of the customer and say, "I've got to go to the washroom; keep an eye on things for me, will you?" He would then go to the lavatory, and the customer would frequently pour himself another glass or two before John got back. When he returned, he would invite the man to have one on the house. After three or four jolt of John's poison the man would be drunk, and two or three more jolts would put him down and out. John and his bouncer, a husky Kanaka, would carry the stranger into a side room and,when he recovered consciousness, he would find himself aboard a whaler far at sea. John was careful not to Shanghai any tramps; had he done so, the tramps would have knocked him on the head and dumped him into the Sound.

Seattle was not as good for mooching as San Francisco had been, and fifty to sixty cents an hour was the most I could beg. I hadn't met any phoney jewelry peddlers for two years or more and thought that maybe the market could be revived, for a time at least. I wrote to a Chicago firm for a catalog, and when it arrived I noted that they listed a line of phoney gold nugget watch charms and bracelets. I had seen quite a few men wearing nugget charms on their watch chains, and I decided to get some phoney ones and try them out.

I ordered three dozen assorted sizes and shapes and a dozen phoney chains. When they came, I slipped a chain with charm attached through a button hole on my vest and stuck the chain ends into my lower vest pockets.. When I started to work I had no well-defined plan in mind, and the first severasl men I flagged didn't show much interest when I told them that I wanted to sell my nugget charm. I offered it for five dollars and then dropped to four. I didn't dare go below four dollars for fear of exciting suspicion, for from the size of the nugget it was evident that if it were gold, it was worth at least six or seven dollars. The last man I spieled to told me that he had no watch or chain on which to hang the nugget. This gave me the germ of an idea and, being hungry, I went into a restaurant. While I was eating I formulated a new approach that I was sure would click. When I went to the desk to pay my bill the proprietor was acting as cashier, and I noticed that he was wearing a watch chain with a nugget charm on it. The setup couldn't have been better if I had staged it myself.

I laid my check and a dollar on the counter, and made some jocular remark about it being my last dollar. I told the man I had pawned my watch the week before. I pulled the watch chain ends out of my pockets and asked if he'd like to buy the chain and charm. He asked me how much I wanted for them, and I told him twenty dollars. He said he didn't care for the chain, but that he might buy the charm. I told him that I had paid ten dollars for it, but that he could have it for eight. He offered me seven dollars in meal tickets or six dollars in cash. After stalling for several minutes I accepted the six dollars, and with his cheery "call again" in my ears, I beat it. Six dollars for a thirty-five cent charm looked better than the Klondike to me.

For the next two months I was in the money again. Every time I made a purchase where the setup favored that approach, I used it with slight variations. It clicked in about one out of five tries at restaurants and cigar stores, and I would arrive at Fisherman John's about four o'clock with my coat pockets stuffed with cigarettes, which I passed out to the gang. Bartenders were my best customers, but the most suspicious. On one occasion the man examined the nugget closely, and when I asked him what he was looking for he told me that jewelers were making imitation nuggets out of ten- and fourteen-carat gold. He said that the only way to tell the real nuggets from the imitation was to look for the jeweler's carat stamp designating the degree of fineness of the gold the nugget contained; and that if the nugget contained no carat stamp, it was bound to be placer gold. I agreed with him, and when he passed me four dollars and a bottle of Three Star Hennessy, we were both satisfied. I gave the brandy to Michael.

I dropped into a saloon one night where a poker game was in progress in a back room. I watched the game for a few minutes, and then asked the house man if I could sit in. He nodded, and I tossed a nugget on the table and asked for five dollars' worth of chips. I played for about an hour, and either I was lucky or the bunch hadn't gotten ready to trim me. When I was ten dollars and two red chips ahead I passed over my chips, and the house man put one of the red chips in the kitty and pushed fifteen dollars and two bits toward me. I made some caustic remark about his taking a two-bit rakeoff he wasn't entitled to, and picked up ten dollars and two bits, leaving a fiver on the table. I said something about the nugget being worth ten dollars, and he replied, in effect, that I had sold it to him, and that if I knew what was good for me I had better skidoo. I picked up the five dollars I had left on the table and retreated to the barroom, where I sold the bartender a nugget for another five I felt so elated that I stopped at a hotel bar on my way home and treated myself to two tall lemonades.

As I had covered Seattle thoroughly, I shuttled back and forth between Tacoma and Vancouver, B.C. I was afraid to work much in Vancouver because I was not familiar with the local laws and feared I might have to take a rap for swindling. I sold a few nuggets there to sailors but the going was none too good, and I returned to Seattle about the midddle of May. I started working "the drag" (streets), and about the third man I tried turned out to be a fly bull. He made the pinch, and the next morning I was given ten days in the "pisshouse",. Fortunately, several other nuggets that I was carrying at the time were concealed in a small hidden pocket inside the back of my pants, which the bull failed to spring when he frisked me at the jail. Had he found them, I would probably have gotten six months. As it was, I had the judge half-believing me when I told him that the nugget I had tried to sell to the bull was one I had bought a few weeks previously from a peddler, and that I did not know it was "phony". Had I used the word "spurious" instead of "phony", I might have been turned up. The pride I took in my cleverness took a fall that day.

When the property clerk took charge of my personal effects, I asked him to let me keep five dollars with me. He handed me the money and I put it in my vest pocket. When I was ushered to my cell, in a block containing about twelve, and the turnkey had left the corridor, the other prisoners gathered about me and I realized that I had pulled another boner. So long a time had passed since I had last been in the can that I had forgotten old "Judge Kangaroo". I was frisked and the five-dollar bill was found and handed to one of the prisoners, who immediately identified it as the one I had taken from him the day before at the point of a gun. I laughed and plead guilty, whereupon I was released without further penalty.

That five dollars must have been a godsend to them, for they were almost entirely out of tobacco. At the end of the corridor there was a steel ledge about six inches wide and four feet long, on which a number of chewing-tobacco quids, from which the juice had been chewed, were laid out to dry--to be smoked later in pipes, or rolled into cigarettes. It was a common practice in jails at that time.

There were only seven or eight men in my block, and one of them gave the turnkey my fiver and asked him to shoot the works in buying cigarettes and tobacco. I was permitted to name my favorite brand of cigarettes, but that was the only say I had in the matter.

I got word to Michael J. and Tony and tried to arrange to have my meals brought in from a restaurant, but the main "screw" put the kibosh on that and I almost starved, for the jail fare was execrable. It consisted principally of half-cooked boiled beans sans pork, boiled potatoes, stale bread, and a mutton or beef slumgullion with very little edible meat in it, for which the tramps had an unforgettable but unprintable name.

There were no tramps in my cell block when I entered it, but a few days later "Canada Red" and his punk Jimmy were brought in. I was surprised to see Red, for he was an eastern tramp whom I had met previously in Buffalo. He had aged considerably since then and had lost his left forearm. He told me that he had been riding the bumpers of a freight, and that when it stopped he had slid off of them to the ground, with his arm resting on the coupling link. The train backed up suddenly, and his arm was crushed between the bumpers. He said he had felt no pain at the time, and in fact didn't know he was injured until he tried to roll a cigarette a few minutes later. I thought he was lying about not feeling pain; but I was destined to learn more about this subject . In the winter of 1905 I had my left foot crushed by the connecting rod of a donkey engine I was attempting to oil. I felt the impact of the rod on my shoe, but it was only when I stepped on the foot and found it wouldn't support my weight that I realized what had happened. I, too, felt no pain. I lost one toe, but when all was healed I was not incapacitated except for a slight limp, which left me within two years.

When I was released from jail I was told to leave town within twenty-four hours. I picked up Michael and Tony and we took the boat to Tacoma, as I didn't want to take a chance on being pinched in the railroad yards. We decided to return to California, as I was sure I could peddle a lot of nuggets there. We stopped at Pendleton for two days and then rambled on, stopping off at all towns of any size; but the nugget gag didn't pan out so well. At Redding, California I tried to peddle one to a bartender, and he laughed at me and told me a fellow townsman made them by the thousands. I learned the man's name and looked him up. I found him in a little shop in back of his residence, where he was working on a die-casting mold. He was old, in his early eighties, but very well preserved and quite active. He told me he had been making phony nuggets, at intervals, for forty years or more. He identified one that I showed him as being of his own manufacture, and corroborated his statement by showing me a large soapbox, over half full of unplated ones of the same pattern. They were made of an alloy of lead, zinc and antimony. He said that he had supplied the jobbers, from whom I had bought mine, with more than fifty thousand of them since the Klondike gold strike; previously, he had made only a few hundred a year since 1870. Before that year he had made them of silver and copper, with just enough gold in them to give a good color, as he was unable to get them plated. He said his best customers in the fifties and early sixties were saloonkeepers and gamblers who used them for "salting" placer claims, which they sold to miners, prospectors, and tenderfeet. Verily, there is nothing new under the sun.

The experience I had had in Seattle convinced me that sooner or later I would get a much longer jolt if I persisted in representing the nuggets as pure gold; and as I valued my liberty more than anything else, I resolved to turn over a new leaf. When we reached San Francisco I tried selling them for what they were, at a dollar each. I had little success in selling them; but I did manage to get rid of quite a few in poker games. I lost more often than I won, but still came out very much to the good, for my actual loss at a sitting was never more than thirty-five cents, while my winnings on several occasions were over twenty dollars.

I called at the house where Irene had been rooming, and was told she had moved. I went to the factory where she had worked, and asked the bookkeeper if Miss X. was still employed there. She smiled and told me that Irene had married the proprietor's son just a week before, and that they were on their honeymoon. I was surprised, but glad to learn that she was at last on the straight and narrow path, for she was too fine a girl to squander her life along the primrose trail.

About ten days later I telephoned Irene, and she met me downtown. She was glad to see me, but the constraint in her manner made me ask if anything was amiss. After some questioning she told me that she feared her past might become known to her husband, whom she said she loved dearly. Further questioning elicited the fact that I was the only one, apart from a few strangers, who knew what she had been. When I assured her that I rejoiced in her happiness and would do nothing to mar it, tears came to her eyes. She thanked me while saying goodbye, and the pressure of her hand on mine as we parted was more eloquent than words. Somehow I was elated to think that for once in my life I had done a good deed.

Two weeks later, Michael, Tony and I hit the road north again. I could never stay long in one place, and now that I had lost out with Irene I was restless. I think it was about the first of August, 1900, when we left Portland to go east through Oregon and Idaho again. It was the same old round, but it was good tramp country and as long as I could keep moving I didn't care much where I went. We made the same old towns, met the same groups of tramps, and about September first we wound up in Pocatello --where I came closer to getting into a really serious jam than ever before.

We had only been in Pocatello a day or two when Michael got into a fight with a gaycat whom he caught rolling Portland Red, who lay dead drunk behind a switchman's shanty. Michael hit the gaycat with a fishplate and fractured his skull. Two switchmen came out of the shanty and turned Michael over to the authorities, who charged him with attempted murder. Tony, Red and I put on acid "bugs" and mooched the country from Cheyenne to Seattle for a month to secure funds for Michael's defense. In that time we collected a little over five hundred dollars, more than half of which was donated by other tramps who had heard of the affair.

In the meantime, the gaycat had recovered and was sticking around waiting for the trial. We gave two hundred and fifty dollars to a local "mouthpiece" (lawyer) to defend Michael, whose case was to come up the following week. We promised him another two hundred and fifty dollars if he succeeded in getting Michael turned up. Then, three days before the trial Tony and I, who were unknown to the gaycat, met him downtown and got him paralyzed drunk. We picked up Portland Red and a tramp called "Washoe", and the five of us climbed into an empty westbound freight car, which we rode to American Falls. We all got out there and went down the river about a mile, where Tony and I left Red and Washoe to care for our friend when he awoke. Meanwhile, we returned to Pocatello and bought a supply of food to feed Red, Washoe and the gaycat until the trial was over. We took the food to them the next day.

When the day of the trial arrived and the prosecuting witness could not be found, our lawyer asked for a dismissal; but the judge refused to grant it when the prosecuting attorney moved to have the case continued. The judge set the trial date two weeks ahead, after warning the prosecuting attorney that if he didn't produce his principal witness on that date, the case would be dismissed. When we left the courtroom our lawyer took us to his office, where he very broadly hinted that he had bribed the gaycat with the money we had given him in order to get the gaycat out of town. He wanted us to kick in with the other two hundred fifty dollars, but we balked and told him that he would get it when the case was dismissed. We knew damn well that he was lying, for we had frisked the gaycat and he had only a few dimes on him.

The next two weeks were a nightmare to me. For years I had carefully avoided doing anything that could involve me in any transgression of the law more serious than begging, and here I was up to my neck in heavy-time stuff. Tony and I relieved Red and Washoe for a week. We had to buy blankets for the three of us, for although it was summer the nights were cold, and we didn't want the gaycat to get pneumonia and die on our hands. We didn't abuse him, but we kept him tied up. We moved about a mile further into the hills, and on the day that Red and Washoe were due to return, I went down to the depot to meet them so that I could guide them to our new hiding place. They didn't show up; but in their stead were two other tramps I knew, "Diamond" and "Dago Joe". They each had a suitcase full of canned food, and told me that Red and Washoe had gotten "ossified" and thrown in the can. They said they would take over the job of guarding our prisoner, so I led them to our hideout. I warned them about building fires, for there was always the possibility that some wandering Indian might spot it and investigate.

While Tony and I were waiting at the depot in American Falls, the station agent began asking us nosey questions. I think I gave him a stall to the effect that we were working for an archeological expedition in search of obsidian arrowheads; at any rate, whatever I told him appeased his curiosity.

At Pocatello, Tony and I found the town literally alive with tramps. Word of our exploit had reached them somehow, and they had come from all directions to be in at the finish. I was scared stiff for fear that one of them would queer the whole show by shooting off his mouth while drunk. However, nothing happened; and when on the day of the trial the judge refused a further continuance and turned Michael up, there was great rejoicing in Trampdom.I passed the word around that there would be big doings in Salt Lake City within a few days, and most of the tramps headed for the Lake. We paid Michael's fare to Ogden, as we wanted to get him out of the court's jurisdiction as soon as possible.

Tony and I had kept away from the courtroom, as we didn't want to encounter Michael's lawyer. We went to the Falls again and that evening we brought the gaycat back from the hideout. He wanted to know why we had kept him prisoner so long after the original date set for the trial. Tony told him we had been holding him for ransom, and I got a laugh out of that. We saw him aboard an eastbound freight, after threatening to kill him if he put in a rap against us. We bought four tickets to Pocatello and rode the cushions in. We stayed on the train until it pulled out again, when we decked it and rode to McCannon Junction. The next morning, I saw that there would be little chance of us beating our way on the mixed local, so I bought tickets for the four of us. We reached Ogden that afternoon, and the next morning we were at the Lake.

I still had about one hundred and ninety dollars left out of our original defense roll, and when we went to the tramp hangout at "Mormon Mike's: flophouse , I turned the money over to Michael J. and Tony and went to a hotel where I slept for about twenty hours. I had lost considerable weight, and my nerves were ragged from the strain I had undergone while waiting for Michael's deliverance.

During the next few days I thought a good deal about what might have happened to me if the gaycat had gotten away from us and preferred charges for kidnapping. In all probability it would have gotten me at least ten years in the penetentiary; and I finally decided to give up tramping for good and all. I no longer had any desire to return to Ella, but I did want to see my mother. It wasn't that I had any revulsion of feeling toward the life I had been leading, for I really liked it, nor was my decision influenced by any desire for self-reformation. I think the deciding factor was fear--fear of the loss of my liberty, fear that I would eventually become, in appearance and decrepitude, a counterpart of some of the older tramps and ex-cons with whom I had associated. Throughout my tramping life I had taken pride in my personal appearance and in keeping my body free from vermin. I noticed that I had grown careless in those respects, and that this carelessness was reflected in the lessened amounts I was able to beg. I simply quit cold. I told no one but Michael and Tony of my resolve. I hadn't been able to find them sober, and when I said goodbye they evidently thought I was kidding.

I had carried a hundred dollars or more sewn into my coatsleeve linings, and I took it all out and spent about fifty dollars for a complete outfit of clothing. I bought a ticket to Denver and when I arrived there I went home, where mother met me with open arms and a tearful smile of welcome.