Through the Shadows with O'Henry

CHAPTER XIII. In California; the bank-robbery; O. Henry's refusal; purchase of a ranch; coming of the marshals; flight and pursuit; the trap; capture at last.

O. Henry has been called a democrat, a citizen of the world. The laboratory wherein he caught and dissected the hearts of men and women was in the alleys and honkatonks. He sought to interpret life in the raw, not in the superficial livery disguising it on the broad ways. The under dog was his subject But at heart he was an aristocrat.

He had all the proud sensitiveness of the typical Southern gentleman. He liked to mingle with the masses ; he was not one of them. Gladly he threw in his lot with a pair of bandits and fugitives. It would have cut him to the soul to have been branded as one of them.

For his haughty nature, the ramble from Mexico to San Diego and up the coast to San Francisco was fraught with disagreeable suspense. It was humiliating to "be on the dodge."

I will never forget the look of chagrin that spread over his face when I bumped against him and Frank just as the ferry boat was swinging into the slip.

"Sneak," I said. "They're here."

The chief of the Wells Fargo detectives was on the boat. He had brushed against my arm. Before he had an opportunity to renew old acquaintance, I sauntered over to Frank and Porter. Wells Fargo had many uncollected claims against me. I was not ready for the settlement. Captain Dodge was probably unaware of my presence. We could not afford to take any chances. We stayed on the boat and it brought us back to Oakland.

Bill was a trifle upset. He insisted on staking us all to a drink, although he had to borrow the money from me to pay for the treat. Texas seemed to be the only safe camping ground for us.

With about $417 left from our capital of $30,000, we landed in San Antonio, still hankering for the joys of simple range life. There I met an old cowman friend of mine and he took us out to his ranch. Fifty miles from the town it ran into low hills and valleys, prairies and timber. A finer strip of country no peeler would ask. The cowman offered us range, cattle and horses for $15,000.

It was a bargain. Frank and I decided to snap it up. Financial arrangements, the cowman assured us, could be made with the bank in ......., several hundred miles distant. In the safe there was at least $15,000, and it could be easily removed. This was a straight tip.

It was a peculiar situation. Frank and I had both decided to quit the outlaw life. But we hadn't a cent and there was but one way to gather a quick haul. The fine fervor of reformation had lost its early ardor. Necessity completed the cooling process.

But we were a little worried about Porter. Whatever may have been his reasons for staying with us we were confident that Bill was not a lawbreaker.

The very thing that decided us to take him into our confidence was his pride. We knew he needed the money. We knew it humiliated him to borrow.

I had given him many and various sums since our flight from Honduras. These were always accepted as loans. We didn't want Bill to be under an obligation to us. We wanted him to earn his interest in the ranch.

The square thing was to invite him to go into the banking venture. If you had seen Bill Porter's face then and the helpless surprise that scooted across it, you would believe as I do that he was never guilty of the theft which sent him for nearly four years of his life to the Ohio Penitentiary. He had neither recklessness nor the sangfroid of the lawbreaker.

Just about evening I went down to the corral. Porter was sitting there enjoying the quiet peace. He was rolling a corn- shuck cigarette.

He looked happier and more at ease than at any time since the shooting of the don. I suppose I should have broached the subject mildly. The satisfying dreariness of this October night was not suggestive of crime or robbery. But the gentleness of the Madonna would not have lured Bill Porter into the scheme.

"Bill," I said, "we're going to buy the ranch for $15,000 and we want you to come in with us on the deal."

He paused with his cigarette half rolled.

"Colonel," he said, "I would like nothing better than to settle in this magnificent country, and to live here unafraid and unmolested. But I have no funds."

"That's just it. Neither have we. We're about to get them. Down there in----, there's a bank with $15,000 in its vaults. That money ought to be put into circulation."

The tobacco dropped from the paper. Porter looked up quickly and searched my face. He saw that I was in earnest. He was not with us, but not for a fortune would he wound us or even permit me to think that he judged us.

"Colonel---" This time his large eyes twinkled. It was seldom that he smiled. I never heard him laugh but twice. "I'd like a share in this range. But tell me, would I have to shoot anybody?"

"Oh, perhaps so, but most likely not."

"Well, give me the gun. If I go on the job I want to act like an expert. I'll practice shooting."

No outlaw would ever ask another for his forty-five. The greatest compliment a cowpuncher can give the man he trusts is to hand over his gun for inspection.

Porter took the honor lightly. He handled the gun as though it were a live scorpion. I forgot to warn him that I had removed the trigger and the gun would not stay cocked. By this device I could shoot faster at close range, gaining a speed almost equal to the modern automatic.

Like all amateurs, Bill put his thumb on the hammer and pulled it back. Then he started walking back and forth with the forty-five in his hand and his hand dropped to his side. Without intending to, he shifted his grip, releasing his thumb from the hammer.

There was a sudden, sharp explosion, a little geyser of earth spurted upward. When it cleared there was a hole as big as a cow's head scooped in the ground.

My forty-five lay in the depression. Porter, scared but unhurt, stood staring over it.

"Colonel," he looked up at me a little abashed, "I think I would be a hindrance on this financial undertaking."

I wanted Porter to go with us. We didn't need him, but I had already grown very fond of the moody, reticent, cultured fellow. I didn't want him to be dependent on us and I wanted his company on the range.

"Well, you needn't take the gun. You just stay outside and hold the horses. We really need you for that.

He hesitated a moment.

"I don't believe I could even hold the horses," he answered.

Troubled and fearful lest we should never return, he bade us good-bye. I did not know until the deal was closed and the ranch ours, the days of worry and misery that Bill Porter suffered while Frank and I went down to take up the matter with the bank.

We left Porter, harried with anxiety, at the Hotel Plaza in San Antonio. Frank and I and the rancher rode into---.

Our plan was simple. The cowman was to attract the attention of the marshals while we cleaned out the bank's vault.

The bank stood on a corner opposite the public square. The cowman went quietly to a bench to wait for the signal from me. I pulled out my handkerchief and began mopping my face. He opened fire, shooting like a lunatic into the air. Men and women ran into the saloons, stores, houses. The officials hurried over to the crazy cowman.

Frank and I walked into the bank, stuck up the cashier and compelled the delivery of $15,560 in currency. The rancher, charged with drunkenness, was arrested, fined and released. Frank and I left the bank as quietly as the next-door merchant might have. The ruse worked.

We went straight to the ranch and then doubled back to San Antonio. It was about two days since we had left Porter. He was not ordinarily a warm-spoken man, but when he saw us he put out his hand and his voice was rich with suppressed emotion.

"Colonel, congratulations. This is indeed a happy moment. I was so troubled in your absence." From Bill Porter that greeting was more expressive than the gustiest tribute from the glib-tongued. Porter's stories are crowded with colorful slang. His own speech was invariably pure and correct.

All of us knew that the parting had come. If Bill could not rob with us he could not settle down on the range bought with our stolen bills.

I have never relished farewells. I did not want to probe into Porter's soul. He had never said a word about his past. He had not even told us his name. But little as I wished to quiz him, I was eager to know his identity. I did not want to lose track of him forever.

"Bill," I said, "here's where we split out. We're getting on mighty familiar soil. There's likely to be trouble enough some day. Something may turn up.

I'd like to write to you. I might want your advice."

"I haven't been very frank with you, have I?" he answered. "I'm sorry."

Such reticence, I felt, was more than a shield for an unhappy love-affair. Porter's troubles, I knew, must be deeper than I had suspected.

"Good-bye, colonel; may we meet happily again," he said.

And the next time I saw him, nearly three years later, the very word "happy" was stricken from his vocabulary.

Frank and I went out to our ranch. For six months we lived in free and profitable industry. Suddenly an old, familiar face peered in at our window.

"Mex," a bandit friend, had tracked our haunt. Other faces appeared on the range and dodged again. The marshals had located us.

Frank, Mex and I escaped. For weeks we rode from range to range. Hunger spurred us. There were more robberies. And then there was the Rock Island daylight holdup. We had counted on a clean haul of $90,000 from the express car. Our dynamite failed to break the safe. We were cheated on the transaction.

It was our most futile venture. It led to our capture. The stickup was counted the boldest in outlaw exploits. Armed bands patrolled the country for the

"Jennings gang." In December, '97, they caught us.

We had gone back to the old Spike S, the range where I had first met and joined the outlaws, the range where the M., K. and T. robbery was planned. We were waiting the arrival of "Little Dick."

There came a knock at the door. The wind was howling like a fiend outside. Mrs. Harliss went to the porch. A man, covered with dirt, his eyes swollen almost shut, his coat dripping with rain, asked shelter. He was a ranchman who lived some miles away. That night he came as a spy. We were his quarry.

All of us felt the "closing of the trap." We had nothing but our suspicions to work on. The rancher was a friend of the Harliss folk. We could not hold him.

But none of us went to bed that night.

The sun came blazing out brilliant but cold the next morning. Mrs. Harliss went down to the cistern for water. She came rushing back, her shawl gone, her hair blowing in the wind.

"The marshals are here! We'll all be killed!"

Frank and Bud hurled themselves downstairs, Winchesters in their hands. Mrs. Harliss grabbed her little brother in her arms and ran to the front; door. I started out through the kitchen window.

Bullets tore the knobs off the front door. The first volley splintered glass in my face. We got to a little box-house just outside the ranch home. There were three rooms downstairs, one up. The shots went through the house as though it were cardboard.

Bullets broke the dishes on the table, smashed the stove, dashed the pictures off the wall. Three of us were hit. We were surrounded on three sides. Marshals were in the barn to the northeast, the log house to the north and the rocks and timber to the northwest; a little peach orchard skirted the south. Beyond that was open prairie.

We fought for 40 minutes, until our rickety fortress was all but shattered. Then we hit for the prairie, firing as we ran. They didn't dare to track us into the open spaces.

Just across the Duck Creek we stopped to bind our wounds. I was shot above the knee, the bullet lodging in the bone. Bud was shot in the shoulder, and Bill had a gash that looked like a dog bite in his thigh. Frank's clothes had 27 holes in thfc coat. He was not even scratched.

Up in the mountains we prepared for a "last stand." We hid all day. It was blue cold. Between us we had two apples. That was our fare for three days. The marshals didn't follow.

We recrossed the creek, took a couple of Indians and their pony team prisoners and made for the Canadian River bed. My wound swelled. I had to rip it open twice with my penknife to get relief. We made straight for Benny Price's house. He had been a friend of ours before the outlaw days. He took us in and gave us a good meal. We could not stay without menacing his welfare.

There was another friend there, a horsethief named Baker. He came down and gave us a wagon. Frank did not trust him. He would not go. Bud, Bill and I got into the covered wagon. Baker was to drive us to his house. Bill seemed to be dying with his wounds. Bud and I were both unconscious. I came to. Someone was sitting on the driver's seat.

"Who is it?" I asked.

"Me, damn it!" Frank answered. "Let's get out of this."

While we were unconscious, Baker sent word to Frank that I wanted him. He had come. Baker drove us into the timber, into the trap, and left us vowing that we were on the right road. A felled tree lay athwart the path. Bill was dying. Bud and I, but half conscious, were dozing in the bottom of the wagon. Frank had scrambled out to move the tree.

The cordon of marshals, six-shooters cocked, sprang about us.

"Jennings, surrender!"

About ten to one, they had us.

It took nearly two years before sentence was passed. I was given five years on a charge of assault with intent to kill a deputy. In another district I was found guilty of the Rock Island holdup and given life imprisonment. I was sent to the Ohio penitentiary.

The mystery of fate had brought me to the home of Bill Porter.