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Updated: May 3, 2025
In extremity we called upon them for help; but it would bother them if we called upon them too often, in which event we could depend upon it that they would get more efficient trusties to take our places. But we did not call upon them often, except in a quiet sort of way, when we wanted a cell unlocked in order to get at a refractory prisoner inside.
"Blasphemous and heretical Warden of San Quentin whose feet have fast hold of hell," I gibed, after I had drunk deep of the water they held to my lips. "Let the jailers and the trusties triumph. Their time is short, and for them there is no time after time." "He's out of his head," Warden Atherton affirmed. "He's putting it over on you," was Doctor Jackson's surer judgment.
One day a hue and cry was raised and word was quickly passed that Number 3126 was missing. He had planned his escape craftily. A new shop building was at that time in process of erection, and each day a gang of "trusties" went outside to haul stone.
Life enough there was in all conscience, seeing that there were four hundred prisoners here at that time, and that nearly every cell was occupied; but it was a life of which no one individual was essentially aware as a spectacle. He was of it; but he was not. Some of the prisoners, after long service, were used as "trusties" or "runners," as they were locally called; but not many.
He had a chest like a wine-barrel and legs that resembled steel poles, weighed fifty-two kilos, yet according to the manager, of whom he was one of the trusties, frequently carried four-hundred-pound burdens up the long hill below the mine.
He sang the summons loud and clear, as it has sounded on many a frosty morning or sultry noon in many a corner of the range. "Set up, fellers," said Curly. "It's bridles off now, and cinches down, and the trusties next to the mirror." We sat down and McKinney uncovered the cake which had been made by the wife of the man from Leavenworth. It appeared somewhat imposing.
I was well pummelled by Thurston, and all the way back up that prodigious stairway I was roundly kicked, punched, and cuffed by the horde of trusties and guards who got in one another's way in their zeal to assist him. Heavens, if his nose did bleed, the probability is that some of his own kind were guilty of causing it in the confusion of the scuffle.
Now the trusties were not allowed keys to the cells, so I could not get in to him. He would stand up in the middle of his narrow cell, shivering convulsively, his eyes rolled backward till only the whites were visible, and howling like a lost soul. Try as I would, I could never get the Cockney to lend him a hand.
Of course, the safe-blower was not included in this outside gang, but one dark and rainy morning he included himself by the simple process of hog-tying and gagging one of the trusties detailed for the job, exchanging numbered jackets with him, and taking the man's place in the ranks of the stone-loaders, where he contrived to pass unnoticed by the guards. The escape was entirely successful.
Generally a convict, if he has long to serve, is not trusted to any great extent. At times these "trusties," although they may have but a few weeks to remain, cannot successfully resist the temptation to escape. Ordinarily the escaped convict is overtaken and brought back. I recollect an instance where two young fellows were thus trusted.
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