Leaving Yuma

by Michael Zimmer

  LEAVING YUMA

  American Legends Collection

  LEAVING YUMA

  MICHAEL ZIMMER

  Copyright © 2013 by Michael Zimmer

  E-book published in 2017 by Blackstone Publishing

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Trade e-book ISBN 978-1-5047-8788-8

  Library e-book ISBN 978-1-5047-8787-1

  Fiction/Westerns

  CIP data for this book is available from the Library of Congress

  Blackstone Publishing

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  Ashland, OR 97520

  www.BlackstonePublishing.com

  Foreword

  A Word about the

  American Legends Collections

  During the Great Depression of the 1930s, nearly one quarter of the American work force was unemployed. Facing the possibility of economic and government collapse, President Franklin Roosevelt initiated the New Deal program, a desperate bid to get the country back on its feet.

  The largest of these programs was the Works Progress Administration (WPA), which focused primarily on manual labor with the construction of bridges, highways, schools, and parks across the country. But the WPA also included a provision for the nation’s unemployed artists, called the Federal Arts Project, and within its umbrella, the Federal Writers’ Project (FWP). At its peak, the FWP put to work approximately six thousand five hundred men and women.

  During the FWP’s earliest years, the focus was on a series of state guidebooks, but in the late 1930s, the project created what has been called a “hidden legacy” of America’s past—more than ten thousand life stories gleaned from men and women across the nation.

  Although these life histories, a part of the Folklore Project within the FWP, were meant eventually to be published in a series of anthologies, that goal was effectively halted by the United States’ entry into World War II. Most of these histories are currently located within the Library of Congress in Washington, DC.

  As the Federal Writers’ Project was an arm of the larger Arts Project, so was the Folklore Project a subsidiary of the FWP. An even lesser known branch of the Folklore Project was the American Legends Collection (ALC), created in 1936 and officially closed in early 1942—another casualty of the war effort.

  While the Folklore Project’s goal was to capture everyday life in America, the ALC’s purpose was the acquisition of as many “incidental” histories from our nation’s past as possible. Unfortunately the bulk of the American Legends Collection was lost due to manpower shortages caused by the war.

  The only remaining interviews known to exist from the ALC are those located within the A. C. Thorpe papers at the Bryerton Library in Indiana. These are carbons only, as the original transcripts were turned in to the offices of the FWP in November 1941.

  Andrew Charles Thorpe was unique among those scribes put into employment by the FWP–ALC in that he recorded his interviews with an Edison Dictaphone. These discs, a precursor to the LP records of a later generation, were found sealed in a vault shortly after Thorpe’s death in 2006. Of the eighty-some interviews discovered therein, most were conducted between the years 1936 and 1939. They offer an unparalleled view of both a time (1864 to 1916) and place (Florida to Nevada, Montana to Texas) within the United States’ singular history.

  The editor of this volume is grateful to the current executor of the A. C. Thorpe Estate for his assistance in reviewing these papers, and to the descendants of Mr. Thorpe for their cooperation in allowing these transcripts to be brought into public view.

  An explanation should be made at this point that, although minor additions to the text were made to enhance its readability, no facts were altered. Any mistakes or misrepresentations resulting from these changes are solely the responsibility of the editor.

  Leon Michaels

  July 17, 2011

  J. T. Latham Interview

  Davenport, Iowa • January 6, 1937

  Begin Transcript

  Session One

  I won’t say I didn’t have second thoughts about this. I appreciate your belief that it’s important to keep a record of our country’s past. I’d even have to say I agree with it. But you’ve got to understand that there’s more at stake here than just an account of someone else’s misfortune. What that woman and those kids went through was bad, the kind of ordeal a lot of people don’t survive, and I hope I don’t need to remind you that some of the men who were involved in their rescue didn’t survive.

  But she did, and so did her children, and they’ve all got fresh new lives today. They’ve put what happened in the past, and I won’t be a party to dredging it up again, or bringing their story back into the public’s eye.

  That said, I still agree it’s important not to let our country’s history slide out of perspective because of a lot of flag-waving rhetoric on one side, or revisionist nonsense on the other. I’ve given this a lot of thought, and here’s about the only deal I’m willing to make. I’ll tell you what happened down there in as much detail as I can remember. I’ll tell you things I probably shouldn’t, and I’ll even let you record it on your Dictaphone. But I won’t reveal the names of the woman or her children, and by extension, I won’t tell you her husband’s name or what he did for a living, either. If you can honor that one condition, we can get started right now. If not, then you might as well pack up and walk on out of here, because that’s the only way I’ll tell you about it. Are you OK with that? All right, then let’s get this shindig moving.

  I guess you could say that I’m fairly well-known, at least around the Midwest. People have read about me in magazines and newspapers and such, and a few of those publications have included little biographies, most of them along the lines of, “J. T. Latham came to Iowa with nothing but a suitcase and a dream.”

  I won’t even comment on the inaccuracies of such a statement, but if you’ve ever read one of those articles, you’ve probably noticed they tend to ignore my life prior to my coming to Davenport in 1907. Which is fine, since nothing I did before then really has any bearing on what I’ve accomplished since, but I suspect it’s going to surprise a lot of people to learn that I once rode on the wrong side of the law, and that I spent some time behind bars in the Territorial Penitentiary in Yuma, Arizona.

  Although I seldom talk about those days, I’m not ashamed of them. Sure, I might have broken the law on a fairly regular basis in my youth, but I was never a cold-blooded killer or a rapist. I never robbed banks or held up stagecoaches or rolled a drunk, other than that one time right after I got back from living with the Yaquis. Escaped from them would be a more accurate description—but that’s getting ahead of myself.

  The account of my going into Mexico to ransom—let’s call her Abby, Abby Davenport—actually begins in the Yuma pen, which is why I brought it up. I figure it was my last day there, one way or another, because if Del Buchman hadn’t come along when he did, the odds were pretty fair that I wouldn’t have lived to see the sun come up the next morning. It’s not a stretch to say I was reckless in those days, and prone to poke the tiger more than common sense would dictate, but probably the dumbest thing I did in Yuma was to get crosswise of a thirty-to-life convict named Elliot Walsh.

  There was a hierarchy to Yuma back then—to most prisons, I expect—that varied depending upon which side of the bars you viewed the world from. For an average con like myself, the head man was the chief turnkey, a stone-hearted son of a bitch named Chuck Halsey. After Halsey came three or four of the prison’s toughest guards, then Elliot
Walsh and his boys. The rest of the hacks, and even the warden, came behind Walsh, that’s how much influence he had on the day-to-day operations of the joint. At least behind the scenes, in that unhinged world very few people realize exists.

  Other than a handful of prisoners who were what today’s doctors might call psychotic, and should have been in an asylum instead of a hellhole like Yuma, Walsh was probably the meanest man on the Hill, at least when I was there. This is the same guy who murdered that family up on Grouse Creek in the summer of 1899, which you might recall, since the incident was in all the papers at the time.

  I was sprung from Yuma more than thirty years ago, but I can still see Elliot Walsh’s face on my last day in the pen, as expressionless as a chunk of wood while his boys had me cornered behind the prison laundry. He looked like someone about to toss a smoked-down cigar into the gutter, rather than watch his men stomp the life out of another human being—but I guess that’s getting ahead of myself, too.

  At Yuma in 1907—which is when all of this took place—after the evening meal and if we’d behaved ourselves during the day’s labors, we’d get a little free time in the exercise yard. Most of the cons used that hour or so of fading daylight to chew the fat or play some kind of game like stick ball, or just wind down as best they could under the watchful eyes and cocked Winchesters of the prison’s hacks. Although there were rules against gambling, we all did it. The guards knew about it, too, but they wouldn’t say anything if we didn’t cause trouble.

  I reckon Elliot Walsh liked to gamble more than he liked to play stick ball or talk. The way he acted, you might think he preferred it to eating or sleeping. He probably also liked the money that gambling brought him, and not just from his own wagering. When I was there between 1903 and 1907, there weren’t many games of chance that Walsh didn’t have a hand in, one way or another. He had a number of slab-faced flunkies he’d gathered around him over the years. You know the type—big, dumb brutes, willing to shove an iron spike through a man’s heart if Walsh told them to. The fact is, there were a lot of guards who were just as afraid of Elliot Walsh and his goons as the rest of us were.

  I didn’t care for Walsh, but I liked to gamble as much as the next guy stuck behind thick, windowless walls and locked doors, so one evening after mess I rolled the dice with him and a couple of cons I sometimes hung out with, and within half a dozen tosses I’d won forty bucks. Back in those days, forty bucks was a month’s wages for most men. In a place like Yuma, it was just about a king’s ransom.

  My two buddies could see where this was heading and backed out real quick, but I was young and brash, and hung in for another throw just to see if my luck held. Walsh was betting wildly by then. He glared a warning as he slapped the dice in my hands, but I didn’t pay him any heed. It was my roll and I shot an easy six right off the bat, then just squatted there on my calves staring at the dice. Hell, even I was starting to wonder if the game was rigged. Grinning, I said, “With this kind of luck, maybe we ought to try breaking out of here tonight.”

  Even on a good day, Eliott Walsh didn’t have much of a sense of humor. My remark brought him instantly to his feet. I stood just as quick, shoving my newly won cash into a pocket.

  “It was a fair game, Walsh,” I said. “I just had a run of good luck, is all.”

  “Nobody has that kinda luck, Latham.”

  “It happens.”

  “Like hell it does. You cheated. I don’t know how, but you did.”

  Being right-handed, I was keeping my left side to him, my arms down with my fists clenched and ready to let fly. “That’s not true, and, even if it was, I wouldn’t be fool enough to do it eight times in a row.”

  “I want my money back,” he snarled.

  “That ain’t how it works,” I replied.

  “It is tonight.”

  I shook my head. You might consider me foolish to refuse his demand, but you have to understand that life functions differently inside a penitentiary. Show the yellow feather just once and you’ll drop to the bottom rung of prison society like a rock down a well, and that isn’t a life I’d wish on a rat.

  Walsh’s eyes flitted briefly to the mess hall entrance, where a trio of guards were watching us. I knew what he was thinking. Whether most of the hacks were secretly afraid of him or not, they couldn’t ignore a fight right out in the open. They’d lose their jobs if they did. Walsh knew it, too, and he suddenly relaxed, rolling his shoulders as if to work out some of the stiffness. “Yeah, you’re right, Latham. Besides, I’ll win it back the next time, right?”

  “Sure, it was just a fluke.” I took a sliding step backward, not yet willing to take my eyes off his. Over at the mess hall, one of the guards was yelling for the cons to pack it up and get inside for lockdown. There was some grumbling about the short shift we were getting on our free time, but I suspect most of the yard knew what was going on.

  Walsh said, “See you around, pard.” Then he strode away as if enjoying an after-dinner constitutional.

  My pulse was racing. I think Elliot Walsh had the shortest fuse on the hottest temper of any man I’d ever met, and that includes Old Toad, who I’m going to tell you about later on. As for Walsh, I guess I should have taken his personality into account before throwing dice with him. That ol’ boy was just plain crazy mean, and, with a sinking sensation in my belly, I knew he’d retaliate.

  It happened sooner than expected. I was over near the prison’s west wall the next day, where a bunch of us were slopping mud and straw for adobe bricks that the warden would sell in town. We made a lot of bricks in Yuma. That and busting big rocks into gravel with sledgehammers was our primary occupation. Those particular bricks were for a photography shop going up somewhere on Third Street. I was packing one of the wooden molds we used to shape the plates for drying, mud up to my elbows and toes squishing inside a pair of cheap, prison-issue shoes, when one of the hacks came over to tell me I was needed at the laundry. I didn’t question what I was needed for. In a place like Yuma, when a guard tells you to go somewhere, you keep your mouth shut and go, either that or risk a hard club to the kidneys and a couple of days in the snake pit.

  In the official paperwork, the snake pit was called the Punishment Cell, a ten-by-ten foot chamber carved out of solid rock on the bluff overlooking the Colorado River, where the prison was built in 1877. The cons called it the pit, and if you ever go through Yuma, take time to see it. You won’t have any trouble figuring out how it got its name.

  There was no light in the pit other than what shimmied down a tiny ventilation shaft in the ceiling. There wasn’t a bunk or blankets or pillow, or even a bucket for waste. There was just cold and dark and hard stone, where every once in a while, if a guard or another con didn’t like you, a snake might be dropped down the ventilation shaft into the cell. I knew from experience it was a place to avoid, although I’d been lucky in not having to share the space with a rattler looking for something warm to curl up against.

  After cleaning myself off with a piece of burlap sacking, I headed for the laundry. I don’t recall if I was surprised or not when I rounded the corner behind the low-roofed building and saw Elliot Walsh and a couple of his boys standing in the shade of an adobe wall, although if I was, I probably shouldn’t have been. Glancing toward the guard’s tower, perched on the corner of the main wall like a squatty birdhouse, I wasn’t exactly stunned to find the hacks inside looking off into the distance like there was a circus setting up outside the prison’s walls.

  I remember hoping the Judas sons of bitches enjoyed their thirty pieces of silver, then reluctantly turned to face Walsh. Hearing a hard thud behind me, like a hand smacking the wall, I looked over my shoulder to see two more of Elliot’s men coming up from the rear, big grins drawn across their faces like scars.

  I wouldn’t have minded taking on Walsh or one of his boys in a fair fight, but the odds now were five to one, with retreat cut off. Mister, I was in
trouble, and I knew it. My heart was kicking around in my chest like it wanted to get out of there even more than I did. There was one more possible avenue of escape—through the laundry itself—although I figured Walsh probably had more men stationed inside to block off that route. I made a move toward the rear door anyway, but hadn’t covered more than a few feet when Elliott whistled sharply, the laundry door swung open, and Tiny Evans squeezed through the wooden frame like sausage through a casing. Behind me, Walsh’s goons were chuckling merrily, likely having set the whole thing up just to see the expression on my face when the big man made his appearance.

  Tiny Evans reminded me of one of those black stone monoliths you see in the pulps of the surface of Mars, broad enough to hide a fair-size crew of little green men. He was sheathed in slabs of muscle and hard fat, a big ol’ Cajun from the backwaters of Louisiana where, according to rumor, he fled after killing a kid who’d chopped the head off his pet gopher snake. Whacked the kid’s head off, if what they said was true, but who knows how much to believe of a story like that? What I’d observed first-hand was Tiny breaking a two-by-six plank over his knee with just one downward swipe of the board, that plus the fact he was as loyal to Walsh as a starving dog is to a bone.

  Just so the folks who might someday listen to these disks understand, I’m not a small man—even in my socks I come pretty darn close to six feet, not to mention broad shoulders, large hands, and, back then, plenty of muscle of my own from swinging a sledgehammer and lugging eighty-pound adobe bricks around the prison yard six days a week—I just looked small standing next to Tiny Evans.

  I said, “Is it just going to be me and him, Walsh? Or will I have to fight all of you?”

  Walsh laughed, so naturally his boys did, too. Well, not Tiny. Tiny just stood there like that monolith I mentioned a few seconds ago, his arms hanging slack at his sides as he awaited his master’s instructions.