BREAKS JAIL IN DENISON

Continued from: Saved From the Dow City Lynch Mob

From the Autobiography of Pat Crowe:

The young man identified Kane. He did not identify Crowe.

"This fellow walked past the station window just before the flyer went through," said the night operator. "I saw his face quite plain. And I could see enough of his chin under the handkerchief he wore to know him when he started to drill the safe."

That settled the fate of the two prisoners.

After two days in the Dow City calaboose, Pat and Kane were taken back to the county jail at Denison, notwithstanding Crowe's vehement protestations that it was all a mistake and that he had never seen Kane in his life until he happened to meet him in a box car.

"All right, Pat," said the sheriff from Crawford County good-humoredly.

"I'll just take you back as one of our famous citizens, not as a robber. Iowa has produced some very well known people. Buffalo Bill Cody was born here, so was Billy Sunday, the baseball player that's turned preacher; Mel Trotter, the other evangelist now with Billy Sunday, he was born here, too. Then, as you know, Farmer Burns, the champeen wrestler, is a native and so's Lillian Russell. They do say as how Lillian is the most beautiful woman in the world, but she seems to have plumb forgot all about us. So's the rest of 'em. And Pat, you're famous, although in a rather different way since you shot up all them Chicago coppers.”

Buffalo Bill Cody Billy Sunday Mel Trotter Farmer Burns Lillian Russell

"I ain't got no kick coming," said Pat meekly, "if you're only going to exhibit me as a famous citizen. The folks down this way is a little too quick on the trigger for me."

"So I hear," chuckled the sheriff. "Well, Pat, seein's how you're one of our noted people, I'll put you in the nice new polly-cage we just put into the jail. Then nobody from Dow City can come up in the night and saw in and take you out and hang you. Them chilled steel bars will turn a hacksaw, Pat, as easy as if any body was tryin' to saw into that cage with a fine-toothed comb. I defy any hothead from here to bust into it at all!"

"Polly-cell" the nickname for individual steel cage jail cells. "Polly" because the cells resembled bird cages. Prisoners were taunted with "Polly want a carrot?" and other chants. The term "singing like a bird" comes from confessions spewed from prisoners in their cells. (Photo illustrative only)

The sheriff's words proved prophetic when the two saddened but by no means hopeless desperadoes thankfully entered the polly-cage on their arrival at the county jail at Denison. Pat's foresight in concealing their plunder weighed both for and against them. Not finding the money made their slight chance of escaping conviction seem a bit brighter; but lack of it handicapped them in obtaining aid at first. Then Kane sent for friends.

His sweetheart came after three months had passed. She was searched, of course. She was a very pretty girl. She laid aside her fashionable silk wrap and willingly submitted to the ministrations of the jail matron. She had no contraband. Then she donned her silk wrap, walked inside, kissed Kane fondly and whispered in his ear:

"Hold me tight, sweetheart, and then reach for the slit in the left sleeve of my wrap. I brought three of the best saws I could buy."

Under cover of the affectionate embrace, Kane slipped the saws, unseen, into the waistband of his trousers. That night Pat Crowe tested the sheriff's veracity. He was a truthful sheriff. The first scratch of the saw across the bar sent a horrid rasp through the jail, like the discordant note on the G string of a bull fiddle. The wheels on which the polly-cage sat vibrated in discordant sympathy, and the raucous, penetrating note filtered into the jail office, where a jailer was sitting with his feet above his head, puffing a corncob pipe. He carried a big pistol strapped to his waist in a holster on his hip.

He leaped to his feet and rushed for the keys. He found them and entered the jail, locking the door behind him. Then he unlocked the main door to the cage, stepped inside that and relocked it. He went straight to the cells occupied by Crowe and Kane, who both feigned sleep.

"Which one of you has got that saw?" demanded the jailer.

"You're having a nightmare," said Pat Crowe. "No saw made can touch these bars. To beat this here cage, you've got to strip the rivets, and that takes tools. Then you can bust the chilled steel bars off, but you got to have a tool to do that, too. You know we ain't got any tools."

"Come out of there," profanely directed the deputy. "You're one of Crawford County's famous people, you know. Gimme that saw!"

Crowe emerged from his cell. He was clad only in a jail shirt and trousers and shoes.

"Search me!" he said defiantly. "If I've got a saw, you're welcome to it."

The deputy did. Then he searched Crowe's cell. He did the same for Kane. He found nothing. Then he went back to bed.

Pat Crowe walked around the next day and so did Kane. Both grinned. The jailers were watchful. Their cells were searched again. Still no saws were found. That afternoon, Pat Crowe heard that his brother Johnnie was in town and would send him a bag of fruit. He did not know that Johnnie was arranging bail for his erring brother. All he knew was that a saw would not beat that polly-cage, so it must be beat in some other way. At three o'clock in the afternoon the same jailer came on duty who had searched them the night before.

The jailer had met Johnnie Crowe in Denison, and asked the jailer to tell Pat that bail would soon be ready for him. But the jailer was miffed at the manner in which Pat had behaved toward him the night before, and his failure to find the suspected saw. So he merely told Pat that his brother was sending in some fruit to him and would see him next day.

Instantly Pat made his plan to beat the polly-cage with Kane, then and there. The jailer's carelessness aided them. He came in without locking the door leading into the jail corridor behind him, a fact which Pat and Kane, both in their also unlocked cells, were quick to note.

"Keep your cell door shut till I get this boob," whispered Pat, as the jailer started to unlock the main door to the polly-cage, while Pat asked him:

"Where's that fruit?"

"Here it is," said he, reaching down to pick up the bag, as Pat opened his cell door as if to receive it.

Eight feet separated the two men. With one bound Pat Crowe covered that distance, twisting the jailer's right arm so violently that he emitted a horrid screech of pain. At the same instant, with his knee, Pat jammed the jailer's body between the jail wall and the door of the now open polly-cage, whisked his big pistol out of his holster, dropped him to his knees with a well directed and hard blow on his head and left him semiconscious and bleeding on the floor of the jail. Kane was not far behind. He opened his unlocked cell and leaped to Pat's side, as the latter said:

"Come on, Billy. We've got to leg it."

With the words Pat leaped through the open door into the corridor, the big pistol held ready for instant action. The sheriff was absent, but his devoted spouse, at hearing the jailer's first wild cry of agony, and hearing the patter of footsteps in the jail, grasped two big pistols on the wall and ran to the corridor of the jail which opened on the street, just as Pat Crowe and Billy Kane came rushing down it.

"Halt!" cried the nervy woman, as she leveled the two guns.

Photo illustrative only. The Sheriff of Crawford County at the time was John Dettman.

The Jailer was Lee Partridge.

Pat could not have halted if he had wanted to. And he would not if he could. Not even if a regiment barred the way. Hatless, coatless, clad only in jail shirt and trousers, wearing his shoes, he was coming with the momentum of an enraged elephant who has torn loose from his habitual fetters. His ready pistol struck down the muzzles of the two guns before the sheriff's wife could pull the trigger, and with his other hand he grasped for them. She foiled him. She crouched suddenly and sat down on both pistols. Pat and Kane leaped by her and were through the door in a flash.

They separated, going in opposite directions. It was already dusk. A citizen confronted Pat. Pat raised the weapon. The citizen leaped the other way and dived through a cellar window, the nearest cover.

Pat whisked around the block, through a clump of trees and around another house. He knew Denison like a book. He was one of the famous people of Crawford County. As a child he had played hookey from Vail and come over to Denison to scrap and play games with the big town boys, but never quite such a desperate game as that which he was now engaged in playing.

Behind him came the tolling of the town bell. Shots and imprecations cut through the stillness of the chill autumn evening. Pat heeded none of them. He ran like a deer. He always was very fleet of foot. In and out, behind houses and through trees, crouching low when he might be in possible view, keeping to back yards most of which, fortunately, were unfenced, he kept on for the open country. A few miles beyond was the booty under the roots of that old tree. He would get that swag. But to get it he must outwit and outrun his pursuers.

Street scene, Denison, Iowa

Kane had bad luck. He was not two blocks from that jail door when a citizen running out at the first tap from the alarm bell confronted Pat's pal with a wicked shotgun. Quail were plentiful in Iowa in those days and bringing them down while in erratic flight was a local pastime. A man is larger than a quail, and cannot fly alone and unaided. Kane put up his hands.

Pat was nearing the outskirts of the town when a man with a shotgun spied him. The fugitive whirled at the command to "Halt!" He whipped up the big pistol. The same instant the would-be captor whipped up his double-barreled shotgun and Pat heard only a desolating click as he pulled the trigger on the big gun he had taken from the jailer. Then he dropped flat in the gloom as the orange blurt of fire from both barrels loaded with buckshot whizzed over him.

He remained prone, twisting. The man ran toward him. Pat hurled the pistol into his face, knocking him down, rose and ran again, this time like a deer with the hounds full on his trail, ran as he had never run before into the friendly darkness, leaving the empty gun which had tricked him lying where it fell. He ran with his iron nerve and his stout heart. He was doing his best. He always did. Outlaw, desperado, hating and being hated, hunting and being hunted, Patrick Crowe yet possessed one supreme virtue in spite of his lawless and crime-stained career. He always did his best! He was doing it now, although every step was supreme agony. For the three hacksaws which Kane's sweetheart had smuggled into the polly-cage, although they would not cut the chilled steel bars, they would still cut human feet and two of them were in one shoe and the other was in the other shoe as Pat still ran. They had been hidden under his feet when in jail to prevent being discovered, which would have meant the girl's arrest. The pain was excruciating. So, he ran the harder, until he struck some invisible barrier and was hurled back on the ground, torn and bleeding from his contact with the barb wire fence he had encountered in the now velvety darkness.

To be Continued: August Clawson Helps Crowe Get Away