The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1900-03-26
PrOyidential Meeting at End of
a Tunnel.
GENEROSITY OF A THIEF
BILL DALToN'S TREATMENT OF
CASHIER WHO FOILED HIM.
Stood Sponsor For An Embezzlement
and Served a Long Prison Term
Without a Murmur-Inhuence of
Little Girl, Who Lived Over the
Bank With Her Mother.
Chicago Inter-oceanl

Chicago Inter-Ocean.)
Do l believe in providential inter
position, you ask, kunnel?" said
Smithers, the con man, one day when
the course of events in the prison hos
pital nal led the old banker to indulge
IN a little moralizing. "Of and on,
must say | does. In course, it's human
natur' for bloke to lay his schemes,
arter calldlatin' all the chances, and if
they look favorable, to go ahead,
trustin' TO his luckies to pull him t'roo,
but when the hand Of providence is
played, it can clean out the hull deck,
sure, and there's no use Of stackin' up
agin it.
1t all reminds me, kunnel, of a story
Blu Dalton told me when he was here
Tune afore last. You've seen Bill,
kunnel, and you'd jedge from the set
or his jaw, and them shoulders of his,
that he's a determined and powerful
man, who has only one way with a
obstacle in his pat, and that is to
crush it. So he is ginerally with a
sub-Sile around his heart that it would
take a erowbar and a pickax to break
troO; and yet, as l will tell you, it be-
came, under providential inflooences,
saft and squashy, to the nobler i'm
pulses of humanity.
BILL was knoWed to the profesh,
kunnel, as a solitary bird; one who
worked his own graft, and said nothin'
TO nobody. He was a bank bugglar,
he were-bold, experienced, but some
what old-faShuned and set in his ways.
Durin the neck-or- nothin' contiSt be-
tween the fraternity on the one hand,
and safe manufacturers on the odder,
which resulted in the former medium
no Ia &c 90
annyWhereS near the invintiVe skill Of
the latter, Bill had been in durincks
vile, doin' a ten-year bit, and so when
he came out he found hiSself not so
much left at the post as outclassed.
Given q big bank to crack, with time
locks, Burglar alarms, and chilled-Steel
plates, and Bill wasn't in it.
-HoWsomeever, kunnel, this state of
affairs agreed well enough with Bits
natur', which, as 1 said, was solit airy;
for big job nowadays takes a gang
to ingineer and put it t'roo. So Bill
he resolves, he does, to take UP with
the leavuns, arter this sort: He
searched out a small country bank, in
the south or west, one of the old-time
sort-and there's a plenty of them
with big, roomy vaults let down deep
into de cart and perfected by walls
and slabs of stun. Well, when Bill
had diskivered one of them old stand
bys he would figger about until he was
settled in some material way on the
ground floor next door. P'raps he might
open store, p'raps he might be a re-
tired gent, sent to the village by his
doctor on account of the soOperiOrity
of the air and the water; in some way
or odder, there he'd be, loungin' about
daytimes, feelin' the public pulse, and
squarin' hisself as bot pious and pa
terotic, and night-times down in the
cellar diggin' the most approved tun-
mel of the ancient graft, plum under
the vault s1I
Bill Daltoh's Country "Plant."
"WeH, kunnel, Bill, it seems, struck
a idill place out in the center of one
of the cheese counties. A small viii
lage, it were, surrounded by large
farms and Well-to-do farmers. They d
drive to town, Onct a week, on a Satur-
day, after the mail, and most of them
would make sure to stop at the bank
and dump out the cOntints of the long
stockin' that did them sarvice as a
puss. Now. the bank in this rOOral
paradise, kunnel, was a thriYin' inSti-
tuting, TO be sure; you might say it
took the cream of the hull cheese bust
ness. The cashiers father had been
think of investments or bang-up as
ssta t'rooout that countryside without
Immediately thinkin' also Of Cashier
Browning.
He was a nice man, he were, ac-
cordin' to old Bills tell; aft bic, friend
ly, KNOWN eVeryone's business with
out mussin' Durin' the week his office
was a sort of club where the rich uns
could drop in social and chat over the
news; but Of a Sunday, why, 1t was
riglar town meetin', ii were, with the
hull pOpelace a-eXpressin' Of itself. and
he actin as cheerman and umpire to
onct. Now. Cashier Browning, win his
invalid wife and little darter, was a
Twin up stairs over the bank when
Bill Dalton came to town and bought
out, at executors sale, a small reel
estate and insurance business, which
occupied a tWO-StOry WOodln Dulldln
next door. Nothin' could have suited
Bits purpose better had it been made
to order by a skilled hand. be knoWed
somethin' about the business, haYln'
used it as a plant afOre. The house II
were coy, with sleepin room upstairs
and a good-5ized cellar below, ana blns
in it, which onct had been built by a
pertater dealer, and jest the thing to
t'row amy surplus cart in which you
didn't want lynn around
you may be sure, kunnel, that old
hand like Bill didn't strike the town
without plenty Of dough TO deposit IN
the bank, the slickeSt OF credentials
and a reasonable excuse for him immi-
gratun. Browning. it seems, was the
| agent fer the buildin' next door, ana
! Bill soon loaded him With the yarn
of how he was widOWer, out OF healt
who wanted a small business more Ior
: inc than
| He had his black brOad-cluths on, nae
Bill.
After Browning's Home Life
"After a while it happened that Bill
got acquainted with the cashiers wife
and little darter. He had the rheuma-
liz. YOU know. and he got it where you
never can get rid of it, and he liked To
sit out in front of his shop smokln ana
sunnin' hisself; and often Mrs. BroWh-
ing and the little gal, as they went OUT
walkin, would stop and pass the tlmi
of day, inquirin' how he felt. and some
times the lady should would perscribe
rimidy, and sometimes the child she
would give him a field flower, and such
attentions moved him more than gang
of detectives with a posse comeandgl-
| tus to boot. Why, he told me, he did
| that he used to dream that when he got
old and was about TO croke, II ne mao
amy of his pile left, he'd VIII II, so ne
would, to the little gal.
"Anodder reason why Bill used &c
dream of helpin' the Brownings was
that he got the idee they hadn't many
comforts They lived, as 1 say, up over
| the bank. and though the woman she
was sickly, she done her own house
| work, and the butcher he didnt make
no more'n a occasional call, and a FOR
NAL one at that At fust Bill lad Il
up agin the cashier, thinkin' that 1t was
| a qualification of the office TO be stlngy