HORRIBLE TREATMENT OF CONVICTS.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXI, Issue 2513, 18 August 1888, Page 2 (Supplement)

HORRIBLE TREATMENT OF CONVICTS.

A Marvellous Escape. A cowboy, vrho was wrongfully accused i by a constable of stealing a pony and re- : fisted capture, was tried and sentenced to i two years in the Texas Penitentiary. He i tells iu the New York Sun the story of hi-i brutal treatment, his escape, the pursuit by bloodhounds, and his final rescue by cowboys. " The penitentiary," he says, " was at Huntsville, 400 miles away by rail, and there were eighteen of us to go. The method of transporting ns was the method still in force in Texas, and I challenge penal history, except that of the galleys of Toulon, to furnish a parallel to it in brutality. Iron collars, weighing at hast five pounds, were riveted around our necks We were stood in double file and then linked, two and two, to a long chain that ran down tho centre. Handcuffs were suapped on , each man, and, bending and stumbling i under our chains, we were driven through I t.hi) jeering crowds up to a Bmoking car, ; side-tracked for us, aud the journoy began. It was a terrible one. The central chain was long enough to stretch i from seat to seat as we sat, two i abreast, and nine rows deep, and if any man moved his head he would jerk the I necks of those before and behind him, and a quiver would pass along the whole line. In fact the two last men were i chained up so tight that they could barely sit on the extreme edge of the I seat by craning their necks as far front - as possible, and in this position they rode 1 the whole four hundred miles. To sleep . was out of the question, and when one moved the whole clanking, cursing, miserable mass movpd with him. We got some bread and meat once on the trip, which lasted exactly twenty-six hours. When we finally reached Huntsville I was trembling like a child, tears of sheer agony were running down my face, and I tried as best I could to hold t the collar away from my neck, which it t had worn raw. As we were getting out ] of the car I stumbled and pulled over 1 another man, half strangling myself at i the same time. Instantly ths nearest I guard kicked me. "I've noticed you i shamming." he exclaimed. " Wait till < we get yon in the walls." The Walls was I the slang name of the prison, and this little r episode fixed my status. I was reported as f a sly, cunning rascal, fond of subterfuge, i and in this light my conduct was viewed, f and all my little mistakes and failures ( were prejudiced. As the summer opened t a gang of us were let out to a contractor 1 to work in a wood camp about fifty miles t away. The men slept in barracks, and i tho work consisted altogether of chopping i and cording wood. In one corner of the t camp was a kennel containing twenty bloodhounds. Dreadful stories were circulated about their ferocity. Fall was coming on, and it was getting cold, when one evening I escaped. I had convicts' stripes ou my back and not a ceu*'. or a weapon in my pocket, and I knew that my absence would be discovered in less than an hour, when the roll would be called. There were long chances, but death, it seemed to me, would be preferable to recapture and punishment. I never paused until I reached a clearing a good six miles away, where I threw myself down and listened. I kept on pretty steadily all night, and when morning dawned it found me on the fringes of the wood belt, with a sparsely grown, undulating country stretching for unknown miles before me. On the third day about noon I heard a mournful note that made my heart stand still. It was no hallucination this time, but the unmistakable wail of bloodhounds that I heard often from their kennel in the camp. As 1 stood there the baying sounded s again, now right at hand, and in an c instaut later three dogs appeared over a f little rise and made straight at me. But f when the dogs camo within a dozen feet p they stopped, and began to fawn and wag i their tails. They were hounds from the camp—they wore the Lone Star collar, but it was plain they wanted to be friends even with such a poor wretch as I. Then I noticed that the brutes were starved and trembling, and threw them half of i my rabbit. By the time they devoured s it I was patting their heads and ,] they were licking my hands. My t theory then was, and is now, that p early in the chase the rest of the hounds r j took the wrong trail, and these threo j stuck to the right one. For eight days longer I wandered aimlessly about in j company with the dogs. Had it not j been for their dexterity in running down j game, I would most certainly have f, starved. On the eleventh day out I and j my bloodho inds walked into a cow camp, _ and when the good-natured cow punchers j heard my story and satisfied themselves q that I had been one of them once upon a s time, they undertook to spirit me over 0 the line. I hated to part with the dogs, g for we had conceived a great esteem for „ each other; but the cowboys kept them | ns loot, and, I afterwards learned, sold t one of them for 75 dollars to an English tourist. After a couple of months of s vicissitudes I made my way north, and although the authorities of Texns have as-ured me that there will b* no effort made to prosecute or re-arrest mo, I have had no craving to visit the Lone Star J, State."