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73 escape from prison— recaptured Chapter X When the four brothers were taken to jail in Graham they were stripped naked and their clothes searched for arms or weapons of any description. Then they were shoved roughly into a small steel cage and locked and barred in with extra precaution. The turnkey and other jail officials and peace officers seemed determined to make their existence as miserable as possible, and every possible indignity and insult that could be devised was heaped relentlessly upon them. Their friends and even their mother and wives were denied admittance to them, and not a message or article of any kind was allowed to be transmitted either to or from them. The food they were given was of the coarsest kind, and not enough of it to have satisfied the hunger of one man, much less that of four strong and stalwart men like the Marlows at this time. As day after day passed under this treatment, the realization that they were to be starved to death like rats in a cage forced its way upon their minds with all its horrors, and smarting under a hundred other insults, taunts and indignities, it is no wonder their free Western spirits rebelled, and that they resolved to make a bold break for liberty. Among the prisoners was a man named Speers,1 who had managed in some way to conceal a large pocket knife upon his person when he 1 This name was usually spelled “Speer” in later accounts (Crouch, History of Young County, 117; Raine, Famous Sheriffs, 31; Sonnichsen, I’ll Die Before I’ll Run, 199). It was spelled “Spear” in some of the court records which gave his first name as John. Ledbetter identifies him as John Frank Spears (Ordeal, 45, 166). In January 1883 Spears had been convicted on two counts of 74 ⁄ CHAPTER X was incarcerated, and this he stuck into the end of a broom handle and poked it through the bars of his cell and across the corridor to the cell of the Marlows, and with it they commenced the work of digging out. There was another man in the cell with the Marlows, named Cummings, who had been jailed for some small misdemeanor,2 and they all took turns working with the knife each night to cut away the wall which lay between them and liberty, concealing the opening being made by means of a blanket in the daytime. They had a sheet of iron to cut through, as well as the wall, which was necessarily very slow and tedious work, having nothing but the pocket knife in the way of tools,3 but they were strong and determined, and worked away steadily through the long hours of each night, thinking as each chip of iron or piece of stone dropped out that it was just that much nearer to liberty and freedom for them. It took them just a week to cut a hole through large enough to crawl out of, and then everything was cleaned up nicely so that the turnkey would not be suspicious, and plans were laid to escape that night. The guard was watched that day with anxious eyes, but he showed no sign of suspicion, and so after all were asleep the boys tore their blankets and tied them into long strips to form a rope on which to descend through the opening they had made to the jail yard below. One end of the blanket rope was made fast to the timbers of the room near the hole, and the other lowered to the ground, after which Alfred clambered out and slid down in safety. The others followed quickly and silently, Cummings bringing up the rear. Once on terra firma again, Cummings separated from the Marlows, he taking a northerly direction and making good his escape,4 and they striking out in the direction of their home, fifteen miles distant. The night was bitter cold, and, having no overcoats or wraps, they suffered keenly from the icy blasts that swept unbroken over the prairie larceny in Tarrant County, Texas, and was sentenced to a pair of two-year prison terms (Logan v. United States, 271). 2 Marion Cummings was charged with taking stolen property into the Indian Territory (Fort Worth Daily Gazette, January 16, 1889; Ledbetter, Ordeal, 46). 3 “Some person on the outside certainly furnished the prisoners with tools to work with. The cage is the best of chilled iron...

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