Page:Memoirs of the United States Secret Service.djvu/65

 found no difficulty, on that occasion, in purchasing his way out of peril. "I was flush," he says. "They had a pretty sure thing on me then, and I was well known. But I left the jail, the city, and over eight thousand dollars behind me, there—one night—and I hav'n't been there since, to make inquiries as to what was thought about my French leave-taking of St. Louis and the hospitality of its municipal officials."

In 1867, Pete again found himself in close quarters at Springfield, Ill. "The prison where I was then confined," he asserts coolly, "was a mighty poor structure. I had no trouble in going through that jail. It wasn't a comfortable place and I didn't like my quarters. So I stepped out early one morning, and left." This is true. At daybreak Pete's cell was empty, and he was on his way into the interior again in safety, for the time being.

Upon another occasion, (during the rebellion,) he was under arrest, and, attended by a guard of soldiers, was manacled hand and foot en route from the west towards Washington—whither orders had been given to conduct him—and for safe-keeping to place him in the Old Capitol Prison. McCartney watched his opportunity. "I didn't want to go to Washington," he said to the writer of these Memoirs, who met him a few months ago. "I didn't like the look o' that arrangement. I could manage the boys out West. I had managed them frequently. It cost me a heap of money, to be sure, from time to time; but I was always a cash man, you know, and money will fetch 'em. In Washington, I thought it was different. And besides I hadn't just then a pile of the ready by me. So I watched the guard, and made up my mind I'd rayther not go to Washington. And I didn't!" As the express train was being whirled along the Penn.