Pocatello, at that time, was just a small railroad town. A famous stopping-off place for the bums bound East, West, North and South. There was a grand jungle by a small, clean river where they boiled up their vermined clothes, or “rags” as they are always called, cooked their mulligans, or, if enough bums got together, held a “convention.” These conventions, like many others, were merely an excuse for a big drunk. Sometimes they would end in a killing, or some drunken bum would fall in the fire and get burned to death, after which they would silently steal away. Oftener, the convention lasted till there was no more money for alcohol, the bums’ favorite drink. The bums then began “pestering the natives” by begging and stealing till the whole town got sore.

The town marshal would then appear with a posse armed with “saps,” which is short for saplings, young trees. He stood guard with a shotgun, while the posse fell upon the convention and “sapped up” on those therein assembled and ran them down the railroad track and out of town.

We found our junk without trouble, and hastened to Mary’s.

If I knew more of composition and writing and talking I might do justice to Mary, the fence, and friend of bums and thieves.

It’s an injustice to the memory of Mary, or, as she was lovingly called by the bums, “Salt Chunk Mary,” to try to crowd her into a few paragraphs or even a chapter. She should have a book.

“Did you eat yet?” was the first thing you heard after entering her house. “I have a pot of beans on the stove and a fine chunk of salt pork in them.” She invariably produced the beans and “fine chunk of salt pork” and always ate as heartily of them as any of her famished guests.

Her principal business was selling wine, women, and song to the railroad men and gamblers. She ruled her half dozen girls with a heavy hand. Her house on the outskirts of the town was a dingy, old two-story frame building with a couple of rooms added to one side of it where she lived and received her friends from the road.