Grat folded the newspaper to the ads for ten-dollar suits, “made from an honest piece of cassimere.” A prison trustee leaned on his mop handle to push a sloshing bucket on rollers down the aisle between the jail cells. He was a huge, slow, black man made forever back-sore from chopping cotton in Sarepta, Louisiana. He stopped at Grat’s cell door. “You know the law just hauled in your brothuh Bill again? Wants to ax him some questions about those train holdups.”

My brother licked a thumb and turned a page of the newspaper; then he noticed a hacksaw blade under the trustee’s foot. Grattan slipped it into an inseam of his trousers while the black man straightened the tongue on his high button shoes.

He said, “You don’t have to thank me. I been paid.” He dragged his mop behind him, streaking the floor wet; then he was gone.

The jails were not very difficult in those days. My brother sawed the bars at night and covered the damage with lampblack and soap. And after supper on the Sunday evening of September 18th, three days before his prison sentencing, Grat Dalton popped four bars of his window into the gravel outside. They made a pong sound when they hit. He stood on his bed and climbed out; then two other prisoners walked from their cells and dropped into the dirt behind him.

From a Baptist church hitching rack, the three of them stole a light buggy and a team of gray horses that were powerful enough to pull a beer truck. At Goshen the two jumped a freight train north while Grat drove ten miles farther to the ranch of a gambler he knew named Middleton. This Middleton was a toothless man who constantly wore the same white shirt that he laundered once a week. He gave Grat his mattress for the night and hitched the buggy and horses back in Tulare to throw the detectives off; then he loaned Grat an Appaloosa horse and a canvas tent and half his closet of clothes. He sketched a map of the Sierra foothills above the town of Sanger. “I’ll be up in about a week with tobacco and fresh meat,” said Middleton. “A convict named Riley Dean may be around there already. You have any money for the grub?”

“There’s sposed to be a check waiting for me in Visalia.”

“Okay. You stay pitched in this vicinity—”

“Where the X is,” said Grat.

“So I’ll know where to find you.”

Grat folded the map inside a blue flannel shirt that had the bacon grease smell of the rancher, pulled down a high round-topped gray hat, and slapped the Appaloosa ahead with the reins.