We got away by heading out to sea, then doubling back into the darkness of the piling across the harbor. But we knew we had only gotten away temporarily, because by this time they'd seen us. . . We were in a yellow dinghy belonging to a yellow boat, and by dawn there would be no question as to where we'd come from.

We were fucked; there was no doubt about it. Steadman was raving incoherently as we rowed back to our boat; he hates violence of any kind. . . But I figured he'd hate jail even worse, so when we got to our boat I told him to pack his gear while I took a big flare-gun up on deck and fired three huge parachute flares up into the night-- these brutes that cost about ten dollars apiece; they go up about 100 yards, then explode into four falling fireballs. . . the kind of things you're never supposed to use except for serious emergencies at sea. Anyway, I fired three of these while Ralph was packing -- twelve orange fireballs that went off like twelve shotgun blasts and lit up the whole harbor. . . Some of them fell on boats and started fires, people were shouting, leaping out of their bunks and grabbing fire extinguishers. . . There was total chaos in the harbor.

I went below and got my own stuff together, then we hailed a passing motor launch -- it was almost dawn by this time -- and whoever was running that launch agreed to give us a ride into the shore for twenty dollars.

From there we got a cab straight to the airport and chartered a small plane to Boston. Ralph was still in a really fiendish condition. He was barefooted, out of his mind and his only refuge was New York. I called down there and found out that Scanlan's had folded yesterday, but a friend of Steadman's would meet him at the airport. I said, “Now look, you have to meet him, because he's in terrible condition. . . I have to be back in Colorado today in order to file to run for sheriff”. . . that was the deadline. So this guy agreed to meet Ralph at La Guardia. He went into a raving frenzy, cursing me, cursing America. . .

ED.: Cursing?

HST: Oh yes. He was very bitter about it -- having lost his shoes, his dignity, his sanity -- all that sort of thing. . . I put him on the plane to New York, then flew off to Colorado. . . and the next time I heard from him was about a month later, when I got a letter saying he'd never come to this country again, and certainly not as long as I was here.