Gunsight Pass

by Raine, William MacLeod

His flight had no definite objective except to put as much distance between himself and Denver as possible. He knew nothing about the geography of Colorado, except that a large part of the Rocky Mountains and a delectable city called Denver lived there. His train trip to it had told him that one of its neighbors was New Mexico, which was in turn adjacent to Arizona. Therefore he meant to get to New Mexico as quickly as Chiquito could quite comfortably travel.

  Unfortunately Dave was going west instead of south. Every step of the pony was carrying him nearer the roof of the continent, nearer the passes of the front range which lead, by divers valleys and higher mountains beyond, to the snowclad regions of eternal white.

  Up in this altitude it was too cold to camp out without a fire and blankets.

  "I reckon we'll keep goin', old pal," the young man told his horse. "I've noticed roads mostly lead somewheres."

  Day broke over valleys of swirling mist far below the rider. The sun rose and dried the moisture. Dave looked down on a town scattered up and down a gulch.

  He met an ore team and asked the driver what town it was. The man looked curiously at him.

  "Why, it's Idaho Springs," he said. "Where you come from?"

  Dave eased himself in the saddle. "From the Southwest."

  "You're quite a ways from home. I reckon your hills ain't so uncurried down there, are they?"

  The cowpuncher looked over the mountains. He was among the summits, aglow in the amber light of day with the many blended colors of wild flowers. "We got some down there, too, that don't fit a lady's boodwar. Say, if I keep movin' where'll this road take me?"

  The man with the ore team gave information. It struck Dave that he had run into a blind alley.

  "If you're after a job, I reckon you can find one at some of the mines.

  They're needin' hands," the teamster added.

  Perhaps this was the best immediate solution of the problem. The puncher nodded farewell and rode down into the town.

  He left Chiquito at a livery barn, after having personally fed and watered the pinto, and went himself to a hotel. Here he registered, not under his own name, ate breakfast, and lay down for a few hours' sleep. When he awakened he wrote a note with the stub of a pencil to Bob Hart. It read:

  Well, Bob, I done got Chiquito back though it sure looked like I wasn't going to but you never can tell and as old Buck Byington says its a hell of a long road without no bend in it and which you can bet your boots the old alkali is right at that. Well I found the little pie-eater in Denver O K but so gaunt he wont hardly throw a shadow and what can you expect of scalawags like Miller and Doble who don't know how to treat a horse. Well I run Chiquito off right under their noses and we had a little gun play and made my getaway and I reckon I will stay a spell and work here. Well good luck to all the boys till I see them again in the sweet by and by.

  Dave

  P.S. Get this money order cashed old-timer and pay the boys what I borrowed when we hit the trail after Miller and Doble. I lit out to sudden to settle. Five to Steve and five to Buck. Well so long.

  Dave

  The puncher went to the post-office, got a money order, and mailed the letter, after which he returned to the hotel. He intended to eat dinner and then look for work.

  Three or four men were standing on the steps of the hotel talking with the proprietor. Dave was quite close before the Boniface saw him.

  "That's him," the hotel-keeper said in an excited whisper.

  A brown-faced man without a coat turned quickly and looked at Sanders. He wore a belt with cartridges and a revolver.

  "What's your name?" he demanded.

  Dave knew at once this man was an officer of the law. He knew, too, the futility of trying to escape under the pseudonym he had written on the register.

  "Sanders—Dave Sanders."

  "I want you."

  "So? Who are you?"

  "Sheriff of the county."

  "Whadjawant me for?"

  "Murder."

  Dave gasped. His heart beat fast with a prescience of impending disaster.

  "Murder," he repeated dully.

  "You're charged with the murder of George Doble last night in Denver."

  The boy stared at him with horror-stricken eyes. "Doble? My God, did I kill him?" He clutched at a porch post to steady himself. The hills were sliding queerly up into the sky.

  CHAPTER XIV

  TEN YEARS

  All the way back to Denver, while the train ran down through the narrow, crooked cañon, Dave's mind dwelt in a penumbra of horror. It was impossible he could have killed Doble, he kept telling himself. He had fired back into the night without aim. He had not even tried to hit the men who were shooting at him. It must be some ghastly joke.

  None the less he knew by the dull ache in his heart that this awful thing had fastened on him and that he would have to pay the penalty. He had killed a man, snuffed out his life wantonly as a result of taking the law into his own hands. The knowledge of what he had done shook him to the soul.

  It remained with him, in the background of his mind, up to and through his trial. What shook his nerve was the fact that he had taken a life, not the certainty of the punishment that must follow.

  West called to see him at the jail, and to the cattleman Dave told the story exactly as it had happened. The owner of the Fifty-Four Quarter Circle walked up and down the cell rumpling his hair.

  "Boy, why didn't you let on to me what you was figurin' on pullin' off? I knew you was some bull-haided, but I thought you had a lick o' sense left."

  "Wisht I had," said Dave miserably.

  "Well, what's done's done. No use cryin' over the bust-up. We'd better fix up whatever's left from the smash. First off, we'll get a lawyer, I reckon."

  "I gotta li'l' money left—twenty-six dollars," spoke up Dave timidly.

  "Maybe that's all he'll want."

  West smiled at this babe in the woods. "It'll last as long as a snowball in you-know-where if he's like some lawyers I've met up with."

  It did not take the lawyer whom West engaged long to decide on the line the defense must take. "We'll show that Miller and Doble were crooks and that they had wronged Sanders. That will count a lot with a jury," he told West. "We'll admit the killing and claim self-defense."

  The day before the trial Dave was sitting in his cell cheerlessly reading a newspaper when visitors were announced. At sight of Emerson Crawford and Bob Hart he choked in his throat. Tears brimmed in his eyes. Nobody could have been kinder to him than West had been, but these were home folks. He had known them many years. Their kindness in coming melted his heart.

  He gripped their hands, but found himself unable to say anything in answer to their greetings. He was afraid to trust his voice, and he was ashamed of his emotion.

  "The boys are for you strong, Dave. We all figure you done right. Steve he says he wouldn't worry none if you'd got Miller too," Bob breezed on.

  "Tha's no way to talk, son," reproved Crawford. "It's bad enough right as it is without you boys wantin' it any worse. But don't you get downhearted, Dave. We're allowin' to stand by you to a finish. It ain't as if you'd got a good man. Doble was a mean-hearted scoundrel if ever I met up with one. He's no loss to society. We're goin' to show the jury that too."

  They did. By the time Crawford, Hart, and a pair of victims who had been trapped by the sharpers had testified about Miller and Doble, these worthies had no shred of reputation left with the jury. It was shown that they had robbed the defendant of the horse he had trained and that he had gone to a lawyer and found no legal redress within his means.

  But Dave was unable to prove self-defense. Miller stuck doggedly to his story. The cowpuncher had fired the first shot. He had continued to fire, though he must have seen Doble sink to the ground immediately. Moreover, the testimony of the doctor showed that the fatal shot had taken effect at close range.

  Just prior to this time there had been an unusual number of killings in Denver. The newspapers had stirred up a public
sentiment for stricter enforcement of law. They had claimed that both judges and juries were too easy on the gunmen who committed these crimes. Now they asked if this cowboy killer was going to be allowed to escape. Dave was tried when this wave of feeling was at its height and he was a victim of it.

  The jury found him guilty of murder in the second degree. The judge sentenced him to ten years in the penitentiary.

  When Bob Hart came to say good-bye before Dave was removed to Cañon City, the young range-rider almost broke down. He was greatly distressed at the misfortune that had befallen his friend.

  "We're gonna stay with this, Dave. You know Crawford. He goes through when he starts. Soon as there's a chance we'll hit the Governor for a pardon. It's a damn shame, old pal. Tha's what it is."

  Dave nodded. A lump in his throat interfered with speech.

  "The ol' man lent me money to buy Chiquito, and I'm gonna keep the pinto till you get out. That'll help pay yore lawyer," continued Bob. "One thing more. You're not the only one that's liable to be sent up. Miller's on the way back to Malapi. If he don't get a term for hawss-stealin', I'm a liar. We got a dead open-and-shut case against him."

  The guard who was to take Dave to the penitentiary bustled in cheerfully.

  "All right, boys. If you're ready we'll be movin' down to the depot."

  The friends shook hands again.

  CHAPTER XV

  IN DENVER

  The warden handed him a ticket back to Denver, and with it a stereotyped little lecture of platitudes.

  "Your future lies before you to be made or marred by yourself, Sanders. You owe it to the Governor who has granted this parole and to the good friends who have worked so hard for it that you be honest and industrious and temperate. If you do this the world will in time forget your past mistakes and give you the right hand of fellowship, as I do now."

  The paroled man took the fat hand proffered him because he knew the warden was a sincere humanitarian. He meant exactly what he said. Perhaps he could not help the touch of condescension. But patronage, no matter how kindly meant, was one thing this tall, straight convict would not stand. He was quite civil, but the hard, cynical eyes made the warden uncomfortable. Once or twice before he had known prisoners like this, quiet, silent men who were never insolent, but whose eyes told him that the iron had seared their souls.

  The voice of the warden dropped briskly to business. "Seen the bookkeeper? Everything all right, I suppose."

  "Yes, sir."

  "Good. Well, wish you luck."

  "Thanks."

  The convict turned away, grave, unsmiling.

  The prison officer's eyes followed him a little wistfully. His function, as he understood it, was to win these men back to fitness for service to the society which had shut them up for their misdeeds. They were not wild beasts. They were human beings who had made a misstep. Sometimes he had been able to influence men strongly, but he felt that it had not been true of this puncher from the cow country.

  Sanders walked slowly out of the office and through the door in the wall that led back to life. He was free. To-morrow was his. All the to-morrows of all the years of his life were waiting for him. But the fact stirred in him no emotion. As he stood in the dry Colorado sunshine his heart was quite dead.

  In the earlier days of his imprisonment it had not been so. He had dreamed often of this hour. At night, in the darkness of his cell, imagination had projected picture after picture of it, vivid, colorful, set to music. But his parole had come too late. The years had taken their toll of him. The shadow of the prison had left its chill, had done something to him that had made him a different David Sanders from the boy who had entered. He wondered if he would ever learn to laugh again, if he would ever run to meet life eagerly as that other David Sanders had a thousand years ago.

  He followed the road down to the little station and took a through train that came puffing out of the Royal Gorge on its way to the plains. Through the crowd at the Denver depot he passed into the city, moving up Seventeenth Street without definite aim or purpose. His parole had come unexpectedly, so that none of his friends could meet him even if they had wanted to do so. He was glad of this. He preferred to be alone, especially during these first days of freedom. It was his intention to go back to Malapi, to the country he knew and loved, but he wished to pick up a job in the city for a month or two until he had settled into a frame of mind in which liberty had become a habit.

  Early next morning he began his search for work. It carried him to a lumber yard adjoining the railroad yards.

  "We need a night watchman," the superintendent said. "Where'd you work last?"

  "At Cañon City."

  The lumberman looked at him quickly, a question in his glance.

  "Yes," Dave went on doggedly. "In the penitentiary."

  A moment's awkward embarrassment ensued.

  "What were you in for?"

  "Killing a man."

  "Too bad. I'm afraid—"

  "He had stolen my horse and I was trying to get it back. I had no intention of hitting him when I fired."

  "I'd take you in a minute so far as I'm concerned personally, but our board of directors—afraid they wouldn't like it. That's one trouble in working for a corporation."

  Sanders turned away. The superintendent hesitated, then called after him.

  "If you're up against it and need a dollar—"

  "Thanks. I don't. I'm looking for work, not charity," the applicant said stiffly.

  Wherever he went it was the same. As soon as he mentioned the prison, doors of opportunity closed to him. Nobody wanted to employ a man tarred with that pitch. It did not matter why he had gone, under what provocation he had erred. The thing that damned him was that he had been there. It was a taint, a corrosion.

  He could have picked up a job easily enough if he had been willing to lie about his past. But he had made up his mind to tell the truth. In the long run he could not conceal it. Better start with the slate clean.

  When he got a job it was to unload cars of fruit for a commission house.

  A man was wanted in a hurry and the employer did not ask any questions.

  At the end of an hour he was satisfied.

  "Fellow hustles peaches like he'd been at it all his life," the commission man told his partner.

  A few days later came the question that Sanders had been expecting.

  "Where'd you work before you came to us?"

  "At the penitentiary."

  "A guard?" asked the merchant, taken aback.

  "No. I was a convict." The big lithe man in overalls spoke quietly, his eyes meeting those of the Market Street man with unwavering steadiness.

  "What was the trouble?"

  Dave explained. The merchant made no comment, but when he paid off the men Saturday night he said with careful casualness, "Sorry, Sanders. The work will be slack next week. I'll have to lay you off."

  The man from Cañon City understood. He looked for another place, was rebuffed a dozen times, and at last was given work by an employer who had vision enough to know the truth that the bad men do not all go to prison and that some who go may be better than those who do not.

  In this place Sanders lasted three weeks. He was doing concrete work on a viaduct job for a contractor employed by the city.

  This time it was a fellow-workman who learned of the Arizonan's record. A letter from Emerson Crawford, forwarded by the warden of the penitentiary, dropped out of Dave's coat pocket where it hung across a plank.

  The man who picked it up read the letter before returning it to the pocket. He began at once to whisper the news. The subject was discussed back and forth among the men on the quiet. Sanders guessed they had discovered who he was, but he waited for them to move. His years in prison had given him at least the strength of patience. He could bide his time.

  They went to the contractor. He reasoned with them.

  "Does his work all right, doesn't he? Treats you all civilly. Doesn't force himself on you. I do
n't see any harm in him."

  "We ain't workin' with no jail bird," announced the spokesman.

  "He told me the story and I've looked it up since. Talked with the lawyer that defended him. He says the man Sanders killed was a bad lot and had stolen his horse from him. Sanders was trying to get it back. He claimed self-defense, but couldn't prove it."

  "Don't make no difference. The jury said he was guilty, didn't it?"

  "Suppose he was. We've got to give him a chance when he comes out, haven't we?"

  Some of the men began to weaken. They were not cruel, but they were children of impulse, easily led by those who had force enough to push to the front.

  "I won't mix cement with no convict," the self-appointed leader announced flatly. "That goes."

  The contractor met him eye to eye. "You don't have to, Reynolds. You can get your time."

  "Meanin' that you keep him on the job and let me go?"

  "That's it exactly. Long as he does his work well I'll not ask him to quit."

  A shadow darkened the doorway of the temporary office. The Arizonan stepped in with his easy, swinging stride, a lithe, straight-backed Hermes showing strength of character back of every movement.

  "I'm leaving to-day, Mr. Shields." His voice carried the quiet power of reserve force.

  "Not because I want you to, Sanders."

  "Because I'm not going to stay and make you trouble."

  "I don't think it will come to that. I'm talking it over with the boys now. Your work stands up. I've no criticism."

  "I'll not stay now, Mr. Shields. Since they've complained to you I'd better go."

  The ex-convict looked around, the eyes in his sardonic face hard and bitter. If he could have read the thoughts of the men it would have been different. Most of them were ashamed of their protest. They would have liked to have drawn back, but they did not know how to say so. Therefore they stood awkwardly silent. Afterward, when it was too late, they talked it over freely enough and blamed each other.

  From one job to another Dave drifted. His stubborn pride, due in part to a native honesty that would not let him live under false pretenses, in part to a bitterness that had become dogged defiance, kept him out of good places and forced him to do heavy, unskilled labor that brought the poorest pay.