XI
Number 3126
In due deference to the "mugging" at police headquarters, I hadregistered in the Denver employment office as "William Smith." But onthe work, which proved to be the construction of a branch feeder forthe Midland in the heart of the gold district, I took my own name--orrather that part of it which had been given to the Denver policeinspector--arguing that the only way in which I could be traced wouldbe by means of the photograph. Against the photographic possibility,my beard, which had been scraped off by the station barber during thewaiting interval between trains in St. Louis, was suffered to growagain.
The railroad labor was strenuous, as it was bound to be; and for thefirst few days the thin, crisp air of the altitudes cut my alreadyindifferent physical efficiency almost to the vanishing point.Nevertheless, there were two pieces of good fortune. Myfellow-laborers in the grading gang were principally Italians from thesouthern provinces and their efficiency was also low. This helped, buta better bit of luck lay in the fact that the contractors on the jobwere humane and liberal employers; both of them with a shrewd andwatchful eye for latent capabilities in the rank and file. Within aweek I was made a gang time-keeper, and a fortnight later I becamecommissary clerk.
Before I forget it, let me say that my first month's pay, or thegreater part of it, went to replace the sixty-three dollars and a halfin the little black pocketbook which I had stolen--I guess that is thehonest word---from Horace Barton. I debated for some time over thesafest method of returning the pocketbook and its restored contents tothe wagon salesman. I realized that it wouldn't do to let him knowwhere I was; and it seemed a needless humiliation to confess to himthat I was the "hobo" who had posed, in his imagination, as the skilfulsidewalk pickpocket.
In casting about for a means of communication I thought of Whitley, theSpringville minister. So I wrote him a letter, enclosing thepocketbook, with a truthful explanation of the circumstances in whichit had come into my possession, and telling him what to do with it. Ilaid no commands upon his conscience, but begged him, if he couldconsistently do so, to suppress my name and whereabouts. And since Icould not be quite sure as to what the ministerial conscience mightdemand, I added, rather disingenuously, I fear, that he needn't replyto my letter, as I had no permanent address.
It was some little time after my promotion to the commissary thatDorgan came on the job as a track-laying foreman. He was a heavy-set,black-browed fellow with a sinister face and deeply caverned, broodingeyes looking out furtively under their bushy coverts, and his chiefcharacteristic was a crabbed reticence which not even the exigencies ofhandling a crew of steel-layers seemed able to break. His face was onenot to be easily forgotten; from the first sight I had of it, it wasvaguely familiar, and a thoughtful ransacking of the cubby-holes ofmemory very shortly recalled it for me. Dorgan was an escaped convict.
His jail-break dated back to my second year in the penitentiary, to aperiod just after I had been slated for the prison office work.Dorgan--his name on the prison books was Michael Murphey, but we knewhim only as "Number 3126"--had "brought" ten years for safe-blowing,and he was known in the prison yard and shops as a dangerous man.Twice within my recollection of him he had been put in solitaryconfinement for fighting; and he was one of the few to whom the wardendenied the small privileges accorded the "good conducts."
One day a hue and cry was raised and word was quickly passed thatNumber 3126 was missing. He had planned his escape craftily. A newshop building was at that time in process of erection, and each day agang of "trusties" went outside to haul stone. Of course, thesafe-blower was not included in this outside gang, but one dark andrainy morning he included himself by the simple process of hog-tyingand gagging one of the trusties detailed for the job, exchangingnumbered jackets with him, and taking the man's place in the ranks ofthe stone-loaders, where he contrived to pass unnoticed by the guards.
The escape was entirely successful. At the critical moment Dorgan hadoverpowered the single wagon guard, leaving the man a candidate foradmission to the hospital, and had made his break for liberty. We, ofthe inside, never knew, of course, the various steps taken in theattempt to recapture him. But they all appeared to be fruitless sinceNumber 3126 was never brought back.
I failed utterly in an endeavor to analyze my own feelings when Irecognized Dorgan and realized that an escaped man from my own prisonwas at work for my employers; an escaped criminal and a desperate one,at that. What was my duty in the premises? Should I bind myself, oncefor all, to the brotherhood of law-breakers--the submerged minority--byshielding this man and conniving at his escape? Or should I turninformer, telling the contractor-partners of the risk they ran bykeeping Dorgan in the force--the risk that some night, after the moneyfor the monthly pay-roll had been brought out from town, they wouldfind the camp safe smashed and its contents gone?
While I was debating this question, inclined first in one direction bysome new generosity on the part of one or the other of my employers,and again leaning the other way when I remembered that, in the eye ofthe law, I, myself, was in precisely the same category with Number3126, I had another promotion. One evening, just after I had closedthe commissary, one of the water-boys came to tell me that I was wantedin the contractors' office, a little shack at the far side of theend-of-track cantonments. Hadley, the senior member of the firm, wasalone when I showed myself at the door.
"Come in, Bertrand," he invited, gruffly genial; "come in and wait aminute until I go over this estimate again. You'll find cigars in thatbox on the bunk."
Having nothing to do while I waited, I sat on a stool in a corner ofthe shack, smoking the gift cigar and silently regarding the man whohad sent for me. He was a good example of the better type of Westerncontractor and out-door man; big-bodied, burly, whiskered like a miner,a keen driver on the work, but withal as kindly as a father whenkindness was called for.
In due time he pushed the figuring pad aside and turned to me. "Dragup your stool, Jim; I want to talk to you," he began. And then: "Howmuch experience have you had in keeping accounts?"
I told him briefly.
"In a bank, eh?" he queried, and I knew precisely what he was thinking.He was wondering what I had done to break myself. In spite of all thathad happened or might happen, I believe I was ready to tell him; but tomy astonishment the curt questioning which all my previous experiencehad taught me to expect at this stage of the game did not come.
"This is a free country, Bertrand," he said, looking me squarely in theeye. "I'm not going to ask you why you quit bank bookkeeping to comeout here and swing a pick in a construction camp. Here in the tallhills we don't think much of digging up graves--the graves of any man'spast. You've done well in every job we've tried you at, and that's allto the good for you."
I said I had tried to fill the bill as well as I knew how, and he tookme up promptly.
"We know you have; and that brings on more talk. Kenniston is leavingus to go prospecting. We've talked it over--Shelton and I--and you'reto have the paymaster's job. Think you can hold it down?"
"I am sure I can--so far as the routine duties are concerned. But----"
Never, in all the soul-killing experiences of the parole period, had Ibeen confronted with a test so gripping. Would this large-hearted manturn the keys of his money chest over to me if he knew I were anex-convict, liable at any moment to be re-arrested for having broken myparole? I was silent so long that he began again.
"Looking around for a spade to begin the grave-digging?" he asked, witha sober smile. Then, with a note of unwonted gentleness in his voice:"I shouldn't do that if I were you, Jimmie. The man doesn't live whohasn't, at one time or another, had to dig a hole and bury somethingdecently out of sight. Whatever you may have done in the past, you'renot going to play marbles with the Hadley-and-Shelton pay-money.That's about all there is to it. You may take hold to-morrow morning.Kenniston will stay long enough to show you the ropes."
It was not until after I had left the
office shack and was crossing tothe bunk house set apart for the office squad that I remembered Dorgan.Now, if never before, my duty in his case was plain. It was temptingProvidence to allow the presence in camp of a burglar who was probablyonly waiting for his chance to "clean up"; doubly perilous now, indeed,since in any case of loss my record would be shown up, and Dorgan, ifhe had already recognized me as I had him, would not be slow to takeadvantage of my vulnerability.
My first impulse was to go straight back to Hadley and tell him,without the loss of another moment. But there were difficulties in theway; obstacles which I had not before stopped to consider. If I shouldaccuse Dorgan, he might retaliate by telling what he knew of me. Thisdifficulty was brushed aside at once: I judged there was little to fearfrom this, in view of what Hadley had just said to me. But there wasanother obstacle; the one which had kept me silent from the day I hadfirst seen Dorgan driving his track-layers. With a crushing sense ofdegradation I realized the full force of the motive for silence, as Ihad not up to this time. With every fiber of me protesting that I mustbe loyal to my employers at any and all costs, that other loyalty, thetie that binds the branded, proved the stronger. I could not bringmyself to the point of sending Dorgan, guilty as he doubtless was, backto the living death of the "long-termer." I make no excuses. Onecannot touch pitch and escape defilement in some sort. For three yearsI had lived among criminals; and the bond . . . but I have said allthis before.
It may be imagined with what inward tremblings I took on the duties ofthe new job the next day. Kenniston, eager to be gone on hisprospecting tour, gave me only a short forenoon over the pay-rolls; butas to this, the routine was simple enough. It was what he said atparting that gave me the greatest concern.
"You have to go to the bank at the Creek and get the money, you know,"he said. "I usually go on the afternoon train. That will make youlate for banking hours, but if you wire ahead they'll have the moneycounted out and ready for you. Then you can catch the evening train tothe junction and come up on one of the construction engines. Bettertake one of the commissary .45's along, just for safety's sake--thoughin all the trips I've made I've never needed a gun."
The week following Kenniston's drop-out was a busy one, with time-booksto check and enter, commissary deductions to be made, and the payrollsto be gotten out. My office was a small room or space partitioned offfrom the commissary, the partition being of matched boards,breast-high, and above that a rough slat grille like those in countryrailroad stations. As I worked at the bracketed shelf which served asa high desk, I could see the interior of the commissary, and those whocame and went. It may have been only a fancy, but it seemed to me thatDorgan came in oftener than usual; and more than once I caught himpeering at me through the slatted grille, with the convict's trick oflooking aside without turning his head. It was for this reason, morethan for any other, that I recalled Kenniston's advice and armed myselfwhen I went to Cripple Creek on the day before pay-day to get the moneyfrom the bank.
The short journey to town was uneventful. A construction locomotivetook me down to the main line junction, where I caught the regulartrain from Denver. But on the way from the railroad station to thebank in Cripple Creek I had a shock, followed instantly by theconviction that I was in for trouble. On the opposite side of thestreet, and keeping even pace with me, I saw Dorgan.
Barrett (for obvious reasons I cannot use real names) was the man I hadbeen told to ask for at the bank, and it was he who admitted me at theside door, the hour being well past the close of business. He was aclean-cut, alert young fellow; a Westerner, I judged, only by recentadoption.
"You are Bertrand, from the Hadley and Shelton camps?" he asked; andthen, as I produced my check and letter of authority; "You don't needthe letter. Kenniston told me what you'd look like. Your money isready."
In one of the private rooms of the bank the currency was counted out,the count verified, the money receipted for, and I was ready to startback. Barrett walked to the railroad station with me, helping with thevalise money bag, which was heavy with a good bit of coin for makingchange. We got better acquainted on the walk, and I warmed immediatelyto the frank, open-mannered young bank teller, little dreaming whatthis acquaintance, begun in pure business routine, was destined to leadto in the near future.
Barrett saw me safely aboard of my return train, and stood on theplatform at the open window of the car talking to me until the trainstarted. On my part this leave-taking talk was more or lessperfunctory; I was scanning the platform throng anxiously in search ofa certain heavy-shouldered man with a sinister face; and when, just asthe train began to move, I saw Dorgan swing himself up to the step ofthe car ahead, I knew what was before me--or thought I did--andsurreptitiously drew the .45 from the inside coat-pocket where I hadcarried it, twirling the cylinder to make sure that it was loaded andin serviceable condition.
There was an excellent chance for a hold-up at the junction. It wascoming on to dusk as the through train made the stop, and there was notown, not even a station; nothing but a water tank and the litteredjumble of a construction yard. My engine was making up a train ofmaterial cars to be taken to our end-of-track camp, and I had to waitfor it to come within hailing distance.
Dorgan got off the through train at the same time that I did. I stoodwith the money valise between my feet and folded my arms with a handinside of my coat and grasping the butt of the big revolver, shaking abit because all this was so foreign to anything I had ever experienced,but determined to do what seemed needful at the pinch. Oddly enough,as I thought, the track foreman made no move to approach me. Instead,he kept his distance, busying himself with the filling and lighting ofa stubby black pipe. After a little time, and before it was quitedark, my engine backed down to where I was standing and I climbedaboard with my money bag, still with an eye on Dorgan. The last I sawof him he was sitting on the end of a cross-tie, pulling away at hispipe and apparently oblivious to me and to everything else. But I madesure that when the material train should pull out he would be aboard ofit; and the event proved that he was.
Obsessed with the idea that Dorgan had chosen the time to make his"clean-up," I took no chances after the end-of-track camp was reached.The money valise went with me to the mess tent, and I ate supper withmy feet on it, and with the big revolver lying across my knees. Aftersupper I lugged my responsibility over to the commissary pay-office,and by the flickering light of a miner's candle stowed the money in theramshackle old safe which was the only security the camp afforded.
Past this I lighted the lamps and busied myself with the account books.There was little doing in the commissary--it was too near pay-day forthe men to be buying much--and the clerk who had taken over my formerjob shut up shop quite early. At nine o'clock I was alone in thestore-room building; and at a little before ten I put out the lightsand lay down on the office cot with a sawed-off Winchester--a part ofthe pay-office armament--lying on the mattress beside me.
A foolish thing to do, you say?--when at a word I might have had allthe help I needed in guarding the pay-money? No; it wasn't altogetherfoolhardiness; it was partly weakness. For, twist and turn it as Imight, there was always the unforgivable thing at the end: the factthat by calling in help and betraying Dorgan to others, I, once hisprison-mate, and even now, like him--though in a lesser degree--alaw-breaker, would become a "snitch," an informer, a traitor to mykind. A wretchedly distorted point of view? Doubtless it was. Butthe three years of unmerited punishment and criminal associations mustaccount for it as they may.
I don't know how long the silent watch was maintained. One by one thenight noises of the camp died down and the stillness of the solitudesenveloped the commissary. The responsibility I was carrying shouldhave kept me awake, but it didn't. If the coming of sleep had beengradual I might have fought it off, but the healthy life of the camphad given me leave to eat like a workingman and to fall asleep like onewhen the day was ended. So after the stillness had fairly laid hold ofme I was gone before I
knew it.
When I opened my eyes it was with a startled conviction that I was nolonger alone in the little boxed-in office. In the murky indoordarkness of a moonless night I could barely distinguish thesurroundings, the shelf-desk, the black bulk of the old safe, thethree-legged stool, and at the end of the room the gray patch whichplaced the single window. Then, with a cold sweat starting from everypore, I saw the humped figure of a man beside the safe. As nearly as Icould make out, he was sitting with his back to the wall and his kneesdrawn up, and by listening intently I could hear his measured breathing.
It required a greater amount of brute courage than I had thought itwould to spring to a sitting posture on the cot and cover the squattingfigure with the rifle slewed into position across my knees. The manmade no move to obey when I ordered him to hold up his hands. Then Ispoke again.
"I've got the drop on you, Dorgan--or Murphey; whichever your name is,"I said. "If you move I shall kill you. You see, I know who you areand what you are here for."
A voice, harsh but neither threatening nor pleading, came out of theshadows beside the safe.
"You ain't tellin' me nothin' new, pally. I spotted you a good whileback, and I knowed you'd lamped me. You was lookin' f'r me to bust inhere to-night?"
"I was. After you followed me to Cripple Creek and back I knew aboutwhat to expect."
"And you was layin' f'r me alone?--when you could 'a' had Collins andNixon and half a dozen more if yous 'd squealed f'r 'em?"
"I didn't need any better help than this," I answered, patting thestock of the Winchester. "The jig's up, Dorgan. You can't crack thissafe while I'm here and alive. I suppose you got in by the window: youcan go out the same way."
"You're aimin' to turn me loose?" said the voice, and now I fanciedthere was a curious trembly hoarseness in it.
"You heard what I said."
"Listen a minute, pally: if you'll hold that gun right stiddy where itis and let out a yell 'r two, you can earn five hundred doughboys. Yedidn't know that, did you?"
"I know you broke jail and skipped for it, but I didn't know how muchthe warden was willing to pay to get you back."
"It's five hundred bones, all right. Study a minute: don't you wantthe five hundred?"
"No; not bad enough to send you back to 'stir' for it."
There was a dead silence for the space of a long minute, and while itendured the man sat motionless, with his back against the wall and hishands locked over his knees. Then: "They'd all pat you on the back ifyous was to let out that yell. I brought ten years with me when thewarden give me my number, and I'm thinkin' they was comin' to me--allo' them."
"But you don't want to go back?"
"Not me; if it was to come to that, I'd a damned sight rather you'dsqueeze a little harder on that trigger you've got under your finger;see?"
"Then why did you take this long chance?" I demanded. "You say youknew I had spotted you; you might have known that I'd be ready for you."
"I kind o' hoped you would," he said, drawling the words. "Yes; I suredid hope ye would--not but what I'm thinkin' I could 'a' done it alone."
"Done what alone? What are you driv----"
The interruption was imperative; a fierce "Hist!" from the cornerbeside the safe, and at the same instant a blurring of the gray patchof the window, a sash rising almost noiselessly, and two men, followingeach other like substance and shadow, legging themselves into theoffice over the window-sill. At first I thought Dorgan had set a trapfor me; but before that unworthy suspicion could draw its secondbreath, the track foreman had hurled himself upon the two intruders,calling to me to come on and help him.
The battle, such as it was, was short, sharp and decisive, as thedarkness and the contracted fighting space constrained it to be.Though I dared not shoot, I contrived to use the rifle as a club on theman who was trying to choke Dorgan from behind, and after ahard-breathing minute or two we had them both down, one of them halfstunned by the blow on his head from the gun-barrel, and the other withan arm twisted and temporarily useless. Under Dorgan's directions Icut a couple of lengths from a rope coil in the commissary with whichwe tied the pair hand and foot, dragging them afterward to the freerfloor space beyond the pay-office partition.
"They'll be stayin' put till mornin', I'm thinkin'," was Dorgan'scomment as we retreated to the scene of the battle. Then, as he edgedtoward the open window: "Ye won't be needin' me any more to-night . . .I'll duck whilst the duckin's good."
"Not just yet," I interposed, and pulled him to a seat on the cotbeside me. "I want to know a few things first. You knew about theraid these fellows were planning?"
"Sure, I did."
"Tell me about it."
"I piped 'em off about a week ago--when Kenniston 'd gone. They talkedtoo much, and too loud, d'ye see? The lay was f'r to chase in to theCreek wit' you--an' they did--an' get you on the road, if they could;if that didn't work, they was to crack the safe"--this with thecontempt of the real craftsman for a pair of amateurs. "D'ye see, theboss 'd been dippy enough to write the combination on a piece o' paperwhen Kenniston ducked out--f'r fear he'd be forgettin' it, maybe, andthese dubs o' the world nipped the paper."
"See here, Dorgan; was that why you followed me to town thisafternoon?" I shot at him.
"Ye've guessed it."
"And it was for the same reason that you sneaked in here while I wasasleep?"
"Ye've guessed it ag'in."
"You didn't want the bosses to be robbed?"
The escaped convict had his face propped between his hands with hiselbows resting on his knees.
"I'm thinkin' maybe it's six o' one and a half-dozen o' tother," hesaid soberly. "I wasn't carin' so damned much about the bosses, squareas they've been to me. But I puts it up like this: here's you, andyou'd spotted me, and you hadn't snitched; you'd been in 'stir'yourself, and knowed what it was: d'ye see?"
I smiled in the darkness. It was the brotherhood of the underworld.
"And you lined up square at the finish, too, as I knowed yous would,"he went on. "You sees me pipin' yous off in town, and you was thinkin'maybe I'd drop in here to-night and crack this old box f'r the swagthere'd be in it. You laid f'r me alone, because yit you wouldn't bewillin' to give me up. Ain't that the size of it, pally?"
"You've guessed it," I said, handing his own words back to him. "Andnow one more question, Dorgan: have you quit the crooked business forkeeps?"
He was up and moving toward the open window when he replied.
"Who the hell would know that? I was a railroad man, pally, before Itook to the road. These days I'm eatin' my t'ree squares and sleepin'good. But some fine mornin' a little man that I could break in halveswit' my two hands 'll come dancin' along wit' a paper in his pocket anda gun in his fist; and then it'll be all over but the shoutin'--or thefun'ral. There's on'y the one sure thing about it, pally: I'll not begoin' back to 'stir'--not alive; d'ye see? So long . . . don't letthem ducks get loose on yous and come at yous fr'm behind, whilst maybeyou'd be dozin' off."
And with this parting injunction he was gone.
Branded Page 11