XXIII
Skies of Brass
The depressive journey from Colorado to the Middle West records itselfin memory as a dismal dream out of which there were awakenings only fortrain-changings or a word of talk now and then with Cummings. Thedeputy warden was a reticent man; somber almost to sadness, as befittedhis calling; but he was neither morose nor churlish. Underneath theofficial crust he was a man like other men; was, I say, because he isdead now.
On the final day of the journey I persuaded him to tell me how I hadbeen traced, and I was still human enough to find a grain of comfort inthe assurance that Agatha Geddis had not taken my money at the lastonly to turn and betray me.
Barton, the Glendale wagon sales manager, was the one who wasinnocently responsible. He had talked too much, as I had feared hewould. The clue thus furnished had been lost in St. Louis, but waspicked up again, some months later, by Cummings himself through thepolice-record photograph in Denver.
Cummings admitted that he had followed Polly and me on our weddingjourney; that he had known where we were stopping, and had seen us inthe canyon-brink hotel.
"Why didn't you take me then?" I asked.
He explained gruffly that the requisition papers with which he wasprovided were good only in Colorado, and that it was simpler to waitthan to go through all the red tape of having them reissued forArizona. Knowing that the wires were completely at his service, theanswer did not satisfy me.
"Was that the only reason?" I queried.
He turned his sober eyes on me and shook his head sorrowfully, Ithought.
"I was young once, myself, Weyburn--and I had a wife: she died when thebaby came. Maybe you deserve what's coming to you, and maybe youdon't; but that little woman o' yours will never have anotherhoneymoon."
Disquieting visions of harsh prison punishments were oppressing me whenwe reached the penitentiary and I was taken before the eagle-eyed oldCivil War veteran who had given me my parole. But the warden merelyput me through a shrewd questioning, inquiring closely into myexperiences as a paroled man, and making me tell him circumstantiallythe story of my indictment, trial and conviction, and also the laterstory of the mining experience in Colorado.
"I don't recall that you ever protested your innocence while you werehere serving your time, Weyburn," he commented, at the dose of theinquisition.
"I didn't," I replied, wondering why he should go behind the returns toremark the omission. Then I added: "They all do that, and it doesn'tchange anything. You set it down as a lie--as it usually is."
"Can you look me in the eye and tell me that you are not lying to menow?" he demanded.
I met the test soberly. "I can. I was convicted of a crime that Ididn't commit, and I broke my parole solely because that appeared to bethe one remaining alternative to becoming a criminal in fact."
The interview over, I expected to be put into stripes, cropped, andsent to the workshops. But instead I was taken to one of the detentioncells, and for an interval which slowly lengthened itself into a weekwas left a prey to all the devils of solitude. It seemed as if I hadbeen buried out of sight and forgotten. Three times a day a kitchen"trusty" brought my meals and put them through the door wicket, butapart from this I saw no one save the corridor guard, who never so muchas looked my way in his comings and goings.
That week of palsying, unnerving isolation got me. Consider it for amoment. For a year I had been living at the very heart of life,working, fighting, scheming, mixing and mingling, and succeeding--notonly in the money-winning, but also--until the Agatha Geddis incidentcame along--in the field of good repute. At the last Agatha had set mefree, and Polly's love had opened the ultimate door of supremehappiness; a joy so ecstatic that at the end of the honeymoon I wasonly beginning to realize what it meant to me.
And then, on the very summit of the mountain of joy, had come the touchof the deputy warden's hand on my shoulder in the Antlers dining-room.That touch had swept the new-born world ruthlessly aside--all savePolly's love and loyalty. Success had been blotted out with the lossof liberty wherewith to profit by it; and for those who had known me inthe great gold camp and elsewhere in the West--my new friends--I wasbranded as an escaped convict. For two shameful years I should be shutaway from Polly, from freedom, from participation in the fight mypartners were making to save the mine, and most probably from anyknowledge of how the fight was going, either for or against us.
Is it any matter for wonder that by the end of the solitary week I waslittle better than a mad-man? If I might have had speech with thewarden, I should have prayed for work; for any employment, however hardor menial, that would serve to stop the sapping of the very foundationsof reason. One hope I clung to, as the drowning catch at straws. Icould not doubt that Polly was near at hand. If the regular "visitingday" should intervene they would surely admit her. But in this, too, Iwas unlucky. The date of my reincarceration fell between two of theregular visiting days. So I waited and looked and longed in vain.
I don't know how many more circlings of the clock-hands were measuredoff before the break came. I lost count of the time by days and was nolonger able to think clearly. In perfect physical condition when I wasarrested, I began to go to pieces, both mentally and physically, underthe strain of suspense. Then insomnia came to add its terrors; I couldneither eat nor sleep. I had an ominous foreboding of what the totalloss of appetite meant, and kept telling myself over and over that forPolly's sake I must fight to save my sanity.
Under such conditions I was beginning to see things where there wasnothing to be seen on the day when I had my first visitor, and theshock of surprise when the cell door was opened to admit CyrusWhitredge, the lawyer whose bungling defense had done so little tostave off my conviction, was almost like a premonition of furtherdisaster. Before I could rise from my seat on the cot he was shakinghands with me and twisting his dry, leathery face into its nearestapproach to a smile.
"Don't bother to get up, Bert," he began effusively. "Just stay rightwhere you are and take it easy. I've been trying for three solid daysto get up here, but court is in session and I couldn't break away.You're not looking very well, and they tell me down below that you'reoff your feed. That won't do, you know--won't do at all. We are goingto get you right out of this, one way or another, mighty quick. You'vetaken your medicine like a man, and we don't propose to let 'em giveyou a second dose of it--not by a jugful."
All this was so totally unlike the Whitredge I had known that I fairlygasped. Then I reflected--while he was drawing up the singlethree-legged stool and sitting down--that in all probability the LittleClean-Up was responsible for the change in him. I was no longer a poorbank clerk without money or friends.
"'We,' you say?" I put in, meaning to make him define himself.
"Why, yes, of course I'm including myself; I'm your attorney, and assoon as the news of your arrest came I made preparations to dropeverything else, right away, and get into the fight. You got yoursentence and served it, and we'll scrap 'em awhile on the propositionof bringing you back for more of it simply because you happened toforget, one day, and step over the State boundaries. I don't know butwhat we could show that the law is unconstitutional, if we had to. Butit won't come to anything like that, I guess."
I looked him straight in the eyes.
"Whitredge, who has retained you this time?" I asked.
"I don't know what you mean by that, Bert."
"I mean that four years and a half ago there were pretty strong reasonsfor suspecting that you were Abel Geddis's attorney, rather than mine."
"Oh, pshaw!" he returned with large lenience. "Geddis wanted to befair with you--he thought a good bit of you in those days, Bert, littleas you may believe it--and he did offer to pay my fee, if you couldn't.But that has nothing to do with the present aspect of the case. I wasyour attorney then, and I'm your attorney now. It's a point ofprofessional honor, and I couldn't think of holding aloof when you'reneeding me. Besides, your Colorado lawyers have been in
communicationwith me--naturally, since I was attorney for the defense four years anda half ago."
"They sent you to me here?" I inquired.
"They knew I would come, of course; I was on the ground and had all thefacts. They couldn't come themselves, either of them. They have hadtheir hands full with the injunction business."
"The injunction business?"
"Yes; haven't you heard?"
I shook my head.
"It was in the newspapers, but I suppose they haven't let you see themhere. Your mine is shut down. You were operating as bonded lesseesunder a temporary injunction, or something of that sort, weren't you?Well, the Federal court has made the injunction permanent and tied youup. As soon as I got this I smelled trouble for you, and as yourattorney in fact I got busy with the wires. The situation isn't halfas bad as it might be. I understand that the plaintiff company, acorporation called the Lawrenceburg Mining & Reduction Company, hasoffered you people five million dollars for a transfer of all rightsand titles under your holdings, and that, notwithstanding theinjunction, this offer still holds good."
Since it is a proverb that an empty stomach is a mighty poor team-matefor a befogged brain, I was unable to see what Whitredge was drivingat, and I told him so.
"Nothing in particular," he countered, "except to remind you that youstill have a good chance to play safe. We are going to 'wrastle' youout of here, just as I say, Bert, my boy, at any cost, and it's a pieceof great good luck that you won't have to count the pennies in whateverit may cost."
"But I shall have to count them if our mine is shut down."
"Not if you and your partners make this sale to the Lawrenceburgpeople. Five millions will give each of you a million and two-thirdsapiece. It's up to you right now to persuade your two partners toclose with the offer while it still holds good. It's liable to bewithdrawn any minute, you know. The other two may be able to hang onand put up a further fight, but you can't afford to."
"Why can't I?"
"For one mighty good reason, if there isn't any other. I met your wifethis morning, Bert. She's stopping across town at the Buckingham--justto be as near you as she can get. You can't afford to do, or to leaveundone, anything that'll keep that little woman dangling on the raggededge. She thinks too much of you."
He had me on the run, and I think he knew it. What he did not know wasthat the smash, the solitary cell, and a weakened body were pushing meharder than any of his specious arguments.
"I've got to get out!" I groaned, with the cold sweat starting out allover me. "Whitredge, I've had enough in these few days to break aniron man!"
"Naturally; married only a month, and all that. I'm a dried-up oldbachelor, Bert, my boy, but I know exactly how you feel. As you say,you've got to get out of here, and the quickest way is the rightway--when you stop to think of that poor lonesome little woman waitingover yonder in the hotel. I've come fixed for you"--he was on hisfeet, now, fumbling in his pockets for some papers and a fountainpen--"I've drawn up a letter to your two partners,--let me see; whereis it? Oh, yes, here you are--a letter from you advising them to closewith that Lawrenceburg offer. If you'll just authorize me to send awire in your name, and then read this letter that I've blocked out andsign it----"
I glanced hastily over the type-written sheet he handed me. It was abusiness-like letter addressed to Barrett and Gifford, going fully intothe situation from the point of view of a man needing ready money, andurging the acceptance of the Lawrenceburg offer, not wholly for thepersonal reason upon which Whitredge had been enlarging, butemphatically as a prudent business measure--an alternative to thepossible loss of everything.
"You see just how the matter stands," he went on while I was readingthe letter. "They've got you stopped, and that is pretty good evidencethat the court is holding you as trespassers on Lawrenceburg property.The next thing in order, if you fellows hold out, will be a suit fordamages which will gobble up all your former returns from the mine andleave you without anything--you and both of your partners."
"What do you get out of it if this sale goes through, Whitredge?" Iasked him suddenly.
He laughed as if I had perpetrated a new joke.
"What do _I_ get out of it? Why, bless your innocent soul, Bert, ain'tI working for my fee? And I tell you I'm going to charge you arattling big one, too, when I can shake hands with you as a millionaireand better on the sidewalk in front of this State eleemosynaryInstitution!"
"You talk as if you had the sidewalk means in your hand," I said,yielding a little to his enthusiasm in spite of my suspicions of himand my feeble efforts to stand alone.
"I have!" he announced oracularly. "I have here"--slapping a secondfolded paper which he had drawn from his pocket--"I have here apetition for your free and unconditional pardon, addressed to theGovernor and signed by the trial judge, the prosecuting attorney, andby ten of the twelve members of the jury. Oh, I tell you, young man,I've been busy these last three days. You may have been setting medown as a hard-hearted old lawyer, toughened to all these things, Bert,but when I read that newspaper story, of how you were kidnapped, as youmay say--torn from the arms of a loving wife and dragged aboard of atrain and railroaded back to prison--every drop of blood in me rose upin protest, and I swore then and there that if there was any such thingas executive clemency in this broad land of ours, you should have it!"
If I had been wholly well and out of prison perhaps the cheap bombastin all this would have been apparent at once. But I was neither wellnor free. And Polly's heart was breaking; I didn't need Whitredge'sword for this--I knew it by all the torments of inward conviction.
I understood well enough what he was asking me to do: to tip the scaleagainst what might be Barrett's and Gifford's better judgment, and tosign a paper which would stamp me for all time as a criminal pleading,not for justice, but for pardon. In spite of this knowledge thepressure Whitredge had brought to bear was well-nigh irresistible.Barrett and the Colorado lawyers evidently had their hands too full tothink of me; and, in any event, I could not see what possible chancethey might have of reopening my case and proving my innocence. At theend of it I was reaching for the pen in Whitredge's hand, but at thetouch of the thing with which I was to sign away my fighting rights forall time a little flicker of strength came.
"You must give me time, Whitredge; a little time to think this over," Ipleaded. "Four years and a half ago I told you I was innocent--I tellyou so again. You are asking me to confess that I was guilty; if Isign that petition it will be a confession in fact. I have sworn athousand times that I'd rot right here inside of these walls before I'dask for a pardon for a crime that wasn't mine. Leave these papers andlet me think about it. Give me a chance to convince myself that thereis no other way!"
He looked at his watch, and if he were disappointed he was too wellschooled in his trade to show it.
"All right; just as you say," he agreed. "Shall we make it thisafternoon--say, some time after three o'clock?"
"Make it to-morrow morning," I begged.
This time he hesitated, again pulling out his watch and consulting itsface as if it were an oracle. I had no means of knowing--what Ilearned later--that he was making a swift calculation upon the arrivingand departing hours of certain railroad trains. None the less, heagreed somewhat reluctantly to the further postponement; but when theturnkey was unlocking the door he gave me a final shot.
"I don't want to influence you one way or the other, Bert--that is, notagainst your best interests; but while you're making up your mind don'tleave the little woman out. I shall see her at dinner to-night, andshe'll want to know what's what. I'm going to give her your love andtell her you're trying mighty hard to be reasonable. Is that right?"
Branded Page 23