I
The convict gang had a pleasant place to work to-day. Their road
building had taken them some miles from the scattered outskirts of Walla
Walla, among fields green with growing barley. The air was fresh and
sweet; the Western meadow larks, newly come, seemed in imminent danger
of splitting their own throats through the exuberance of their song.
Even the steel rails of the Northern Pacific, running parallel to the
stretch of new road, gleamed pleasantly in the spring sun.
The convicts themselves were in a genial mood, easily moved to wide
grins; and with a single exception they looked much like any other road
gang at work anywhere in the land. An expert might have recognized
purely criminal types among them: to a layman they suggested merely the
lower grades of unskilled labor. Some of the faces were distinctly
brutal; there was the sullen visage of a powerful negro who, with
different environment, might have been a Congo prince; but the face of
"Plug" Spanos, a notorious gunman who was by far the worst character in
the gang, might have been that of an artless plow-boy in a distant land
under a warm sun. There remained, however, the "exception." Curiously
enough, whenever the warden's thought dwelt upon the inmates of his
prison, classifying them into various groups, there was always one
wind-tanned, vivid face, one brawny, towering form that seemed to demand
individual consideration. The man who was listed on the records as Ben
Kinney was distinctly an individual. He some way failed to classify
among the groups of his fellows. Because he had been sent out to-day
with the road gang the two armed guards had an interesting subject of
conversation.
In the first place he habitually did two men's work. He did not do it
with any idea of trying to ingratiate himself with his keepers: no
inmate of the institution at Walla Walla made any such mistake as that.
He did it purely because he could not tone down his mighty strength and
energy to stay even with his fellows. To-day Sprigley, the guard in
first command of the gang, had placed him opposite Judy, the burly
negro, but the latter was being driven straight toward absolute
exhaustion. Yet Kinney at least knew how to subdue and direct the
pouring fountain of his vitality and energy, for the robust blows of his
pick fell with the regularity of a tireless machine. It was as if a wild
stallion, off the plains, had been trained to draw the plow. His great
muscles moved with marvelous precision; but for all the monotony and
rhythm of his motions he conveyed no image of stolidity and dullness.
He was a great, dark man, his skin darkly brown from exposure; his
straight hair showed almost coal black in spite of the fact that it had
but recently been clipped close; his eyebrows were similarly black; and
black hairs spread down his hands almost to the finger nails and
cropped up from his chest at his open throat. It was a mighty, deep,
full chest, the chest of a runner and a fighter, sustained by a strong,
flat abdomen and by powerful, sturdy legs. Yet physical might and
development were not all of Ben Kinney. The image conveyed was never one
of sheer brutality. For all their black hair, the large, brawny hands
were well-shaped and sensitive; he had a healthy, good-humored mouth
that could evidently, on occasion, be the seat of a most pleasant,
boyish smile. He had a straight, good nose, rather high cheek bones, and
a broad, brown forehead, straight rather than sloping swiftly like that
of the negro opposite. But none of his features, nor yet his brawny
form, caught and held the attention as did his vivid, dark-gray eyes.
They were deeply dark, even against his deeply tanned face, yet now and
then one caught distinct surface lights, denoting the presence of
unmeasured animal spirits, and perhaps, too, the surprising health and
vitality of the engine of his life. They were keen eyes, alert, fiery
with a zealot's fire: evidently the eyes of a steadfast, headstrong,
purposeful man. Some complexity of lines about them, hard to trace,
indicated a recklessness, too; a willingness to risk all that he had for
his convictions.
"That's the queerest case we ever had here at Walla Walla," Sprigley
told his fellow guard, as they watched the man's pick swing in the air.
"Sometimes I wonder whether he ought to be here or not. Look at that
face--he hasn't any more of a criminal face than I have."
The other guard, Howard, scanned his companion's face with mock care.
"That ain't sayin' so much for him," he observed. But at once he began
to evince real interest. "I maintain you can't tell anything from their
faces," he answered seriously. "There's nothin' in it. The man's a
crook, isn't he? Wasn't he caught red-handed?"
"Let me tell you about it. I was interested in the case and found out
all I could concerning it. He apparently showed up in Seattle some time
during the summer of 1919, a crook of the crooks, as you say. No one
knows where he came from--and that's queer in itself. You know very well
that his face and form are going to be remembered and noticed, yet he
wasn't in any rogue's gallery, in any city. Desperate crook though he
was, no one had ever heard of him before he showed up in Seattle.
"The crooks down there called him 'Wild' Kinney, and were pretty well
scared of him. Swanson, one of the lieutenants of the Seattle force,
whom I know well as I know you, told me that he was a power, sort of a
king in the underworld from the very first, largely because he was
afraid of nothing, absolutely desperate, and willing to take any chance.
He wasn't a hop-head, yet they all looked at him as sort of queer;
though ready to follow him to the last ditch, yet some way they thought
him off his head. And Swanson believes that his career of crime started
_after_ he reached Seattle, not before--that he hadn't grown up to crime
like most of the men in his gang. He didn't know anything about the
'profession'--as far as skill went he was a rank amateur, but he made it
up with daring and cunning. Once or twice he got in a fight down there,
and they all agree he fought like a mad man, the most terrible fighter
in the whole district, and it took about a half dozen to stop him."
"You don't have to tell me that. Anybody who can swing a pick like
that--"
"Now let me tell you how they happened to catch him. Maybe you heard--he
and Dago Frank were in the act of breaking into the Western-Danish
Bank. Part of this I'm giving you now came straight from Frank himself.
He says that they were in the alley, in the act of jimmying a window,
and all at once Kinney straightened up as if something had hit him and
let the jimmy fall with a thump to the pavement. Frank said he thought
that the man had 'gone off his nut,' but it's my private opinion that he
had been somewhat deranged all the time he was in Seattle, and he just
came to, more or less, that minute. The man hardly seemed to know what
he was doing. 'Have you lost your guts, Kinney?' Frank asked him; and
Kinney stood there, staring like he didn't know he was being spoken to.
He put his hands to his head, then, like a man with a headache. And the
next instant a cop came running from the mouth of the alley.
"Kinney was heeled, but he didn't even pull his gun. He still stood with
his hands to his head. All his pards in the underworld always said he'd
die before he'd give up, but he let the cop take him like he was a baby.
Frank got away, but they got him, you remember, three weeks later. After
some kind of a trial Kinney was sent down here."
Sprigley paused and shifted his gun from his right to his left shoulder.
"You'll say that's all common enough," he went on. "Now let me tell you
another queer thing. You know, the chief has started a system here to
keep track of all the prisoners, with the idea of making them good
citizens when they get out. He has them all fill out a card. Well, when
this man Kinney turned in his card, he had written 'Ben' on it, but the
rest was absolutely blank.
"Mr. Mitchell thought at first that the man couldn't write. It turned
out, though, that he can write--an intelligent hand, and spell good too.
Then Mitchell decided he was just sulking. But his second guess was no
better than his first. I haven't got Mitchell persuaded yet, and maybe
never will have him persuaded, but I'm confident I know the answer. The
reason he didn't fill out that card was because he couldn't remember.
"He couldn't remember where or when he was born, or who were his folks,
or where he had come from, or how he had spent his life. He knew that
'Ben,' his first name, sounded right to him, but 'Kinney' didn't--the
reason likely being that Kinney was an alias adopted during his life as
a criminal. I suppose you've noticed that queer, bewildered look he has
when any one calls him Kinney. What his real name is he doesn't know. He
can't even remember that. And the explanation is--complete loss of
memory.
"You mark my words, Howard--that man hasn't been a criminal always.
Something got wrong with his head, and he turned crook--you might say
that the criminal side that all of us has simply took possession of him.
That night in the alley he came to himself--only his mind was left a
blank not only in regard to his life as a criminal, but all that had
gone before."
"Then why don't you do something about it--besides talk? Mitchell says
you're gettin' so you talk of nothin' else."
"It's not for me to do anything about it. The man was a criminal. The
State can't go any further than that. I suppose if every man was set
free who wasn't, in the last analysis, responsible for his crimes, we
wouldn't have anybody left in the penitentiary. He's in for five
years--considering what he'll pick up here, it might as well be for
life. Amnesia--that's what the doctors call it--amnesia following some
sort of a mental trouble. In the end you'll see that I'm right."
Sprigley was right. To Ben Kinney life was like a single pale light in
a long, dark street. Complete loss of memory prevented him from looking
backward. Complete loss of hope kept him from looking ahead.
It had been this way for months now--ever since the night the policeman
had found him, the "jimmy" dropped from his hands, in the alley. Heaven
knows what he had done, what madness had been upon him, before that
time. But as Sprigley had said, that night had marked a change. It was
true that so far as facts went he was no better off: when he had come to
himself he had found his mind a blank regarding not only his career of
crime, but all the years that had gone before. Even his own name eluded
him. That of Kinney had an alien sound in his ears.
The past had simply ceased to exist for him; and because it is some way
the key to the future, the latter seemed likewise blank,--a toneless
gray that did not in the least waken his interest. Indeed the only light
that flung into the unfathomable darkness of his forgetfulness was that
which played in his dreams at night. Sometimes these were inordinately
vivid, quite in contrast to the routine of prison life.
He felt if he could only recall these dreams clearly they would
interpret for him the mystery of his own life. He wakened, again and
again, with the consciousness of having dreamed the most stirring,
amazing dreams, but what they were he couldn't tell. He could only
remember fragments, such as a picture of rushing waters recurring again
and again--and sometimes an amazing horizon, a dark line curiously
notched against a pale green background.
They were not all bad dreams: in reality many of them stirred him and
moved him happily, and he would waken to find the mighty tides of his
blood surging fiercely through the avenues of veins. Evidently they
recalled some happiness that was forgotten. And there was one phase, at
least, of this work in the road gangs that brought him moving, intense
delight. It was merely the sight of the bird life, abounding in the
fields and meadows about the towns.
There had been quite a northern migration lately, these late spring
days. The lesser songsters were already mating and nesting, and he found
secret pleasure in their cheery calls and bustling activity. But they
didn't begin to move him as did the waterfowl, passing in long V-shaped
flocks. That strange, wild wanderer's greeting that the gray geese
called down to their lesser brethren in the meadows had a really
extraordinary effect upon him. It always caught him up and held him,
stirring some deep, strange part of him that he hardly knew existed.
Sometimes the weird, wailing sound brought him quite to the edge of a
profound discovery, but always the flocks sped on and out of hearing
before he could quite grasp it. When the moon looked down, through the
barred window of his cell, he sometimes felt the same way. A great,
white mysterious moon that he had known long ago. It was queer that
there should be a relationship between the gray geese and the cold,
white satellite that rode in the sky. Ben Kinney never tried to puzzle
out what it was; but he always knew it with a knowledge not to be
denied.
The last of the waterfowl had passed by now, but the northern migration
was not yet done. The sun still moved north; warm, north-blowing winds
blew the last of the lowering, wintry clouds back to the Arctic Seas
whence they had come. And because the road work the convicts were doing
brought them, this afternoon, in sight of the railroad right-of-way, Ben
now and then caught sight of other wayfarers moving slowly, but no less
steadily, toward the north. The open road beckoned northward, these
full, balmy, late-April days, and various tattered men, mostly vagabonds
and tramps, passed the gang from time to time on this same, northern
quest.
Ben thought about them as birds of passage, and the thought amused him.
And at the sight of a small, stooped figure advancing toward him up the
railroad right-of-way he paused, leaning on his pick.
Because Ben had paused, for the first time in an hour, his two guards
looked up to see what had attracted his attention. They saw what seemed
to them a white-haired old wanderer of sixty years or more; but at first
they were wholly at a loss to explain Ben's fascinated look of growing
interest.
It was true that the old man scarcely represented the usual worthless,
criminal type that took to vagabondage. As he paused to scrutinize the
convict gang neither insolence nor fear, one of which was certainly to
be expected, became manifest in his face. They had anticipated certain
words in greeting, a certain look out of bleary, shifty eyes, but
neither materialized. True, the old man was following the cinder trail
northward, but plainly he did not belong to the brotherhood of tramps.
They saw that he was white-haired and withered, but upright; and that
undying youth dwelt in his twinkling blue eyes and the complexity of
little, good-natured lines about his mouth. Poverty, age, the hardships
of the cinder trail had not conquered him in the least. He was small
physically, but his skinny arms and legs looked as if they were made of
high-tension wire. His face was shrewd, but also kindly, and the gray
stubble on his cheeks and chin did not in the least hide a smile that
was surprisingly boyish and winning. And when he spoke his cracked
good-natured voice was perfectly in character, evidently that of a man
possessing full self-respect and confidence, yet brimming over with easy
kindliness and humor.
Both guards would have felt instantly, instinctively friendly toward him
if they had been free to feel at all. Instead they were held and amazed
by the apparent fact that at the first scrutiny of the man's outline,
his carriage and his droll, wrinkled face, the prisoner Kinney was moved
and stirred as if confronted by the risen dead.
The old man himself halted, returning Kinney's stare. The moment had,
still half concealed, an unmistakable quality of drama. In the contagion
of suppressed excitement, the other prisoners paused, their tools held
stiffly in their hands. Kinney's mind seemed to be reaching, groping for
some astonishing truth that eluded him.
The old man ran, in great strides, toward him. "My God, aren't you Ben
Darby?" he demanded.
The convict answered him as from a great distance, his voice cool and
calm with an infinite certainty. "Of course," he said. "Of course I'm
Darby."