THE TWO PRISONERS.
As the key rattled in the lock of the heavily barred door the wounded
prisoner looked up from the cot on which he was lying and saw the second
captive marched into the room by Constable Hubbard.
“I guess,” said the constable, “I can chance it to take the irons off ye
while you’re in here, for we’ve got the place guarded by men who would
shoot ye quick as they’d spit if you ever did break out, which ain’t
nohow prob’le.”
“Thank you,” said the man, as Hubbard removed the handcuffs. “I won’t
try to break out, I promise you that.”
“And I’d be a fool if I took any stock in your promise,” said the fat
officer, as he backed out of the room, closing and relocking the door.
With a grimace of pain, the wounded man lifted himself to a sitting
posture on the cot. The eyes of the two prisoners met.
“So they nabbed you after all, Thirteen-thirteen,” said the first
prisoner. “Tough luck, old pal. I told yer to lay low.”
The other man shrugged his shoulders. “I did,” he answered; “but they
surrounded the place and had me pinched, so there was no use trying to
make a run for it. If I’d tried that, the chances were a hundred to one
that the damage to your wing wouldn’t have been a patch compared to what
would have happened to me.”
“Tough luck,” repeated the other. “But they can’t do anything to yer for
this job we made such a rotten mess of. I won’t forget how you tied up
this shoulder of mine, nor how the kid did his best to give me a show to
get away. I’ll swear you wasn’t mixed up in the job here.”
The younger man smiled wearily. “It’s not fear of their nailing this
business onto me that gets me,” he said; “it’s the old case against me.
I was supposed to be dead and buried, you know. Yes, it’s tough luck. I
was born under an unlucky star on the thirteenth day of the month. In
prison I was ‘Number 1313,’ and that was a double sign of bad luck.”
“You made a great break, you and your two pals. When they nabbed the
other pair and couldn’t find you, it seemed that all the luck was yours.
Course, arter I did my bit and was turned loose, I heard you had
croaked. When I was sitting on that box just at day peep trying to stop
the blood that was leaking out of me and you stepped out to give a hand
at the job, you certain looked like a ghost. I couldn’t believe you was
old Thirteen-thirteen till you owned up to it. Then the youngster come
on us, and we had to——”
“That’s the thing I regret most. Look here, Riley, you owe me something,
don’t you?”
“Anything you say, old pal.”
“I bound up your wound the best way I could. My brother caught me at it.
Then we had to bring him into the business, knowing that the searchers
were likely to trace you to that place. If they did so, it was a sure
thing that I’d be nabbed, which must lead to the public knowledge that
Clarence Sage, escaped convict, had not been drowned in the Hudson. In
hopes of avoiding this, my brother guided you into the woods and helped
you as best as he could to get another start in your flight.”
“The kid done his part all right, pal.”
“Now I want you to do yours, Riley.”
“Spiel it off. Lay it out. Put me on. What am I to do?”
“Not one word about my brother and the part he played must escape your
lips. He did it for me, not for you, but you owe him this much: you must
protect him.”
“Bank on it, cull—bank on it. They’ll never jimmy a word of it outer
me.”
“Thanks,” said Clarence Sage, taking the single chair which the lockup
contained and seating himself near the cot. “That relieves my mind in a
measure. Fred’s a fine boy, and it would be a shame to have suspicion
fall on him. My misfortune has cast enough stigma on my unfortunate
family.”
“Say, ’bo, there’s just one thing about you that I don’t like. You don’t
have to put up this misfortune bluff to me. Course it’s always hard luck
when we get laid by the heels on any little job, but seems to me you’re
throwing it out that you was on the level.”
“I was,” asserted Clarence Sage grimly, almost fiercely. “I was
arrested, tried and convicted for a crime I never committed. If this
were not true, I wouldn’t think of saying so now. Somebody else looted
the bank, and I believe I know the man. It was on his testimony
principally that I was convicted. He saved himself, but the knowledge
that he sent an innocent man to Sing Sing may possibly have caused him
some uneasy and regretful moments.”
“Well,” said Riley slowly, as he narrowly eyed his fellow prisoner, “you
spiels it like you was talking gospel. Mebbe it’s true.”
“It _is_ true,” asserted Clarence Sage. “Think what it meant, Riley, not
only to me, but to my people. I have the finest mother a boy ever had.
The thought of her shame and suffering has been gall and wormwood to
me.”
“My old mother,” said Riley, with a touch of sentiment, “was dead and
buried before I was pinched the first time, thank Heaven!”
Sage bowed his head and spoke in a low tone, his gaze fixed upon the
floor.
“It was to get another look at my mother’s face that I returned to
Oakdale. I was here a week ago, and I went away without obtaining a
glimpse of her. In all the years that I was supposed to be dead I have
carried her image in my heart, and it was the knowledge of her faith in
me—for she never believed me guilty—that kept me straight, I believe.
I’ve knocked about in many places and associated with all sorts of men,
some of them honest, but many more who were crooks. I’ve roughed it in
Alaska, sailed before the mast, starved and nearly died from fever in
the Philippines, tried my hand at coal mining in Australia; and through
it all the knowledge of my mother’s faith has kept me straight, even
though I’ve had many a chance to turn a good thing by crookedness. At
last, believing there was little danger, I came back and hunted for my
people. I found them here, and here I have likewise found my undoing.”
“Tough luck,” said Riley again. “They’ll send you back to the jug.”
“No doubt of it. I’ll have to serve out my term, with an additional
period hitched on to it because of my break. There’s water in my veins,
Riley; the dread of what I’m up against takes the heart out of me.
Perhaps you don’t know what it is to be sent to prison with the
knowledge that you’re innocent and serving time for the crime of another
man.”
“It must be fierce,” said Riley sympathetically. “And you say he put it
on you at the trial? Pal, if I was in your boots, he’d get hisn some
day. When I’d done my turn and been discharged, I’d look the gent up and
hand him something he’d remember—if he was in shape to remember
anything.”
“That would be poor satisfaction to me. It wouldn’t clear my name of the
crime. It might mean that I’d be sent up again for another, still
greater, crime. The only thing in this wide world that can ever give me
the least satisfaction is proof of my innocence. I’ve dreamed of
it—dreamed of it a million times. I’ve dreamed of standing before the
world free and exonerated. Of going to my old mother and feeling her
arms about my neck and her tears upon my cheeks, and hearing her glad
cry, ‘I knew it, my boy—I knew it!’ Nothing but that, Riley, can ever
satisfy me, and if there’s any justice under Heaven it will come some
day.”
“I hope so, pal—I hope so,” said Riley, with genuine sympathy. “I’m just
a plain crook, and nothing else; but for an honest man to be marked as a
crook by the bulls and people in general—why, that’s blazes, sure.”