Why I should have chosen, haphazard, and solely because it chanced to
be the first that offered, a train which numbered among its passengers
not only a man from my home town of Glendale, but also the deputy
warden of the penitentiary, is one of those mysteries of coincidence
which we discredit impatiently when we run across them in fiction, but
which, nevertheless, are constantly recurring in every-day life.
For the moment I was desperately panic-stricken. It seemed blankly
impossible that Cummings should not see and recognize me at once. I
could have sworn that he was looking straight at me while the steward
kept him waiting. My terror must have shown itself in my face, since
Barton spoke up quickly.
"Why, say--what's struck you, Bert?--are you sick?" he demanded; and
then he supplied an answer to his own query: "I ought to be kicked
around the block for loading you up with a big dining-car breakfast
when you had just told me that you were off your feed. Cut it short
and we'll trot up ahead and smoke a cigar. That'll help you get away
with it."
The steward had found Cummings a seat at the forward end of the car,
and how to pass him without detection was a problem that made me dizzy
with the nausea of fear. Barton, with the lordly manner of the
American salesman away from home, made it possible. Snapping his
fingers for a waiter he paid for the breakfasts before we left our
seats, and then quickly led the way forward. At the pause in the
vestibule, while Barton was answering the steward's query as to how we
had been served, I could have reached out and touched Cummings's
shoulder. But the deputy warden was running an investigative finger
down the menu card and he did not see me.
It may say itself that I was in no condition to enjoy the
after-breakfast cigar burned in the smoking-room of Barton's Pullman,
where the wagon salesman's tips, or his good-natured insistence, again
made me welcome. Every moment I expected to see the door curtain flung
aside to admit the burly figure of William Cummings. True, there were
a number of Pullmans in the train, and it was possible that I might not
be in the smoking-room of his car. But it was enough, and more than
enough, to know that we were fellow-travelers on the same train.
There is little use piling on the agony by trying to tell what I
suffered during this forenoon of nerve-racking torture and suspense.
Let it be sufficient to say that the torments ended for me at Decatur,
Illinois, when, at the train stop, I saw Cummings cross the platform to
a street-car followed by a station porter carrying his grip. Barton
marked the change in me at once.
"By George, Bert, what did you see in that platform jumble to make you
look as if you had suddenly taken on a new lease of life?" he inquired
jestingly. Then he passed the ever-ready cigarcase. "Smoke up, and
after a bit we'll go and try it on the dog--see if a second meal in the
diner will come as near to upsetting you as the first one did. Say,
don't you know, I'm bully glad we met up in the smoker this morning? I
was rawhiding myself to beat the everlasting band at the prospect of
having to make this long, tiresome day jump alone, and it's done me a
heap of good to talk you to frazzles. And that reminds me: you haven't
told me yet where you are heading for."
I had not; and what was more, I did not mean to. There were distant
relatives on my mother's side of the family living somewhere in central
Missouri, and I spoke of them.
"Sedalla, you say?" he commented. "Well, if that's the how of it, I
may see you again in a day or so, and here's hoping. I have a horrible
suspicion that our St. Louis general agent wants me to chase out with
him and dig up some of his dead-alive country dealers. We sell a raft
of wagons in Missouri."
It was just here that it occurred to me that Barton was carrying it off
pretty toppingly for a mere traveling salesman; also that he dressed
better, smoked better cigars, and seemed a good bit freer with his
money than such a job warranted.
"You were selling Whiteley Wagons by yourself, when I dropped out," I
said. "Have I been doing you an injustice by not allowing for a
promotion in the three years and a half?"
"You sure have!" he laughed. "In the reorganization a year ago they
made me sales manager. Oh, yes, Bert; I've blossomed out some since
you knew me. I've actually got a little chunk of stock in the concern.
You never would have thought it of old Hod Barton, would you? Look at
this."
He reached into a pocket and pulled out a money roll, riffling the ends
of the bills between thumb and forefinger to let me see that the
denominations were all comfortably large. There was something
instantly suggestive in the bit of braggadocio; a feeling that I had
seen somebody do that same thing in exactly that same way once before.
But before I could follow up the impression he was making me an offer
which put everything but his free-hearted generosity out of my mind.
"You haven't said a word, Bert, and if it's none of my business, you
can tell me so--but if a couple of these yellow-backs would come in
handy to you just now, they're yours and you can toss 'em back to me
any old time when you're good and ready."
I shook my head and thanked him out of a full heart. The purchase of
the Denver ticket hadn't left me much of a balance out of the black
pocketbook's holdings, but I couldn't borrow of Barton; that was out of
the question.
Shortly after this we had another meal together in the dining-car, and
this time there were no sudden alarms to make me turn sick and panicky.
Afterward, I made another attempt to return to my place in the forward
end of the train, but since Barton would not hear of it, we spent the
remainder of the short afternoon in the Pullman smoker.
During this interval, Barton did most of the talking, growing
confidential along toward the last and telling me a lot about the girl
he was going to marry--the youngest daughter of good old Judge Haskins,
of Jefferson--the man who had sentenced me. If all the world loves a
lover, certainly no considerable part of it cares to pay strict
attention while he descants at length upon the singular and altogether
transcendent charms of the loved one; and when Barton got fairly
started I had time to consider another matter which was of far greater
importance to me.
Earlier in the day Barton had assured me that he would not fail to go
and see my mother and sister when he returned to Glendale. I could
scarcely urge him not to do so, though I knew very well that he would
not stop with telling the home-folks; that he would doubtless tell
every Tom, Dick and Harry in town how he had met me, and where. What I
was asking myself as he burbled on about Peggy Haskins was whether I
might dare give him the one cautionary word which would reveal the true
state of affairs. In the end I decided that it would be most
imprudent, not to say disastrous. He would have sympathized with me
instantly and heartily, but the knowledge would have been as fire to
tow when he got back where he could talk. I could foresee just how it
would bubble out of him as he button-holed each fresh listener: "Say!
you must keep it midnight dark, old man, but I met Bert Weyburn on the
train: he's jumped his parole and, skipped--lit out--vanished! Not a
word to any living soul, mind you; this is a dead secret. We mustn't
give him away, you know,"--and a lot more of the same sort.
The arrival of the through train in the great echoing Terminal at St.
Louis was timed accurately with the coming of a gloomy twilight fitly
climaxing the bleak and stormy day. Having no hand-baggage I was the
first to leave the Pullman, and on the platform I waited for Barton who
had gone back into the body of the car to get his coat and hat and
bags. As he ran down the steps and gave his two suit cases to the
nearest red-cap, the links in a vague chain of recognition snapped
themselves suddenly into a complete whole, and I knew instantly why the
thumbing of the pocket-roll in my friend's generous offer to lend me
money had struck the chord of familiarity. The two hand-bags turned
over to the platform porter were the same two that I had seen snatched
out of a cab in front of the Marlborough entrance while their owner was
digging in his pockets for the cab fare, and the coat and hat Barton
had donned for the debarking were the fur-lined luxury and the soft
felt worn by the man who had dropped the black pocket-book.
"Well, old boy," he said, gripping my hand in leave-taking, "the best
of friends must part. I suppose you'll wait here to take your Sedalla
train. Maybe we'll get together again in a day or so. If we
shouldn't, here's hoping that the world uses you well from this on--to
sort of make up for what has gone, you know."
"Wait a minute," I gasped, as he was turning to follow the red-cap.
"You said you were at the Marlborough last night. I was there--on
an--on an errand. Did you come in late?--in a cab?"
"I did; and I had a funny experience--or have I told you about it?"
"No, you didn't tell me," I contrived to say.
"I didn't know but I had; I've talked so much about everything to-day.
It was this way: when I got out of the cab I saw a sort of hobo-ish
looking fellow standing at the curb with his hands in his pockets and
all doubled over as if he were cold. It never occurred to me for a
minute that he was anything but what he looked to be."
The porter, with Barton's suit-cases, was disappearing in the direction
of the cab stand, and I suggested that we walk along. I had learned
all I needed to know. But Horace Barton never left a story unfinished
if he could help it.
"Yes, sir; that fellow fooled me good and proper," he went on, as we
hurried to overtake the suit-cases. "He wasn't any hobo at all; he was
a pickpocket, and one of the finest. I was hunting for a half-dollar
to pay the cabby, and I could have sworn that that 'dip' never got
within six feet of me. And yet he 'frisked' me before I could get
across the sidewalk and into the hotel. Luckily, all he got was a
little pocketbook with some sixty or so dollars in it."
"You reported your loss to the police?" I asked.
"Not for one little minute!" was the laughing rejoinder. "I didn't
discover the loss until after I got up to my room and found the St.
Louis wire waiting for me; and then there wasn't time. But I shouldn't
have done it anyway. Any fellow fly enough to do me that way when I'm
wide awake and 'at' myself is welcome to all he gets. . . . Well,
here's our jumping-off place, I guess. My man 'll be waiting for me at
the Southern, and I must go. Take care of yourself, and so long!"
I let him go; saw him climb into a cab and disappear. There was
nothing to be done about the money, of course: I had spent more than
half of it for my Denver ticket. But, since honesty, like all other
human attributes, dies hard in any soil where it has once taken root, I
turned away with a great thankfulness in my heart. The owner of the
black pocketbook was found, and some day he should have his own
again--with interest.
Nothing of any consequence happened after Barton left me. Finding upon
inquiry that the westbound connecting train would not leave until eight
o'clock, I ventured out in search of a slop-shop where I could purchase
a cheap suit to go with the clean shirt and collar given me by the
free-handed sales manager. The purchase left me with less than ten
dollars in my pocket, but it made a new man of me otherwise. In the
old life at home I had never dreamed that a few rags and wisps of
cloth, properly sewed together, make all the difference in a moralizing
world between the man and the vagrant.
There was a wreck on the Missouri road some time during the night, and
our train was caught behind it and delayed. For this reason another
rainy afternoon was drawing to its close when I had my first glimpse of
Kansas City, high-perched on its hills from my glimpsing view-point on
the opposite bank of the Missouri River, but low-lying and crowded to
suffocation with railroad yards in that part of it where the train came
to a stand.
As a matter of course, I had missed my proper Denver connection, owing
to the wreck delay. But, a passenger agent directing me, I found the
evening Union Pacific train waiting at another platform. A short
half-hour later the tangle of railroad yards in the river "bottoms" was
left behind and the overland train was boring westward into a cloudy
night through Kansas.
With the welcoming West lying fair and free before me, the memory of
the prison years and of the parole purgatory to which they had led was
already beginning to fade into a limbo of things past and irrevocable,
and therefore to be quickly and decently forgotten. There should be a
new life in the new world, and the humiliation and disgrace of the past
should be so deeply burled that it could never be resurrected. I was
still under twenty-nine, it must be remembered, and at that age Hope,
the one human quality which seems to have in it the precious germ of
immortality, will flap its wings over the most wretched ash-heap that
was ever blown together by the bleak winds of misfortune.
X