"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 that
had happened or might happen, I believe I was ready to tell him; but to
my astonishment the curt questioning which all my previous experience
had 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 the
eye. "I'm not going to ask you why you quit bank bookkeeping to come
out here and swing a pick in a construction camp. Here in the tall
hills we don't think much of digging up graves--the graves of any man's
past. You've done well in every job we've tried you at, and that's all
to the good for you."
I said I had tried to fill the bill as well as I knew how, and he took
me up promptly.
"We know you have; and that brings on more talk. Kenniston is leaving
us to go prospecting. We've talked it over--Shelton and I--and you're
to 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 I
been confronted with a test so gripping. Would this large-hearted man
turn the keys of his money chest over to me if he knew I were an
ex-convict, liable at any moment to be re-arrested for having broken my
parole? I was silent so long that he began again.
"Looking around for a spade to begin the grave-digging?" he asked, with
a 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 who
hasn't, at one time or another, had to dig a hole and bury something
decently out of sight. Whatever you may have done in the past, you're
not 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 to
the 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 tempting
Providence to allow the presence in camp of a burglar who was probably
only 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, if
he had already recognized me as I had him, would not be slow to take
advantage 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 the
way; obstacles which I had not before stopped to consider. If I should
accuse Dorgan, he might retaliate by telling what he knew of me. This
difficulty was brushed aside at once: I judged there was little to fear
from this, in view of what Hadley had just said to me. But there was
another obstacle; the one which had kept me silent from the day I had
first seen Dorgan driving his track-layers. With a crushing sense of
degradation I realized the full force of the motive for silence, as I
had not up to this time. With every fiber of me protesting that I must
be loyal to my employers at any and all costs, that other loyalty, the
tie that binds the branded, proved the stronger. I could not bring
myself to the point of sending Dorgan, guilty as he doubtless was, back
to the living death of the "long-termer." I make no excuses. One
cannot touch pitch and escape defilement in some sort. For three years
I had lived among criminals; and the bond . . . but I have said all
this before.
It may be imagined with what inward tremblings I took on the duties of
the new job the next day. Kenniston, eager to be gone on his
prospecting tour, gave me only a short forenoon over the pay-rolls; but
as to this, the routine was simple enough. It was what he said at
parting 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 you
late for banking hours, but if you wire ahead they'll have the money
counted out and ready for you. Then you can catch the evening train to
the junction and come up on one of the construction engines. Better
take one of the commissary .45's along, just for safety's sake--though
in 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-books
to check and enter, commissary deductions to be made, and the payrolls
to be gotten out. My office was a small room or space partitioned off
from the commissary, the partition being of matched boards,
breast-high, and above that a rough slat grille like those in country
railroad stations. As I worked at the bracketed shelf which served as
a high desk, I could see the interior of the commissary, and those who
came and went. It may have been only a fancy, but it seemed to me that
Dorgan came in oftener than usual; and more than once I caught him
peering at me through the slatted grille, with the convict's trick of
looking aside without turning his head. It was for this reason, more
than for any other, that I recalled Kenniston's advice and armed myself
when I went to Cripple Creek on the day before pay-day to get the money
from the bank.
The short journey to town was uneventful. A construction locomotive
took me down to the main line junction, where I caught the regular
train from Denver. But on the way from the railroad station to the
bank in Cripple Creek I had a shock, followed instantly by the
conviction that I was in for trouble. On the opposite side of the
street, and keeping even pace with me, I saw Dorgan.
Barrett (for obvious reasons I cannot use real names) was the man I had
been told to ask for at the bank, and it was he who admitted me at the
side door, the hour being well past the close of business. He was a
clean-cut, alert young fellow; a Westerner, I judged, only by recent
adoption.
"You are Bertrand, from the Hadley and Shelton camps?" he asked; and
then, as I produced my check and letter of authority; "You don't need
the letter. Kenniston told me what you'd look like. Your money is
ready."
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 start
back. Barrett walked to the railroad station with me, helping with the
valise money bag, which was heavy with a good bit of coin for making
change. We got better acquainted on the walk, and I warmed immediately
to the frank, open-mannered young bank teller, little dreaming what
this acquaintance, begun in pure business routine, was destined to lead
to in the near future.
Barrett saw me safely aboard of my return train, and stood on the
platform at the open window of the car talking to me until the train
started. On my part this leave-taking talk was more or less
perfunctory; I was scanning the platform throng anxiously in search of
a certain heavy-shouldered man with a sinister face; and when, just as
the train began to move, I saw Dorgan swing himself up to the step of
the car ahead, I knew what was before me--or thought I did--and
surreptitiously drew the .45 from the inside coat-pocket where I had
carried it, twirling the cylinder to make sure that it was loaded and
in serviceable condition.
There was an excellent chance for a hold-up at the junction. It was
coming on to dusk as the through train made the stop, and there was no
town, not even a station; nothing but a water tank and the littered
jumble of a construction yard. My engine was making up a train of
material cars to be taken to our end-of-track camp, and I had to wait
for it to come within hailing distance.
Dorgan got off the through train at the same time that I did. I stood
with the money valise between my feet and folded my arms with a hand
inside of my coat and grasping the butt of the big revolver, shaking a
bit 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 of
a stubby black pipe. After a little time, and before it was quite
dark, my engine backed down to where I was standing and I climbed
aboard with my money bag, still with an eye on Dorgan. The last I saw
of him he was sitting on the end of a cross-tie, pulling away at his
pipe and apparently oblivious to me and to everything else. But I made
sure that when the material train should pull out he would be aboard of
it; 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 with
my feet on it, and with the big revolver lying across my knees. After
supper I lugged my responsibility over to the commissary pay-office,
and by the flickering light of a miner's candle stowed the money in the
ramshackle 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 for
the men to be buying much--and the clerk who had taken over my former
job shut up shop quite early. At nine o'clock I was alone in the
store-room building; and at a little before ten I put out the lights
and lay down on the office cot with a sawed-off Winchester--a part of
the pay-office armament--lying on the mattress beside me.
A foolish thing to do, you say?--when at a word I might have had all
the help I needed in guarding the pay-money? No; it wasn't altogether
foolhardiness; it was partly weakness. For, twist and turn it as I
might, there was always the unforgivable thing at the end: the fact
that by calling in help and betraying Dorgan to others, I, once his
prison-mate, and even now, like him--though in a lesser degree--a
law-breaker, would become a "snitch," an informer, a traitor to my
kind. A wretchedly distorted point of view? Doubtless it was. But
the three years of unmerited punishment and criminal associations must
account for it as they may.
I don't know how long the silent watch was maintained. One by one the
night noises of the camp died down and the stillness of the solitudes
enveloped the commissary. The responsibility I was carrying should
have kept me awake, but it didn't. If the coming of sleep had been
gradual I might have fought it off, but the healthy life of the camp
had given me leave to eat like a workingman and to fall asleep like one
when the day was ended. So after the stillness had fairly laid hold of
me I was gone before I knew it.
When I opened my eyes it was with a startled conviction that I was no
longer alone in the little boxed-in office. In the murky indoor
darkness of a moonless night I could barely distinguish the
surroundings, the shelf-desk, the black bulk of the old safe, the
three-legged stool, and at the end of the room the gray patch which
placed the single window. Then, with a cold sweat starting from every
pore, I saw the humped figure of a man beside the safe. As nearly as I
could make out, he was sitting with his back to the wall and his knees
drawn up, and by listening intently I could hear his measured breathing.
It required a greater amount of brute courage than I had thought it
would to spring to a sitting posture on the cot and cover the squatting
figure with the rifle slewed into position across my knees. The man
made no move to obey when I ordered him to hold up his hands. Then I
spoke 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 are
and what you are here for."
A voice, harsh but neither threatening nor pleading, came out of the
shadows beside the safe.
"You ain't tellin' me nothin' new, pally. I spotted you a good while
back, and I knowed you'd lamped me. You was lookin' f'r me to bust in
here to-night?"
"I was. After you followed me to Cripple Creek and back I knew about
what to expect."
"And you was layin' f'r me alone?--when you could 'a' had Collins and
Nixon and half a dozen more if yous 'd squealed f'r 'em?"
"I didn't need any better help than this," I answered, patting the
stock of the Winchester. "The jig's up, Dorgan. You can't crack this
safe while I'm here and alive. I suppose you got in by the window: you
can go out the same way."
"You're aimin' to turn me loose?" said the voice, and now I fancied
there 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 it
is and let out a yell 'r two, you can earn five hundred doughboys. Ye
didn't know that, did you?"
"I know you broke jail and skipped for it, but I didn't know how much
the warden was willing to pay to get you back."
"It's five hundred bones, all right. Study a minute: don't you want
the 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 it
endured the man sat motionless, with his back against the wall and his
hands locked over his knees. Then: "They'd all pat you on the back if
yous was to let out that yell. I brought ten years with me when the
warden give me my number, and I'm thinkin' they was comin' to me--all
o' 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'd
squeeze 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 you
knew 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 sure
did 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 corner
beside the safe, and at the same instant a blurring of the gray patch
of the window, a sash rising almost noiselessly, and two men, following
each other like substance and shadow, legging themselves into the
office over the window-sill. At first I thought Dorgan had set a trap
for me; but before that unworthy suspicion could draw its second
breath, 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 the
darkness and the contracted fighting space constrained it to be.
Though I dared not shoot, I contrived to use the rifle as a club on the
man who was trying to choke Dorgan from behind, and after a
hard-breathing minute or two we had them both down, one of them half
stunned by the blow on his head from the gun-barrel, and the other with
an arm twisted and temporarily useless. Under Dorgan's directions I
cut a couple of lengths from a rope coil in the commissary with which
we tied the pair hand and foot, dragging them afterward to the freer
floor space beyond the pay-office partition.
"They'll be stayin' put till mornin', I'm thinkin'," was Dorgan's
comment as we retreated to the scene of the battle. Then, as he edged
toward 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 cot
beside me. "I want to know a few things first. You knew about the
raid these fellows were planning?"
"Sure, I did."
"Tell me about it."
"I piped 'em off about a week ago--when Kenniston 'd gone. They talked
too much, and too loud, d'ye see? The lay was f'r to chase in to the
Creek 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 the
contempt of the real craftsman for a pair of amateurs. "D'ye see, the
boss 'd been dippy enough to write the combination on a piece o' paper
when Kenniston ducked out--f'r fear he'd be forgettin' it, maybe, and
these dubs o' the world nipped the paper."
"See here, Dorgan; was that why you followed me to town this
afternoon?" I shot at him.
"Ye've guessed it."
"And it was for the same reason that you sneaked in here while I was
asleep?"
"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 his
elbows resting on his knees.
"I'm thinkin' maybe it's six o' one and a half-dozen o' tother," he
said soberly. "I wasn't carin' so damned much about the bosses, square
as they've been to me. But I puts it up like this: here's you, and
you'd spotted me, and you hadn't snitched; you'd been in 'stir'
yourself, and knowed what it was: d'ye see?"