The depressive journey from Colorado to the Middle West records itself
in memory as a dismal dream out of which there were awakenings only for
train-changings or a word of talk now and then with Cummings. The
deputy warden was a reticent man; somber almost to sadness, as befitted
his calling; but he was neither morose nor churlish. Underneath the
official crust he was a man like other men; was, I say, because he is
dead now.
On the final day of the journey I persuaded him to tell me how I had
been traced, and I was still human enough to find a grain of comfort in
the assurance that Agatha Geddis had not taken my money at the last
only to turn and betray me.
Barton, the Glendale wagon sales manager, was the one who was
innocently responsible. He had talked too much, as I had feared he
would. The clue thus furnished had been lost in St. Louis, but was
picked up again, some months later, by Cummings himself through the
police-record photograph in Denver.
Cummings admitted that he had followed Polly and me on our wedding
journey; that he had known where we were stopping, and had seen us in
the canyon-brink hotel.
"Why didn't you take me then?" I asked.
He explained gruffly that the requisition papers with which he was
provided were good only in Colorado, and that it was simpler to wait
than to go through all the red tape of having them reissued for
Arizona. Knowing that the wires were completely at his service, the
answer did not satisfy me.
"Was that the only reason?" I queried.
He turned his sober eyes on me and shook his head sorrowfully, I
thought.
"I was young once, myself, Weyburn--and I had a wife: she died when the
baby came. Maybe you deserve what's coming to you, and maybe you
don't; but that little woman o' yours will never have another
honeymoon."
Disquieting visions of harsh prison punishments were oppressing me when
we reached the penitentiary and I was taken before the eagle-eyed old
Civil War veteran who had given me my parole. But the warden merely
put me through a shrewd questioning, inquiring closely into my
experiences as a paroled man, and making me tell him circumstantially
the story of my indictment, trial and conviction, and also the later
story of the mining experience in Colorado.
"I don't recall that you ever protested your innocence while you were
here serving your time, Weyburn," he commented, at the dose of the
inquisition.
"I didn't," I replied, wondering why he should go behind the returns to
remark the omission. Then I added: "They all do that, and it doesn't
change 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 me
now?" he demanded.
I met the test soberly. "I can. I was convicted of a crime that I
didn't commit, and I broke my parole solely because that appeared to be
the one remaining alternative to becoming a criminal in fact."
The interview over, I expected to be put into stripes, cropped, and
sent to the workshops. But instead I was taken to one of the detention
cells, and for an interval which slowly lengthened itself into a week
was left a prey to all the devils of solitude. It seemed as if I had
been buried out of sight and forgotten. Three times a day a kitchen
"trusty" brought my meals and put them through the door wicket, but
apart from this I saw no one save the corridor guard, who never so much
as looked my way in his comings and goings.
That week of palsying, unnerving isolation got me. Consider it for a
moment. For a year I had been living at the very heart of life,
working, fighting, scheming, mixing and mingling, and succeeding--not
only in the money-winning, but also--until the Agatha Geddis incident
came along--in the field of good repute. At the last Agatha had set me
free, and Polly's love had opened the ultimate door of supreme
happiness; a joy so ecstatic that at the end of the honeymoon I was
only beginning to realize what it meant to me.
And then, on the very summit of the mountain of joy, had come the touch
of the deputy warden's hand on my shoulder in the Antlers dining-room.
That touch had swept the new-born world ruthlessly aside--all save
Polly's love and loyalty. Success had been blotted out with the loss
of liberty wherewith to profit by it; and for those who had known me in
the great gold camp and elsewhere in the West--my new friends--I was
branded as an escaped convict. For two shameful years I should be shut
away from Polly, from freedom, from participation in the fight my
partners were making to save the mine, and most probably from any
knowledge 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 was
little better than a mad-man? If I might have had speech with the
warden, I should have prayed for work; for any employment, however hard
or menial, that would serve to stop the sapping of the very foundations
of reason. One hope I clung to, as the drowning catch at straws. I
could not doubt that Polly was near at hand. If the regular "visiting
day" should intervene they would surely admit her. But in this, too, I
was unlucky. The date of my reincarceration fell between two of the
regular visiting days. So I waited and looked and longed in vain.
I don't know how many more circlings of the clock-hands were measured
off before the break came. I lost count of the time by days and was no
longer able to think clearly. In perfect physical condition when I was
arrested, I began to go to pieces, both mentally and physically, under
the strain of suspense. Then insomnia came to add its terrors; I could
neither eat nor sleep. I had an ominous foreboding of what the total
loss of appetite meant, and kept telling myself over and over that for
Polly's sake I must fight to save my sanity.
Under such conditions I was beginning to see things where there was
nothing to be seen on the day when I had my first visitor, and the
shock of surprise when the cell door was opened to admit Cyrus
Whitredge, the lawyer whose bungling defense had done so little to
stave off my conviction, was almost like a premonition of further
disaster. Before I could rise from my seat on the cot he was shaking
hands with me and twisting his dry, leathery face into its nearest
approach to a smile.
"Don't bother to get up, Bert," he began effusively. "Just stay right
where you are and take it easy. I've been trying for three solid days
to 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're
off your feed. That won't do, you know--won't do at all. We are going
to get you right out of this, one way or another, mighty quick. You've
taken your medicine like a man, and we don't propose to let 'em give
you a second dose of it--not by a jugful."
All this was so totally unlike the Whitredge I had known that I fairly
gasped. Then I reflected--while he was drawing up the single
three-legged stool and sitting down--that in all probability the Little
Clean-Up was responsible for the change in him. I was no longer a poor
bank 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 as
soon as the news of your arrest came I made preparations to drop
everything else, right away, and get into the fight. You got your
sentence and served it, and we'll scrap 'em awhile on the proposition
of bringing you back for more of it simply because you happened to
forget, one day, and step over the State boundaries. I don't know but
what we could show that the law is unconstitutional, if we had to. But
it won't come to anything like that, I guess."