The driver arrived on the minute, backed up to the sprawling wooden
steps, and kicked open the door of the waiting-room with his foot.
"All right, boss, I got two passengers 'stead o' one, but you won't
kick, I know. You git in; I'll go for the mail." The promotion and the
confidential tone were intended as a compliment.
I slipped into my fur overcoat; slid my manuscript into the outside
pocket, and followed the driver out into the cold night. The only
light visible came from a smoky kerosene lamp boxed in at the far end
of the stage and protected by a pane of glass labeled in red paint,
"Fare, ten cents."
Close to its rays sat a man, and close to the man--so close that I
mistook her for an overcoat thrown over his arm--cuddled a little
girl, the light of the lamp falling directly on her face. She was
about ten years of age, and wore a cheap woolen hood tied close to her
face, and a red shawl crossed over her chest and knotted behind her
back. Her hair was yellow and weather-burned, as if she had played out
of doors all her life; her eyes were pale blue, and her face freckled.
Neither she nor the man made any answer to my salutation.
The child looked up into the man's face and shrugged her shoulders
with a slight shiver. The man drew her closer to him, as if to warm
her the better, and felt her chapped red hands. In the movement his
face came into view. He was, perhaps, thirty years of age--wiry and
well built, with an oval face ending in a pointed Vandyke beard;
piercing brown eyes, finely chiseled nose, and a well-modeled mouth
over which drooped a blond mustache. He was dressed in a dark blue
flannel shirt, with loose sailor collar tied with a red 'kerchief, and
a black, stiff-brimmed army-shaped hat a little drawn down over his
eyes. Buttoned over his chest was a heavy waistcoat made of a white
and gray deerskin, with the hair on the outside. His trousers, which
fitted snugly his slender, shapely legs, were tucked into his boots.
He wore no coat, despite the cold.
A typical young westerner, I said to myself--one of the bone and sinew
of the land--accustomed to live anywhere in these mountains--cold
proof, of course, or he'd wear a coat on a night like this. Taking his
little sister home, I suppose. The country will never go to the dogs
as long as we have these young fellows to fall back upon. Then my eyes
rested with pleasure on the pointed beard, the peculiar curve of the
hat-brim, the slender waist corrugating the soft fur of the deerskin
waistcoat, and the peculiar set of his trousers and boots--like those
of an Austrian on parade. And how picturesque, I thought. What an
admirable costume for the ideal cowboy or the romantic mountain ranger
who comes in at the nick of time to save the young maiden; and what a
hit the favorite of the footlights would make if he could train his
physique down to such wire-drawn, alert, panther-like outlines and--
A heavy object struck the boot of the stage and interrupted my
meditations. It was the mail-bag. The next instant the driver's head
was thrust in the door.
"Dick, this is the man I told you was goin' 'long far as Bingville.
He's got a show up to the college."
I started, hardly believing my ears. Shades of D'Artagnan, Davy
Crockett, and Daniel Boone! Could this lithe, well-knit, brown-eyed
young Robin Hood be a convict?
"Are you Dick Sands?" I faltered out.
"Yes, that's what they call me when I'm out of jail. When I'm in I'm
known as One Hundred and Two."
He spoke calmly, quite as if I had asked him his age--the voice clear
and low, with a certain cadence that surprised me all the more. His
answer, too, convinced me that the driver had told him of my
time-honored views on solitary confinement, and that it had disposed
him to be more or less frank toward me. If he expected, however, any
further outburst of sympathy from me he was disappointed. The surprise
had been so great, and the impression he had made upon me so
favorable, that it would have been impossible for me to remind him
even in the remotest way of his former misfortunes.
The child looked at me with her pale eyes, and crept still closer,
holding on to the man's arm, steadying herself as the stage bumped
over the crossings.
For some minutes I kept still, my topics of conversation especially
adapted to convicts being limited. Despite my implied boasting to the
driver, I had never, to my knowledge, met one before. Then, again, I
had not yet adjusted my mind to the fact that the man before me had
ever worn stripes. So I said, aimlessly:--
"Is that your little sister?"
"No, I haven't got any little sister," still in the same calm voice.
"This is Ben Mulford's girl; she lives next to me, and I am taking her
down for the ride. She's coming back."
The child's hand stole along the man's knee, found his fingers and
held on. I kept silence for a while, wondering what I would say next.
I felt that to a certain extent I was this man's guest, and therefore
under obligation to preserve the amenities. I began again:--
"The driver tells me your mother's sick?"
"Yes, she is. She went over to her sister's last week and got cold.
She isn't what she was--I being away from her so much lately. I got
two terms; last time for five years. Every little thing now knocks her
out."
He raised his head and looked at me calmly--all over--examining each
detail,--my derby hat, white tie, fur overcoat, along my arms to my
gloves, and slowly down to my shoes.
"I s'pose you never done no time?" He had no suspicion that I had; he
only meant to be amiable.
"No," I said, with equal simplicity, meeting him on his own
ground--quite as if an attack of measles at some earlier age was under
discussion, to which he had fallen a victim while I had escaped. As he
spoke his fingers tightened over the child's hand. Then he turned and
straightened her hood, tucking the loose strands of hair under its
edge with his fingers.
"You seem rather fond of that little girl; is she any relation?" I
asked, forgetting that I had asked almost that same question before.
"No, she isn't any relation--just Ben Mulford's girl." He raised his
other hand and pressed the child's head down upon the deerskin
waistcoat, close into the fur, with infinite tenderness. The child
reached up her small, chapped hand and laid it on his cheek, cuddling
closer, a shy, satisfied smile overspreading her face.
My topics were exhausted, and we rode on in silence, he sitting in
front of me, his eyes now so completely hidden in the shadow of his
broad-brimmed hat that I only knew they were fixed on me when some
sudden tilt of the stage threw the light full on his face. I tried
offering him a cigar, but he would not smoke--"had gotten out of the
habit of it," he said, "being shut up so long. It didn't taste good to
him, so he had given it up."
When the stage reached the crossing near the college gate and stopped,
he asked quietly:--
"You get out here?" and lifted the child as he spoke so that her
soiled shoes would not scrape my coat. In the action I saw that his
leg pained him, for he bent it suddenly and put his hand on the
kneecap.
"I hope your mother will be better," I said. "Good-night; good-night,
little girl."
"Thank you; good-night," he answered quickly, with a strain of sadness
that I had not caught before. The child raised her eyes to mine, but
did not speak.
I mounted the hill to the big college building, and stopped under a
light to look back; following with my eyes the stage on its way to the
station. The child was on her knees, looking at me out of the window
and waving her hand, but the man sat by the lamp, his head on his
chest.
* * * * *
All through my discourse the picture of that keen-eyed, handsome young
fellow, with his pointed beard and picturesque deerskin waistcoat, the
little child cuddled down upon his breast, kept coming before me.
When I had finished, and was putting on my coat in the president's
room,--the landlord had sent his team to bring me back,--I asked one
of the professors, a dry, crackling, sandy-haired professor, with
bulging eyes and watch-crystal spectacles, if he knew of a man by the
name of Sands who had lived in Hell's Diggings with his mother, and
who had served two terms in state's prison, and I related my
experience in the stage, telling him of the impression his face and
bearing had made upon me, and of his tenderness to the child beside
him.
"No, my dear sir, I never heard of him. Hell's Diggings is a most
unsafe and unsavory locality. I would advise you to be very careful in
returning. The rogue will probably be lying in wait to rob you of your
fee;" and he laughed a little harsh laugh that sounded as if some one
had suddenly torn a coarse rag.
"But the child with him," I said; "he seemed to love her."
"That's no argument, my dear sir. If he has been twice in state's
prison he probably belongs to that class of degenerates in whom all
moral sense is lacking. I have begun making some exhaustive
investigations of the data obtainable on this subject, which I have
embodied in a report, and which I propose sending to the State
Committee on the treatment of criminals, and which"----
"Do you know any criminals personally?" I asked blandly, cutting
short, as I could see, an extract from the report. His manner, too,
strange to say, rather nettled me.
"Thank God, no, sir; not one! Do you?"
"I am not quite sure," I answered. "I thought I had, but I may have
been mistaken."