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Gunsight Pass, a fiction by William MacLeod Raine |
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Chapter 15. In Denver |
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_ CHAPTER XV. IN DENVER The warden handed him a ticket back to Denver, and with it a stereotyped little lecture of platitudes. "Your future lies before you to be made or marred by yourself, Sanders. You owe it to the Governor who has granted this parole and to the good friends who have worked so hard for it that you be honest and industrious and temperate. If you do this the world will in time forget your past mistakes and give you the right hand of fellowship, as I do now." The paroled man took the fat hand proffered him because he knew the warden was a sincere humanitarian. He meant exactly what he said. Perhaps he could not help the touch of condescension. But patronage, no matter how kindly meant, was one thing this tall, straight convict would not stand. He was quite civil, but the hard, cynical eyes made the warden uncomfortable. Once or twice before he had known prisoners like this, quiet, silent men who were never insolent, but whose eyes told him that the iron had seared their souls. The voice of the warden dropped briskly to business. "Seen the bookkeeper? Everything all right, I suppose." "Yes, sir." "Good. Well, wish you luck." "Thanks." The convict turned away, grave, unsmiling. The prison officer's eyes followed him a little wistfully. His function, as he understood it, was to win these men back to fitness for service to the society which had shut them up for their misdeeds. They were not wild beasts. They were human beings who had made a misstep. Sometimes he had been able to influence men strongly, but he felt that it had not been true of this puncher from the cow country. Sanders walked slowly out of the office and through the door in the wall that led back to life. He was free. To-morrow was his. All the to-morrows of all the years of his life were waiting for him. But the fact stirred in him no emotion. As he stood in the dry Colorado sunshine his heart was quite dead. In the earlier days of his imprisonment it had not been so. He had dreamed often of this hour. At night, in the darkness of his cell, imagination had projected picture after picture of it, vivid, colorful, set to music. But his parole had come too late. The years had taken their toll of him. The shadow of the prison had left its chill, had done something to him that had made him a different David Sanders from the boy who had entered. He wondered if he would ever learn to laugh again, if he would ever run to meet life eagerly as that other David Sanders had a thousand years ago. He followed the road down to the little station and took a through train that came puffing out of the Royal Gorge on its way to the plains. Through the crowd at the Denver depot he passed into the city, moving up Seventeenth Street without definite aim or purpose. His parole had come unexpectedly, so that none of his friends could meet him even if they had wanted to do so. He was glad of this. He preferred to be alone, especially during these first days of freedom. It was his intention to go back to Malapi, to the country he knew and loved, but he wished to pick up a job in the city for a month or two until he had settled into a frame of mind in which liberty had become a habit. Early next morning he began his search for work. It carried him to a lumber yard adjoining the railroad yards. "We need a night watchman," the superintendent said. "Where'd you work last?" "At Canon City." The lumberman looked at him quickly, a question in his glance. "Yes," Dave went on doggedly. "In the penitentiary." A moment's awkward embarrassment ensued. "What were you in for?" "Killing a man." "Too bad. I'm afraid--" "He had stolen my horse and I was trying to get it back. I had no intention of hitting him when I fired." "I'd take you in a minute so far as I'm concerned personally, but our board of directors--afraid they wouldn't like it. That's one trouble in working for a corporation." Sanders turned away. The superintendent hesitated, then called after him. "If you're up against it and need a dollar--" "Thanks. I don't. I'm looking for work, not charity," the applicant said stiffly. Wherever he went it was the same. As soon as he mentioned the prison, doors of opportunity closed to him. Nobody wanted to employ a man tarred with that pitch. It did not matter why he had gone, under what provocation he had erred. The thing that damned him was that he had been there. It was a taint, a corrosion. He could have picked up a job easily enough if he had been willing to lie about his past. But he had made up his mind to tell the truth. In the long run he could not conceal it. Better start with the slate clean. When he got a job it was to unload cars of fruit for a commission house. A man was wanted in a hurry and the employer did not ask any questions. At the end of an hour he was satisfied. "Fellow hustles peaches like he'd been at it all his life," the commission man told his partner. A few days later came the question that Sanders had been expecting. "Where'd you work before you came to us?" "At the penitentiary." "A guard?" asked the merchant, taken aback. "No. I was a convict." The big lithe man in overalls spoke quietly, his eyes meeting those of the Market Street man with unwavering steadiness. "What was the trouble?" Dave explained. The merchant made no comment, but when he paid off the men Saturday night he said with careful casualness, "Sorry, Sanders. The work will be slack next week. I'll have to lay you off." The man from Canon City understood. He looked for another place, was rebuffed a dozen times, and at last was given work by an employer who had vision enough to know the truth that the bad men do not all go to prison and that some who go may be better than those who do not. In this place Sanders lasted three weeks. He was doing concrete work on a viaduct job for a contractor employed by the city. This time it was a fellow-workman who learned of the Arizonan's record. A letter from Emerson Crawford, forwarded by the warden of the penitentiary, dropped out of Dave's coat pocket where it hung across a plank. The man who picked it up read the letter before returning it to the pocket. He began at once to whisper the news. The subject was discussed back and forth among the men on the quiet. Sanders guessed they had discovered who he was, but he waited for them to move. His years in prison had given him at least the strength of patience. He could bide his time. They went to the contractor. He reasoned with them. "Does his work all right, doesn't he? Treats you all civilly. Doesn't force himself on you. I don't see any harm in him." "We ain't workin' with no jail bird," announced the spokesman. "He told me the story and I've looked it up since. Talked with the lawyer that defended him. He says the man Sanders killed was a bad lot and had stolen his horse from him. Sanders was trying to get it back. He claimed self-defense, but couldn't prove it." "Don't make no difference. The jury said he was guilty, didn't it?" "Suppose he was. We've got to give him a chance when he comes out, haven't we?" Some of the men began to weaken. They were not cruel, but they were children of impulse, easily led by those who had force enough to push to the front. "I won't mix cement with no convict," the self-appointed leader announced flatly. "That goes." The contractor met him eye to eye. "You don't have to, Reynolds. You can get your time." "Meanin' that you keep him on the job and let me go?" "That's it exactly. Long as he does his work well I'll not ask him to quit." A shadow darkened the doorway of the temporary office. The Arizonan stepped in with his easy, swinging stride, a lithe, straight-backed Hermes showing strength of character back of every movement. "I'm leaving to-day, Mr. Shields." His voice carried the quiet power of reserve force. "Not because I want you to, Sanders." "Because I'm not going to stay and make you trouble." "I don't think it will come to that. I'm talking it over with the boys now. Your work stands up. I've no criticism." "I'll not stay now, Mr. Shields. Since they've complained to you I'd better go." The ex-convict looked around, the eyes in his sardonic face hard and bitter. If he could have read the thoughts of the men it would have been different. Most of them were ashamed of their protest. They would have liked to have drawn back, but they did not know how to say so. Therefore they stood awkwardly silent. Afterward, when it was too late, they talked it over freely enough and blamed each other. From one job to another Dave drifted. His stubborn pride, due in part to a native honesty that would not let him live under false pretenses, in part to a bitterness that had become dogged defiance, kept him out of good places and forced him to do heavy, unskilled labor that brought the poorest pay. Yet he saved money, bought himself good, cheap clothes, and found energy to attend night school where he studied stationary and mechanical engineering. He lived wholly within himself, his mental reactions tinged with morose scorn. He found little comfort either in himself or in the external world, in spite of the fact that he had determined with all his stubborn will to get ahead. The library he patronized a good deal, but he gave no time to general literature. His reading was of a highly specialized nature. He studied everything that he could find about the oil fields of America. The stigma of his disgrace continued to raise its head. One of the concrete workers was married to the sister of the woman from whom he rented his room. The quiet, upstanding man who never complained or asked any privileges had been a favorite of hers, but she was a timid, conventional soul. Visions of her roomers departing in a flock when they found out about the man in the second floor back began to haunt her dreams. Perhaps he might rob them all at night. In a moment of nerve tension, summoning all her courage, she asked the killer from the cattle country if he would mind leaving. He smiled grimly and began to pack. For several days he had seen it coming. When he left, the expressman took his trunk to the station. The ticket which Sanders bought showed Malapi as his destination. _ |
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