Branded

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 s.p.a.ce part.i.tioned off from the commissary, the part.i.tion 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 surrept.i.tiously 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 b.u.t.t 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 a.s.sociations 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 hoa.r.s.eness 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 s.p.a.ce 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 d.a.m.ned 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 s.p.a.ce 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 s.p.a.ce beyond the pay-office part.i.tion.

"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?"