Branded Part 2

When we reached the street I said I wanted to go around by way of my boarding-house for a change of clothing.

"That's all been 'tended to," said the surly deputy, with a jerk of his thumb toward a suitcase in the seat beside the driver of the hack carriage. "You get in and keep quiet; that's all you've got to do."

After this he said nothing and made no further move until we were jouncing along on our way to the railroad station. Then, without warning, he turned upon me suddenly and tried to snap the hand-cuffs on my wrists.

It was all I was waiting for; something to pull the trigger. In a flash the savage, which, in the best of us, lies but skin-deep under the veneer of habit and the civilized conventions, leaped alive. There was a fierce grapple in the interior of the darkened carriage--fierce but silent--and the blood sang in my veins when I found that I was more than a match for the scar-faced deputy. With fingers to throat I choked him into submission, and when I had taken his pistol and hand-cuffed him with his own manacles, the step that made me a criminal in fact had been overpa.s.sed.

"One yip out of you, and you get a bullet out of your own gun!" I warned him; and then I got speech with the driver, a squat, thickset Irishman, whose face and brogue were both strange to me.

"Drive to the Farmers' Bank--side door--and be quick about it!" I called to him over the lowered window-sash.

"I'm hired to go to the train. Who's payin' me for the side-trip?" he queried impatiently.

"I am," I snapped; adding: "There's money in it for you if you put the whip on."

He obeyed the order with what might have seemed suspicious readiness, if I had been cool enough to consider it, and a minute or two later the hack ground its wheels against the curb at the side door of the bank building. With the pistol at his ribs I pushed the deputy out ahead of me. My keys were still in my pocket--Runnels hadn't searched me for anything--and I opened the door and entered, driving Simmons a step in advance.

The bank was untenanted, as I knew it would be if Geddis should not be there, since we had never employed a night watchman. At that time of night there was nothing stirring in the town, and in the midnight silence the ticking of the clock on the wall over Abel Geddis's desk crashed into the stillness like the blows of a hammer. I made the deputy sit down under the vault light while I worked the combination.

The lock had not been changed, and the door opened at the first trial.

Again pus.h.i.+ng Simmons ahead of me, I entered the vault. It was a fairly modern structure; Geddis had had it rebuilt within the year; and it was electric-lighted and large enough to serve the double purpose of a bank strong-room and a safety deposit. Shoving the deputy into a corner I opened the cash-box and took out the exact amount of my savings, neither more nor less. Simmons stretched his neck and leered at me with an evil grin.

"You're the fine little crook, all right enough," he remarked. "They was sayin' over at Jefferson that you was a Sunday-school sup'rintendent, or somethin' o' that sort. Them kind is always the flyest."

It struck me suddenly that he was taking his defeat pretty easily, but there was no time for a nice weighing of other men's motives.

"I'm fly enough to give you what's coming to you," I said; and with that I snapped off the electric light, darted out, slammed the vault door and shot the bolts. For a few hours at least, during the latter part of which he might have to breathe rather bad air, the deputy was an obstruction removed.

My hurriedly formed plan of escape would probably have made a professional criminal weep; but it was the only one I could think of on the spur of the moment. In the next county, at a distance of thirty-odd miles, there was another railroad. If I could succeed in bribing the Irish hack-driver, I might be far on my way before the bank vault would be opened and the alarm given.

The Irishman took my money readily enough and offered no objections when I told him what I wished to do. Also, he claimed to be familiar with the cross-country road to Vilasville, saying that he could set me down in the village before daylight. Oddly enough, he made no comment on the absence of the deputy, and seemed quite as willing to haul one pa.s.senger as two. With my liberal bribe for a stimulant he whipped up his horses, and in a few minutes we were out of town and rolling smoothly along the intercounty pike.

For a time the sudden break with all the well-behaved traditions kept me awake and in a fever heat of excitement. But along in the small hours the monotonous _clack-clack_ of the horses' hoofs on the limestone pike and the steady rumbling of the wheels quieted me.

Reflecting that I had had little sleep the night before, and that the way ahead would be perilous enough to ask for sharpened faculties and a well-rested body, I braced myself in a corner of the carriage and closed my eyes.

When I awakened, after what seemed like only the shortest hand-s.p.a.ce of dreamless oblivion, a misty dawn was breaking and the carriage was stopped in a town street and in front of a brick building with barred windows. While I was blinking and rubbing my eyes in astoundment, a big, bearded man whose face was strangely familiar opened the door and whipped the captured pistol from the seat.

"This was one time when the longest way 'round was the shortest way home," chuckled the big pistol-s.n.a.t.c.her quizzically. And then: "Old Ab Withers seems to know you better than most of us do, Bert. He told me I'd better not risk you on the train with just one Glendale constable; that I'd better send a rig and two deputies after you, if I wanted to make sure o' seein' you. What have you done with Simmons?"

I told him briefly.

"All right," he said. "Climb down out o' that and come on in. The jig's up."

It was not until I was standing on the sidewalk beside the gigantic sheriff, with the Irishman grinning at me from his seat in the hack, that I realized fully what had happened. Instead of taking me to Vilasville, the driver, who was Simmons's partner and fellow deputy, had changed his route while I was asleep and brought me to the county seat.

III

In the Name of the Law

Of course, I didn't have to wait until Whitredge came over to the county seat to learn that I had hopelessly cooked my goose by the clumsy attempt at an escape. What I did not suspect then, nor, indeed, for a long time afterward, was the possibility that Withers or Geddis, or both of them, had forestalled me in the matter of bribing the two deputies; that my foolish attempt had been antic.i.p.ated, and that Whitredge, himself, was not wholly above suspicion as an accessory before the fact. For it was his thinly veiled suggestion that put the thing into my head.

However, that is neither here nor there. With the charge before it, the grand jury quickly brought in a true bill against me; and on the plea of the county prosecuting attorney my case was advanced on the docket and set for trial within the week, the argument for haste being the critical state of affairs in the business of the Farmers' Bank of Glendale; a state of affairs which demanded that the responsibility for certain shortages in the bank's a.s.sets be fixed immediately as between the accused bookkeeper and cas.h.i.+er and his superiors. Whitredge brought me word of this hurry-up proposal, and either was, or pretended to be, properly indignant over the unseemly haste.

"You just say the word, Bert, and I'll have the case postponed until the next term of court, or else I'll know the reason why!" he bl.u.s.tered stoutly.

"Why should I wish to have it postponed, when the delay would merely mean six months more of jail for me?" I objected.

"It might give us some chance to frame up some sort of a defense; and, besides, it would give public opinion a little time to die down," he suggested. "I say it isn't fair to try you while everybody's hot and excited and wrathy about the money loss. Still, if you think you're all ready, and want to take the chance----"

He knew I did, and was only egging me on. What he and all the rest of them were working for was to get me out of the way as swiftly as possible. I knew this afterward, after I had time to think it out and piece it together; and G.o.d knows, they gave me all the time I needed to do the thinking.

So, with the prisoner's counsel making no motion to the contrary, the trial date stood, and shortly I found myself in the dock, with good old Judge Haskins peering down at me over the top of his spectacles. Like many of the older people in the county, the judge had known my father well, and I am willing to believe that it was not easy for him to sit in judgment upon that father's son.

The trial was fair enough, as such things go. In the selection of the jury, Whitredge made free use of his challenging privilege; but it seemed to me that he always objected to the intelligent man and chose the other kind. When our Anglo-Saxon ancestors fought for the right of trial by jury, and got it, they pa.s.sed down to us a sword with two edges. Their idea, which was embodied in the common law, was that a man should be tried by a jury of his peers. But the way things have worked out, the man of average intelligence is apt to have to face a dozen jurors who are chosen partly for their lack of intelligence, and partly because their earning ability is so low that they are willing to serve for the paltry wage of a juror, whatever it may be.

So far as the presentation of the case went, the county attorney had it all his own way. Certain of the bank's moneys were missing, and they had been replaced by worthless mining stock. Specifically, the charge was that I had been borrowing the bank's money and investing it in the mining stock--all without authority from anybody higher up--and that at the last I had grown panic-stricken, or something, and had turned the stock in as part of the bank's a.s.sets.

Chandler, the prosecuting attorney, called only two witnesses, Withers and Fitch. They both testified that they had heard me admit that I was guilty. There were no details given which could involve Agatha Geddis.

It was merely stated that my admission of guilt was made at Abel Geddis's house, and both witnesses a.s.serted that Geddis himself was not present.

Whitredge leaned over and whispered to me while this evidence was being taken.

"Chandler knows, and we all know, that this acknowledgment of yours was made in a talk with Miss Geddis. We are all willing to spare her the humiliation of being brought into court. But it is your perfect right to have her called if you wish it."

Knowing well enough by this time what I was in for, I was still foolish enough, or besotted enough, to shake my head. "I don't wish it," I said; and since this was practically telling Whitredge not to do so, he did not cross-examine the two witnesses.

When the prosecution rested, Whitredge took up his line of defense. He tried to show, rather lamely, I thought, that I had always lived within my means, hadn't been dissipated, and had never been known to bet, either on horse races or on the stock market; that whatever I had done had been done without criminal intent. In this part of the trial I had a heart-warming surprise. The afternoon train from Glendale brought a big bunch of young people, and a good sprinkling of older ones, all eager to testify to my former good character. I saw then how unfair I had been in the bitterness of that first day. The shock of my arrest had simply dammed up the sympathy stream like a sudden frost; but now the reaction had come and I was not without friends. That little demonstration went with me though many a long and weary day afterward.

Naturally, the greater part of this "character evidence" was thrown out as irrelevant. The trial wasn't held for the purpose of ascertaining what sort of a young man I had been in the past. It was supposed to be an attempt to get at the facts in a particular case; and according to the testimony of two uncontradicted witnesses, I had admitted these facts.

Chandler said nothing about my attempt to escape until he came to address the jury. But then he drove the nail in good and hard. The deputy sheriff, Simmons, bruised and beaten, was shown to the jurors, and the prosecuting attorney made much of the fact that I had not stopped at a possible murder in shutting Simmons up in the bank vault.

There was nothing said about the bribe to the other deputy who had figured as the hack driver; from which I inferred that the Irishman had pocketed my money and held his peace.

Whitredge's summing-up was as lame in effect as it was rantingly emotional. He liked to hear himself talk, and his stock in trade as a criminal lawyer consisted mainly of perfervid appeals to the sympathies of his juries. Here, he pleaded, with the tremolo stop pulled all the way out, was a young man whose entire future would be blasted--and all that sort of thing. It hadn't the slightest effect upon the group of stolid hill farmers and laborers in the box who sat and yawned through it, and I fancy it wasn't intended to have any.

Good old Judge Haskins's charge to the jury was all that a fair and upright judge could make it. He was no party to the agreement between the attorneys to keep Agatha Geddis out of it, or even to any knowledge of it, as he proved by pointing out to the jury the lack of detail in Fitch's and Withers's testimony. Also, he cautioned the twelve not to make too much of the attempted escape. He said--what most judges wouldn't have said--that the attempt was entirely extraneous to the charge upon which I had been arraigned; that it was not to be taken as a presumption of guilt; that it proved nothing either way. He added that an innocent man badly involved might be as easily terrified into taking flight as a guilty one. If the jury, upon due deliberation, should be convinced that I had misappropriated the bank's funds, the verdict should be "Guilty"; but not otherwise.

It was merely in conformity with time-honored custom that the jurymen rose and left the box and filed out of the court-room, I am sure, for they were back again in almost no time. Though I had every reason to expect it, the low-voiced verdict of "Guilty as charged" struck me like the blow of a fist.

"Brace up and be a man!" Whitredge leaned over to whisper in my ear; and then the good old judge, with his voice shaking a little, p.r.o.nounced my sentence. Five years was the minimum for the offense with which I stood charged. But a law recently pa.s.sed gave the judges a new power. Within the nominal period of five years my sentence was made indeterminate. The law was vindicated and I became a convict.

IV