by Max Brand
Miss Ashton had actually risen from her chair in her excitement. The warden rose, also.
“Go on,” she urged him. “Don’t stop there. I want to know a thousand other things about him.”
“I could talk all day about him,” the warden said. “There’s enough things to say.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
It was a full two hours later that the warden, a weary but a happy man, rushed into the library, the doors hurtling wide and crashing against the walls on either side as he entered. Dashing to the side of big Tom Keene, he smote the giant a resounding thump on the shoulder.
“She’s gone!” he cried. “She’s gone, Tom! And she’s gone away swearing that, if she had a son or a brother that she wanted to have disciplined, she’d send them to me first off.”
Tom Keene smiled.
“It’s you, Tom!” cried the joyous warden. “It’s you that have done it!” He strode rapidly up and down and at length came to a halt in front of his librarian. “I had an idea,” he said, “that this was the beginning of the end. I thought that the women would kick our party out of office and me along with it. But, by the Lord, if they want votes from women, let ’em send delegations down to visit our prison.”
He broke into uproarious laughter as he said this, and again he clapped Tom on the shoulder. The latter closed the book, marking the place carefully.
“And it’s going to be a great day for you, Tom, too,” Tufter said. “Boy, I’ve planned to do something for you before I was through, and now I’ve made up my mind. Why, that laugh you turned in for the benefit of the Ashton girl was as good as a year’s salary to me. She’s going to leave this prison spreading a report that I’m the greatest reformer of characters that ever held down the job.”
The laughter broke through his talk again. Then he became sober. The elements of the brute that he had carefully masked while the girl was with him now came to the surface. But withal there was a certain honest revealing of himself, and he looked with a real kindness upon Tom Keene.
“Keene,” he said, “I’ve fought you, and, I don’t mind saying, I’ve beaten you. But that’s forgotten. Now I’m your friend, and I’m going to show you what a friend I can be. Tom, what’s your sentence worked up to now, after all your tries at jail breaking?”
“Twenty years from next Tuesday,” Tom answered. “That’s all I have left to serve,” and he laughed softly.
“Twenty years, eh? You have the iron nerve with you, Keene if you can laugh at that. But suppose I were to write to the governor and tell him that you’re a cured case … that it would do me good as a warden to have you out spreading the word around that I’m a white man, and that it would do the whole party good if we can find something to balance against the talk they’re starting about that rat-faced dago that died here last year, and some of the others. Tom, what if I write in to the governor and make out a good case for you? Would you be my friend the rest of your life?”
“Your friend? What do you think?” Tom asked, and he smiled frankly at the warden.
The latter shook his head. “Sometimes I don’t know,” he said. “Sometimes I think that you’ve never got over hating me for what I did those first three years.”
“That’s five years old,” Tom Keene said. “Five years … I know. And I’ve sure treated you white in these five years, Tom, haven’t I? D’you know, though, that I used to lose sleep at first, wondering what would happen to me if you ever got out of prison and came across me?” He sighed at the memory, and then added more cheerily, “But I’ll take that chance, now.”
And he was as good as his word. That night the mails hurried a long report to the governor, covering the case of Tom Keene in full, detailing the three years of battle that had commenced his term, and that had brought a number of sentences heaped upon his head, which practically amounted to a life term.
One week later came the pardon. Yes, seven days to an hour after the advent of pretty little Miss Ashton in the prison, Tom Keene stepped out of his prison garb and thrust his long limbs into civilian clothes. He had been allowed, in various ways, to pick up small bits of money during the past five years. He had made lariats, and small toys out of horsehair, and from the sale of these he had saved a little store of coin. With this he was able to buy the outfit he needed. And when Tufter came to see him, he found the big man luxuriating in the full cowpuncher regalia, and rolling a cigarette.
Tufter regarded him with a critical eye. There was only one fault to be found, and that was because his face was so pale. No cowpuncher could have ridden into the wind for any length of time without being sun- and wind-burned to a deeper tan. However, a long illness might account for that defect. Then the eye of the warden fell to another thing, and he started a little.
“A gun, too?” he said. “You’ve even got a gun?”
Tom Keene moved his hand. Into the palm, with an oiled and frictionless speed, came a heavy Colt revolver.
“It’s my old gat,” he said gently. “It’s been lying up in the armory all the time. I got it out this morning. And there she lies as snug as ever.”
He put the weapon away. He handled that rather clumsy weight as though it were a sentient thing that he simply wished into place and it obeyed him. And the warden noted his movements with a touch of awe. If he had been kindly in his attitude toward Tom before, he now became almost whiningly subservient.
“You don’t seem to have lost the knack of making your gun jump when you talk to it, Tom,” he said.
“No,” said Tom. “I’ve never stopped practicing.”
“What?”
“I fixed up a cloth holster. I got a lead pipe to do for the revolver and bent it into shape. I’ve been slinging that regularly and pointing with it at marks. Not bad practice, either.”
“Even when you had twenty years hanging over you … you did that every day?”
“Every day … for the past five years,” Tom said. “A man never stops hoping, Tufter.”
There was a certain brusqueness about this speech that jerked the mind of the warden violently back through five or six years to certain scenes of brutal violence during which Tom Keene had learned how heavily the hand of the law may fall upon its chosen victims. And out of those gruesome recollections the warden stared sharply at Tom Keene. Had he loosed from the prison a man who might …? He dared not finish his thought. And there was no need to complete it, he told himself, for in a moment Tom Keene was smiling upon him with the most equable gentleness.
“But now tell me, man to man,” the warden said with great heartiness, “is there anything more that I can do for you?”
“There’s one favor,” said Tom.
“Name it, man.”
“I’d like to talk to Johnson.”
“The cripple?”
“Yes.”
The warden hesitated, and then reached for a bell and pressed it. “That’s the man that you first put up the fight for in the shoe shop?” he muttered slowly. “Is that the man, Tom?”
“That’s he,” said Tom.
“Hmm,” said the warden, but, as the trusty entered at this moment, he snapped an order over his shoulder that Johnson should be brought up at once. “Has he been riding in your mind all these years?” the warden asked.
“More or less,” answered Tom.
“You’re a queer fellow,” the warden said. “You’re a mighty queer fellow. I’d have thought that you’d be so glad to get shut of the prison yourself that you wouldn’t waste time thinking about others. But I guess that the chaplain is right. You’ve got a big heart in you, Tom. You want to remember that you owe him something. He was always interested in you from the first.”
“I’ll remember him,” Tom said. “I have a pretty good memory.”
And again there was a quality in his voice that made the warden start, but on his face there remained only an inscrutable smile.
Two pairs of feet approached the door. Johnson appeared, and the warden took his leave.
“It isn’t regular for you to be alone with him,” he said, “but this isn’t the first irregular thing that I’ve done, eh?”
“No,” Tom said, and this time with an unmistakable dryness.
The warden turned a frightened glance toward him from the door, seemed about to speak, changed his mind, and went out.
Chapter Twenty-Five
One savage outburst of temper had placed Johnson in the prison. He had struck a single thoughtless blow that ruined his life. For the term of his imprisonment was endless, and the cause of his imprisonment was murder.
Yet he was the mildest of men in appearances. Indeed, he was mild of heart, also, but he had given way to one of those savage bursts of temper that rise in any man. He had turned the corner in one wild instant. And, after that, he could never regain his old place in the world. Society banished him.
He was a cripple. His left leg and his left arm were withered, not so that they were completely helpless, but so that his strength was eaten away at the root. Habitually he carried his left hand high upon his chest as though to keep it from striking against anything. It must have been a form of paralysis that afflicted him, for the left side of his face, also, was slightly drawn. It was not a great contracting of the muscles, but it was sufficient to exert a pull on the corner of the eye and the mouth, so that a faint and inexpressibly disdainful leer was his usual expression. And because of this, the warden hated him and had broken him in body and soul.
He was well past forty now. He had been ten years in the prison. He had perhaps three years of life left to him, and he knew that his remaining term was short. Perhaps it was for this reason that his good humor increased instead of diminishing in the prison. Besides, the warden had always felt that it was impossible truly to torture the man. He who is walled in with fire, does not fear flame, and little Henry Johnson, constantly tormented by the separation from his family, that was forced to drag out a laborious and bitter existence as well as it could, felt the worst torments of the prison life as only dim and secondary pain.
This was the man who presented himself before Tom Keene. He greeted the big man with a silent nod, and, in return to Tom’s gesture toward a chair, he crossed the room with his twisting, labored gait and sank down upon the edge of the chair with his eyes fixed on the floor.
To him Tom Keene addressed a hard-toned speech. “Johnson,” he said, “eight years ago, when I entered the prison, I attempted to keep a guard from bullying you. I was thrown into the dark cell for it and left there until I went almost mad. But, while I was in that cell, I swore to myself that someday I would do something for you. Eight years have gone by, and I haven’t fulfilled that promise to myself. Now I’m leaving the stripes behind. Tell me something you want me to do … something that I can do.”
The head of Johnson jerked up. “Keene …” he began in a trembling voice.
But Tom Keene interrupted him by holding up a forbidding hand. “No use in talking like that,” he said, “I’m not doing this for your sake. I’m doing it because I made the promise to myself, and I keep my promises. Tell me what you want.”
Little Johnson shrank from the big man, examining his face with incredulous eyes. It did not seem possible that that smooth, deep voice could come from a heart as matter-of-fact and cold as this. Then he nodded.
“It’s true, then,” he said at length. “They’ve killed the heart in you, Keene. That’s what the boys have been telling me, and what I couldn’t believe, that … that …”
“Look here, Johnson,” Tom Keene said, “I’ve come to make a fair proposition to you. If you wish to accept it, do so. If you want to deliver a lecture, find another audience. Is that all clear to you?”
“It’s clear,” Johnson said sadly. And he waited, his glance on the floor.
There was no sign of impatience from Tom Keene, but after a considerable wait he said, “Well, are you going to talk?”
Johnson looked up with a faint smile. “Don’t you suppose I know that you and the warden are working hand in glove?” he said. “Good Lord, Keene, what an awful fool you must think I am.”
Keene leaned forward. “Johnson,” he said, “make up your mind. I’m not going to stay for you to think twice. What’s the thing you want most in the world? Tell me that, and I’ll try to get it for you when I’m out. But tell me quick. I’ve got business ahead of me … big business. I can’t wait for you to think.”
That direct challenge caused the other to come out of his chair, and he came hobbling to Tom, his left leg pulling his body halfway around. He laid a hand on the shoulder of Tom. “Keene,” he whispered, “you mean it? You mean it?” He was on fire with sudden enthusiasm. “Keene, if I tell you a thing that’ll make us both rich, can I trust you?”
Tom sighed. He knew of other men in whose minds these hallucinations had grown up while they were in prison—strange dreams that, once they were free, they could find a treasure in coin out of their freedom.
“I’m asking what I can give you,” he said, “and not what I can take from you.”
“I know … I know. Oh, Lord, can I trust you?” He wrung his feeble hands.
“Talk soft,” Tom said, “or you’ll have to be trusting the whole prison. Understand?”
The other gasped and made a sign of assent. “It’s a whole ledge of gold,” he said, “and …”
Tom stopped him again with a quiet, almost pitying protest. “Think that over before you ask me to believe it, Johnson. You say you know where there’s a whole ledge of gold. If that’s true, why haven’t you let your family know about it years ago? Why haven’t you written to them?”
“Write to them?” sneered Johnson. “Why, my letter would never get to them until it had been opened by the warden. And why should I make him a rich man? Blast him.”
The truth of this staggered Tom.
“That’s been the worst of it,” Johnson said. “I’ve had a million … more’n a million … under my hand, you might say. But I haven’t been able to use it. Lord knows what’s become of the wife and the kids. And …” He broke down into horrible choking sobs.
Tom Keene rose and placed himself at a window, totally unconcerned. He was even humming a tune when he faced Johnson again. Apparently that indifference made Johnson feel that he must prove the truth of what he had been saying. Also, it assured him that Tom was not attempting to draw a secret from him. And under the double stimulus he told his strange tale.
Ten long years ago he had been prospecting in a country that, a generation before, had been thoroughly combed—as what stretch of Rocky Mountain land has not been examined at one time or another by seekers after precious metals? But, with an amateur’s delight and an amateur’s disbelief in the results, he had come upon a mountain side that had been recently gouged to the bedrock by a great landslide. And here it was that he made his strike.
He lingered in detail over the beauties of that ore until Tom shut off the flow of words with a weary request that the directions to the spot be given him. He would keep his promise and go to the place.
“But how do you know,” he said to Johnson, “that I’ll give you the mine if I locate it?”
“Half of it,” Johnson said eagerly. “That’s all that I ask. There’s enough for ten. More than enough for two. But for heaven’s sake, hurry now, Keene. Trust you? Why, I’ve got to take the chance now or never. You reached your hand into the fire to try to help me once … and now pray the Lord we can help each other.” Quickly he sketched the site, and so he left him.
Tom Keene went on to the warden. “I’m through, Tufter,” he said. “I know what Johnson wants, and, when I’ve done what he asks, I’m held back from the prison by only one thread.”
“And that’s me,” remarked the warden, swelling a little with self-satisfaction. “That’s me, Keene, eh? Well
, friendships have started in even stranger ways than ours.”
“Friendship?” Tom said, grown cold. “Who spoke of friendship?”
The warden was not a very tall man, but he was compactly, almost roundly, built. Yet his rotundity did not keep him from literally fading to the far side of the room where he jerked a drawer open and gripped the revolver that was thereby exposed to his hand. And still Tom Keene leaned against the door, rolling his cigarette and smiling in the same deadly manner toward him.
“It’s you that have acted the fool and driveled all the nonsense about friendship,” said the cowpuncher. He placed his sombrero on his head, and, although they were still within the prison walls, that act seemed to break down the bounds and place them out under the free sweep of the sky and wind. The warden moistened his white lips and waited. It was worse than death, this delay.
“You’re going down,” Tom Keene said. “I’m not fool enough to lay a hand on you while you’re in the prison, Tufter. That would be playing your own game. But, as soon as the election comes around next month, you’ll find your party out, and you’ll be out with them. And about the same time, Tufter, I’m going to start looking for you. When I find you, I’m going to step on you, partner. Remember that. Why, you fool, don’t you see that I’ve been playing a game? I saw I could not beat you by force, so I played your own game, and, though it took five years, I’ve beaten you. Good bye, Tufter. And remember, Tufter, remember how I told you, when they took me down toward the dark cell the second day, that I would be even with you? Remember, that? This is only eight years later.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
There was to be no money wasted on railroad fares on his journey from prison. Tom Keene rode the rods as far as the mainline trains would take him and then traveled into the hills on a branch road. When he tumbled off that train, Crystal Mountain was a huge blue triangle splitting the sky fifty miles to the north. And Crystal Mountain was his goal. On its side, according to Johnson, was the rich ore that the landslide had exposed.
