Branded

  IX

  The Cup of Trembling

  Why I should have chosen, haphazard, and solely because it chanced tobe the first that offered, a train which numbered among its passengersnot only a man from my home town of Glendale, but also the deputywarden of the penitentiary, is one of those mysteries of coincidencewhich we discredit impatiently when we run across them in fiction, butwhich, nevertheless, are constantly recurring in every-day life.

  For the moment I was desperately panic-stricken. It seemed blanklyimpossible that Cummings should not see and recognize me at once. Icould have sworn that he was looking straight at me while the stewardkept him waiting. My terror must have shown itself in my face, sinceBarton spoke up quickly.

  "Why, say--what's struck you, Bert?--are you sick?" he demanded; andthen he supplied an answer to his own query: "I ought to be kickedaround the block for loading you up with a big dining-car breakfastwhen you had just told me that you were off your feed. Cut it shortand we'll trot up ahead and smoke a cigar. That'll help you get awaywith it."

  The steward had found Cummings a seat at the forward end of the car,and how to pass him without detection was a problem that made me dizzywith the nausea of fear. Barton, with the lordly manner of theAmerican salesman away from home, made it possible. Snapping hisfingers for a waiter he paid for the breakfasts before we left ourseats, and then quickly led the way forward. At the pause in thevestibule, while Barton was answering the steward's query as to how wehad been served, I could have reached out and touched Cummings'sshoulder. But the deputy warden was running an investigative fingerdown the menu card and he did not see me.

  It may say itself that I was in no condition to enjoy theafter-breakfast cigar burned in the smoking-room of Barton's Pullman,where the wagon salesman's tips, or his good-natured insistence, againmade me welcome. Every moment I expected to see the door curtain flungaside to admit the burly figure of William Cummings. True, there werea number of Pullmans in the train, and it was possible that I might notbe in the smoking-room of his car. But it was enough, and more thanenough, to know that we were fellow-travelers on the same train.

  There is little use piling on the agony by trying to tell what Isuffered during this forenoon of nerve-racking torture and suspense.Let it be sufficient to say that the torments ended for me at Decatur,Illinois, when, at the train stop, I saw Cummings cross the platform toa street-car followed by a station porter carrying his grip. Bartonmarked the change in me at once.

  "By George, Bert, what did you see in that platform jumble to make youlook as if you had suddenly taken on a new lease of life?" he inquiredjestingly. Then he passed the ever-ready cigarcase. "Smoke up, andafter a bit we'll go and try it on the dog--see if a second meal in thediner will come as near to upsetting you as the first one did. Say,don't you know, I'm bully glad we met up in the smoker this morning? Iwas rawhiding myself to beat the everlasting band at the prospect ofhaving to make this long, tiresome day jump alone, and it's done me aheap of good to talk you to frazzles. And that reminds me: you haven'ttold me yet where you are heading for."

  I had not; and what was more, I did not mean to. There were distantrelatives on my mother's side of the family living somewhere in centralMissouri, and I spoke of them.

  "Sedalla, you say?" he commented. "Well, if that's the how of it, Imay see you again in a day or so, and here's hoping. I have a horriblesuspicion that our St. Louis general agent wants me to chase out withhim and dig up some of his dead-alive country dealers. We sell a raftof wagons in Missouri."

  It was just here that it occurred to me that Barton was carrying it offpretty toppingly for a mere traveling salesman; also that he dressedbetter, smoked better cigars, and seemed a good bit freer with hismoney than such a job warranted.

  "You were selling Whiteley Wagons by yourself, when I dropped out," Isaid. "Have I been doing you an injustice by not allowing for apromotion in the three years and a half?"

  "You sure have!" he laughed. "In the reorganization a year ago theymade me sales manager. Oh, yes, Bert; I've blossomed out some sinceyou knew me. I've actually got a little chunk of stock in the concern.You never would have thought it of old Hod Barton, would you? Look atthis."

  He reached into a pocket and pulled out a money roll, riffling the endsof the bills between thumb and forefinger to let me see that thedenominations were all comfortably large. There was somethinginstantly suggestive in the bit of braggadocio; a feeling that I hadseen somebody do that same thing in exactly that same way once before.But before I could follow up the impression he was making me an offerwhich put everything but his free-hearted generosity out of my mind.

  "You haven't said a word, Bert, and if it's none of my business, youcan tell me so--but if a couple of these yellow-backs would come inhandy to you just now, they're yours and you can toss 'em back to meany old time when you're good and ready."

  I shook my head and thanked him out of a full heart. The purchase ofthe Denver ticket hadn't left me much of a balance out of the blackpocketbook's holdings, but I couldn't borrow of Barton; that was out ofthe question.

  Shortly after this we had another meal together in the dining-car, andthis time there were no sudden alarms to make me turn sick and panicky.Afterward, I made another attempt to return to my place in the forwardend of the train, but since Barton would not hear of it, we spent theremainder of the short afternoon in the Pullman smoker.

  During this interval, Barton did most of the talking, growingconfidential along toward the last and telling me a lot about the girlhe was going to marry--the youngest daughter of good old Judge Haskins,of Jefferson--the man who had sentenced me. If all the world loves alover, certainly no considerable part of it cares to pay strictattention while he descants at length upon the singular and altogethertranscendent charms of the loved one; and when Barton got fairlystarted I had time to consider another matter which was of far greaterimportance to me.

  Earlier in the day Barton had assured me that he would not fail to goand see my mother and sister when he returned to Glendale. I couldscarcely urge him not to do so, though I knew very well that he wouldnot stop with telling the home-folks; that he would doubtless tellevery Tom, Dick and Harry in town how he had met me, and where. What Iwas asking myself as he burbled on about Peggy Haskins was whether Imight dare give him the one cautionary word which would reveal the truestate of affairs. In the end I decided that it would be mostimprudent, not to say disastrous. He would have sympathized with meinstantly and heartily, but the knowledge would have been as fire totow when he got back where he could talk. I could foresee just how itwould bubble out of him as he button-holed each fresh listener: "Say!you must keep it midnight dark, old man, but I met Bert Weyburn on thetrain: he's jumped his parole and, skipped--lit out--vanished! Not aword to any living soul, mind you; this is a dead secret. We mustn'tgive him away, you know,"--and a lot more of the same sort.

  The arrival of the through train in the great echoing Terminal at St.Louis was timed accurately with the coming of a gloomy twilight fitlyclimaxing the bleak and stormy day. Having no hand-baggage I was thefirst to leave the Pullman, and on the platform I waited for Barton whohad gone back into the body of the car to get his coat and hat andbags. As he ran down the steps and gave his two suit cases to thenearest red-cap, the links in a vague chain of recognition snappedthemselves suddenly into a complete whole, and I knew instantly why thethumbing of the pocket-roll in my friend's generous offer to lend memoney had struck the chord of familiarity. The two hand-bags turnedover to the platform porter were the same two that I had seen snatchedout of a cab in front of the Marlborough entrance while their owner wasdigging in his pockets for the cab fare, and the coat and hat Bartonhad donned for the debarking were the fur-lined luxury and the softfelt worn by the man who had dropped the black pocket-book.

  "Well, old boy," he said, gripping my hand in leave-taking, "the bestof friends must part. I suppose you'll wait here to take your Sedallatrain. Maybe we'll get together again
in a day or so. If weshouldn't, here's hoping that the world uses you well from this on--tosort of make up for what has gone, you know."

  "Wait a minute," I gasped, as he was turning to follow the red-cap."You said you were at the Marlborough last night. I was there--onan--on an errand. Did you come in late?--in a cab?"

  "I did; and I had a funny experience--or have I told you about it?"

  "No, you didn't tell me," I contrived to say.

  "I didn't know but I had; I've talked so much about everything to-day.It was this way: when I got out of the cab I saw a sort of hobo-ishlooking fellow standing at the curb with his hands in his pockets andall doubled over as if he were cold. It never occurred to me for aminute that he was anything but what he looked to be."

  The porter, with Barton's suit-cases, was disappearing in the directionof the cab stand, and I suggested that we walk along. I had learnedall I needed to know. But Horace Barton never left a story unfinishedif he could help it.

  "Yes, sir; that fellow fooled me good and proper," he went on, as wehurried to overtake the suit-cases. "He wasn't any hobo at all; he wasa pickpocket, and one of the finest. I was hunting for a half-dollarto pay the cabby, and I could have sworn that that 'dip' never gotwithin six feet of me. And yet he 'frisked' me before I could getacross the sidewalk and into the hotel. Luckily, all he got was alittle pocketbook with some sixty or so dollars in it."

  "You reported your loss to the police?" I asked.

  "Not for one little minute!" was the laughing rejoinder. "I didn'tdiscover the loss until after I got up to my room and found the St.Louis wire waiting for me; and then there wasn't time. But I shouldn'thave done it anyway. Any fellow fly enough to do me that way when I'mwide awake and 'at' myself is welcome to all he gets. . . . Well,here's our jumping-off place, I guess. My man 'll be waiting for me atthe Southern, and I must go. Take care of yourself, and so long!"

  I let him go; saw him climb into a cab and disappear. There wasnothing to be done about the money, of course: I had spent more thanhalf of it for my Denver ticket. But, since honesty, like all otherhuman attributes, dies hard in any soil where it has once taken root, Iturned away with a great thankfulness in my heart. The owner of theblack pocketbook was found, and some day he should have his ownagain--with interest.

  Nothing of any consequence happened after Barton left me. Finding uponinquiry that the westbound connecting train would not leave until eighto'clock, I ventured out in search of a slop-shop where I could purchasea cheap suit to go with the clean shirt and collar given me by thefree-handed sales manager. The purchase left me with less than tendollars in my pocket, but it made a new man of me otherwise. In theold life at home I had never dreamed that a few rags and wisps ofcloth, properly sewed together, make all the difference in a moralizingworld between the man and the vagrant.

  There was a wreck on the Missouri road some time during the night, andour train was caught behind it and delayed. For this reason anotherrainy afternoon was drawing to its close when I had my first glimpse ofKansas City, high-perched on its hills from my glimpsing view-point onthe opposite bank of the Missouri River, but low-lying and crowded tosuffocation with railroad yards in that part of it where the train cameto a stand.

  As a matter of course, I had missed my proper Denver connection, owingto the wreck delay. But, a passenger agent directing me, I found theevening Union Pacific train waiting at another platform. A shorthalf-hour later the tangle of railroad yards in the river "bottoms" wasleft behind and the overland train was boring westward into a cloudynight through Kansas.

  With the welcoming West lying fair and free before me, the memory ofthe prison years and of the parole purgatory to which they had led wasalready beginning to fade into a limbo of things past and irrevocable,and therefore to be quickly and decently forgotten. There should be anew life in the new world, and the humiliation and disgrace of the pastshould be so deeply burled that it could never be resurrected. I wasstill under twenty-nine, it must be remembered, and at that age Hope,the one human quality which seems to have in it the precious germ ofimmortality, will flap its wings over the most wretched ash-heap thatwas ever blown together by the bleak winds of misfortune.