A DISAPPOINTMENT
DURING the second winter Ruth left the ranch only twice, except for runs down to Wagon Wheel. Late in January she went to Cheyenne with her boy to make another appeal to the governor. He was full of genuine homely kindness to her, and renewed at once his allegiance to Rowan, junior. With the large hospitality of the West, he urged her to spend the next few months as their guest, to postpone her return at least until the snow was out of the hills. But in the matter of a parole he stood firm against the entreaties of his wife, the touching wistfulness of her friend, and the tug of desire at his own big heart.
Her other visit was in April to the penitentiary. McCoy was away as a trusty in charge of a road-building gang near Casper. But it was not her husband that Ruth had come to see. She wanted to make a plea to the one man who could help her. She carried an order from Governor McDowell permitting her to see him.
The hour she had chosen was inauspicious. Falkner, sullen and dogged, was brought in irons to the office of the warden. His face was badly swollen and cut. He pretended not to recognize Ruth, but stood, heavy and lowering, his sunken eyes set defiantly straight before him.
“He’s been in solitary for a week,” explained the warden. “Makes us more trouble than any two men here. This time he hit a guard over the head with a shovel.”
The prisoner had the baited look of a hunted wild animal.
“I’m so sorry,” breathed Ruth.
It was plain to her at a glance that he was much more of a wild beast than he had been when she last saw him.
“You needn’t be sorry for him. He brings it all on himself.” The warden turned curtly to Falkner. “This lady wants to talk to you. See you behave yourself.”
But when she was alone with this battered hulk her carefully prepared arguments all fell away from her. She felt instinctively that they would have no weight with him. She hesitated, uncertain how to proceed. The best she could do was to repeat herself.
“I’m sorry they don’t treat you well, Mr. Falkner. Is there anything I can do for you—tobacco or anything like that?”
He gave her a sulky sidewise look, but did not answer.
“We’re all hoping you’ll get out soon,” she went on bravely. “They are talking of getting up a petition for all of you.”
She stuck again. His whole attitude was unfriendly and hostile.
“I—I’ve come to ask another favour of you. Perhaps you don’t know that I have a little baby now. I’m trying to get Rowan out on parole, but the governor won’t do anything unless we bring evidence to show that he did not kill Mr. Gilroy.”
He clung still to his obstinate silence. His eyes were watching her now steadily. It came to her that her suffering pleased him.
“So I’ve come to you, Mr. Falkner. You are the only man that can help me. If you’ll make a statement that you shot Mr. Gilroy the governor will give me back my husband. I’m asking it for the sake of my little baby.”
A pulse beat fast in her throat. A tremor passed through her body. The eyes begged him to be merciful.
He laughed, and the sound of his laughter was harsh and cruel.
“I’d see the whole outfit of you rot first.”
“I’m sure you don’t mean that,” she said gently. “You haven’t been treated well here, and naturally you feel hard about it. Anybody would. But I’m sure you want to be fair to your friends.”
“My friends!” he jeered bitterly. “Tha’s a good one. My friends!”
“Isn’t Rowan your friend? You told me yourself that he had stood by you to the finish, though it almost cost him his own life. If he had lifted a finger and pointed it at you he and the others would have been given short terms and you would have been hanged. You said as much to me that day down at Wagon Wheel. Won’t you say as much to the governor now? It can’t hurt you, and it would bring happiness to so many people.”
“You want me to be the goat, eh?”
“I want you to tell the truth. Rowan would in your place. He’d never let women and children suffer for his wrongdoing. I don’t think you would if you thought of it.”
“You’re wastin’ yore breath,” he told her sulkily.
“I wish you could see Missie Yerby and her little boy. They get along somehow because the neighbours help with the cattle. She doesn’t complain. She’s brave. But she does miss Sam dreadfully. So does the little boy. He’s a nice manly little chap, but he needs a father. It isn’t right that he shouldn’t have one. He often asks when his dad is coming home.”
“I ain’t keepin’ him here,” he growled.
“And Mrs. Rogers will be an old woman soon if Brad doesn’t get out. I can see her fading away. It seems to me that if I could help them by saying a few words, by just telling the truth, that it would give me pleasure to make them happy.”
“Different here,” he snarled. “It’s every one for himself.”
“That isn’t what you told me that day at Wagon Wheel,” she said quietly.
“All right. I’ve changed my mind. Let it go at that.”
“Kate is still waiting for Jack Cole. She won’t look at any other man.”
“Makes no difference to me if she waits till Kingdom Come.”
“That’s three women who are unhappy, and Jack’s mother is another, and I’m the fifth. Five women and two children you could make glad by confessing that you started the shooting and killed Mr. Gilroy. Not many men have an opportunity like that. We would bless you in our prayers, Mr. Falkner.”
“Keep right on soft-soapin’ me. See where it gets you,” he taunted.
She ignored his retort.
“We’d do more for you than that. We’d all work for your pardon, too. We’d show how Joe Tait had beaten you up when you hadn’t a chance and how quarrelsome he was. Pretty soon we’d get you out, too.”
“The hell you would! Don’t I know? I’d stand the gaff for all of ’em. Ain’t I doing it now? Rowan’s out somewheres bossin’ a road gang. Rogers is in the warden’s office. Sam Yerby putters around the garden. An’ me—I live in that damned dark hole alone. They’re warden’s little pets. I’m the one that gets the whip. By God, if I ever get a chance at one of these slave-drivers——”
He broke off, to grind his teeth in a fury of impotent rage.
“Don’t! Don’t feel that way,” she begged. “You get all the worst of it. Don’t you see you do? And it makes you unhappy. Let me tell the warden that you’ll try not to break the prison rules. It would be so much better for you.”
“Tell him I’ll cut his black heart out if I ever get a chance.”
She was appalled at his venomous hatred. Vaguely she knew that prison discipline was often harsh. Occasionally some echo of it crept into newspapers. Falkner was refractory and undisciplined. No doubt he had broken rules and been insubordinate. It came to her that there had been some contest of stubborn will between this lawless convict and the guards who had charge of him. His face was scarred with wounds not yet healed. She did not know that ridges crossed and recrossed his back where the lash had cut away the skin with cruel strokes which had burned like fire. But she did know that he was untamed and unbroken, that nothing short of death could make that wild spirit quail before his tormentors.
“I wish I could help you,” she said. “But I can’t. All I can do is ask you to help me. Won’t you think about it, please? I know you’re a man. You’re not afraid to take the blame that belongs to you. If you could only see this straight, the way you would see it if you were outdoors in the hills, I know you would help me.”
“I don’t need to think about it. I’m playin’ my own hand.”
“The governor says that if I can get any evidence, any proof that Rowan did not start the shooting or kill Gilroy, he will give him a pardon. It lies with you, Mr. Falkner.”
“Well, I’ve done given you my answer. I’m for myself, an’ for nobody else. Tha’s the bed rock of it.”
For Rowan’s freedom Ruth would have gone a long way. She had humbled herself to plead with the convict. But she had known it would be useless. His environment had so deadened his moral sense, so numbed his sympathy, that she could strike no response from him. When she left the prison it was with the knowledge that she had not advanced her husband’s cause one whit.
In front of the warden’s house a convict was wheeling manure and scattering it on the lawn. Some trick of gesture caught the attention of Ruth. Her arrested eyes fixed themselves on the man. His shoulders drooped, and his whole attitude expressed dejected listlessness, but she was sure she knew him. Deserting the warden’s wife, she ran forward with both hands outstretched.
“Oh, I’m so glad to see you!”
For an instant a puzzled expression lifted the white eyebrows and slackened the lank jaw of Sam Yerby. Then his shoulders straightened. He had been caught with his guard down, detected in the mood of hopelessness into which he often fell now.
He came gamely to time. “Well—well, Miss Ruth. I’m sure proud to see you, ma’am.”
“They told me you were at a road camp. One of the guards said so.”
“I was, but I’m back. You’re looking fine, ma’am. Missie writes me you-all done got a little baby of yore own now.”
She nodded. “Yes, I’ll tell you all about it. But how are you? Missie will ask me a hundred questions.”
“I’m tol’able, thank you.” Yerby, looking across her shoulder, saw a guard moving toward them. He did not mention to her that he was liable to ten days’ solitary confinement for talking to a visitor without permission. “How’s Missie—and Son?”
“Missie is prettier than ever. She’s always talking about you. And the boy—he’s the dandiest little chap—smart as a whip and good as gold. You’ll be awfully pleased with him when you come home.”
“Yes’m—when I come home.”
His voice fell flat. Its lifelessness went to the heart of his friend. She saw that hope was dead within him. He was getting into the fifties, and the years were slipping away.
“That won’t be long. We’re getting up a petition to——”
The guard pushed between Ruth and the convict. “You know the rule, Yerby,” he said curtly.
“Yes, sir, and I most generally aim to keep it. But when a lady speaks to me—an old friend——”
“Come along with me.”
The old cowman dropped his shovel and shambled off beside the guard.
Ruth turned in consternation to the wife of the warden. “What have I done?”
“He oughtn’t to have talked with you. That’s the rule. He knew it.”
“You won’t let him be punished because I made a mistake, will you? He’s a Texan, you know. He thinks it wouldn’t be courteous not to answer a lady. It would make me very unhappy if I had got him into trouble.”
The warden’s wife smiled. “I think it can be arranged this time. We all like him. We’re all sorry for him. He takes it to heart a good deal that he has to stay in prison. I talk with him when he pots my plants, and he tells me he wants to hear the whining of a rope and to taste the dust of the drag driver, whatever that is. I wish the governor would pardon him. If he stays much longer he’ll become an old man with no hope in his heart.”
“I’ll tell his wife that you are good to him. It will be a great comfort to her. She’s a good deal younger than he is, but she’s very fond of him.”
The meeting with Yerby depressed Ruth more even than her encounter with Falkner. She took home with her a memory of a brave man slowly having the zest of life pressed out of him.
But of this she said little when next she wrote to Rowan. Always her letters had running through them the red thread of hope. She told him that Flanders was getting up a petition for a parole which had been signed by half the county, including the judge who had tried him, every member of the jury, the prosecuting attorney, and the sheriff. Nor did she mention that Ruth McCoy was the motive power behind the petition, that she in person had won the signatures of Haight, Matson, and the judge, as well as hundreds of others.
The clock struck midnight before she finished her letter:
It is very late, sweetheart—almost utterly quiet, save for a small wind among the leaves, and the night is black and soft, and abloom with stars. Stillness and stars and whispering wind—they are all astir with dreams and questions—yes, and answers, too. I feel sure of that, love—as sure as I do of you.
Will you take “good-night” born of the night’s voices, dear?
She signed her name, turned out the lights, and sat long at the low window, her fingers laced around her knee. The thoughts back of her hungry, shadowy eyes were gropings for the answers of which she had written so confidently.