Branded

by Francis Lynde

Disquieting visions of harsh prison punishments were oppressing me when we reached the penitentiary and I was taken before the eagle-eyed old Civil War veteran who had given me my parole. But the warden merely put me through a shrewd questioning, inquiring closely into my experiences as a paroled man, and making me tell him circumstantially the story of my indictment, trial and conviction, and also the later story of the mining experience in Colorado.

"I don't recall that you ever protested your innocence while you were here serving your time, Weyburn," he commented, at the dose of the inquisition.

"I didn't," I replied, wondering why he should go behind the returns to remark the omission. Then I added: "They all do that, and it doesn't change anything. You set it down as a lie—as it usually is."

"Can you look me in the eye and tell me that you are not lying to me now?" he demanded.

I met the test soberly. "I can. I was convicted of a crime that I didn't commit, and I broke my parole solely because that appeared to be the one remaining alternative to becoming a criminal in fact."

The interview over, I expected to be put into stripes, cropped, and sent to the workshops. But instead I was taken to one of the detention cells, and for an interval which slowly lengthened itself into a week was left a prey to all the devils of solitude. It seemed as if I had been buried out of sight and forgotten. Three times a day a kitchen "trusty" brought my meals and put them through the door wicket, but apart from this I saw no one save the corridor guard, who never so much as looked my way in his comings and goings.

That week of palsying, unnerving isolation got me. Consider it for a moment. For a year I had been living at the very heart of life, working, fighting, scheming, mixing and mingling, and succeeding—not only in the money-winning, but also—until the Agatha Geddis incident came along—in the field of good repute. At the last Agatha had set me free, and Polly's love had opened the ultimate door of supreme happiness; a joy so ecstatic that at the end of the honeymoon I was only beginning to realize what it meant to me.

And then, on the very summit of the mountain of joy, had come the touch of the deputy warden's hand on my shoulder in the Antlers dining-room. That touch had swept the new-born world ruthlessly aside—all save Polly's love and loyalty. Success had been blotted out with the loss of liberty wherewith to profit by it; and for those who had known me in the great gold camp and elsewhere in the West—my new friends—I was branded as an escaped convict. For two shameful years I should be shut away from Polly, from freedom, from participation in the fight my partners were making to save the mine, and most probably from any knowledge of how the fight was going, either for or against us.

Is it any matter for wonder that by the end of the solitary week I was little better than a mad-man? If I might have had speech with the warden, I should have prayed for work; for any employment, however hard or menial, that would serve to stop the sapping of the very foundations of reason. One hope I clung to, as the drowning catch at straws. I could not doubt that Polly was near at hand. If the regular "visiting day" should intervene they would surely admit her. But in this, too, I was unlucky. The date of my reincarceration fell between two of the regular visiting days. So I waited and looked and longed in vain.

I don't know how many more circlings of the clock-hands were measured off before the break came. I lost count of the time by days and was no longer able to think clearly. In perfect physical condition when I was arrested, I began to go to pieces, both mentally and physically, under the strain of suspense. Then insomnia came to add its terrors; I could neither eat nor sleep. I had an ominous foreboding of what the total loss of appetite meant, and kept telling myself over and over that for Polly's sake I must fight to save my sanity.