"We know you have; and that brings on more talk. Kenniston is leaving us to go prospecting. We've talked it over—Shelton and I—and you're to have the paymaster's job. Think you can hold it down?"
"I am sure I can—so far as the routine duties are concerned. But——"
Never, in all the soul-killing experiences of the parole period, had I been confronted with a test so gripping. Would this large-hearted man turn the keys of his money chest over to me if he knew I were an ex-convict, liable at any moment to be re-arrested for having broken my parole? I was silent so long that he began again.
"Looking around for a spade to begin the grave-digging?" he asked, with a sober smile. Then, with a note of unwonted gentleness in his voice: "I shouldn't do that if I were you, Jimmie. The man doesn't live who hasn't, at one time or another, had to dig a hole and bury something decently out of sight. Whatever you may have done in the past, you're not going to play marbles with the Hadley-and-Shelton pay-money. That's about all there is to it. You may take hold to-morrow morning. Kenniston will stay long enough to show you the ropes."
It was not until after I had left the office shack and was crossing to the bunk house set apart for the office squad that I remembered Dorgan. Now, if never before, my duty in his case was plain. It was tempting Providence to allow the presence in camp of a burglar who was probably only waiting for his chance to "clean up"; doubly perilous now, indeed, since in any case of loss my record would be shown up, and Dorgan, if he had already recognized me as I had him, would not be slow to take advantage of my vulnerability.
My first impulse was to go straight back to Hadley and tell him, without the loss of another moment. But there were difficulties in the way; obstacles which I had not before stopped to consider. If I should accuse Dorgan, he might retaliate by telling what he knew of me. This difficulty was brushed aside at once: I judged there was little to fear from this, in view of what Hadley had just said to me. But there was another obstacle; the one which had kept me silent from the day I had first seen Dorgan driving his track-layers. With a crushing sense of degradation I realized the full force of the motive for silence, as I had not up to this time. With every fiber of me protesting that I must be loyal to my employers at any and all costs, that other loyalty, the tie that binds the branded, proved the stronger. I could not bring myself to the point of sending Dorgan, guilty as he doubtless was, back to the living death of the "long-termer." I make no excuses. One cannot touch pitch and escape defilement in some sort. For three years I had lived among criminals; and the bond … but I have said all this before.
It may be imagined with what inward tremblings I took on the duties of the new job the next day. Kenniston, eager to be gone on his prospecting tour, gave me only a short forenoon over the pay-rolls; but as to this, the routine was simple enough. It was what he said at parting that gave me the greatest concern.
"You have to go to the bank at the Creek and get the money, you know," he said. "I usually go on the afternoon train. That will make you late for banking hours, but if you wire ahead they'll have the money counted out and ready for you. Then you can catch the evening train to the junction and come up on one of the construction engines. Better take one of the commissary .45's along, just for safety's sake—though in all the trips I've made I've never needed a gun."
The week following Kenniston's drop-out was a busy one, with time-books to check and enter, commissary deductions to be made, and the payrolls to be gotten out. My office was a small room or space partitioned off from the commissary, the partition being of matched boards, breast-high, and above that a rough slat grille like those in country railroad stations. As I worked at the bracketed shelf which served as a high desk, I could see the interior of the commissary, and those who came and went. It may have been only a fancy, but it seemed to me that Dorgan came in oftener than usual; and more than once I caught him peering at me through the slatted grille, with the convict's trick of looking aside without turning his head. It was for this reason, more than for any other, that I recalled Kenniston's advice and armed myself when I went to Cripple Creek on the day before pay-day to get the money from the bank.
The short journey to town was uneventful. A construction locomotive took me down to the main line junction, where I caught the regular train from Denver. But on the way from the railroad station to the bank in Cripple Creek I had a shock, followed instantly by the conviction that I was in for trouble. On the opposite side of the street, and keeping even pace with me, I saw Dorgan.