Back home
Date: 2024-05-08T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Short stories; Detective and mystery stories; Texas -- Fiction; Law enforcement -- Fiction; Texas Rangers -- Fiction

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Back home

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Title: Back home

Author: J. Frank Davis

Release date: May 8, 2024 [eBook #73567]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: Street & Smith Corporation, 1923

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/73567

Credits: Roger Frank and Sue Clark

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BACK HOME ***

Back Home

By J. Frank Davis

Author of “A Rule of the Service,”
“Too Much Golden Fleas,” Etc.

Captain Carmichael of the Texas Rangers does his duty and a little more.

Captain James Carmichael of the Texas Rangers, home-bound after a week in Mexico City on official secret business for the governor, let his gaze rove idly through the window of his Pullman as the train paused in the late afternoon at an unimportant Mexican hill village.

He saw a dingy station, around which stood and squatted expressionless, stolid, serape-draped Indian men. Behind it two or three square, flat adobe buildings, each a mean rabbit warren whose many doors were now crowded with staring women and babies. Beyond, in a disorder that made no reckoning of streets or avenues, fifty low jacals, barely higher than dog kennels, before which Indian women tended toy cooking fires or ground corn for tortillas. On a hill, a church. Far back beyond the hill’s shoulder a glimpse of the handsome hacienda whose master was feudal lord of this narrow corner of the republic—or had been, before the revolutions.

The village children of ages from five to a dozen—a swarm of them—were not with the men whose backs rested against the station walls or the women in their doorways or about the fires, but were strung along the track for the length of the train, trotting beside the Pullmans as they slowed. One could see them if he pressed his face to the screen and looked down. One could hear them whether he looked or not. They were all softly whining, their eyes upcast to the car windows, their high-pitched voices almost a chorus in unison.

“Centavita! Centavita! Por gracias Dios, centavita!”

Captain Carmichael was not thinking of the things his eyes saw or his ears heard. They were not unique. At least a half dozen times since noon the train had stopped where the passengers’ eyes rested upon a dingy station, many-doored adobe rabbit warrens, jacals with women tending toy fires before them, lounging men and swarming children who trotted beside the cars and begged, in the name of God, a little penny. The Ranger had noted the name of the station on its sign and it had brought his mind back to the errand that had taken him to the Mexican capital and the report that he should make to the governor at Austin, for it was not many miles back of this hill village that the Tarbox Exploration and Mining Company had one of its greatest concessions and what the Ranger captain would have to say to the governor would of necessity contain many a mention of the Tarbox Exploration and Mining Company.

And then, suddenly, as the car brakes jammed tight and the train came to its full stop, he saw a white man standing beside the track, a traveling bag on the ground by his feet, plainly an American or an Englishman and the first the captain had seen at any station that afternoon. He wondered if, perchance, this man was one of the Tarbox outfit. It was not necessarily so, for there were other mining outfits in these hills, but it was possible.

A moment later the porter came bustling into Carmichael’s car, bearing the white man’s bag, which he put in a section almost opposite the captain, and the white man followed him. Presently, when the train was again in motion and the conductors came through, the Ranger overheard sufficient of their conversation to learn that the new passenger was bound for San Antonio.

The man was at least as old as Carmichael, who was fifty-three, and he looked rather more like an American than an Englishman, but the big bag that contained his belongings had never been made anywhere but in the British Isles. His dress was rough and worn, as would be expected of any Anglo-Saxon coming aboard there in the mountains, but Captain Carmichael’s experience was of a section where one gauges a man by everything but his clothes and there was something in this stranger’s bearing that gave an impression of success and prosperity.

He was tall and at first glance seemed thin, but his movements indicated a lean wiriness that bespoke an active life in the open, as did the sun-browned skin of his face and hands. His hair, short-trimmed by a barber not more than three weeks since, was wholly white, and his face, smooth shaven, might have been sternly handsome but for a scar, old and faded but deep and puckering, that crossed his upper lip almost from corner to corner and drew the lip upward into an expression of perpetual disdain.

Carmichael’s first thought, as he observed the scar, was that if it were on his face he would conceal it with a mustache; his second that hair, in all probability, would not grow on that lip.

The man settled into his seat and stared out of the window and it seemed to Captain Carmichael that there was something vaguely familiar about his profile. More than twenty-five years in the Ranger service had cultivated his memory for faces, yet if he had ever seen the man before the recollection of when and where evaded him. He felt positive he had never seen that unusual scar, and it obviously was an ancient one, which would mean that if he had ever seen the man it must have been long ago.

Until dusk fell the stranger sat quietly in his seat, seldom moving, his eyes on the passing landcape, his face stern and brooding. Carmichael might have tried to open a conversation with him but another passenger who did so was politely but firmly discouraged. And after having got a good full-face study of him in the dining car, Captain Carmichael became convinced that he did not know the man, that his impression of having met him somewhere was due merely to the stranger’s slight resemblance to somebody else.

The correctness of this judgment was borne out at the Rio Grande, when the train stopped in the middle of the International Bridge the next morning and he heard the conversation between the stranger and the American customs and immigration officers.

The man’s papers were in perfect order and he bore in his big British bag or on his person nothing dutiable and no firearms. His name was Andrew Miller, and he was a citizen of Argentina, of English birth. This was his first visit to the United States. He had had business in Mexico and wished to see a portion of the big northern republic. He expected to return to South America within a month or two.

The train rolled on to San Antonio, where the scar-lipped Argentinian left it. Captain Carmichael continued on to Austin.

There the governor gave him an hour of earnest conference the following forenoon, as an outcome of which it was decided his next investigations had best be made in San Antonio. He took an afternoon train and that evening found him registered at the Hotel Bonham, in whose wide lobby and its overlooking mezzanine, if he but waits long enough, one may see practically every refugee, revolutionary and plotter against the peace of Mexico that visits the Texas metropolis. And there in the Bonham lobby, after dinner, he again saw Andrew Miller.

The man was in different clothing—new clothing of a smoother weave and more fashionable cut than he had worn on the train—and he sat in an armchair that gave him a view of the desk and the passing crowds. The Ranger thought he might be waiting for some acquaintance. But when an hour had passed and Carmichael had finished his evening paper, always with his eyes over the top of it for a sight of the Mexicans he had come there to watch, if they should drop in, Miller still sat idle, unspeaking and unspoken to.

And then at a moment when the Ranger’s gaze chanced to be upon him he saw something or some one near the main entrance that so affected his emotions that he could not wholly conceal them.

He did not start. He did not move so much as a finger. But his features stiffened ever so slightly and into his eyes came an expression such as comes into the eyes of the hunter when, after stealthily stalking, he comes into view of his quarry.

Carmichael looked quickly in the direction in which Miller was staring. He saw a score of men and half as many women entering and leaving the hotel. Discarding those who were going out as unlikely to have attracted Miller’s attention, since he had had opportunity to see them before, the Ranger swiftly appraised the new arrivals.

One or two were traveling men, just alighted from a depot street car, hustling with their bags toward the desk. The remainder were women in filmy dresses and their well-groomed escorts, who passed laughing and chattering toward the corridor that led to the big ballroom from which a crash of drums and saxophones some time since had signaled the opening of a dance. It was quite evidently to be a big dance, for a hundred or more festively dressed couples had already passed in to it and more were constantly arriving.

Miller’s eyes followed a group of these newly arrived dance patrons. He might be observing any one of the twenty or more. Captain Carmichael studied the group.

They were for the most part young people and Carmichael recognized several as sons and daughters of well-to-do business men of the city. Two of them were already successful in their own right—Morton Perry the real-estate operator and Wallace Locke the oil man. Each of these had inherited money and skillfully increased it, although there the comparison ended, because Perry’s initial stake had been not more than fifty thousand, while Locke’s father, an old cattleman, had left him close to half a million. Each of them although barely past thirty had at least doubled his original capital.

A pretty girl moved beside each as he passed on into the ballroom. Perry’s companion was his wife, a slight, bobbed-haired bunch of vivacity. With Locke was Edith Alsbury, a merry girl of twenty-three with a creamy complexion and flaming hair, whom Captain Carmichael had known slightly all her life, being an acquaintance of her aunt who had reared her since she was orphaned in infancy. He recalled that he had heard she was engaged to Locke; that they were to be married in a month or two.

The captain’s eyes, as the group disappeared and others coming from the entrance took their places, returned to the chair where the Argentinian had sat, to find it vacant. Miller now stood at the desk, talking to a clerk. Presently, nodding as though in thanks for some information, he left the desk and went to a chair, not the one he had vacated with its full view of the entrance, but another in a far corner. Seated in it he paid no more attention to the throng but fell into deep thought.

Captain Carmichael frowned as he studied the situation that had suddenly developed. Certain facts which aligned themselves in his mind seemed to have a bearing on one another and on the very assignment from the governor on which he was engaged.

Texas, as the next-door neighbor to Mexico, has many business relationships with the southern republic and Texans believe they understand Mexico and Mexicans better than do the residents of most other States. There was a period, during the early revolutions, the insane Plan of San Diago which set the border aflame, and the aftermaths of the Columbus raid, when the administration at Washington did not satisfy Texans because it watched and waited. Following the establishment of relative order below the Rio Grande certain of the Texas business citizenry became dissatisfied because watchfulness and waiting still continued and the Mexican government was not officially recognized.

With whether these were right or wrong Captain Carmichael was not concerned. His duty was to the State administration and that administration was doing what it might to bring about more perfect peace and understanding between the two countries. And it was convinced that more perfect peace and understanding was being hindered by certain American corporations which had financial interests below the Rio Grande.

Such a corporation was the Tarbox Exploration and Mining Company—whose biggest concession was there in the mountains back of where Miller had boarded the train.

Fighting the political ambitions and desires of the combination of which the Tarbox outfit was a member was another combination. Wallace Locke was a member of it. Notwithstanding his youth, because of connections with the governor and other strong men of Texas, he was powerful.

Miller was an Argentinian. He might not have come from the Tarbox camp. But on the other hand——

Carmichael lounged to the hotel desk and asked the clerk, who knew him well:

“What did that old feller with the scar—Miller—ask you a few minutes ago?”

“Who the young man was with the young lady in white with the red hair,” the clerk told him promptly. “With Miss Alsbury—although he didn’t know her name.”

“You told him, of course.”

“Yes. He said he had thought Locke’s face looked familiar, but must have been mistaken. Anything the matter with Miller, captain?”

“No,” the Ranger smiled. “I was just curious.”

So Miller, who might be with the Tarbox crowd, was seeking to identify the Tarboxes’ strongest enemy in Texas. It came to the Ranger that there had been attempts to buy Locke off, which had failed, and that there had been courteous words that were veiled threats.

Miller looked like a resolute man, a hard man. In all the hours the Ranger had observed him he had not once smiled.

Captain Carmichael went and stood not far from the news stand, facing the lobby, and absently rearranged his necktie, after which he left the hotel by the side entrance. A young man who had been within sight all the evening but had not spoken to him rose from his seat, drifted out aimlessly through the other door and went around the corner to where his captain stood in a shadowed doorway.

“There’s an old fellow sitting not far from the manager’s office,” Carmichael said without preliminary. “White haired, smooth face, new clothes, bad scar on his upper lip.”

“I saw him. Noticed the scar.”

“His name is Andrew Miller. Born an Englishman; now says he lives in Buenos Aires—and I reckon he does; he has the papers to prove it. Tourist. First trip to the States, he says. Came in on the train with me yesterday. We didn’t get acquainted but after seeing me there on the train he’d be bound to notice me, of course, if I stuck too close to him. I want him followed tonight and to-morrow. Get McCampbell to help you and split up the work so he won’t see too much of either one of you. I want to know what he does, who he sees, what he talks about.”

“Yes, suh.”

“That’s all.” The young man turned away. “Oh, Burnham! You know that crowd I’m watching. If he gets in touch with any of them get me word as soon as you can—and try to fix it so you and McCampbell can split up and keep tabs on both him and the people he sees.”

“All right, cap’n.”

Ranger Burnham returned to the hotel. So, after a little, did Captain Carmichael, who observed as he entered that Andrew Miller was still sitting quietly in the same place, still deep in thought and unsmiling, and that Burnham was seemingly engrossed in a magazine at the other side of the lobby.

The captain did not take further notice of the Argentinian. Indeed, there presently developed something else for him to do, when two well-dressed, Spanish-featured men, typical Mexican refugees of the wealthy class, entered together and met, apparently by accident and to the mutual surprise of all the trio, a big, gray-mustached man who looked like a retired cattleman, was a lawyer of sorts and really made the bulk of his excellent income as a lobbyist.

These were some of the people—none of them directly connected with the Tarbox Company, but all interested, for various reasons, in keeping alive friction between Mexico and the United States—on whom he had hoped to get his eyes this evening, and he was too busy observing them until they separated for the night to think again more than casually of the man with the disdainful scar.

Nor did he see Miller during all the following day. At six o’clock, while he was washing up for dinner in his hotel room, Ranger Burnham knocked at his door and came in briskly.

“Wallace Locke!” he exclaimed, the moment he had closed the door behind him. “If there is anything about Locke that this Miller hasn’t found out, I don’t know what it could be. He’s asked questions about him from the cradle to this good day. And—didn’t you tell me he is a stranger? Never been in the States before?”

“That’s what he claims,” Carmichael said.

“Bunk!” ejaculated Burnham. “This isn’t the easiest city in the world for a stranger to find his way about in—and Miller got around it like it was his own dooryard. Without asking, usually. When he did ask it was about some part of the town that has changed the last few years. If he never was in San ’Ntonio before, I never saw a tarantula.”

“And he wanted information regarding Locke, eh? What sort? And where did he go for it? Did he see any of the gang we are watching?”

Ranger Burnham answered the last question first.

“No, not one. His inquiries were made in exactly the places you would expect them to be made if he is exactly who he says he is—a business man, a stranger, who has a proposition that he is half thinking of putting up to Locke if the replies to his inquiries are satisfactory. He has been to banks, to the chamber of commerce, to a big business man or two. He has good business credentials—from Buenos Aires. The questions he asked, however, had very little to do with Locke’s business standing. They were mostly personal.”

“In what way?”

“As to his character and habits. What sort of a man is he? Does he drink? Does he gamble? Does he run around nights? If so, where?”

“H’m!” grunted Carmichael. “Wants to know where to find him after dark, eh?”

“It looks that way. And right in that connection comes a thing that could be mighty significant. Less than half an hour ago he got him a gun—a .45—and a box of cartridges.”

“Where?”

Burnham named the store. “Tucked it down into his pants—he’s handled a .45 before, I’d say, from the way he did it—and then came here to the hotel. He has just gone up to his room.”

Captain Carmichael considered briefly.

“If he’s come here on some errand with Locke for that Tarbox outfit—and those questions look like he wants to know when and where to find him at bed hours,” he said, “he isn’t likely to lose any time. And with a gun hung on him——”

The captain crossed to where his own holstered pistol had been laid on the bed while he made his toilet, strapped it on, and reached for his coat.

“I reckon the time has come to ask Mister Miller what his game is,” he said. “Him toting a pistol that-a-way without any permit to do so gives me a good excuse. I’ll make him a little unannounced call. Go get your supper; I’ll see you downstairs afterward.”

He already knew the location of Miller’s room. Three minutes later he tapped on the door. A deep voice called, “Come!” and Carmichael entered. The Argentinian stood facing him from near the bathroom entrance, not a dozen feet away, and instantly, without a word, when he saw the Ranger he went after his gun.

It was not a fight; it was too one-sided and over too quickly to be called that.

Miller’s right hand went back to the weapon high on his hip with what might have seemed fair speed to the eyes of some Easterner unversed in the technique of pistol drawing, but a fatal slowness by the standards of the Southwest. Captain Carmichael covered the distance between them in two flying steps and his own pistol leaped into his hand while he was taking the first of them; he easily could have killed the Argentinian where he stood but he did not find it necessary. Miller had not got the new gun clear of his waistband when the Ranger came within arm’s reach. It was just coming free when the barrel of Carmichael’s .45 crashed against the side of his head. He went down limp, his hand slipping from the half-drawn weapon.

The captain had it safely out of reach and had satisfied himself that Miller bore no other arms when the man opened his eyes, groaned, touched his head gently with his fingers and made a dizzy effort to sit up.

“Steady, hombre!” Carmichael warned him gruffly. “I’ve got your gun. Take it easy. When your brain gets cleared a little we’ll talk.”

Miller did not groan again, although his head must have ached terribly. Once he had gained full control of his faculties he did not even wince, and Carmichael noted this with approval; he admired men who could take what punishment came to them without whining. Two or three minutes elapsed before Miller asked:

“Do you mind if I sit in a chair, cap’n?”

Carmichael succeeded in concealing his surprise that Miller knew him.

“Go to it,” he said. He, too, took a seat, his pistol resting on his knee. “You won’t be fool enough to start anything more,” he said, moving it significantly. “If you do, you won’t get away with it. All right. Suppose you tell me——”

Miller interrupted him. He was staring at his own wrists, as though puzzled.

“I thought there’d be handcuffs on them,” he said. “Much obliged. I’d hate to go out through that lobby handcuffed.”

“What did you go to pull a gun on me for, that a way?” the Ranger demanded. “You’re a pretty darn lucky feller not to be dead this minute. You would be, if I couldn’t see, first look, that you hadn’t any speed.”

“It’s been twenty-two years since I pulled a gun, or even wore one,” Miller said. “But I wasn’t pulling it on you.”

“Of course not.”

“No, I wasn’t, really. It was for myself.” He leaned forward and looked into the Ranger’s eyes earnestly. “See here, Carmichael! Couldn’t the thing be fixed that way? I’ll give you my word of honor I don’t want to hurt anybody else. Couldn’t you let me have that pistol of mine back and go out of the room for a minute? That would make the least trouble. For all concerned. Couldn’t it be fixed?”

He seemed to think instantly of an amendment to this, and added:

“And you could let it stand that I’m a stranger named Andrew Miller—my papers prove it. Couldn’t that be done, too? So that the old business never came out at all? Couldn’t it?”

There was sincerity in the man’s eyes. He meant what he said.

And he was not Andrew Miller, but somebody else. Who? He obviously thought the Ranger knew. Until he himself gave some clew to his identity the thing must be handled with tact.

“Why?” Carmichael asked.

“Why?” the man repeated. “Why? Great heavens! After all these years, to have it come out right now—— You’ve got a family yourself, haven’t you? You used to have, anyway. If you were in my place——”

“What did you buy that gun for?”

“I saw the game was up. You were closing in. When I saw you there in that Pullman I wondered if you’d recognize me—and I thought sure you didn’t. I’ve changed more than you have. My hair, last time you saw me, was thick, and its natural color. And this”—he touched the long ragged scar on his upper lip—“you never saw that. Nobody in Texas did. Nobody in Texas ever saw me without a mustache; I had it all raised when I came here. Not a living soul in the State knew I had this mark under it except my wife—and she never saw it. I got it falling off a shed onto a harrow back there in Kentucky when I wasn’t twelve years old. Just as soon as I was able to raise hair over it, I hid it. Then I raised whiskers, too. I was twenty when I came to Texas, you know.”

“So you thought I didn’t recognize you there on the train?”

“If I’d believed you did, I’d have left it the other side of the border. But when it seemed I’d got by you, I thought I could get by anybody, so I came on. Then there you were in the lobby last night but you didn’t seem to notice me much. So I still thought I was all right until your man followed me to-day.”

“How did you know him?”

“I didn’t, of course. He doesn’t date back to my time. But I ran into him three or four times this afternoon, and finally I asked a man, while he was in sight, who he was. And the man didn’t remember his name but said he was a Ranger.”

The man spread his hands.

“So then I knew it was all up,” he said, “and that I’d been a fool to come back into this country. And there was no getting away—so I decided to take the only way out. I got the gun. If you hadn’t come in here about when you did——”

Who was the man? Even with a mustache and beard imagined on his face, Carmichael could not reconstruct a face he knew. He said, groping for a clew:

“Twenty-two years. Time goes, doesn’t it?”

“Twenty-two years. And in all that time I have never asked a question about Texas that would show any knowledge of it, never admitted I ever was in Texas, never more than three or four times seen a Texas paper. I went to England on a cattle boat right after my escape—with the whiskers and mustache shaved off, of course, so they never spotted me—and then, after a while, to the Argentine. I’ve been there ever since.”

“Prospered some, I take it.”

“Yes, I’ve prospered. I’m worth a good deal of money. It was one of my interests brought me to Mexico; I own more than half of the Buena Ventura Mine, there in the hills back of where you saw me get on the train. I had to come up to look it over and when I thought that I was only a few hundred miles from San Antonio—well, the thing pulled me. I just had to come. Why, I didn’t even know whether my girl was alive or dead. And I wanted to know. For one thing, if she was living I wanted to fix it so she’d get my property when I pass out. And I couldn’t write to anybody, of course, not without making talk.”

“Been going straight all this time, eh?” Carmichael was still groping.

“I never was anything else,” the man protested. “You never heard anything against me outside of that last killing, did you? And you never heard the truth of that. Nobody did.”

“I don’t remember all the details,” the Ranger said. “It’s a long time.”

“I was railroaded,” the man declared earnestly. “You may not believe it—convicts always say they were railroaded. But I was. The evidence was all against me. I didn’t have a chance. But as true as there’s a God in heaven I never killed a man that wasn’t trying to kill me. Not one of them. Everybody had to admit that until the last one. They got me that time without a friendly witness.

“Of course anything I say isn’t going to have any weight, after all this time. The records of the court show for themselves. But it’s a relief, somehow, to talk about it. The biggest thing in a man’s life and I’ve had to be dumb for twenty-two years! Twenty-two years without a word from home—although after a while it stopped seeming like home. Buenos Aires is my home now. People down there don’t think badly of me at all. If it wasn’t for the girl—and yet, until I got into Mexico there, so close to Texas, I never really intended to look her up in person. You see, I didn’t even know whether or not she’d lived.”

“So you said. Tell me about that killing. The straight of it.”

The man had quite recovered from the effects of his blow, except that an ugly lump was raising itself above his ear, which from time to time he patted softly.

“That feud between John Gater and me,” he said, “dated back a long time. He was the boss of Huevaca County in those days, of course, and I was a sort of leader of the faction that was trying to pull him off his throne and get halfway decent government. Sheriff Aristo Coyne was his man, and all Coyne’s deputies. And he was in with the Sarran gang.”

“A fine bunch of desperadoes and horse thieves,” Carmichael murmured.

“And Dick Sarran, the head of them, was a dirty killer, but nobody could do anything to him because Gater stood behind him. And Gater was above all the law there was in Huevaca County.”

“He was a powerful boss.”

“And I fought him, like a young fool. I was about twenty-five. I’m only forty-nine now. This white hair——

“Larry Beeson was governor and Gater was his man—and that meant that he had the State backing for anything he chose to do, murder included, provided he delivered the votes of the county. The first killing was on an election day, when ‘Buck’ Hamilton, one of Sarran’s gang, tried to vote a bunch of Mexicans solid that he’d brought across the river only that morning. He and I had words and he went after his gun. I was some fast in those days and I killed him. They couldn’t do a thing to me. It was self-defense and there were a lot of witnesses. But they had it in for me from that minute. I was a fool not to leave the county. But I was too stuffy.”

“It took more than stuffiness to stay in Huevaca County after John Gater and Dick Sarran wanted a man out of it,” the Ranger said sympathetically.

“So they laid for me, and inside of a year I had to kill two more of them.” Even the thought of it brought a harassed, haunted look into the man’s eyes. “I slept, those days, with a gun, not under my pillow, but actually in bed with me, under my hand. Sometimes, looking back on it, it seems as though I didn’t really sleep during that whole year. It was along in the early part of that time that the baby was born, and my wife died when it was four days old. And it seemed to me I didn’t much care whether they killed me or not. My wife’s sister here in San Antonio took the baby.

“Then that gubernatorial campaign came along where Jeff Rich was running against Larry Beeson, and you remember there never was bloodier politics in Texas. I was for Jeff Rice, to the limit. And when he was licked, after a close election, it looked as if word went out that it was an open season on the fellows that had fought Beeson the hardest. Anyway, a lot of them got killed pretty soon, one way and another.

Well, I wouldn’t leave the county, and my turn came.

“That man Bristow, of Sarran’s gang, had a good reputation compared to most of the rest of them. He hadn’t ever killed a man—at least it never had been proved that he had—and maybe Gater and Sarran had that in their minds when they set him to get me. I suppose the scheme had been all worked out for some time, waiting for the cards to fall just right. Anyway, he and I met one evening along about dusk near the post office—and there wasn’t one single man in sight that didn’t belong body and soul to Gater. And Bristow said fighting words to me and went after his pistol and I beat him to it. Seems funny that I could beat fast gunmen to the draw in those days, when you think how slow I went after that pistol of mine just now, doesn’t it? But after twenty-two years without practice——

“If another man, that they couldn’t manage, hadn’t come into sight just as I shot him, they’d probably have finished me right then and there, although perhaps I could have taken two or three of them along with me. But there was a preacher—one of these circuit riders—came around the corner just as Bristow fell. They didn’t know, I suppose, whether he saw Bristow go after his gun first or not, although it turned out at the trial that he didn’t. So they didn’t keep the fight going—but one of them sneaked Bristow’s pistol from where it lay beside him before the parson could get near enough to see what he was doing and everybody swore I’d deliberately killed an unarmed man that had always had a reputation of being peaceable.”

For three seconds the speaker stared gloomily before him, his eyes on that tragic past. Then:

“That’s all,” he said, simply. “Gater had the jury and why they didn’t hang me I don’t know. Perhaps he thought it would be a bigger punishment to send me to the pen. The sentence was life. And Deputy Sheriff Dominguez started with me for Huntsville.”

“And you jumped off the train, handcuffed, while he was asleep.”

“I jumped off the train, but he wasn’t asleep—and I had the handcuffs loose in my hand when I jumped, because they’d just been unlocked. And there was a thousand dollars in Miguel Dominguez’s pocket the next day that hadn’t been there before. It was pretty nearly all the money I had in the world and Dominguez was willing to double cross his own gang if the temptation was strong enough. He knew I’d never come back, and if I did, and told it, I’d be just an escaped lifer trying to make trouble for an officer.”

“I’ve been trying to think of your first name, Alsbury,” said Carmichael. “It is ‘Martin,’ isn’t it? You were always called ‘Red.’”

“Martin Alsbury,” the other agreed. “‘Red’ Alsbury to everybody, in those days. The color’s been gone out of my hair a good many years. The girl’s got it. That exact shade. She’s a fine-looking young woman, Carmichael. Just to think that until day before yesterday I didn’t even know whether she had lived or died! A man doesn’t have much affection for a little bit of a baby, less than a year old—especially if its mother died when it came. I never thought much about Edith till lately. But as a man gets older——”

Suddenly the grim stoicism with which he had been speaking departed. His face distorted and his voice broke, as he implored:

“Carmichael! Can’t I have that gun and settle it the easiest way? Is it necessary she should ever know? She’s going to marry that young Locke, and all day I’ve been checking him up, and he’s a regular man, just the kind I’d want her to marry, but if he and she knew that her father—— She’s never dreamed that I was alive. Is there any need for her to know? If you won’t give me a gun, can’t you slip me into Huntsville for the rest of my sentence without any of it ever getting into the papers, Cap’n? For those young folks’ sakes!”

And now there was huskiness in the Ranger’s throat, too, as he cried, harshly, to conceal his own emotion:

“Why, you darned old fool, you’ll be at the wedding to give her away! Jeff Rich ran again for governor and was elected, two years after you escaped. They never could get track of you to let you know, and finally, when it was in all the papers and you didn’t show up, everybody natchully supposed you were dead. One of the first things Jeff Rich did as governor was to sign your unconditional pardon.”

Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the January 7, 1923 issue of The Popular Magazine.

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