Branded. Lynde Francis

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СКАЧАТЬ this though I was definitely charging the exposure to the town marshal as being the only person who could have spread it abroad. To my surprise, the grocer defended the marshal promptly and warmly.

      "That shows how little you know Cal Giddings," he retorted. "He's the last man on top of earth to go 'round givin' you a black eye of that sort."

      "May I ask what reason you have for thinking so?" I inquired.

      "Sure you may. I've known Cal ever since we was little kids together. I've seen him every day this week, and he knew you was workin' for me. If he'd 'a' told anybody, it would 'a' been me; you can bet your hat on that."

      "Then where did you hear the story?" I persisted.

      "Why, I dunno just where I did hear it first. Everybody in town seems to know it," he asserted; and with this unsatisfying answer I was obliged to be contented.

      The next attempt was made in a small industrial city on the opposite side of the State. This time I went to the chief of police as soon as I arrived, and after making the required report, I had it out with him in plain speech.

      "I am going to try to get work here in your city," I said, "and I'd like to know beforehand how much leeway you are going to give me."

      The portly thief-taker leaned back in his chair and regarded me with a coldly appraisive eye. He was a coarse-featured man with a face that would have fitted admirably in any rogues' gallery in the land.

      "You're in bad, young fellow," he growled. "We've got plenty and more than enough of your kind in this town, without takin' on any more."

      "But I am keeping my parole," I pleaded. "I have come to you like a man the first thing, and have made my report according to the conditions. Somebody has got to give me a chance."

      "You'll earn it, damn' good and plenty, if you stay here to get it," was the gruff response. "What kind of a job are you lookin' for?"

      It was hard to confide in such a man, even casually, but I had no choice.

      "I am willing to take anything I can get, but my experience has been mostly in office work," I told him; adding: "I suppose I might call myself a fairly expert bookkeeper."

      "Umph!" he grunted, shifting his cigar from one corner of the hard-bitted mouth to the other. "That means that you want to try for a job where you can work the till-tapping game again."

      Not having as yet learned my lesson line by line, I was incautious enough to say: "I have yet to work it the first time."

      "Like hell you have! See here, young fellow—you needn't spring that kind of talk on me. I know you and your kind up one side and down the other. You say you've put three years in 'stir' and that settles it." At this point he broke off short, righted his chair with a snap and reached for a bill-spindle on his desk. After a glance at one of the impaled memoranda he sat back again, chewing his cigar and staring into vacancy. A full minute elapsed before he deigned to become once more aware of my presence. Then he whirled upon me to rap out an explosive question.

      "What did you say your name was?" and when I told him: "Aw right; you come back here this afternoon and we'll see whether you stay or move on. That's all. Now get out. I'm busy."

      I went away and killed time as I could until the middle of the afternoon. Upon returning to police headquarters I found the hard-faced chief tilted in his chair with his feet on his desk, looking as if he hadn't moved since my visit of the forenoon. When he saw who it was cutting off the afternoon sunlight he straightened up with a growl, rummaged in a file of papers and jerked out a typewritten sheet which he glanced over as one who reads only the headings.

      "James Bertrand Weyburn, eh?" he rasped. "I know all about you now, and you may as well can all that didn't-do-it stuff. Forget it and come down to business. You say you want to hit the straight-and-narrow: how would a job in a coal yard fit you?—keepin' books and weighin'-in the coal cars?"

      I told him, humbly enough, that I was too nearly a beggar to be a chooser; that I'd be only too glad to get a chance at anything at which I might earn a living.

      "Aw right," was the curt rejoinder. "You hike over to the Consolidated Coal Company's yard on the West Side, and tell Mullins, the head book-keeper, that I sent you, see? Tell him to call me on the 'phone if he wants to know anything more about you. That's all. Pull your freight out of here and get busy—if you don't want to get the 'move on' out of this burg."

      Notwithstanding this crabbed speech, matching all the other things this man had said to me, I left police headquarters with a warm spot in my heart, thinking that I had lighted upon a diamond in the rough and hadn't had discernment enough to recognize it.

      Yet there was a small mystery thrusting itself into this second interview with the chief. What was the content of the typewritten sheet he had consulted, and who had written it? If it had been a telegram I might have concluded that he had wired the warden of the penitentiary for a corroboration of my story. But it was not a telegram.

      I was still puzzling over the mystery half an hour later when I found the coal yard and the bookkeeper, Mullins, a red-faced Irishman who winked solemnly when I told him that Chief Callahan had sent me.

      "Know anything at all about the railroad end of the coal business?" was the first inquiry shot at me; but it was not made until after the book-keeper had shut himself into the telephone booth, presumably for a wire talk with Callahan.

      I shook my head. "None of the details. But I can learn."

      "Maybe you can, and maybe you can't. We'll try you out on the railroad desk, and Peters 'll show you what you don't know. Peel your coat and jump in. Hours eight to six; pay, sixty dollars a month: more bimeby if you're worth it."

      Robert Louis Stevenson's cheerful little opening verse:

      "Light foot and tight foot,

       And green grass spread;

       Early in the morning,

       And hope is on ahead,"

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