Эл Дженнингс - Through the Shadows with O'Henry

"You're a likable microbe. I've heard of you from very reliable sources. I believe you are straight, I'll speak to Mr. McKinley about you. He is the kindest man in the world. We'll get you out."

The promise raised me to almost hysterical hilarity. I could think of nothing but freedom. I imagined I would be turned loose perhaps the next day—surely within a week. I wrote to Porter telling him I would see him within the fortnight. We could collaborate on another story. (For Porter had been generous enough to call me a collaborator for the "dope" on the holdup.) He wrote back.

"Great news," he said. "Hanna can do it. He made the President and he has a chattel mortgage on the United States."

The fortnight came. Porter sent an urgent query. "Why didn't you show up, colonel ? I had the school ers chartered." In the same letter he told me that the story as he had revised it had been accepted by Everybody's. The check would be sent on publication.

"As soon as the check comes, I'll send you your 'sheer of the boodle.' By the way, please keep my nom de plume strictly to yourself. I don't want anyone to know just yet.

"P. S. —Did you get a little book on short story writing? The reason I ask, I had a store order it and they were to send it direct to you. You have to watch these damn hellions here or they'll do you for 5 cents."

The story-writing kept my mind occupied in the months of waiting for the promised commutation. At last a telegram came! I would be free.

They were anxious, straining days—in that week before my discharge. Hopes, ambitions, old ideals—they went like tireless phantoms before my eyes. Waking or sleeping, I had but one thought---"I must make good—I've got to get back—I'll show them all."

It was the morning of my release. Warden Darby met me in the corridor.

"Walk over to the hospital with me, Al." Darby's face was mottled grey—it got that way whenever he was laboring under excitement or anger.

"By God, Al, I hate to tell you!"

I stood still—the hot blood pounding into my throat, my ears. I felt as though the flesh were dropping from my bones in a kind of throbbing terror. Was my father dead ? Was John dead ?

"They've done you a damn' scurvy trick, Al. The United States marshal is waiting for you. They're going to take you to Leavenworth for five years more."

Five years more in prison! It might as well have been fifty. A blighting tornado of rage overswept me, whipping out every new hope, every honest thought. I felt lashed and tormented as though the blood in my veins were suddenly turned into a million scorpions, stinging me to a hot fury of blinding madness.

I rushed into the post-office, dashed the neat bundle of treasures I had gathered to the ground. Photographs of some of the "cons"---a steel watch fob a "lifer" in the contract shop made for me, an old wooden box fashioned by a "stir-bug" in the lumber mills—these and a few other things I had wrapped together. I wanted these mementoes. Billy looked at me and the trinkets strewn to the floor.

"Don't seem to be too chipper, Al. Ain't sorry to kick the dust of the O. P. off your boots, be ye?"

I was kneeling on the floor, dumping the treasure into a big handkerchief and dumping them out again, scarcely conscious of the repetition. I was afraid to talk, afraid even to look at Billy. A murderous hatred was rearing like an angry snake in my mind.

Before I was aware of it Billy had shuffled over to me, helping himself along with the chair. He sat down, grabbed the bundle out of my hands and tied it up.

"What hit you, Al?"

"Double-crossed. 'Tain't New York, 'tain't Oklahoma, it's Leavenworth for me—five years."

I spat the words out in a vicious gust. Billy dropped the bundle, his mouth sagged open. Amazed and unbelieving, he stared at me.

"Can't be true, Al. They're kiddin' you."

I took the bundle from him. "The marshal is waiting for me!" I started running from the room.

"Al, you ain't going without sayin' goodby?" Billy's crippled spine kept him from reaching me. I turned back. He stretched out his slender hand. He was crying. "It's a damn' shame, Al."

I went outside into a warm flood of sunshine. There was a zip and a dash in the air and the flowers seemed to flaunt their jaunty spring colors. If I had been free I would have gulped in that buoyant gladness in the air.

I was doomed, and the slap in the soft breezes put only an added tang to the bitterness in my heart. The marshal's long, black figure leaned against a stone column just outside the gates. He was twirling something that glittered in his hands.

As I came near him he took a step toward me, dangling the handcuffs. Something insane, unreasoning as a tiger, possessed me. I made a leap. The marshal drew back. We faced each other, both ready to spring. And then Darby, breathless and flurried, was between us.

"Don't handcuff him! He's straight as a die." The marshal, already weak with fear, dropped the steel rings into his pocket. "He won't try to escape."

For the entire trip he made no attempt to guard me. I made no effort to escape. At Leavenworth he turned me over to the warden. The shame and the ignominy of going again through the measurements, the mugging, the head-shaving, of standing again in the fourth-grade criminal class, humiliated me with a mean, paltry, slap-in-the-face kind of feeling.

I had no interest left in life. Not even the thought of seeing Frank buoyed me.

I felt too degraded to wish for the meeting. It was a silent, mournful reunion two pals had. Frank looked at me and I at him, and we didn't say a word until the guard beckoned for me to leave.

Something had died in me. After that I saw very little of my brother. I didn't even try to see him. Six months of weary, sordid stagnation wheeled along.

And then one morning, with but a breath of warning, the light broke for me. I walked out of the pen.

John and my father had pressed my case. The United Circuit Court of Appeals released me on a writ of habeas corpus. The court ruled that my imprisonment in Leavenworth was illegal and that the verdict which sentenced me to five years was worthless, as I had received this term on top of a sentence to life.

I had been convicted in one county and given life for the Rock Island train-robbery. I had been immediately whisked to another district and given five years for assault on Marshal Bud Ledbetter. The court ruled that this district had no jurisdiction over me at the time the sentence was imposed.

When they told me I was free it was as immaterial to me as though they had ordered me to carry a message from one cell block to another.

Six months before Billy Raidler and I had sat far into the night discussing my future. Should I go to New York and try to write, make a fortune and return to the home folks?

Should I dash back to them dead broke and trust to luck for success?

These problems did not exist for me now. I had fallen into a kind of lethargy. I had written to no one. I had put far away every ambition and plan for the "come back." I was a sort of animated corpse.

Not until I stood at the door of Frank's cell and he put out his hand and looked down at me did a tremor of emotion seize me. My brother started to speak. His words were muffled and indistinct. He held my hand.

"For God's sake, Al, let her be on the square from now on!" It came out blurting, anxious, pleading. An overpowering tide of remorse swept over me. I'd have given the soul out of my body to have changed places with him.

It was on the square with me. I went back to Oklahoma and took up the practice of law. After a year of temptation, hardship and starving in a land of plenty I began to make good. One case followed another. I had a few big successes.