A Private Chivalry by Francis Lynde

BRANT awoke on the morning following his excommunication with one idea dominant, and that pointed to flight. Whatever he might be able to do with his life elsewhere, it was evident that the Denver experiment was a pitiful failure. This he said, cursing the fatuous assurance which had kept him from flying to the antipodes at the outset. The city of the plain was merely a clearing house for the mining camps, and sooner or later his story would have found him out, lacking help from Harding or any other personal enemy.

"Anybody but a crazy fool would have known that without having to wait for an object lesson; but, of course, I had to have it hammered into me with blows," was the way he put it to himself on the walk downtown. "Well, I have had the lesson, and I'll profit by it and move on -- like little Joey. If they would give me the chance I'd rather be a sheep dog than a wolf; but it seems that the world at large hasn't much use for the wolf who turns collie -- damn the world at large! If I hadn't given my word to Hobart I'd be tempted to go back and join the fighting minority. As it is, I'll run for it."

So he said, and so he meant to do; but a small thing prevented. Colonel Bowran was away, and he could not well desert in his chief's absence. But this need no more than delay the flight. The chief engineer's absences were usually short, and a day or two more or less would neither make nor mar the future.

So ran the prefigurings, but the event was altogether different from the forecasting, as prefigured events are prone to be. For three days Brant made shift to sink his trouble in a sea of hard work, but on the fourth he had a note from the front, saying that the chief engineer's absence would be extended yet other days. At the same time, lacking the data contained in the field notes carried off by the colonel, he ran out of work. After that the days were empty miseries. In the first idle hour he began to brood over the peculiar hardness of his lot, as a better man might, and with the entrance of the remorseless devil of regret such poor forgetfulness as he had been able to wring out of hard work spread its wings and fled away.

At the end of twenty-four hours he was fairly desperate, and on the second day of enforced idleness he wrote a long letter to Hobart:

"The devil has another job for me," he began, "and if it wasn't for my promise to you I should take it. Things have turned out precisely as I knew they would, and you are to blame; first, for dragging me out of the pit when I wasn't worth saving, and next, for telling me that I might come to Denver when I should have gone to the ends of the earth. By which you will understand that my sins have found me out. I don't know that you care to hear the story, but I do know that I shall presently go mad if I don't tell it to somebody. If it bores you, just remember what I say -- that you are to blame.

"Before I begin I may as well tell you that it is about a woman, so you can swear yourself peaceful before you come at the details. I met her on the train the day I came down from the Colorow district -- the day of my return to civilization. Nothing came of that first meeting, save that I got a glimpse of the gulf that separates a good woman from a bad man; but later, after I had begun to look ahead a little to the things that might be, we met again -- this time in her own home, and I with an introductory godfather.

"That was two months ago. Up to last Wednesday everything went as merry as a marriage bell. The father liked me, the mother tolerated me, and the young woman -- but let that pass. I was welcome enough, and sufficient unto the day was the good thereof. As a matter of course, I was living in a fool's paradise, walking daily over a mine that any chance spark might explode. I knew all that, and yet I was happy till last Wednesday. That was when the mine was fired.

"It came about in the most natural way, but the story is too long to write out, and I don't mean to weary you needlessly. It is enough to say that the mother found me out. You can guess what happened. I went to the house, knowing nothing of what was in store for me. There was a little scene in which I played the heavy villain to the mother's part of outraged virtue -- and the end of it is that I am once more a pariah.

"I didn't see the young woman; that wasn't permitted, of course. But I suppose she knows all about it, and the thought makes me want to run amuck. In the whole dreary business there is only this single grain of comfort: I know who gave me away. And when I meet that man, God do so to me and more if I don't send him where he belongs, and that without benefit of clergy. And you won't say me nay when I tell you that his name is Harding.

"I suppose you will want to know what I am going to do next. I don't know, and that is God's truth. The day after the thing happened I meant to vanish; but the chief was away and I couldn't very well shut up the office and walk out. Since then the mill has been grinding until I don't know what I want to do. Sometimes I am tempted to throw the whole thing overboard and go back to the hog wallow. It is about all I am fit for; and nobody cares -- unless you do.

"For pity's sake write me a letter and brace me up if you can; I never needed it worse. The chief is still away; I can't do another stroke of work till he comes back with the field books, and there isn't a soul here that I can talk to. Consequently I'm going mad by inches. I suppose you have taken it for granted that I love the young woman, though I believe I haven't said so in so many words. I do, and that is what racks me. If I go away, I give her up for good and all. If I stay I can't get her. If I go to the devil again -- but we won't discuss that phase of it now. Write, and hold me to my word, if you love me."