FullReads

His name was Aaron Burr.

The other was a big backwoodsman of twenty, whose life had been as obscure as that of a domestic animal. He was rough of manner and slow of speech, and just now, owing to a combination of physical confinement and mental torture altogether unlovely in disposition.

This man was Bud Ellis.

The other prisoners–a motley lot of frontier reprobates–ate together, slept together, and quarrelled together. Looking constantly for trouble, and thrown into actual contact with an object as convenient as Aaron Burr, it was inevitable that he should be made the butt of their coarse gibes and foul witticisms; and when these could not penetrate his calm, superior self-possession, it was just as inevitable that taunts should extend even to worse indignities.

Burr was not the man to be stirred against his calm judgment; but one day his passionate nature broke loose, and he and the offender came to blows.

There were a dozen prisoners in the single ill-lighted, log-bound room, and almost to a man they attacked him. The fight would not have lasted long had not the inequality appealed to Ellis on the second.

Moreover, with him, the incident was to the moment opportune. If ever a man was in the mood for war, it was the big, square-jawed pioneer. He was reckless and desperate for the first time in his life, and he joined with Burr against the room, with the abandon of a madman.

For minutes they fought. Elbows and knees, fists and feet, teeth and tough-skulled heads; every hard spot and every sharp angle bored and jabbed at the crushing mass which swiftly closed them in. They struggled like cats against numbers, and held the wall until the sound of battle brought the negligent guard running, and the muzzle of a carbine peeped through the grating. Burr and Ellis came out with scarce a rag and with many bruises, but with the new-born lust of battle hot within them. Ellis glowered at the enemy, and having of the two the more breath, fired the parting shot.

“How I’d like to take you fellows out, one at a time,” he said.

From that day the two men were kept apart from the others, and the friendship grew. When Burr chose, neither man nor woman could resist him. He chose now and Ellis, by habit and by nature silent, told of his life and of his thoughts. It was a new tale to Burr, these dream products of a strong man, and of solitude; and so, listening, he forgot his own trouble. The hard look that had formed over his face in the three years past vanished, leaving him again the natural, fascinating man who had first taken the drawing-room of the rare old Jumel mansion by storm. It was genuine, this tale that Ellis told; it was strong, with the savor of Mother Nature and of wild things, and fascinating with the beauty of unconscious telling.

“And the girl?” asked Burr after Ellis finished a passionate account of the last year. Unintentionally, he touched flame to tinder.

“Don’t ask me about her. I’m not fit. She was coming to see me, but I wouldn’t let her. She’s good and innocent; she never imagined we were not as strong as she, and it’s killing her. There’s no question what will happen to me; everything is against me, and I’ll be convicted.

“No one understands–she can’t herself; but she feels responsible for one of us, already, and will feel the same for me when it’s over. Anyway, I’d never see her again. I feel different toward her now, and always would. I’d never live over again days like I have in the past year: days I hated a friend I’d known all my life–because we both loved the same woman. If the Almighty sent love of woman into the world to be bought at the price I paid, it’s wrong, and He’s made a mistake. It’s contrary to Nature, because Nature is kind.