THE SKY LINE
OF SPRUCE
By EDISON MARSHALL
AUTHOR OF
"The Voice of the Pack," "The Strength of the Pines,"
"The Snowshoe Trail," "Shepherds of the Wild," etc.
1922
CONTENTS
PART ONE
THE WAKENING
I
The convict gang had a pleasant place to work to-day. Their roadbuilding had taken them some miles from the scattered outskirts ofWalla Walla, among fields green with growing barley. The air wasfresh and sweet; the Western meadow larks, newly come, seemed inimminent danger of splitting their own throats through theexuberance of their song. Even the steel rails of the NorthernPacific, running parallel to the stretch of new road, gleamedpleasantly in the spring sun.
The convicts themselves were in a genial mood, easily moved towide grins; and with a single exception they looked much like anyother road gang at work anywhere in the land. An expert might haverecognized purely criminal types among them: to a layman theysuggested merely the lower grades of unskilled labor. Some of thefaces were distinctly brutal; there was the sullen visage of apowerful negro who, with different environment, might have been aCongo prince; but the face of "Plug" Spanos, a notorious gunman whowas by far the worst character in the gang, might have been that ofan artless plow-boy in a distant land under a warm sun. Thereremained, however, the "exception." Curiously enough, whenever thewarden's thought dwelt upon the inmates of his prison, classifyingthem into various groups, there was always one wind-tanned, vividface, one brawny, towering form that seemed to demand individualconsideration. The man who was listed on the records as Ben Kinneywas distinctly an individual. He some way failed to classify amongthe groups of his fellows. Because he had been sent out to-day withthe road gang the two armed guards had an interesting subject ofconversation.
In the first place he habitually did two men's work. He did notdo it with any idea of trying to ingratiate himself with hiskeepers: no inmate of the institution at Walla Walla made any suchmistake as that. He did it purely because he could not tone downhis mighty strength and energy to stay even with his fellows.To-day Sprigley, the guard in first command of the gang, had placedhim opposite Judy, the burly negro, but the latter was being drivenstraight toward absolute exhaustion. Yet Kinney at least knew howto subdue and direct the pouring fountain of his vitality andenergy, for the robust blows of his pick fell with the regularityof a tireless machine. It was as if a wild stallion, off theplains, had been trained to draw the plow. His great muscles movedwith marvelous precision; but for all the monotony and rhythm ofhis motions he conveyed no image of stolidity and dullness.
He was a great, dark man, his skin darkly brown from exposure;his straight hair showed almost coal black in spite of the factthat it had but rece
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