“At Canon City.”

The lumberman looked at him quickly, a question in his glance.

“Yes,” Dave went on doggedly.  “In the penitentiary.”

A moment’s awkward embarrassment ensued.

“What were you in for?”

“Killing a man.”

“Too bad.  I’m afraid—­”

“He had stolen my horse and I was trying to get it back.  I had no intention of hitting him when I fired.”

“I’d take you in a minute so far as I’m concerned personally, but our board of directors—­afraid they wouldn’t like it.  That’s one trouble in working for a corporation.”

Sanders turned away.  The superintendent hesitated, then called after him.

“If you’re up against it and need a dollar—­”

“Thanks.  I don’t.  I’m looking for work, not charity,” the applicant said stiffly.

Wherever he went it was the same.  As soon as he mentioned the prison, doors of opportunity closed to him.  Nobody wanted to employ a man tarred with that pitch.  It did not matter why he had gone, under what provocation he had erred.  The thing that damned him was that he had been there.  It was a taint, a corrosion.

He could have picked up a job easily enough if he had been willing to lie about his past.  But he had made up his mind to tell the truth.  In the long run he could not conceal it.  Better start with the slate clean.

When he got a job it was to unload cars of fruit for a commission house.  A man was wanted in a hurry and the employer did not ask any questions.  At the end of an hour he was satisfied.

“Fellow hustles peaches like he’d been at it all his life,” the commission man told his partner.

A few days later came the question that Sanders had been expecting.  “Where’d you work before you came to us?”

“At the penitentiary.”

“A guard?” asked the merchant, taken aback.

“No.  I was a convict.”  The big lithe man in overalls spoke quietly, his eyes meeting those of the Market Street man with unwavering steadiness.

“What was the trouble?”

Dave explained.  The merchant made no comment, but when he paid off the men Saturday night he said with careful casualness, “Sorry, Sanders.  The work will be slack next week.  I’ll have to lay you off.”

The man from Canon City understood.  He looked for another place, was rebuffed a dozen times, and at last was given work by an employer who had vision enough to know the truth that the bad men do not all go to prison and that some who go may be better than those who do not.

In this place Sanders lasted three weeks.  He was doing concrete work on a viaduct job for a contractor employed by the city.

This time it was a fellow-workman who learned of the Arizonan’s record.  A letter from Emerson Crawford, forwarded by the warden of the penitentiary, dropped out of Dave’s coat pocket where it hung across a plank.