“So your rich man Justice is getting richer by robbing guns from the army. Probably selling them to some revolutionary down in Mexico, or even the Mexican government.”
“Josiah Justice is ruthless and ambitious and just damned evil,” Maxwell said. “But we don’t think he’s doing all this for money.”
“Then what? ” Fallon asked.
“To start another Civil War,” MacGregor answered. “Here. In the South.”
When that finally sank in, Fallon said, “That’s insane.”
“Which also describes Josiah Jonathan Justice to a tee,” Attorney General Malcolm Maxwell said.
Insane. The darkness. The heat. The wretchedness of his own body. That could also drive someone mad.
Fallon counted the bread slices again. Twelve . . . Thirteen . . . Fourteen . . .
No. His eyes widened in the darkness.
Fifteen . . . Sixteen . . . Seventeen.
It couldn’t be. He was supposed to be in this furnace for only two weeks. Fourteen days. He counted again. Seventeen. He wanted to reach up and bang on the iron door, but he lacked the strength.
They’d forgotten him. The damned fools had forgotten him. Or they were trying to break him.
He reached for the pitcher and knew it was empty before he ever got it to his mouth.
No. They weren’t trying to break him. And they hadn’t forgotten him. They were trying to kill him.
CHAPTER FIVE
Two days later, the door opened. Fallon covered his eyes with both arms and tried to turn his head from the intense light.
“Son of a gun,” a guard drawled. “He’s alive.”
“Son of a gun,” a trusty echoed. “Reckon that’s a half pound of chewing tobacco you owe me, Mort.”
“Hell.” Fallon heard the sound of feet beside him, joints popping as prisoners helped him up. The guard snorted, then laughed.
“Well, Alexander,” the guard said, “I guess we just plumb forgot about you. Get him to the infirmary.”
* * *
The prison doctor looked more like a skeleton this time, and his hair seemed even whiter. He looked up from his desk as the guards led Fallon inside. Slowly, he removed his glasses and let recognition come.
“More scars, Mr. Alexander?” he said as he groaned and pushed himself out of the hard-backed chair.
The doctor walked slowly to Fallon but stopped and kept his distance. Fallon understood why. The doctor should smell Fallon’s wretchedness from Fallon’s point of view, and scent.
“Who set your nose?” he asked after a moment.
“I did.”
The doctor nodded and looked at the lead guard. “Get him to the bathhouse. Let him bathe as long as it takes. Give him some coffee, but nothing to eat. When he’s clean, get him a clean, decent uniform. Then bring him back here as soon as you can.”
Grumbling, one of the guards nudged Fallon’s shoulder and muttered an order than sounded like, “Come on.”
Once Fallon reached the doorway, the doctor added one more instruction.
“Make sure he’s not in worse condition when he gets back here.”
* * *
By the time he had his third tub of water, Fallon didn’t hurt so much. He didn’t consider himself completely clean, but no one stayed completely clean in a prison.
The new uniform didn’t fit any worse than his first one, but now he had no underdrawers and he had to bribe one of the guards for a clean pair of socks. That was fine. Fallon neither smoked nor chewed tobacco, so his quarter-pound allotment wouldn’t have done him any good.
When he found himself back inside the infirmary, the doctor dismissed the two guards and went to work.
“Not the first time your nose was broken,” the ancient cadaver of a man said.
“Not the first time I had to set it myself, either,” Fallon said.
The doctor checked his records. “You’ve been here a little more than two weeks and already in the sweatbox.” His bony head shook. “How long were you in that contraption?”
“Since I walked out of here the first time.”
The doctor stepped back and sat on the stool across from Fallon. He tapped Fallon’s knee with a small hammer.
“That sweatbox didn’t alter your reflexes.”
He let the old man do his work, and when the doctor settled back behind his desk and told Fallon to put his shirt back on, Fallon asked, “How long have you been here?”
“Six years,” the doctor said without looking up. “Feels like sixty.”
Six years. He wouldn’t know the history of the warden, not personally. He hadn’t been in Huntsville long enough to know about Justice, either, and Fallon couldn’t just go about asking him direct questions.
“Am I in good health?” Fallon asked.
“You’re walking and breathing and talking.” The doctor looked up.
“Fit for duty?”
“You’ll enjoy working in the mill,” the doctor said. “It’s better than two weeks in solitary.”
“Seventeen days,” Fallon corrected. “And I’d rather be doing something other than working in some damned factory.”
“Your record says you’re from Louisiana.”
Fallon nodded. “Born there. Cotton and cane. When I was in my teens, my folks moved to Arkansas. Corn and more corn. But I also have some experience with . . . trains.” He winked.
The old man shook his head sadly. “Repairing track is different than robbing trains, young man. And if you’re thinking about getting leased out to some farming operation, think again, Mr. Alexander. You’re in for life. Lifers don’t get outside until they’re dead.”
“My wife’s working on that with our lawyer,” Fallon said. Those words caused his stomach to constrict. My wife. The image of Renee locked in his mind. His eyes closed.
“Well, I wish her luck. Stay out of solitary. It’s no place to be.”
“Nor is Huntsville.”
“Agreed.”
The doctor jotted a few notes, set the charts on his desk, and leaned back in his chair before he called for the guards.
* * *
My wife. Fallon had wondered how it would feel when he finally had to say that. He hadn’t realized how hard it would be, though, or the memories it would resurrect. Renee had been dead for years. He had no wife. And someone in this prison was likely responsible for that.
Quickly, he forgot about that, and as the guards led him into the yard, he saw Sergeant Barney Drexel walking toward him. The doctor had put some white cotton and bandages over Fallon’s nose and the cut over his right eye. The left eye remained blackened, and the swelling hadn’t gone down in his lips.
A prisoner walked alongside the prison guard, and both men stopped a few feet in front of Fallon and the guards.
“I guess it’s time,” the sergeant told one of the guards, who giggled. “Take him to The Judge. See what sentence he gets.”
Fallon stiffened. “I just finished better than two weeks in that sweatbox,” he said. “I’ve been sentenced, and I damned well served my time and then some.”
“Well,” the ragtag convict standing next to Drexel said. “You see, fresh fish, that was the free people that sentenced you. Now you gotta face our trial. You got to go before The Judge.”
* * *
As the old trusty led Fallon away, two bigger, younger prisoners joined them, walking on either side of Fallon as the older inmate fell behind them. The two new convicts were big men, hair shaved down to nothing but stubble, with muscles bulging against the ill-fitting striped uniforms. A line of prisoners parted, creating an opening, and Fallon and his guards passed through into a field where inmates kicked a ball to one another. Exercise. Others smoked tobacco; a few chewed tobacco.
Fallon kept walking, guided by the hulking men on either side of him. He saw The Judge. Well, he figured it had to be The Judge. That was the man sitting in a rocking chair in the shade next to the redbrick wall. Fallon noticed the guard towers where the guards looked
well past the man in the rocking chair and the men approaching him.
“Stop,” the con on Fallon’s right said.
Fallon obeyed.
The circle tightened. One small prisoner fanned The Judge with a book. The volume of Blackstone’s Commentaries seemed a bit heavy to be using as a fan.
The man stopped fanning and handed the book to the dark-haired man, who kept right on rocking in his chair.
“Hear ye, hear ye,” the convict who had been fanning The Judge said. “All those with business before this court, step forward and ye shall be heard.”
The men who had been kicking the ball stopped their exercise. The circle of men in black-and-white-or brown-and-white-striped uniforms stopped their whispers, crushed out their smokes, or removed the chaws of tobacco.
“The Right Honorable John Wesley Hardin presiding.”
* * *
John Wesley Hardin, the most notorious killer in Texas, raised his head and let his cold eyes lock on Fallon. Hardin was The Judge? Although The Judge remained sitting in the rocking chair, Fallon guessed Hardin to be no taller than five foot ten, and weighing perhaps 160 pounds. The Judge wore no robe and looked nothing like Judge Isaac Parker. Hardin’s uniform was like Fallon’s, brown-and-white stripes rather than black-and-white, his hair close-cropped but not as tightly shorn as the two brutes still standing beside Fallon. His face remained bronzed by the sun. He folded his hands and rested his head against them.
The would-be bailiff said, “Harry Alexander of Arkansas and Louisiana. Sentenced to life for robbing a damned Yankee paymaster.”
“That’s a crime?” Hardin said, and the surrounding throng roared with laughter.
“He’s charged with assaulting Josh Ryker,” the bailiff said.
“Who swore out the complaint?” The Judge asked.
“I did.”
A blond-headed convict with a pockmarked face and missing his left ear stepped out of the wall of striped uniforms. “Larry Purvis, Your Honor.”
Hardin’s eyes rolled. “Of course,” he said. “Ryker’s concubine.”
“I ain’t no such,” the inmate said in a nasal voice, and he kept talking until The Judge turned and gave him an icy stare. Larry Purvis swallowed and dropped his head. “My apologies, Judge Hardin,” he said timidly.
“Why isn’t Ryker making the complaint?” Hardin asked.
“That’s just it, Judge,” Purvis said. “Two days after that little set-to, Ryker got hisself transferred to Rusk. They just come up and grabbed him and took him to the warden’s office. And nobody knows why or nothing. He didn’t even get to tell nobody good-bye.”
Holderman, Fallon thought. Holderman had to come through, sent word to Dan MacGregor or someone outside. The American Detective Agency and the Texas attorney general had gotten Josh Ryker sent to another Texas prison—for Fallon’s safety. At least, that’s what they must have thought. Only Fallon wished they had left Ryker alone. This would just arouse suspicion, and that doubt crept into The Judge’s gray eyes.
“How about it, Alexander?” Hardin said. “Why did Ryker get sprung from The Walls and sent to Rusk?”
Fallon cleared his throat. “I wouldn’t know, Your Honor. I’ve spent the past seventeen days in the sweatbox.”
A murmur swept through the wall of prisoners.
The Judge sat up a little straighter in his rocking chair.
“Seventeen?”
“Yes, sir,” a trusty said. “I was there. Sergeant Hard Arse give Ryker a dozen lashes, put this fresh fish in the hole for twelve days, then said make it fourteen. Which he conveniently turned into seventeen. Only reason they opened the hatch to let him out is on account they figured him dead.”
“That’s hearsay, Mr. McCord,” Hardin said.
The trusty nodded. “Apologies to the court, Your Honor.”
Hardin’s head shook. “Seventeen days. Hell, they only gave me five when they learned about that escape we had planned all those years ago. You must be a hard case, Mr. Alexander.”
“I was just defending myself, Your Honor.”
“Not very well,” Hardin said, and his grin sent a ripple of laughter among the spectators.
Fallon shrugged.
“The fight got broke up,” Larry Purvis said. “That new guard, Holderman, come up and broke the fish’s nose.”
“Figures,” Hardin said. “Ryker wouldn’t have enough strength, or guts, to do that. Who started the fight?”
“He did.” Purvis pointed at Fallon.
“That ain’t true,” the trusty, McCord, said. “Ryker called the fish a turncoat lowlife. Just charged right into the fish. It was a pretty good fight, Your Honor. Ryker started off pretty good, but at the end, it was him lying in the dirt not knowing what day or month it was.”
Hardin brought his hands out from behind his head, spread his fingers, brought the tips together and leaned forward. “‘Turncoat lowlife’ . . . not a compliment, Mr. Alexander. Turncoat lowlifes told the guards about our planned break. Put me behind in solitary for five days.”
“Consider the source,” Fallon said.
Hardin lowered his hands. “Well put.” He opened the Commentaries, turned a page, closed the book, and studied Fallon for the longest time.
“But the charge, for the time being, is not being a turncoat bastard but of assault and battery. Do you wish to enter a plea?”
“Not guilty,” Fallon said.
“A wise choice.” The Judge cleared his throat.
Fallon guessed Hardin had to be around forty years old now. When had he been convicted of shooting down that sheriff and sent to prison? Fallon hadn’t been riding for Judge Parker’s court for that long when he had read about Hardin in the newspapers. Fifteen years ago? Sixteen? Longer than even Fallon had served in Joliet. Of course, John Wesley Hardin had killed that lawman. Fallon had been framed. And most people in Texas and across the West would have said that John Wesley Hardin, who might have killed forty men, deserved to hang. But here he sat, playing judge and, apparently, jury, trying fellow inmates.
“But a witness says that Josh Ryker started the fight, so Mr. Alexander was merely defending himself. The charge is dismissed with prejudice. Purvis. You must pay court costs. Cigarettes and some of your homemade brew delivered to my clerk by noon Friday of next week. Mr. Alexander, you are free to go, but you will sit at my table at supper tonight. McCord, see to that. This court is now adjourned.”
The men spread out. Fallon found himself swept away from The Judge, known outside The Walls as the man-killing John Wesley Hardin. A few men slapped Fallon’s back and shoulders, but most stared in silence and suspicion. Transferring Josh Ryker had been a tactical error. Fallon looked around for Holderman, but the big man was nowhere to be found.
Then the men surrounding Fallon disappeared, and Fallon knew why. Two guards were making a beeline toward him. They stopped. So did Fallon.
“You got a visitor,” the smaller of the two guards said. “Your wife’s here to see you.”
CHAPTER SIX
“Your wife’s here to see you.”
He never heard that in Joliet.
Fallon saw Renee again. Standing in the middle of the exercise yard at The Walls, staring at two ugly prison guards, he saw his beautiful wife. He was back in Van Buren, Arkansas, and Renee was crying.
“It’s not funny anymore, Ted,” Fallon had snapped at the deputy marshal standing just inside the door to the place he and Renee had rented in Van Buren. Fallon swung back to his wife. “It’s all right, honey. Don’t . . .” Now Rachel, his daughter, only two years old, was crying.
“Ted!” Fallon whirled back at the deputy. “See what you’ve done? I don’t know what the hell made you think . . .”
Fallon stopped. Ted Merritt had his right hand on the butt of his holstered Remington, and behind him, Fallon now saw four other deputies, armed with revolvers, some with rifles, one holding a Greener shotgun with the barrels sawed off. None of them even cracked a smile.
“You’re serious,” Fallon whispered.
His daughter wailed. Renee sobbed as she tried to get the toddler to stop crying.
Fallon looked at the writ Ted Merritt held in his left hand.
“You’re under arrest, Hank,” Merritt said, and Fallon swore he saw tears welling in the deputy’s eyes. “Don’t make this any harder.”
Fallon felt as though someone had punched him in the stomach, but he remained upright. Slowly, he reached for his hat and called back to Renee. “Find Chris,” he said. “Tell him what’s happened.”
Chris Ehrlander was a lawyer. Judge Parker had recommended him, but Fallon never thought he would be asking Ehrlander to represent him. Parker had suggested that Fallon study for the bar. Read law with a good attorney. Become a lawyer. “You’d make a good one,” Judge Parker had said as they walked to the corner to catch the omnibus for home. “You have a wife, son. Riding down outlaws in the Indian Nations is no job for a married man. Especially not for a married man with a child.”
“I guess I’m lucky in one regard,” Fallon later told Chris Ehrlander.
“How’s that?” his lawyer and friend had said.
“Judge Parker told the solicitor he didn’t have enough evidence to try me for murder.” A deputy marshal had been shot dead. A peace officer with the Creek Nation had been wounded, too. “So it’s not a rope I’m facing.”
Ehrlander shook his head sadly.
“If you get sentenced to Detroit, you’ll wish you’d hanged,” the lawyer said, and Fallon knew he wasn’t joking.
But Judge Parker later intervened. After Fallon had been convicted, the judge had somehow made arrangements to get Fallon sent to the Illinois State Penitentiary in Joliet and not the Detroit House of Corrections.
“Lucky again,” Fallon had said stiffly in the stifling courthouse.
“You are lucky beyond belief,” his lawyer had whispered. “Look behind you.”
And he saw his wife. He saw his daughter.
“Good-lookin’ wench ya got thar, Alexander,” the guard in the anteroom said. He rapped the heavy stick against the palm of his hand. “No contact whatsoever. Ya don’t kiss ’er. Ya don’t hold ’er hands. If she passes anything to ya, I knock yer head off an’ yer back in the sweatbox. An’ she don’t never come to see ya agin. Understand?”
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