by Max Brand
“Look here, Steve,” he said one day, “I got no cause to love Single Jack. I know that he’s no good, and that it’ll be a fine thing for the world when he’s polished off, but, just the same, what call have you got for coming here to damn him black and white every day of your life? He’s gonna hang soon enough.”
“Shut up, Dan!” snapped Steve Grange. “I don’t need any lessons in politeness from you. But I hate a mean hound. I hate him, and I’m gonna tell him about it when I get a chance to.”
At that very moment he had passed behind the chair of the prisoner, and something cold and sharp slithered down the back of Deems between his skin and his shirt.
He had been half convinced that the recent attitude of young Grange had been real, but when he had his first chance to examine what had been dropped into his clothes, he found that it was the chief treasure that can be given to a prisoner. It was a file of the finest quality of steel, specially adapted for eating through the best of opposing steel. And those old-fashioned chains that held him were far from the finest quality. At every touch of the beautiful shark teeth of the saw, the steel in the links would give way. If he had had a few minutes to work boldly and freely with that file, he told himself that he would be a free man. But he did not have those few minutes.
During the day, it was impossible for him to do anything. The broad sun and the constant attention of McGruder and Shodress, to say nothing of the others, made it ridiculous to attempt anything. But during the night there was a little difference.
To be sure, he was never unwatched and his guard never slept, because every man in Yeoville dreaded him like death itself, and even Shodress and McGruder had not lost any of their awe by their constant association with him. But while he lay on his bed, he could effect a little progress with the file every night. He did his best.
To attempt anything upon the strong double chains that controlled his hands was impossible, under such circumstances. But he could lie doubled up on the bed, with his knees drawn high, and his face toward his guard, watching through the long, dark lashes of his eyes the slightest change of expression upon the face of the other man in the room. And, while he watched, with his hands thrust far down and the file prepared, he ground it stealthily into the chain that tied his feet together, and the chain that held the heavy shot.
He had to use strong pressure, and yet he dared not let his fingers be chafed until they bled. He had to use strong pressure, and yet he dared not let the file make the slightest sound. And yet now and again his energy became a little greater than his caution, and the file would emit a slight scratching against the steel.
Once, when Shodress was on guard, one of these sounds brought him to his feet with a bound.
Single Jack pretended to waken that instant.
“Can’t you put me in a place where I can sleep without having rats run all over me?” he demanded in disgust. “Is this such a mean little town that it can’t afford even a decent death cell?”
Shodress stood over him. In his hand was the double-barreled shotgun that never left his side, night or day. The sawed-off barrels carried in them enough fragments of lead and enough powder behind them to blow twenty men to the devil in small bits. Every day, in the afternoon, when Shodress came back from the hotel after his lunch, he was in the habit of unloading that terrible weapon and loading it again in the presence of the prisoner, and, after it was loaded, he would always say with a dreadful and yearning wickedness in his eyes: “Why don’t you try to break and run, one day, Deems? Why don’t you make a break for your liberty, Single Jack? Oh, don’t I just wish you would, so’s I could have a fair excuse to drive both charges in this gun through you.”
This idea tickled the fancy of the boss of Yeoville immensely and he was constantly referring to it.
Now, as he leaned over the bed of the prisoner, he said savagely: “What’re you talking about . . . rats? That wasn’t any rat that squeaked. What was it?”
“Oh, confound your fat head, and all the fool ideas that are in it!” exclaimed Single Jack, and, turning on the bed with a violent clinking of all his chains, he pretended to compose himself sullenly for sleep.
The shadow of the watcher remained in a great shapeless, splotch against the wall.
“Oh,” said Shodress in a whisper through his teeth, “how I would love to do it now . . . both barrels against the back of your neck, and both of the triggers pulled at the same time.”
“I’ll tell you, Shodress,” said the prisoner, turning over on his back and looking up dauntlessly into the face of the other, “you missed your happiest chance in life. You’ve made a little money and you’ve landed in a place where you have a good deal of power over fools that aren’t quite as completely crooked as yourself. But at the same time, you haven’t lived up to your possibilities.”
“What do you mean?” asked Shodress, half guessing at a compliment. “What are you driving at?”
“I mean, you ought to have worked in a slaughterhouse. That would have kept you happy.”
A torrent of oaths broke from the lips of Shodress. He stormed up and down the room, cursing volubly, and, as he cursed, he threatened the prisoner with every torment. But as his storm of words reached an end and he sank into his chair again, breathing hard, once more the prisoner lay in his accustomed position upon his side, with his knees hunched up high—tying himself into a knot, much after the fashion of a young boy. And watching the grumbling, furious Shodress, he resumed his dexterous work at the fetters.
It was a very slow progress that he made, though he pretended to more weariness than he felt and insisted upon going to bed early at night and lying late in the morning. For, early and late, while the sun lasted, he was really sleeping, but, through the heart of the night, he was lying apparently utterly relaxed, but really working with uncanny patience and a dogged resolution.
Those cramped and stealthy motions of the fingers, repeated for endless hours and hours, began to accomplish results, at last, and a great gash began to eat up into the underside of the chain that secured his feet. This chain was never examined, but, lest it should be even casually glanced at, he always finished his night’s work by rubbing a little adobe dust into the crease that the file had made in the steel.
And so the days drifted past, not slowly, any longer, but with a dizzying speed toward the day of execution.
Two days before the date set for the hanging, he gave up his plan as utterly hopeless, because there was still remaining too much of the thickness of the chain for him possibly to cut through it. But that very night he struck a veritable air bubble in what remained on one side of the link on which he was working, and, when he cut into it, he ground away almost the very last of the steel on that side.
With a renewed heart, he set to work on the other side of the link, and though the steel remained as strong there as ever, yet such a fiery power had hope given to him that, despite the growing dullness of the file, he was eating rapidly through it, and, by the time the morning came, there was left only a thin, brittle shell of steel on each of the links that he wanted to break.
When the daylight came and he stood up from his bed, he regretted keenly that he had worked so boldly, because he had left the link in such a depreciated condition that the slightest concentration upon the chain would show that it had been cut through, and that the veriest tissue of thin steel still connected it.
However, he trusted that such an examination would not be given. The day of his execution was literally just around the corner, and men would be thinking of his death, not of his escape. At least, to that he must trust, and pray that no real observation came the way of that chain.
When he stood up, he walked with short steps, or steps shorter even than the hobbling chain compelled, because he knew that at the first sharp strain the chain would snap.
And so he entered upon his last twenty-four hours, according to the verdict of the law. But even if the cutting of the links were completed, there were still the double manacles on h
is hands.
However, he had made one single stride toward the distant door of liberty, and now he was ready to take every opportunity, or any opportunity, with the cool resolution of an absolutely desperate man. For one thing at least he knew—which was that he would not die under the rope. Rather even the double-barreled shotgun of big Shodress.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Early that morning Steve Grange and Hester herself came and asked to see the prisoner. Shodress admitted them, and remained on guard in person, with Dan McGruder in the corner of the room with his repeating rifle across his knees.
“I’ve tried to keep her away from him,” said Steve, “but she wanted to have a last look at him. Let’s stand back and let her talk a minute alone with him.”
“Not a second,” insisted Shodress. “She ought to hate him. Everybody around here ought to. But you never can tell about a woman. They do the things that ain’t likely, and they think the things that are most foolish.” So he stood close by, with his ever-present shotgun dropped over the crook of his left arm and the muzzles turned toward the prisoner.
He was much amazed, now, watching Single Jack, for that man of the steady nerves had first grown red and then very pale as the girl entered the room.
She would have gone up to shake hands with him, but the harsh voice of Shodress warned her back.
“I’ll have nobody touch him,” said Shodress. “There’s all sorts of things that can happen, and even a hat pin in the hands of a trickster like him might turn into a gun with which he’d blow all our heads off. You keep clean away from him, Hester, on the far side of this here table.”
So she paused by the table with her hands clasped together and her eyes fastened upon the face of the criminal. “I had to come to say good bye to you,” murmured Hester.
“Louder!” barked Shodress. “I ain’t gonna have no whispering around here.”
There was an ominous growl from Steve Grange at this brutal remark, but Shodress did not even notice it, and, as for Single Jack and the girl, they seemed unable to notice the others in the room.
“I had to come,” she told him earnestly, “because I know that you’ve hated me and despised me, and now I can swear to you that I had nothing to do with McGruder and the others when they laid their trap for David Apperley.” She turned with a caught breath. “Alec Shodress, will you tell him that I had nothing to do with it?”
“Hello!” snarled Shodress. “Look at your sister, Steve. Blamed if she ain’t got tears in her eyes. Say, have you let her fall in love with that crook? Tell me that.”
“What’s that to you?” asked Steve Grange savagely. “Did you hear her ask you a question?”
Shodress stared first at Steve Grange and then at the girl and the prisoner. Then he stepped back and made his shotgun ready. “Dan!” he called. “Get ready! There’s something queer about this. I dunno what. But you cover Grange. I’m taking no chances. Deems, if you’ve framed something . . . why, start it.” He presented the double muzzle straight at Single Jack.
“I don’t need his word for it,” said Deems to the girl. “Yours is enough for me. And if you really want to know, I’ll tell you that I’ve stopped doubting you. If I hadn’t been a fool, I’d never have questioned you in the first place. But that’s finished and can’t be helped. It’s what’s to come that’s worth thinking about now . . .”
“What’s to come? The rope, d’you mean?” broke in Shodress, laughing loudly.
“It’s what’s to come,” agreed the girl eagerly. “And I hoped that you’d let me say that no matter what happens, you’ll never be forgotten.”
“Listen.” Shodress grinned. “Look if she ain’t making love to him right in front of our eyes.”
As for Steve Grange, he was white with emotion. But he hardly seemed to hear the boss of Yeoville, so intently was he watching the two on the opposite sides of the table.
Even Dan McGruder seemed to feel that the role that his chief was playing now was most unworthy, and he stood up, his rifle across his arm. “Leave ’em be, Shodress,” he snapped. “Can’t you leave ’em alone for a minute?”
“Sure! Let her work on him!” exclaimed Shodress. “She’s weakening him fast. Look at him begin to shake, Dan. I never expected really to see that. But a crook and a sneak is always a coward, down in his heart. If you can only put him in the right place to bring it out.”
“He’s right,” said Single Jack. “I’m shaking, Hester. I’m weak as a rag. But I’ve got the strength to say one thing. Will you let me say it?”
“Yes,” whispered the girl. “I want you to say it.”
“Do you guess what it is?”
“I think that I guess what it is. I hope that I do.”
“It’s this. If I get out of this tangle, I’m coming to you in spite of the devil. I won’t even wait to kill Shodress. I’ll come to you to tell you I love you, Hester.”
“Hey, he’s gone crazy!” cried Shodress. “I leave it to you, boys, if he ain’t gone crazy. Listen to what he’s saying. A gallows bird telling a girl that he loves her . . .”
“Shodress!” yelled McGruder in a savage burst of fury. “You leave them alone!”
And so amazed was Shodress at this act of rebellion on the part of an old and proved henchman that he could not help stopping to stare at Dan McGruder.
In the meantime, Hester had stretched out her arms across the table. “I thought I hated you, Jack. I thought that I just hated and feared you. But now I know that I’ve loved you from the first moment.”
“Ah,” cried Single Jack, “if I die tomorrow, I’ll die the happiest man in the world, knowing that . . . !”
“Get her out!” bellowed Shodress at Steve Grange. “Did you bring her here to give him heart like this and buck him up to the very end? Confound it, Grange, you’ve spoiled everything. You’ve ruined everything. Take your sister away from here. I wish that I’d never laid eyes on her.”
Steve Grange stepped beside his sister. One arm he passed around her. His free hand fingered the butt of his revolver fiercely. “I’m taking her away because you’re the boss of this place, Shodress,” he said. “But at the same time she leaves, I leave. I’m through with you and your ways. I’m done.”
“I can’t go yet, Steve!” pleaded the girl. “There’s one more thing I’ve got to say.”
“Not a syllable!” roared Shodress. “I won’t have another word out of her. As for you, Grange, I’ll see that you pay for daring to talk back to me like this. I’ll show you who took you out of jail, you low-down cow thief, and I’ll show you who can put you back.”
“Steve,” said Single Jack quietly, “I understand, and I’ll never forget. Take her away. Hester, good bye for a little while.”
The girl burst into tears, and Grange, his savage glance fixed on Shodress, led her from the room.
They left Shodress in a towering passion, stamping up and down the floor.
“I’ll ruin him!” bellowed the great Shodress. “I’ll smash him flat! I made that kid a man. I’ll make him nothing, now. I’ll show him what I am. I’ll teach him who runs this town. It’s time there was an example made of him. McGruder, can you believe all we’ve seen and heard it all these last five minutes?”
Poor Dan McGruder, baffled, and bewildered, made no reply. He could only gape at Single Jack. For this was a side of the prisoner’s character that he had not even dreamed of before. Still he could not believe it. But his senses told him that Hester Grange had come to the jail and told a man already legally dead that she loved him, and he had told her that he loved her.
It was too much for McGruder. It turned the plain world of the senses into an airy, fairy place where a man knew not what to think or do.
The rest of that morning was a stormy scene in the jail. Shodress, savage beyond belief, alternated between taunting his prisoner and damning the entire Grange family.
“I’m gonna leave you hanging for twenty-four hours on the gallows,” he told Single Jack. “But say, ha
ve you seen it yet?”
“You mean the gallows?”
“Yes.”
“I hear the hammers working,” said Single Jack. “It’s down the street, isn’t it?”
“Lean out the window,” said Shodress, “and you can see it.”
Single Jack walked obediently to the window and leaned out. He could see the tall skeleton of the gallows rearing its gaunt head, and its long shadow lying awkwardly upon the white dust of the street.
“I’ll be high enough for them all to see me,” said Deems. “I’m glad of that. I hope that they have a well-stretched rope, Shodress.”
“It’s one that’ll do for you,” replied the boss of Yeoville. He considered the smiling face of Deems with a scowl. “I got an idea,” he said, “that you still think that you ain’t gonna hang tomorrow.”
“How can I?” said Deems. “Because that leaves me hardly time to put a bullet in you, Shodress. And that has to happen first, you know.”
“Man, you talk like a fool,” declared big Shodress. “I didn’t have any idea that any grown man could have such an empty head. McGruder, tell me if you ever heard any such talk before? Partly crooked and partly crazy . . . that’s him.”
But Single Jack merely smiled.
And, as it was noon a moment later, Shodress prepared to go across the street to the hotel for his lunch. “Watch him like a hawk, Dan,” he said to McGruder. “I hardly like to trust him to you, even though I know that you ain’t got any reason for loving him. But keep your eyes on him. Remember that he does things that ain’t possible. He turns my best men, like Grange, into blockheads. Keep your guns ready, and, if anything happens . . . if you should have to sink a pair of bullets into him . . . why, I wouldn’t have many questions to ask you, old man.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
In the door he paused for a final shot at Deems. “What pleases me the most,” he declared, “is that I do it all so safe and easy. I use the law for the hanging of you, Single Jack. And while you’re about to swing, you ain’t gonna be able to tell yourself that you’ll ever be revenged on me. My hands are clean. It’s the law that does it.” He laughed with huge enjoyment.
